Just four thousand words to go, and we’re free!  Freeeeeee!!!

“I’m afraid it doesn’t look good, Mrs. Wolf,” the doctor said as we arrived at the hospital, “Your husband has been savagely beaten, and this has lead to a severe heart attack.  Surgery will be necessary, but even with it he may not survive the day.  I’m dreadfully sorry to have to tell you this, especially so soon after your wedding.”

Cherry and Joe might have been crying, but I wasn’t.  I was busy staring into space, sickened at the thought of Jordan doing this to Gary. 

Heaven only knew how the evil stepbrother had escaped from prison.  Maybe James Foster had helped him, as Gary had worried he might.  That would make sense, because if he hadn’t, how would Jordan know where we lived?

Oh Lord.  I’d dismissed Gary’s fears about Jordan as paranoia, but as it turned out, they had been right on the money.

And Gary was as good as dead.  That news had almost caused actual physical pain inside my heart, and yes I do mean my heart.  Its beating was now so sharp that maybe I would be joining Gary at the end of the day.   That was my only hope, but I knew it wasn’t likely.  Not many sixteen-year-olds die of shock induced heart attacks, although one seventeen-year-old would probably do so that day.

I would never, ever be able to comfort Gary again.

This is the one thing she’s going to miss most.  Gary being in deep psychological pain so that she can comfort him.  Why do I get the impression that she’s going to be the sort of mother who deliberately makes her children sick for attention?

And I wanted him back, only for five minutes so that I could make him happy again.  My husband was probably going to die, that was bad enough.  What was worse was that the first real man in my life was going to die as well.  So was my best friend at Mark and Estelle’s in that last week of October last year.

Whenever bad things happen to me, there is always a faint voice in my head that whispers, It’s all going to be alright.  When I locked myself out of the house in Year Seven, I heard it.  When my friends were all angry with me, I heard it.  When Mr. Daly attacked me, I heard it.

I was still hearing it now, but I knew that it had no value.  It was lying.  I would never be able to believe it again.

Joe and Cherry were talking.  Why were they talking?  What gave them the right to talk when no sound came out of my mouth when I opened it?

“I’m sorry, guys,” Joe wept, “I’m really, really sorry.  If I could only turn back the clock…  It’s all my fault.”

Oh Gawd, here we go…

“Sh,” Cherry consoled, “We all feel like that.  We all could have been downstairs while it was happening.  But I’m sure Gary wouldn’t want us to feel guilty.  And besides, he might be OK.  You never know.  Miracles do happen…” But I could tell by her face that Cherry didn’t believe a word of it.  Ben, out of Cherry’s refusal to let him suffer any more than was necessary, was staying with his Auntie Melissa.  Jack and Emily had cut their honeymoon short, and were rushing home to comfort me.  Well, that’s what I thought Melissa said.  It was hard to tell, through the tears.

“No, I don’t mean that.  I mean…  I mean I was downstairs while it was happening, if you know what I mean.”

Because that’s how people sound when they confess to attempted murder!  “If you know what I mean.”

Cheery reared up in grief and rage.  “You mean to say that you saw Gary’s stepbrother kicking the crap out of him, and you didn’t lift a finger to help?  Oh, that’s low, Joe Foster, even for you, even for one of your stinking family…” 

You mean the stinking family you’ve just allowed to babysit your son? You’re not a very attentive mother, Cherry.

Joe signalled for her to shut up, apparently to defend himself.  Just you try, I thought, still unable to speak.

“It’s worse than that,” sniffed Joe, “Jordan had nothing to do with it!  It was me!  I’m sorry, Cherry, it’s just that I kept thinking about the way you’d kissed him at the wedding, and what you’d said to me a few weeks ago, and it just spilt out when I was alone with him, and…”

Cherry, her eyes wide open with shock, opened her mouth and then closed it again.  She told me later that nothing she could possibly say could do any justice to the magnitude of what Joe had done.  Gary had been a great help to everyone, always pleasant even though he’d been through a lot, and we had loved him for that.  Joe had shown no hint of a personality as sweet as Gary’s, and had been a pain in the neck almost since I’d met him.  Joe had no right to feel any anger towards Gary, and what he had done was, considering his and Gary’s respective worth, almost an act of blasphemy.   

