sixteen
SOMETHING’S VERY WRONG WITH ME

I should be mortified, totally and utterly mortified, at making such an awful scene over a trunk of kids’ dolls and a swinging lightbulb. And deep down, I am thoroughly embarrassed, but it’s a dull sensation buried under layers and layers of other emotions that are much sharper and more stabbing. Fear. Confusion. Panic.

Someone’s caught me and is holding me by the shoulders, keeping me on my feet. It’s Jane.

“Has anyone got a paper bag?” she’s asking urgently. “She’s having a panic attack—it helps to breathe into a paper bag—”

“It’s like that shadow on the wall! Like that shadow we saw up there!” Plum squeals. “I know why she’s screaming! She saw something at the top of the slope in the doorway—she said someone was following her—”

“Wee Flora’s just a story, lassie,” the guide says, sounding very worried. “There’s no documentation for it; we’ve just got the psychic’s word for it. She might have made it all up, y’know—”

“Throw some water on her!” Miss Carter recommends.

I really can’t breathe now. Dark spots are spinning before my eyes. My head’s tightening, as if my skull’s shrinking, and my body feels lighter and lighter, my legs as wobbly as jelly.

And then someone grabs my arm in a grip even tighter than Taylor’s and starts dragging me out of the room. I feel every single finger digging into me, separate and distinct, the thumb sinking into my tricep muscle, and the pain is sharp and clear and hugely welcome, because it’s an instant distraction from my panic. I gasp in shock and drag in a long, merciful breath as I’m pulled out into the corridor and up the incline, then shoved into a stone embrasure, an old window frame onto which I slump. It’s an improvised chair; the hand stays on my arm and the other hand comes down on the back of my head, shoving it between my knees.

“Blood to the head stops a faint,” Aunt Gwen’s voice snaps above me.

“Oh, well done, Gwen,” Miss Carter says, trotting up the slope in our wake. “Very well done. What on earth is going on with Scarlett? I know she had period issues on Arthur’s Seat, but I’m beginning to think we have a serious nerve disturbance here!”

“Her mother was very unstable,” Aunt Gwen says grimly. “A lot of these problems start at puberty, you know.”

“Oh dear …” Miss Carter clicks her tongue.

I try to speak, but my head’s still swimming. Aunt Gwen is a foul, evil witch who can’t resist an opportunity to bitch about my mother, and yet she’s the only person who had the wit to save me from fainting. I suppose I should be grateful to her. Which is incredibly annoying.

“I’ll take her back to Fetters and let her rest,” Aunt Gwen says. “It’s the best we can manage for now.”

“Absolutely,” Miss Carter agrees. “I really don’t think that silly little ghost story was remotely upsetting enough to cause something like this. Plum was saying Scarlett hallucinated some sort of shadow, isn’t that right? We’ll have to get her checked out by a doctor once we’re back at Wakefield.”

“One thing at a time,” Aunt Gwen says. “Scarlett, lift your head up now and take deep breaths from your diaphragm. You can control yourself, and you will.”

It’s amazing that Aunt Gwen’s rough treatment is actually working. But it is. She’s let go of my arm by now, but it’s still throbbing, and the pain’s a focus for me to concentrate on. Pain I can deal with. Panic’s much harder. By the time I raise my head as Aunt Gwen commands, the black spots in my vision have gone, and my head isn’t spinning anymore.

“Miss Carter, what’s happening?” Taylor sprints up the slope, sounding as frantic as I just felt. “Is Scarlett okay?”

“Goodness knows, Taylor,” Miss Carter sighs. “Her aunt is taking her back to Fetters to lie down. We’ll see what the nurse has to say.”

“I’ll go back too!” Taylor says immediately. “She shouldn’t be alone. I can sit with her in our room—”

“I think I’m more than capable of taking care of one hysterical teenager, thank you, Taylor,” Aunt Gwen snaps.

“No—Miss Carter, Miss Wakefield, please let me come!” Taylor sounds hysterical herself. “She’s my best friend, please!”

“I suppose it couldn’t do any harm—” Miss Carter starts, but I interrupt her.

“No!” I say loudly. “I don’t want her!”

“Scarlett!” Taylor almost wails. “Scarlett, you have to—”

“I don’t have to do anything!” I yell. “I know you saw that ghost—no, not a ghost, it was something real—I know you saw it, and you’re lying! Not just now, when we were coming back from the Shore as well! That’s twice you’ve lied about it!”

