Welcome to chapter eleven, where we finally meet our villain!  Only halfway through the book, too!

Bloody hell.

I’d seen the inside of a few nightclubs, and they’d all been dimly-lit, crowded places with a bunch of people trying to dance to a record the DJ was scratching into oblivion. I hadn’t expected Blaze to be any different, though I had thought it was slightly strange that a woman in her 50s would want to run one. 

Again with the insistence that people in their fifties are impossibly old.  And anyway, how old would you expect the owner of a nightclub to be?  I mean, Peter Stringfellow wasn’t exactly youthful even in 2002, right?

But as soon as I got into the main hall of Blaze, I could see exactly why Svetlana had left Ben in the crèche.  If a kid Ben’s age saw the inside, they would have had nightmares for the rest of their life and ended up in a mental hospital by the time they were twenty.  Well, that or a rock group.

“That or a rock group.”  Honestly, I didn’t mean for my story to sound like a Chick Tract.

Before I get to the special Halloween decorations…

SPOILERS- We will not, in fact, get to the special Halloween decorations.  All we will be told about them is that they exist.

…I’ll just say that I’ve never seen so many mirrors in my entire life.  The walls, the dancefloor, the tablecloths (and, just for the record, I didn’t think tables had any place in a nightclub either.  Especially not ones with anorexic chairs attached). 

I’m trying to imagine what “anorexic chairs” would look like, and failing.  Maybe they just suffer from bad chair role models.

That might have been OK in the room Gary had drawn, but not here.  Basically, my face was reflected at every angle you can think of, and when you consider that I’m not all that pretty to start with this was a frightening experience. 

Because Anja is STUNNINGLY GORGEOUS but MODEST.  This is an interesting and original character trait that certainly hasn’t been used for every young female protagonist in the history of time.

And quite apart from the mirrors, there was a stage at one end of the room.  I don’t mean a huge stage, like one you get at the theatre.  This was platform-size, but it still had red net curtains drawn across it, as well as a door slightly to the side of it for exiting.  You could see the costumes hung up on the clotheshorse, and they were even worse than the walls.   

As I said, we won’t actually find out much about the walls.  So the costumes are worse than some unknown quantity (Costumes = >x).

I think Svetlana or Jean had chosen a Halloween theme, because the dresses that weren’t mirrored all had black stripes, with orange or red underneath.  I didn’t dare to think what they’d look like when someone was actually wearing one. 

And we won’t be finding out, because that would be far too interesting.

Especially the orange ones.

Nor will we be finding out why the orange costumes were so alarming that they deserved their own micro-sentence.  Never has so much description conveyed so little information!

And I’m not even going to describe the hideous creatures someone had painted on the walls.  

SEE?!?

But I will say that one of them turned out to be human and started walking towards us.

Oh good, a zombie revenant come to gobble them up.  I love a happy ending.

“Cherry, hi!” she squealed, “Is Jean not in today?”  She didn’t seem to notice me, but that was probably because her platinum blonde hair was blinding her.  There were enough mirrors in the room without her hair reflecting the lights.  Her teeth were as well.  Teeth might have been designed to be white, but not glowing white.

This girl is a “hideous creature,” you see.  Because she has blonde hair and shiny white teeth.  It’s a wonder she left the house without a bag on her head.

Svetlana looked at the blonde girl as directly as she could without burning her corneas.  “No.  Good thing my sister showed up, eh?”  Svetlana looked at my confused expression, and mouthed, “You.”

Svetlana Hughes, mistress of deception.  Why didn’t they work out their story about who Anja was before they left the house?

“Hi, I’m Honour,” I smiled, hoping I didn’t sound too surprised. 

“Wow, nice name!  Mine’s Emily, boring or what?” she gushed, before saying something I hadn’t thought of.  “Funny how two sisters could have such different names, isn’t it? 

You mean funnier than how two cousins with last names like Cleary and Hughes could end up with first names like Anja and Svetlana?

I mean, Chez, they gave you a name that no-one can pronounce…

YES.  THEY.  CAN.

…and then they call your sister Honour!”  She giggled, apparently not seeing the evil look on Svetlana’s face.  “I can see who’s your mum’s favourite!”