Gary is Jesus, apparently. 

So Cherry couldn’t possibly articulate all the loathing that filled her brain at that moment.

I could.  I let him have it.

*** 

By the time that the doctor came back into the waiting room, Cherry and I both knew that we would never see Joe again. 

And that’s how the “Anja has a grudge against Joe” storyline is resolved.  With Anja being completely vindicated, even though her grudge made no sense whatsoever.  She’s the Mary Sue, after all- if she’s wrong about something, reality warps itself around her so that she’s actually right.

Although our main thought was one of “Good riddance,” I couldn’t help feeling guilty about the way I’d stopped trusting Joe after what his father had said.  Maybe if I’d trusted him about Vi, it would…  No, that was a ridiculous thought.  I couldn’t feel sorry for the bastard who had led Gary to an early grave.

“No, that was a ridiculous thought.  I’m never wrong!”

“Mrs. Wolf?  Miss Hughes?” asked the doctor; “I have good news and bad news.”

I looked up, my misery being replaced, if only temporarily, with curiosity and maybe even hope.  What good news could she possibly have at a time like this?

“The good news is that, thanks to the surgery, Gary is past the worst this time.  The bad news is that he will have to be careful from now on.  You tell me that he’s had a heart attack before?”

I nodded, but my brain wasn’t connected to my ears.  What did she mean, “past the worst”?  She was playing a cruel joke on me.  Yes, that must be it.  There was no way in the world that she could be telling the truth.  No way.

And yet…

“Well, I’m afraid that his heart has weakened terribly.  His life expectancy is much lower than it would otherwise have been.  Mrs. Wolf, I’m sorry to have to tell you that it will be a miracle if he lives for another ten years.”

I have no idea if this is a realistic diagnosis after a second heart attack.  It sounds like the kind of thing that might be true, but it’s awfully convenient- ten years is just enough time for Anja to put on her “brave martyr caring for her ailing husband” act, before neatly burying him and falling in love with someone healthier.

I don’t think there was a word to describe what I felt at that moment.  I knew that I was supposed to either be overjoyed that Gary had survived this time, or heartbroken about his reduced life expectancy.  The two feelings must have cancelled each other out, because try as I might, I couldn’t feel either.  The event, and the fact that I couldn’t produce the required emotions, made me feel as though I had suddenly slipped into a parallel universe where nothing was as I remembered it or as it seemed.  I almost understood how Melissa must have felt when she was told that the son whose death she had come to terms with was alive and well.  I began to hope that this was all a dream and that I could forget about all the confusion and stress it caused when I woke up.

Cherry clearly didn’t feel that.  I wish I was more like her.

“He’s alive!”  Her face lit up with relief like someone switching on a lightbulb in a gloomy shed.  She actually laughed, the cow.  “Oh, Anja, he’s alive!” she squealed, hugging me, “He’s alive!  It’s a miracle!”

“Wait a minute,” the evidently puzzled doctor interrupted, “I just said that…”

“Oh, I know it’s terrible about the heart and the ten years and…  But he’s alive now!  And when he eventually does… you know…  At least then you’ll get the chance to say goodbye and be prepared and Anja he’s alive!”  With that, she hugged me again.  This time, I hugged back with equal enthusiasm.  The joy had kicked in, which was a bad sign as it meant that the heartbreak might want its turn at any moment.  At the moment, though, the only negative emotion I had was slight guilt at the fact that Cherry had felt the emotions before I had, when I was the would-have-been-widow and Cherry wasn’t.  Did that mean that Cherry loved him more? 