“It’s not—I can explain—” Taylor begins, but Aunt Gwen’s voice cuts through us like a knife through butter.

“This situation is completely out of control,” she snaps, her voice as tart as a lemon. “I am taking Scarlett back to school immediately. Miss Carter, will you please escort Taylor McGovern back to the group now, before the girls work each other up to any further heights of childish hysteria?”

“Come on, Taylor,” Miss Carter says, turning away. “This isn’t helping Scarlett at all.”

I look at Taylor; she’s white as a sheet. Pushing past Miss Carter, she runs up to me, dropping down next to me so she can be level with my face.

“Scarlett, let me come with you!” she pleads. “Please! I can explain everything—just let me come back to school with you—”

“Leave me alone,” I say angrily, my voice echoing off the stone walls. “I can’t trust you anymore! Plum saw that thing—whatever it was—it’s mad that you’re the one who kept lying to me, and Plum didn’t! Everything’s so messed up, I don’t know what to think!”

Aunt Gwen pulls me to my feet.

“This is clearly a case of a friendship getting too close,” she says over my head to Miss Carter. “We see it much too often, don’t we? It’s the bane of single-sex schools.”

“What?” Taylor jumps up, yelling at Aunt Gwen. “That’s bull! You’re the one who told Scarlett she couldn’t see her boyfriend! If you were worried about me and Scarlett getting too close, why didn’t you let her see Jase?”

“Jase Barnes is Scarlett’s boyfriend?” Miss Carter says in surprise, before she shakes her head. “This is getting completely out of control,” she says firmly. “Gwen, you’re absolutely right. Taylor, you will come with me this instant to rejoin the group.”

“But, Miss Carter—”

“Now!” Miss Carter barks at her, with all the authority of a gym mistress more than used to making reluctant girls jump on command.

Aunt Gwen is already marching me back through the narrow underground passages as expertly as if she had spent her life down in these closes. In a matter of minutes, we’re climbing the wooden staircase again, emerging into the gift shop, startled faces turning to stare at us as we exit through the heavy iron-framed door into the daylight. The Royal Mile is bustling, and I balk at the number of people on the pavements, the sightseeing buses lumbering past; it’s too much for me to deal with. Too much reality, too much confusion.

But it certainly isn’t too much for Aunt Gwen. Maybe she really is the best person to be taking care of someone in as highly emotional a state as I am right now; she hails a black taxi and has me inside, slumped on the backseat, almost immediately. The familiar ticking noise of the cab’s engine is loud and comforting, and in the fifteen minutes it takes us to drive back to Fetters, we don’t exchange a word.

Aunt Gwen doesn’t take me to see the nurse, for which I’m also grateful; that woman was nasty enough to me last time I collapsed. I can’t imagine how sarcastic she’d be at the sight of me coming in twice in three days with fainting symptoms. Instead, I’m marched through the main hall, up five flights of a back staircase, and through a series of fire doors to a modern wing of the school so tucked away behind its Victorian Gothic facade that I didn’t even know it existed. This is clearly for the teachers—Aunt Gwen has her own suite of rooms, which are as spacious and luxurious as the pupils’ are cramped and old-fashioned.

So this is where a lot of the school fees go, I think, the cynical granddaughter of a headmistress. Bet they don’t let the parents anywhere near this wing.

Aunt Gwen chivvies me into the sitting room and indicates an armchair while she bustles off into the adjoining kitchenette. I peer around and notice a bedroom off one side of the sitting room, and what I assume is an en suite bathroom beyond it. The living room is very nicely furnished, with a leather sofa and two matching armchairs round a coffee table, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, a desk, and two huge windows with views over the parking lot to the Fetters football pitches beyond.

“Here, drink this,” Aunt Gwen says, coming back with a mug of tea and setting it down in front of me on the coffee table—on a coaster, naturally. “Plenty of sugar in it. That’s always good for a shock.” She takes a seat in the other armchair. “Oh, and open that window next to you,” she adds, nodding at it. “Cold air will do you good as well.”

There’s no disobeying Aunt Gwen; I stand up obediently and twist the chrome handle, cracking the heavy, double-glazed window open as little as I can get away with. The breeze is sharp on the back of my neck as I turn away, and I must admit, she’s right; it does wake me up, even as I’m shivering.

I sit back down in the armchair and pick up the tea, blowing on the top to cool it down. Aunt Gwen has brewed it as strong as she could.

“Drink it all,” she commands, fixing her bulging, green gobstopper eyes on me.