Wait, why is Svetlana giving Emily an evil look?  She isn’t shown to be sensitive about her name at any point before or after this moment.  OK, it’s a bit insulting to have somebody infer that you’re not your mum’s favourite, but a) they don’t actually have the same mother, and b) “Honour” isn’t really Anja’s name!  So it doesn’t matter!

It would have been interesting to see how Svetlana was going to kill Emily, but at that point a group of other people started pouring into Blaze.  Unlike Emily, they seemed to notice me immediately and wonder who I was. 

Oh yeah, now that I think about it, why aren’t Cherry/Svetlana’s friends more suspicious?  I mean, presumably they know that Cherry/Svetlana’s cousin has been killed in an accident, especially since it’s been all over the papers, and now they’re being introduced to an alleged “sister” who looks exactly like the deceased cousin only with red hair.  There’s only so much they’re going to put down to family resemblance.

Svetlana stood on the stage.  “Hey, listen everyone!  My sister Honour’s going to help me with the managerial duties until Miss Foster comes back. Treat her with the same respect you would me, only without all the jokes, OK?  It wouldn’t work, anyway- she doesn’t have anything you can make jokes about.

“Except for the smug drunk sociopath tendencies, of course.”

(And sure, give a fifteen-year-old an assistant managerial position.  I’m sure she’s the most qualified candidate.)

Or at least I don’t think she does, but some of the lads round here could get innuendo out of anything.” 

What?  Don’t encourage them!

Some men at the back cheered in agreement.  “So, in summing up, everyone be nice to my sister, OK?  If you don’t, you’ll have me to deal with.”  She smiled as she stepped down.

As everyone went into the changing rooms, I wondered if I’d ever get used to being called Honour. 

I’m still wondering why you feel you have to!

(Paragraph break goes here, because Heaven knows watching Anja actually settle into her new job wouldn’t make for interesting reading.)

Ben was jumping up and down in front of a kid’s programme.  Mr Daly was looking sulky (again).  Some bizarre looks were going from Joe to Cherry (she insisted that I call her that, since everyone else did)…

The actual reason was that fifteen-year-old me got tired of typing out “Svetlana.”

…from Cherry to Gary and between Gary and me (putting Gary off the picture he was drawing, I think).  All in all, the house was chaotic. 

If by “chaotic” you mean “slightly passive-aggressive.”

It was a good thing Cherry and me had a day off.

From my first day, Emily and the others had made it clear I fitted in.   

“The others” will not be getting any names, descriptions, or dialogue, but it’s good to know that they’ve accepted the Mary Sue as their new god.

“It’s great to have someone new around,” Emily had told me shortly after Cherry’s speech, “Especially after losing Jean and Joe.”  At this point, she’d lowered her voice.  “No offence, Honour, but from what everyone’s been telling me, Jean might not be coming back.  From the sounds of it, she’s gone a bit… off the wall since Joe died. 

SPOILERS-  We won’t be seeing any evidence of this “off the wall”- ness when we actually meet Jean.

Don’t tell Cherry I said that.  She’d hate me.”

She already hates you.  You implied that her mother liked her nonexistent sister better.  Them’s fighting words.

I hadn’t told Cherry what Emily had said, but by the looks of it she was right.  I’d been working at Blaze for nearly a week and I hadn’t seen Jean yet.

And everybody knows it’s not normal to take a couple of weeks off work following the sudden, violent death of your nephew.

But judging from what Cherry said that morning, I was just about to.

“Hey, Anja,” she asked, “I know you’re not supposed to be at work or anything, but could you come with me to drop this tape off?”  She held up a video labelled Firework Night Performance.

It takes two people to drop a video tape off, you know.

“Only Jean was worried in case last night’s show wouldn’t go well, and I want to show her that it did.  Don’t worry,” she added, “she hasn’t gone bonkers or anything, no matter what the morons at Blaze are saying.   

The morons who have assured Anja that she fits in perfectly with them.

She’s just depressed.  She’ll act pretty normal in front of strangers.  That’s partly why I wanted you to come.”  She blinked, making sure to flutter her eyelashes and smile cutely.  “Gary, do you want to come?”