Probably.  That would make this story more interesting, at least.

No, of course not.  What it meant was that we had different ways of reacting to a strange situation.  It wasn’t any judgement on either of our personalities.  It wasn’t.

Keep telling yourself that.

The bruises hadn’t spoiled Gary’s face any more than the bandages had his body.  They’d told me that Joe had broken his ribs, nose and left arm, as well as the superficial damage to his skin and the loss of a few of his teeth.  What a bastard Joe truly was. 

“And wasn’t I truly perceptive for treating him like crap for six months before he even did anything wrong?  I must be a genius.”

“Hello, Anja,” he managed in a cracked and tired voice, “I missed you.”

“Hello.  You’re looking a little worse for wear, eh?”  He laughed, more out of relief than humour, I think.

“Where’s… er…”

“Cherry?”

“No… er… Joe.”

I couldn’t respond quickly enough.  “He’s gone, Gary.  He’ll never hurt you again, I promise.”  Of course, I’d also promised him that nobody would ever hurt him while he was with me.  Maybe I’m just a liar.

“Oh.”  Gary looked upset.  He was being sympathetic to the one person who didn’t deserve it.  That can be very irritating at times.

“He should only be sympathetic towards me!”

This was the part I had been dreading.  “Gary?”

“Yeah?”

“The doctors said I had to tell you something.”  Here it came.  Telling unpleasant news is like ripping off a plaster- with both; it’s better to do it really fast so the pain is shortened.   “They’re saying that you’ll probably not last ten years.” 

“What?”

“I’m sorry!”  I yelled, almost crying.  You know the heartbreak I was worried about?  This is where it came in.  I suddenly realized what terrible cards life had dealt to Gary. 

“Suddenly”?  We’ve been reminded of it every time Gary’s appeared in the book!

Being born with a life-threatening condition, losing his mother at a young age, having no friends at school, being tortured by his stepbrother, seeing the friends he eventually did get killed by themselves or others, being separated from his decent relatives, and then, after he’d finally started to have a few friends and even get married, being told that he wouldn’t live to see thirty. 

Gary is the woobie to end all woobies!  Fear him, fear him!

Nobody on Earth would have switched places with Gary, not even me.  I wished more than anything that I could rewind time to that morning, so that I’d be able to stop Gary from getting out of bed and going downstairs to the room where he’d met Joe.

Gary was having the same thoughts.  “Well, that figures,” he muttered, “Some people marry beautiful women and live happily ever after, but not me.  I marry a beautiful woman, and the next day she tells me I’m dying.  But then, that’s just my life, isn’t it?  I’m the biggest loser anyone’s ever met.  I might as well give up and die here and now, then you’d be a free woman.  You’d get over it eventually.”

Something in me changed.

Ooh!  Did it cure you of Smug Drunk Sociopathy?

Maybe it was the way that Gary spoke, almost blaming me for something that I’d had no control over.  Or maybe I felt that he was fed up of me supporting his tiny ego.  Either way, for a few seconds I turned into my grandma.

Oh.

“Gary Wolf, stop this nonsense right now,” I snapped.  As soon as I realized what I’d just said, I clapped my hand over my mouth.  I really, really shouldn’t have said that.

“It isn’t nonsense,” Gary retorted, though with a little less anger than his previous comment, “It’s the truth.  Anja, think about it, I’ve only got ten years.  That means I’ll be gone before I’m twenty-eight, and you’ll be a widow by the time you’re twenty-six.”

“I can add up, Gary,” I responded testily.

“So… what I’m saying is, you can leave any time you like.  I’ll understand, honest.”

Passive-aggressive Gary strikes again.  “Yes…  I’ll completely understand if you walk out on me, in my hour of need…  I’ll understand if you leave me lying in a hospital bed with no-one to turn to…  You need your space; it doesn’t make you a heartless monster at all…  Don’t torture yourself with mental images of me strangling myself with the IV drip…”

“That’s enough, Gary!” I snapped.  I was beginning to suspect that he was trying to get rid of me.  With that, I left the ward in a huff.  Halfway down the corridor I was greeted by somebody who, if not exactly identical to Joe, certainly resembled him enough to make me jump.