One of Aunt Gwen’s most effective powers is her ability to not say a word, which is a lot harder than you’d think. Under her basilisk stare, I dutifully drink down my entire mug of tea. The sugar and caffeine rush, combined with the cold air blowing over my face, dispels the last wisps of dizziness from my meltdown; I set the mug on the table, feeling as good as I can, considering that I just threw a major wobbly and am now seated in front of my horrible aunt, doubtless about to get one of her special, nerve-crunching lectures about exactly what’s wrong with me.

I take a deep breath and brace myself for the onslaught. But her first question takes me completely by surprise.

“Are you still in contact with Jase Barnes, Scarlett?” she asks, leaning forward and smoothing her tweed skirt down over her knees. “Taylor McGovern said just now that he was your boyfriend. I told you in no uncertain terms to break it off with him earlier this year. And I certainly assumed that after all that unpleasantness with his father, and Jase’s disappearance, the two of you were no longer in touch.”

I bite the inside of my lip and prepare to tell a string of lies. There’s no point having a confrontation with Aunt Gwen; I live in her house, and she made it very clear to me months ago that if I kept seeing Jase, she would do everything in her power to turn my life into even more of a living hell than she’s managed to do so far.

“No, Aunt Gwen,” I fib, sliding one hand under my thigh so I can cross my fingers. It may be a silly superstition, but this isn’t just any lie; it’s to do with Jase, and after what happened last night at the quarry party—blood rises to my face when I think about it—I’m more protective than ever of our relationship.

It isn’t enough, though. Aunt Gwen doesn’t look remotely convinced.

“He’s gone,” I say. “I haven’t heard from him since he took off. We weren’t even seeing each other when all that happened. I just wanted to help him because I was sure he was innocent.”

To sell the lies, I call on the memories of how awful I felt when Jase didn’t ring me for all those weeks, and how even more awful I felt when I thought we’d broken up. It’s like being an actress, when they tell you to think of something really sad, like your dog dying, so that you can cry on cue; I feel my face sag in misery, my mouth turning down at the corners.

From Aunt Gwen’s expression, I see immediately that it’s worked; she’s nodding in satisfaction.

“The Barnes family are nothing but scum,” she says, settling back in her armchair and crossing her legs. “Look at the grandmother! And that pathetic creature Kevin married!”

I don’t think I’ve ever heard Aunt Gwen say a nice word about another woman, I reflect, but she’s particularly nasty about poor Dawn. Jase’s mum isn’t exactly the Brain of Britain, it’s true, but she means well, after all, which is more than one can say about Aunt Gwen. It’s odd that I think of Jase’s mum by her first name, rather than calling her Mrs. Barnes, but when you meet Dawn, you know that treating her like an adult just doesn’t feel right. In a maturity contest between her and Lizzie Livermore, I honestly think Lizzie would win.

“You really don’t like Dawn—Jase’s mum,” I observe.

Aunt Gwen’s eyes bulge.

“There’s nothing to dislike,” she snaps. “Dawn Barnes is simply a nothing. She wasn’t even that pretty when she was younger, let alone now.”

Harsh, as Taylor would say. But you just have to look at Aunt Gwen to understand why she might be catty about another woman’s looks. Poor Aunt Gwen didn’t have much luck in the beauty department; she takes after her father, and my grandfather’s craggy, masculine features and big, sturdy build don’t translate well to a female. Of course, Aunt Gwen could make more of an effort—do something with her frizzy sandy hair, dye her eyebrows, wear clothes that make her look less like she’s in an Agatha Christie village mystery from the 1940s, with her twinsets, pearls, and orthopedic-looking sturdy shoes. But it’s true that the raw materials don’t give her much to work with, and the thyroid disease that makes her eyes bulge out like an angry frog’s is very unlucky.

I don’t look anything like Aunt Gwen; I’m a dead ringer for many of the Wakefield women in the family portraits. Small frame, white skin, blue eyes, dark curly hair. My mother was actually a distant cousin of my father’s, so I have Wakefield blood on both sides, which explains why the resemblance between me and a lot of the previous Wakefields in crinolines and bonnets and, later, bustle skirts, is so pronounced. I know Aunt Gwen hates me for this, but it’s not exactly my fault, is it?

And without meaning to be too much of a bitch, I do think Aunt Gwen should be more careful about commenting on other women’s looks. I mean, people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

I close my eyes for a moment, feeling a little woozy. I squinch the lids shut tightly, shaking my head, in an attempt to wake myself up.