Pass the sick bag.  And wasn’t she asking Anja if Joe liked her a few chapters ago?  Now she’s going to flirt unsubtly with Gary right in front of both him and Gary’s girlfriend?  Nobody’s motivation makes sense!

Gary looked up.  His face still made me jump.  “No, I might be hard to explain.  You can just tell her Anja’s your sister.”

I had to go, if only to see this woman I’d heard so much about.   

“So much” amounts to “She owns a nightclub, and she’s rich.”  Hey, it would get me interested.

I wanted to see if she knew anything about the bus disaster that we didn’t.  Maybe she could bring some facts about James and Joe’s relationship into the light.

“Anja?” Cherry asked in the car.

“Hmm?”

“You and Gary…  Would you, you know, say that you two were an item?”

I didn’t like the way this conversation was going.  “Well…  yes.”

“Ah.”  She paused, then smiled at me.  “Anja, you have brilliant taste in men.” 

SPOILERS- This will not stop her from flirting shamelessly with Gary in front of Anja.

As soon as we got to the gate of Wild Cherry House, Cherry groaned.  “Take a look at that…”

She pointed at two cars in the driveway.  One was the limousine I’d seen before, but another looked far more normal.  I have no idea what type of car it was, but I could tell that it was the large, plain kind a family would use. 

Wow, I can just picture it!

(And I didn’t pick up on this before, but Jean owns a limo?  Why?  The only people who’d drive around in it on a regular basis would be Jean and Joe, and presumably one of them would be doing the driving.  It strikes me as a waste of seats.)

“That,” Cherry announced, “is James Foster’s car.  He probably turned up to” she indicated speech marks with her fingers, “‘Look after her.'”

…Two weeks after Joe’s “death”?  Why now?

I decided to take matters into my own hands.  “Let’s give her the tape anyway,” I told her.

…Was there any indication that they weren’t going to do exactly that?  This doesn’t count as being pragmatic, Anja.

“Maybe while we’re in there James will say something that’ll help us.  And even if…”

Cherry interrupted.  “It’s not just him, Anja, it’s…  Well, you’ll see.”

And I did see.  For a start, when I rang the doorbell I saw that the person who answered was an exact clone of Joe. 

“Oh my, this really does change things!  I already knew Joe had a twin brother, but I never imagined they’d look alike!”

(Aaand paragraph break.)

“It was very hard on Jack, losing his twin like that,” Joe’s mum informed me.

SPOILERS- Jack will seem perfectly cheerful and well-adjusted in every scene he’s in.

She had explained why she and her family had turned up, and it was exactly what Cherry had thought.  Something told me, though, that Melissa (as she’d told us to call her) had no idea of what her husband was up to. 

The psychic powers again!  It’s a good thing they’re there, or Anja might actually have to think about who she can and can’t trust, and we can’t have that!

Her face had the same eager-to-please look that Emily’s had, although it was clear that Joe’s “death” had hit her hard.

“It was bad enough when Joe moved out of the house,” Melissa continued, “Identical twins have a really hard time if they’re split up. 

It’s worth noting that fifteen-year-old me had never met a set of identical twins.

And Joe and Jack had barely been separated a day in their lives.”  She sighed, then realised what she’d just said.  “Not that I blame Aunt Jean for anything.  Joe just wasn’t happy living with us, and she was right to adopt him.  I’ve got to tell you, girls,” she whispered, “my husband never really… got on with Joe.”

Cherry nodded.  “Yeah, he told me.”

At this point, someone else came into the room.  She looked as if she was in her late fifties, and definitely, despite what Emily had told me, completely sane. 

You can tell that just by looking!

Her hair was dyed blonde and brushed to within an inch of its life.  She looked at all three of us in turn, with different reactions on her face.  I saw her view Melissa with a scowl, Cherry with an approving smile and me with raised (pencilled) eyebrows.  I would find out why in a few minutes.

Aunt Jean is a silent film star.  Who knew?

“Hello, Aunt Jean!” Melissa said with the fake happiness people usually reserve for lunatics, toddlers or idiots.  Jean was not impressed, but her niece kept it up.  “Cherry’s brought her sister along.  That is OK…  Isn’t it?”  I could tell from her tone that she was scared of Jean.  And I could see why from the glare of revulsion on Jean’s stark face.