“Honour!” said Vick, “I’m glad I caught you.  Cherry told me that Gary’s going to be OK.  I’m so pleased for you, honest I am.”

“Thanks, Vick,” I replied, deciding not to correct him on the “Gary being OK” matter for the time being. 

“Do you want me to give you a lift home?” he asked, “Only Emily and Jack took Cherry back to Ben while you were in the ward, so…  Unless you want to stay here for a bit longer…”

“Pfft, why would I want to do that?  It’s certainly not as if my terminally-ill husband needs me around, or anything!  I needs me beauty sleep!”

“No, I’d rather go home,” I said.  The sooner I could get to sleep and not still be in the same day that all these awful things had happened, the better.  At least tomorrow I could think of it all as something that happened yesterday.

“Right.  My car’s outside.”

In the car park, I began to wonder if Cherry had dumped Vick for the right reasons after all.  I’d always been suspicious of him after she mentioned his “obsession” with Vi, but maybe she’d just been exaggerating.  He seemed normal to me.  And even if she had been telling the truth, just because Cherry no longer wanted to be his girlfriend didn’t mean that I had to hate him or anything.  Besides, that had been two months ago.  He might have straightened up by now.

It was only when he turned the car in the opposite direction to Wild Cherry that I realized he hadn’t.

Serves you right!

I stared at the hotel outside the car window.  The Black Heart was, maybe by coincedence, maybe through some kind of plan…

Maybe through lazy writing…

…the hotel that James Foster had moved into after putting the house on the market.  According to Vick, he hadn’t chosen the same room as any of us had in November, but then he didn’t know which ones we’d been in. 

So…  How could he know it’s not the same one?

“So go on, Honour,” Vick grinned, “Go up and talk to him.”

I told myself to remain calm, which is a good bet in most situations.  Maybe if I spoke to him in an authoritative enough voice, he would listen to me.  He’d never struck me as being very strong-willed.  “Vick, take me back home right now.  I need to get some rest.”

“Get some rest in my Dad’s room,” Vick smirked (you know my feelings on the Foster males’ smirks already), “He’s always liked you, you know.”

“Since you were fourteen, in fact!”

“Vick!  How can you even say that, you pervert!”  The remaining calm strategy had fallen apart.  “I’m married, for Heaven’s sake!  What does this ring look like to you, Scotch mist?”  I waved my hand in his face.  Now it would be in the right position to slap him if he made any more insinuations.

“Please, Honour!”  He stopped acting cool and started to plead. 

“‘Please!’ he pleaded, pleadingly.”

That felt better, for me at least.  “Dad says you have to come.  He says something bad will happen if you don’t!  He says you’re the only one who can…” Clearly he knew what he was going to say next but didn’t want to say it.  He looked so pathetic that I gave in. 

It would have taken far too much effort to actually resist doing what the villain wanted!  That’s not the protagonist’s job!

Walking up the stairs, I wondered what the girl I’d been when I first arrived here would think if she saw me now.  I came here when I was still a virgin, when I was still on good terms with Joe, when Cherry was still Svetlana to me, and when I’d never even met James Foster.  And it occurred to me that, apart from meeting Gary, I might have been happier if I’d never caught that sodding bus in the first place.

No!  Really?  You might have been happier if you hadn’t completely lost contact with all your loved ones and made friends with a serial killer and his family?  Perish the thought!

“Come in, Honour,” said James’ voice after I knocked on the door of Room 202, “Or should I say Anja?”

DUN DUN DUUUN!