“So you’re not still in contact with Jase Barnes?” Aunt Gwen asks. “You don’t have any idea whether he’s planning to come back to Wakefield?”

“No,” I say, opening my eyes again. Why is she going over this? I wonder. I already said I wasn’t.

I turn toward the window a little, letting the air blow onto my face. I’m feeling a bit dizzy again. Probably because I got so little sleep last night—or rather, this morning.

“I think I should go and lie down,” I say to Aunt Gwen, stifling a yawn.

“Not yet,” she says with a shake of her head. “We have a lot more to talk about.”

Really? I think. All you seem to be asking me is the same question about Jase, over and over again.

“I just feel a bit woozy,” I say apologetically.

“Stay where you are,” Aunt Gwen says calmly. “You’re fine in the armchair.”

It’s true, the armchair’s very comfortable, squashy and yielding; it’s just that it’s hard to relax in Aunt Gwen’s presence. No, I amend that; it’s impossible.

“Did you ever wonder, Scarlett,” Aunt Gwen continues conversationally, “why I live in the gatehouse? Not the family wing of Wakefield Hall? There’s a whole floor, almost, of the Hall, that was being done up for your father and mother. And now it’s closed off, and I’m in that tiny little cottage where the lowest member of staff used to live.”

My eyes widen.

“I did, actually,” I admit. “Wonder about it, I mean.”

She nods.

“It was my mother’s idea,” she says. “After your parents died. She wanted me to move in there with you, bring you up; she wanted me to bond with you. Be a sort of substitute mother, I imagine.” She snorts in contempt at this idea. “Crammed together in that horrible little box—what was she thinking?”

She leans forward again.

“But of course, you realize her real motive,” she adds. “She was terrified. Terrified that I had something to do with your parents’ being killed. She couldn’t bear to think about it. So she made me take you in and bring you up, to prove to herself that she didn’t believe it. And, I assume, to make sure nothing happened to you. She didn’t think I could risk anything happening to you when you were in my care.”

My mouth is hanging open; I’m dumbfounded. This is so unexpected, so hard to process, that there’s nothing I can think of to say.

Also, my head feels like it’s stuffed full of cotton wool, and my lips don’t seem to be working very well.

“And she was right, wasn’t she?” Aunt Gwen smiles. It’s like watching a crocodile bare its teeth. “I couldn’t have risked you having an accident when you were small and vulnerable, could I? It would have been much too suspicious.”

“But Mr. Barnes killed my parents!” I manage to get out. “He knocked them off their scooter—he ran them down with his van!”

Aunt Gwen raises her hands and claps once, mockingly.

“Why don’t you try thinking for a moment, Scarlett? You’re supposed to be a bright girl. Did it ever occur to you to wonder why Kevin would bother to do something as senseless as run over Sir Patrick and Lady Wakefield? Why would he have taken a risk like that unless he had something huge to gain? What, did you think he was a homicidal maniac? You’re as big an idiot as your mother, that brainless little fluffball. Kevin killed your parents so that I could inherit the Hall, my dear. We were in it together.”

I simply don’t believe this. She’s playing a horrible joke on me, torturing me, knowing that no one will believe me when I tell them what she said to me, because it’s so impossible and outrageous.

I try to shake my head, but it’s as heavy as lead. Something’s very wrong with me.

“Don’t you like what I’m telling you, Scarlett?” Aunt Gwen says, smiling even more now. “Then why don’t you leave? I won’t try to stop you.”

I push my hands down on the arms of the chair, but I can’t lift myself. I’m almost paralyzed; my bones might as well be made of polystyrene, my muscles of cotton wool. I can’t brace myself against the chair; my arms collapse instead.

“Antihistamines always had this effect on you,” she informs me. “I gave you one when you were small and had hay fever, and you went out like a light.” She looks reminiscent. “It was very tempting, I can tell you! But, as I said, it was too soon. I made a note of the active ingredients in the pills, and I bought some more last week and put them in your water bottle. I was hoping you’d fall off the edge of that mountain and split your head open.” She shrugs. “Well, I didn’t have much luck with that, did I?”

“Taylor said … antihistamines …,” I mumble.

“Taylor’s a clever girl,” Aunt Gwen agrees. “That’s why I was so relieved when you didn’t want her to come back with us this afternoon. Goodness knows what’s going on between the two of you, but it worked out perfectly for me. Your tea had four pills crushed up in it—you should be very drowsy by now. I just hope you can take in what I’m saying. It would be a disappointment for me if you couldn’t, frankly.”