Jean cleared her throat.  “Melissa, could I speak to Miss Hughes and her sister alone, please?”  Joe’s mum got up from her chair and left so quickly she could have given a cheetah a run for its money.  Yep.  Definitely scared.

Just as Joe is SMARMY and Gary is VULNERABLE, Melissa is TIMID.  Got that?

“Thanks Heavens she’s gone,” Jean sneered, “Sometimes I think she’s just as bad as James.”

Cherry shrugged.  “She’s always seemed nice to me.  Sure, maybe she’s a bit stupid, but…”

“Well, quite,” Jean interrupted.  She looked straight at me.  “I might as well tell you now.  I know who you are, Anja.”   

Woo!  Another sane character!  I’ve really been missing those!

My heart jumped.  How much did she know, exactly?  Did James know as well?  Had Cherry told her?

Apparently not.  Cherry was open-mouthed in shock.  “But the papers said…”

“I know full well what the papers said.  In fact, until I saw you I believed them myself, though I did think it suspicious that no bodies were found.  But I have no doubt that this young lady is Anja Cleary.  She has changed her hair, that is true, and I imagine that has been enough to fool most people.   

“Most people in a badly-written story, anyway.”

But I have a talent for seeing through people’s disguises.  That’s why I have never trusted James.”

I love how Jean is trying to make herself out to be Sherlock Holmes for working out that the girl who looks exactly like Cherry’s deceased cousin might just be the same person.  And for working out that the obvious villain is an obvious villain.

I began to wish I wasn’t in the same room as someone who could see through people. 

Oh, come on, Anja!  She may have her powerful deductive skills, but you’ve still got your psychic powers.  I’d say you two were evenly matched.

“You’re right,” I stammered, “I survived the accident.  Joe and Mark did too.”

Jean nodded.  Apparently, she’d already made that conclusion.  I would still have felt a lot better if she’d at least pretended to be surprised. 

You’re lucky she’s not strangling you.  “Oh yeah, by the way, that nephew you’ve been mourning for a fortnight?  Totally still alive.”

“Now, I must ask you something.  Am I right in thinking that what happened on the bus that day was no accident?”

“I think so,” I replied, “And I think the person who did it must have wanted to get rid of Mark so he could be with Estelle.  Also, it must have been someone who hated Joe…”

Jean nodded.  “James fits all your criteria. 

By this point in the story, everyone just takes it for granted that James is the villain.  He won’t even appear on-page until the end of this chapter, by the way.

In fact, as I recall, he disapproved of Mark and Estelle’s marriage so much, he was seeing bad omens everywhere.”  She raised her eyebrows.  “And your own presence on that bus wasn’t a coincedence.  Your death would have been a warning to your cousin.”  Jean nodded to Cherry.  “Tell her about the snail, Miss Hughes.”

Jean’s main job here will be exposition.  Did I mention that this is her only scene?  Good to know it’s used well, eh?

Cherry’s eyes flicked around to check that no one was listening.  “Well…  I was round Ms Foster’s house one day, right?  We were sort of planning Mark and Estelle’s wedding- with James saying stuff like ‘Don’t lose your ring, Estelle, that’s bad luck,” and “You can’t wear red to your own wedding!  Brides are supposed to wear white.’  But…”

“Which is ridiculous for two reasons,” Jean sneered, “For one thing, brides are only supposed to wear white if they’re virgins, or at least pretending to be, and for another, red has always suited Estelle perfectly.”

“Exactly.  But Mark and Joe had sort of been dragged away by Ben- he wanted to play on Sa…  the snail.”  I could see that Jean didn’t think of her snail as “Sammy.”  She nodded, and Cherry resumed her story.  “But I was staring at the garden, and I suddenly noticed that the snail was at a funny angle.  So I started worrying, thinking it might be dangerous for Ben, and I had to go outside and look at it.”  She paused for dramatic effect, but Jean decided to tell the end herself.