The room was similar to mine (and, I’m prepared to bet, every other room in the building) except for one crucial difference.  It wasn’t clear exactly what he’d done with the lights, but there was an iron pole fixed to them somehow, hanging above James.  His face wasn’t in the Foster family grin, but in the look of a man who has been overworked and had a lot demanded of him recently.  He was sitting in a pool of water, holding out the empty kettle from where the water had come. 

Electrical socket…  Iron pole…  Pool of water.  Electrical socket…  Iron pole…  Pool of water.  It will take Anja most of the rest of the chapter to put those three things together.  But if she just worked it out and wandered off, she wouldn’t be able to dramatically wrench her hands away, now, would she?

“I need to confess, Anja,” he gasped, “Many religions say that you need to, before you…  Well.  I know what you know, Anja.  And I know that you’re the same person as the sweet little blonde child who broke the nation’s hearts last year.  You’ve grown up now, though, haven’t you?”  A loving smile crossed his lips.  “I want you to understand about the bus, about the snail…  About everything.  Sit down, and I’ll begin.”

“Are you sitting comfortably?  Then here comes the Motive Rant.”

Before you what? I wondered as I sat down on the carpet next to James, avoiding the wet patch.  He was planning something for us, I could tell.  I hoped I could work out what it was before he did it.

The rest of us worked it out two paragraphs ago, Brain of Britain.

“As a child, I was always very close to my Aunt Jean,” he explained, “She was my father’s sister, and of course she’d never married or had any children of her own, so I was the closest thing she had to a son.  Jean had invested her money more shrewdly than my father had, and my parents always suggested that she would leave the money to me when she died.  Not that this was ever about the money, of course, but that would have been good security for me, especially when I had Melissa and the children to think about.  Jack and Joe were the eldest, you know that, but from when he was a toddler, Joe always seemed full of anger.  Melissa dismissed my fears as paranoia until Violet died.  You know that was his fault, Anja.  He was so jealous of that child, so full of life.  Maybe I mistreated him after that, but wasn’t I justified?  Jean thought I wasn’t, so she took him to live with her at Wild Cherry.  Now, she’d always put all her energy into her nightclub, Blaze, which she owned with Victoria Jewel.  Victoria knew glamour when she saw it; she wasn’t a film star for nothing, but such a cruel woman.  She proved that when she abandoned her lovely daughter to Jean’s care, while she went off to America with her new husband.”

This is a fascinating story, but you know what would have been great?  If we’d heard any of this before the final chapter!

“Was this Estelle?”

“Yes, Anja, Victoria doesn’t have another daughter.  Unless she had one and she swapped it for a Gucci dress.  Sweet little Estelle.  She was like a third sister to Joe.  If only Jean had known how Joe had treated his real sisters, she would have separated them quickly enough.  But no, not even Joe could fail to be enchanted by that gorgeous creature.  She was fourteen when she started living at Wild Cherry, and we saw her every time we went up to visit Joe. 

What is it with this guy and fourteen-year-olds?!?

You’ve met Estelle, Anja.  Can you blame me for only wanting the best for that darling girl?  When Estelle was… oh, eighteen or so, she would have been, Jean suddenly decided that the nightclub needed new talent, young people to give it a little more energy.  Only three people showed up. 

“Clearly, word had got around that the club attracted Smug Drunk Sociopaths.”

Now, I’ll never hear a word said against Emily or Svetlana, but the young man was simply awful.”

I pretended to be interested as I remembered something about electricity, metal and water.  With a thud, I knew what James was thinking.

“With a thud.”

“Mark Freeman is loud, volatile, rough and superficial, but somehow- I wish I knew! – somehow, he managed to sweep Estelle, his polar opposite, off her feet.  Never were a couple less suited to each other.  Can you blame me for wanting to stop the wedding and get rid of Violet’s killer at the same time?  And when the snail didn’t work…

More books should contain sentences beginning. “And when the snail didn’t work…”

and Svetlana knew about my thoughts, I knew she wouldn’t understand.  It was a stroke of luck for me when Joe decided to stay with Estelle and the man she’d married.  They lived in the same town as you; I knew that because Svetlana had mentioned it when she was told.  I heard Joe mention in a telephone call that they always stayed in the pub until a certain time- alcohol is evil, Anja, you must never drink it- and drove over to the town for the day.  It wasn’t easy to get into your school undetected, much less to put a fraudulent note into the box in the office, but all I could think about was scaring Svetlana with the death of a relative close enough to frighten, but not close enough to provoke real pain. 