“You—and Mr. Barnes?” I say, my lips almost numb.

She nods abruptly.

“We were—together, when we were younger,” she says, and now she looks wistful, almost vulnerable. “But it was impossible, of course. He was the gardener’s son, and I am a Wakefield! Ridiculous! But Kevin was always ambitious. When I made it clear to him that no one could ever know that we were seeing each other, he got furious. Really angry. Kevin had a terrible temper. He tore off and married the first woman he met, that stupid little nothing, Dawn.” She’s frowning now. “But naturally, that didn’t last. How could it? She bored him to death. So we began seeing each other again. And it occurred to both of us that if your father was out of the picture, my mother would be a lot more generous to me.”

She looks directly at me, her eyes flashing.

“Patrick was always her favorite,” she says bitterly. “The son—her firstborn—serving in the army, marrying a Wakefield cousin, for God’s sake! He did everything right in her eyes! And then, when they had you, and it was clear that you were going to be a perfect tiny little Wakefield clone, it was as if I didn’t even exist for my mother anymore. Everything was Patrick’s, everything. I thought if he wasn’t around anymore—and your mother, too, because my mother just drooled over her—that it would all be different.” She sighed. “I wanted you gone too, of course. That would have been best. But Kevin wouldn’t do that. Not a little girl, he said. That was too much. He turned out to have some scruples.”

She laughs, without a hint of humor.

“But it was too much for him anyway, wasn’t it?” she says resentfully. “He couldn’t cope with what he’d done. He was weak, weaker than I ever expected. After running down your mother and father, he dived straight into a bloody whisky bottle. God, it was so infuriating! He’d barely even look at me afterwards—he blamed me for talking him into it, when it was his idea just as much as mine.” Her eyes narrow. “Pathetic! Catch me ever falling to pieces like that! At least my mother never made the connection. But I know she suspected I was involved somehow, I know it. Otherwise I would never have been sent to the gatehouse. And made to look after you. God, those were the worst years of my life. Waiting, waiting, until enough time had passed, and you were old enough so it wouldn’t look suspicious. Till I could finally get rid of you and be the only heir to Wakefield Hall, whether my mother liked it or not.”

She raises her eyebrows.

“I thought this would be the perfect opportunity—up in Scotland, a different location. It has to look like an accident, of course. The smoke bombs were such a good idea, weren’t they? I knew no one would ever think a teacher would do something like that. And that note I put in your room!”

Aunt Gwen is almost beaming with perverse pride. “So clever! With all those St. Tabitha’s girls around, there were bound to be some who you’d had a fight with! I know exactly what teenage girls are like—best friends today, deadly enemies tomorrow. Ugh, such a waste of an excellent plan!” She sighs. “If you’d only been killed falling down that staircase … I gave you a hard enough push, God knows! It would have been absolutely perfect. They’d have looked at the smoke bombs, found the note, and thought it was a prank that went horribly wrong.”

I’m pushing down on the arms of the chair now frantically, with everything I have, trying to get my feet underneath me to take my weight, but my legs keep collapsing. I’m never getting out of this chair under my own steam. Panic is rising in me. It might seem totally unbelievable that I haven’t freaked out before now, but the antihistamines make me feel as if I’m being wrapped in layers and layers of padding; it takes ages for anything to sink in, to seem real. Let alone a story as insane as Aunt Gwen’s.

I know it’s true, every word of it. She’s relishing telling me all this; I can see the malicious gleam in her eyes. Everything fits—especially because it slots in the last puzzle piece to Mr. Barnes’s hit-and-run killing of my parents, his motive for doing that. And it explains why both Mr. Barnes and Aunt Gwen were so violently opposed to Jase’s and my falling in love with each other.

“It’s time,” she says, standing up. She tugs down her skirt, smoothing it out, a banal, everyday little gesture that somehow intensifies the horror of what she’s about to do.

I shake my head frantically, a scream building inside my skull, wanting to explode from my mouth; but I can barely manage to make any sound at all.

“I have no idea why on earth you’ve been babbling about all this ghost nonsense,” she says almost cheerfully. “You’ve never seemed that sort of silly, childish girl. But it’s perfect for my purposes. You’ve had two collapses in three days. You’re acting so hysterically every single teacher is concerned you’re on the verge of a nervous breakdown. So, my story will be very simple: I brought you up here to talk to you and see how you were, Scarlett, because I was worried about you. After all, you are my niece. I left to make another cup of tea, but when I came back, the window was open. And you were gone.”