“What do you think she found, but that the snail was practically hanging off the ledge!  If Joseph and Mark had put little Ben on it, his weight would have thrown the snail right onto them!  It’s a heavy statue, Miss Cleary.  I’m sure it’s more than heavy enough to crush two grown men to death.  I hope that James’ plan was for Benjamin to simply fall onto the grass, but fortunately your cousin made sure that we’d never know.  Miss Hughes moved the snail back into its proper place, thinking its positioning an accident, and came back into the house.”

“I told everyone what had happened,” Cherry added, “You know, just to make sure they knew not to move the snail again.  When I saw James’ face, he just looked… annoyed.  As if I’d done something to upset him.  I started being a bit suspicious of him then, but I didn’t really put two and two together until the bus thing…”

So his first attempted murder involved a snail statue, and his second involved exploding light fixtures.  Whatever happened to just poisoning someone’s coffee?

Just then, a small squeaky voice shouted, “Are you talking about my dad?”

I looked round.  An angry-looking girl was standing at the door, with that look of indignant rage that was slightly more mature than Ben’s.  Her black hair and small freckled nose told me she was probably Joe’s sister, and she certainly lived up to her reputation. 

What reputation?  She’s been mentioned once!

She was wearing the kind of clean, sensible clothes that were specifically designed for avoiding getting on your parents’ nerves.  You couldn’t climb trees in that skirt if your life depended on it.

Said parents came in after her.  That’s right, her parents.  Not just Melissa.  For the first time, I was looking at James Foster. 

And finally, eleven chapters into the book, we actually meet the villain!  Not that he’ll make much of an impression in the nine chapters he’s got left.  He’ll mainly wander about grinning creepily.

Personally, I couldn’t see why Melissa had married him.  She wasn’t a supermodel or anything, but she could have done better that him.  He looked like he was used to stress, and that’s putting it politely.

Tsk, so shallow.  Maybe she’s attracted to his quirky, murderous charm.

But the most important thing I noticed was the same expression of shocked recognition that Jean had shown when she’d seen me.   He knew who I was.  But judging by the beaming and unusually white smile he put on two seconds later, he wasn’t going to admit it.

“Sorry about this, Aunt Jean!” Melissa trilled in abject terror, “Leah was just curious.  Honestly, you take your eyes off children for five minutes, and look what happens…” She tried to pick her daughter up, but Leah wasn’t having any of it.  “Mum!  They were saying things about Dad!  That’s rude, that is!”

Jean winked at me and whispered, “Ask Joseph about Violet.”  As I wondered who Violet was, Melissa and James herded us out of the room. 

SPOILERS- Anja won’t ask Joe about Violet for another few chapters, even though asking him would have cleared up any number of misunderstandings in the meantime.

“Sorry girls,” James sighed, “I think maybe you should leave for now.  Aunt Jean hasn’t been the same since Joe died.  She’s got it into her head that it’s our fault.”  He shook his head.  “He could do no wrong in her eyes.  Wearing rose-colour glasses all the time, Aunt Jean.”

Something in Melissa seemed to snap.  “James!” she hissed, “Joe’s dead!  Don’t you think you can suspend a silly grudge against him now?”

As we left, James was replying.  “Silly grudge?  Mel, what Joe did to his sister was unforgivable!”

“It wasn’t all his fault!”

We didn’t say anything until we’d parked outside Cherry’s home.  “What do you think Joe did?” I asked, still amazed at how close Mark and Joe had come to a horrible death.

“A different horrible death to the one I already knew about, that is.”

Cherry shrugged.  “No idea.  I’m worried about Jean, myself.  If he knows she’s worked out what he’s up to…  Well, things could get pretty nasty.”

That should have been on my mind, too.  I realised that later.  But all I could think about was the fact that Joe had done something “unforgivable” to Leah.  I forgot how well we’d been getting on recently.  I forgot how helpful he’d been.  I forgot the way he always defended me and Gary against Mr Daly.  From that moment on, he became the slimy, untrustworthy person I’d always thought him to be.  I never trusted him again.

Now I know the whole story, I wish I’d trusted him a little more.  Maybe then he might have told me how he felt before it all came to a violent climax. 

Yep, from this point, Anja decides she doesn’t like Joe.  No real reason, just a few words from the obvious villain, who is clearly a trustworthy source of information.

Next time, we bid a tearful goodbye to the only two sane characters, and to anything resembling a plot.