“And obnoxious enough for her to not really give a toss.”

Oh Anja, can you ever forgive me for thinking such thoughts about you?  I didn’t know you then, I didn’t know that your sweetness equalled that of Estelle, Leah, and even Violet.  And you are the only person I would want to take with me, my scarlet-haired beauty!” 

“My scarlet-haired beauty!”  Try adding that to the end of all your sentences.

“I’d like to pay by debit card, my scarlet-haired beauty!”

“I think we should go and get some lunch, my scarlet-haired beauty!”

“These vomit stains are really hard to clean up, my scarlet-haired beauty!”

Hours of fun.

He grabbed my hands in his, and I knew that what I’d noticed would only help if I acted quickly.

I wrenched my hand from his and ran out of the door.  James grabbed the bar attached to the light before he noticed that I’d escaped.  I didn’t see him die, and I’m glad.  I was determined that there was only one person whose death I’d be present for, and if he was lucky he had another ten years on the clock.

James Foster had liked me a lot more than I’d thought.  He was going to die, so he decided to take the woman he loved with him, and I don’t mean his wife.  If I hadn’t noticed that the bar was in exactly the right place for him (us) to be electrocuted, I’d have fried along with him.

Very keen on electricity, was James Foster.

Yes.  Life would have been so much simpler if he’d just bought a gun like all the other homicidal maniacs.

Anyway.  On with the epilogue!

I’ve got a whole scrapbook full of newspaper and magazine articles that have something to do with the events that you have just read about.  It starts with the articles that marked the first anniversary of the “death” of poor little Anja Cleary.  “If Anja had survived, would she have fared any better?  Or would she have fallen victim to the drug abuse and casual sex that blight the nation’s youth?” 

The sad thing is, that’s a more-or-less direct quote from an article sixteen-year-old me read about two murdered teenagers.  Apparently, it didn’t matter if they were shot by a nutter, because black inner-city kids have a short life expectancy anyway.  Of course, the fact that I then turned around and made it all about a self-absorbed fictional white girl isn’t necessarily any less offensive.

No, she wouldn’t.  Honour Wolf might be a little different, but Anja Cleary wouldn’t have said boo to a goose, let alone do anything like that.  “The nation wept along with Anja Cleary’s parents last year…” And so on.

Yeah, let’s not dwell on Anja’s parents weeping.  It might remind us that Anja is a pustule on the arse of humanity, and we don’t want that.

Speaking of my parents, the next article is from my mum’s favourite magazine and entitled “Why We Can Smile Again.”  That’s nice to know.  I’m glad I don’t have to go around scowling all the time anymore.  There’s a photo of me at the top, along with others of my parents with my brother and this girl they’ve adopted, Sara.  Mum says in the article that she adopted Sara as “a choice of life, not death” rather than trying to replace me.  Hmm.  I just hope that they won’t expect this Sara to dye her hair red when she’s fifteen, or something equally stupid. 

Oh, screw you, Anja.  I hope your mother is so enchanted with her new daughter that she forgets you ever existed.

Apparently she calls me “Sister Anja in Heaven.”  In a way, she’s right.  I’m happy now.  Maybe I won’t be for long, but I am now.

There’s a short obituary of James Foster, a man apparently driven to a bizarre suicide in the Black Heart Hotel after his wife had left him.  He leaves the aforementioned wife and five children.  Apparently, the Black Heart might have to close down.  There’s an investigation going on into how safe their lights are.