She walks toward me, reaching down and pulling me out of the armchair. I can’t believe how strong Aunt Gwen is; I try to struggle but I have nothing at all to do it with. No juice, Taylor says, when we’ve worked out so hard our muscles feel soft as toffee and we’re too knackered even to lift the remote to change the channel on the TV, lying there watching a blah program rather than mustering the energy to find something we’re actually interested in. And right now, I have no juice, not a drop of it. Aunt Gwen hauls me up and out of the chair, gripping my sweater rather than my skin, and I know this is so she won’t leave any marks on me that might be suspicious. My feet flail at the ground as she frog-marches me over to the window.

“You opened it yourself, of course,” she’s saying complacently. “That’s why I got you to do it, in case anyone was suspicious—your fingerprints are all over the latch. You wanted to get some air, but you leaned out too far. A tragic accident. I’m not stupid enough to try to fake a suicide—even though it’s terribly common among teenage girls, apparently. Though if that’s what the police choose to believe …” I feel her shrug as she nudges the window open with an elbow and starts to shove me through the frame, out onto the ledge.

Desperately, I do the only thing I can think of. Fighting her isn’t working; the antihistamines have sapped my muscle control. Instead, I slump against her, making myself a dead weight. My feet catch on the windowsill, and she curses, trying to lift me. The rubber of my trainers catches on the paint of the wall below, providing resistance against her attempts to haul me up.

She’s swearing now, a stream of filthy words pouring from her—in any other context it would totally shock me that Aunt Gwen has this kind of vocabulary. I’m hanging from her grip like a huge, unwieldy doll, and I feel her knee come into the small of my back, boosting me, shoving my legs so they fold up enough that she can hoist me through the window frame.

I’m trying to push back, fall back on top of her, make myself so heavy that she can’t maneuver enough to make the final shove. It’s freezing out here, the wind icy on my face, lifting my hair, my fingers feeling numb with cold, and it’s sapping me. I’m exhausted, shocked, and dazed from the drugs she’s given me; part of me still can’t believe that it’s my aunt who’s doing this, my own flesh and blood. My aunt, who’s made several attempts to kill me, and is going to succeed this time …

My neck wobbles, tipping my head forward, despite my best efforts. And that’s fatal for me. An adult human head weighs about ten pounds—I had that dinned into me for years at gymnastics, to remind me to tuck my head in when I somersaulted. The extra weight helps with the rotation.

And now it’s helping Aunt Gwen, tilting my body in the direction she wants it. Forward. Out the window. Off the ledge. Chin resting on my chest, I’m looking straight down at the ground below. It’s hard concrete: the empty parking lot. Not even a car that might break my landing.

Aunt Gwen’s planned this perfectly. There are no lawns below, no soft grass. No question that this fall will kill me.

I close my eyes, not brave enough to watch myself plummet into space.

And then my head spins dizzily as I’m dragged back so abruptly that I hit my head against the side of the window. Pain shooting through my skull, I tumble awkwardly onto the carpet inside, my knees shooting up into my chest, rolling into a ball to protect my face and chest, because Aunt Gwen and someone else are struggling, trampling each other, feet shuffling right next to me, one tripping over my leg as I scramble as best I can to get out of the way.

My back pushes against the armchair. I curl up against it, eyes snapping open, staring in disbelief at what I see: Aunt Gwen and Taylor, swaying back and forth in the window embrasure. But no, not Taylor; that’s what I’m finding so hard to process. It’s a male version of Taylor, built on a bigger scale; the same shaggy hair, the same wide shoulders, the same strong features.

My brain’s firing so slowly that it takes me a ludicrously long time to work out what’s blindingly obvious.

“Seth!” I say finally. “You’re Seth!”

He swings round at hearing his name, momentarily distracted, his heavy fringe tumbling across his eyes, his hold on Aunt Gwen slackening. Aunt Gwen, gasping for breath, reaches out, hand rising like a claw to scratch at his face. I scream a warning to him. Seth looks back and slaps her hand away just before her nails can make contact with his skin.

And that’s what sends her off balance. Her feet slide from underneath her, her legs shoot up. She snatches desperately for the window frame, and misses. It looks as if she’s sitting down in thin air. Her skirt bunches up around her knees, her bottom tips back. Her head jerks madly, her eyes bulging more than I’ve ever seen them before; her mouth opens in a scream.

The last thing I see of Aunt Gwen is the soles of her shoes as she falls off the ledge, back into nothingness, her scream thin and faraway. The scream of someone who knows she’s already dead.