There’s an advert for Blaze, which is doing really well under its new management.  Cherry now splits the work with Jack and Emily, on the grounds that the nightclub has been in their family for decades, so they’ve every right to it.  Jack and Emily were suitably delighted when she told them this.  Then there’s a photo from a tabloid, of 70s film star Victoria Jewel coming down to England to visit her beautiful daughter, Estelle, and equally beautiful granddaughter, Jean.  I still haven’t met Victoria.

No word on whether or not Victoria (or anyone else) still believes her son-in-law to be dead.  That would smack of actually resolving the plot threads I set up.

The next one is a strange article from a national paper.  Apparently, Keith Daly, a resident of a mental hospital in Essex, has been claiming that he has seen Anja Cleary since her death.  In fact, he’s saying that her spirit’s presence was so strong that it broke his wrists.  A group of American psychics keep asking the hospital staff for interviews with this interesting clairvoyant, but they haven’t had any luck yet.  Well, that’s a turn up for the books.

So Anja’s actions have got Mr Daly sectioned.  Good to know!

Then there’s something about Jordan Albright, the evil man suspected by conspiracy theorists of causing the Anja Cleary disaster. 

It’s not nice to call your husband a conspiracy theorist, Anja.

He’s been imprisoned for twenty years for the murder of Topaz Seaman.  His mother, who has recently given birth to a boy named Gary…

So Mr Wolf’s second son has the same name as his deceased first son?  That’s not creepy at all!

…has disowned him.  An older article that I found on the internet tells of a tragic event eight years ago, in which a small girl named Violet Foster was drowned after swimming out to sea in adverse weather conditions, much to the horror of her three brothers, who were present at the time.  It was suggested in the article that one of her brothers dared her to go swimming in the first place, but it wasn’t known which one.  I know which one.  Jack told Gary and me all about it shortly after his father’s funeral.  We both assured him that he was only a kid, and kids don’t usually think about consequences when they’re having fun.  Besides, Vi might have gone swimming anyway.

So, in conclusion, Joe did absolutely nothing wrong, and Anja ostracised him anyway!  Yay for Anja!

Finally, there’s an article with a picture of me, not as the cute blonde tragedy queen Anja Cleary, but as the worried, redheaded tragedy queen Honour Wolf.  The same magazine that printed the Sara article has told the story of a young girl who, while most of her peers are worrying about “boys and hairdos” (no comment) must look after the man she loves, a man without much time to live, and how she is now, to put it delicately, in the same “condition” that Estelle was when I met her. 

Oh, great.  Now she’s going to be raising a child in the ways of Smug Drunk Sociopathy.  And she’s eventually going to be a single parent.  I think we can safely say that kid is going to grow up to be a supervillain.

After the readers had read about me, the letters pages filled with comments like “Honour is a sign of self-sacrifice in a selfish world,” “I wept when I read about the man who did such terrible things to poor Honour’s husband,” and “It is a sign of great corruption in the world that a girl who should be out enjoying life is forced to take care of somebody who needs professional help.” 

…Hang on, if he needs professional help, why isn’t he getting it?  It’s not as if they can’t afford it- his wife’s cousin’s a millionaire!  Is it because Anja wants to play the martyr as much as she possibly can?  You know, I think it very well might be.

All in all, nobody paid Gary much attention.  Poor Gary.

Sometimes it irritates me that, even after changing my name, my hair and my lifestyle, I’m still destined to be a tragic figure.

Shut the hell up, Anja.

…Actually, she has!  That was the last sentence of the book!  We never have to listen to anything Anja says again!  We’re free!  Free, I say!  Oh, joyous moment!  Oh, happy day!

The thing I’m going to take away from this (other than things like “protagonists actually have to do stuff occasionally” and “sustained misunderstandings are a terrible way to add conflict”) is something I mentioned at the beginning:  Just because somebody’s written a terrible story doesn’t mean that they’re a terrible person.  Fifteen-year-old me had a series of cool-looking moments in her head, and she didn’t think too hard about how the characters got them.  I wanted a story where the main character was separated from her parents and had to survive on her wits… and didn’t notice that I’d made her callously ignore her parents’ grief.  I wanted a story where the main character got to live in a big, fancy house… and didn’t notice that an innocent woman had to be murdered in order to make that happen.  I wanted a story in which the main character brought her enemies to a stunned silence with her biting wit… and didn’t notice that some of the enemies didn’t really deserve it.  In real life, if fifteen-year-old me had been told not to contact my parents and allow them to think I was dead, I’d have ignored that and got in touch at the first opportunity.  If not because I was concerned about their feelings, then definitely because I missed them.  Anja Cleary might have been a Smug Drunk Sociopath, but fifteen-year-old me wasn’t.  At least, I hope not.

I leave you with a merry song, and a suggestion that you drink a large bottle of whatever it is you like best:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ05LV…

(Fifteen-year-old me preferred the Robbie Williams version to the George Michael version.  So does twenty-eight-year-old me.)

It occurs to me that, since chapters 16 and 17 are about five pages long added together, it might be a lot more painless if I just combined them here.  That way, this travesty comes to an end a whole lot quicker.

Gary‘s life turned sour for the fourth time on April Fool’s Day.  I’m sorry to say that it wouldn’t be the last time, either.

Please note the date- we’ve skipped three months since the last chapter.  Anja and pals didn’t use those three months to try and bring down the villain, or to get in touch with their families about the not-being-dead thing.  Instead, they just sat around twiddling their thumbs.  Go them.

I was expecting Joe to play a whole load of April Fool’s tricks on everyone… 

Why?  It’s not as if he’s been in a very jovial mood for the last few chapters.  He’s had exactly one sentence of dialogue since his aunt died, and that was the one where you blew up at him for calling you “ginger.”  Which you are.  If I was him, I wouldn’t be in the mood for fun, either.

…but he remained in the same foul mood he’d been in all week.  It had all started on Monday, when Cherry had told us how serious things were getting between her and Vick.

“Hope you’re not planning on marrying him,” he’d grunted, “If he moves in here, you’ll need one hell of an excuse to explain me.” 

Yeah, there’s a thought.  Are Cherry and Anja planning to keep Joe in the attic for the rest of his life?  If so, you’d think they’d stop inviting his family over at every opportunity.

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Joe,” Cherry had laughed, “I’ve only been seeing him for three months.  I’m not in that much of a hurry.  My biological clock ain’t exactly bothering me right now!  I’m only nineteen, remember.”

Cherry was beginning to see the problem I’d had with Joe since November.  Never mind slimy, he was acting like a bear with a sore head.   

GEEZ, I WONDER WHY.

He barely spoke to any of us, and when he did he kept it to a sarcastic remark. 

Like you can talk, Miss Glares-At-People-For-Five-Months-Instead-Of-Having-An-Actual-Conversation.

I was beginning to wonder why he even bothered living with us.

I’m beginning to wonder the same thing.  You’d think, after five months of barely-disguised contempt, he would have gone back to Mark and Estelle and thrown himself on their mercy.

When the day started turning from ordinary to malicious, Cherry had gone out on her date with Vick.  I was sitting back on the sofa that had been cream until Ben had got his hands on it, watching TV. 

No wonder Joe’s in a bad mood.  That’s his deceased aunt’s sofa you’re destroying, Cherry and Ben.

People had stopped nattering on about the terrible Anja Cleary tragedy…

Which you enjoyed, remember.
…so I felt safe to watch news reports again now.  But just because I was safe to watch it didn’t mean there was anything good on, so I was spending more time reading the newspaper over Gary’s shoulder. 

Not that he did much reading.  When his eyes landed on the front page, he practically jumped with shock. 

Then…  How can you have been reading over his shoulder?  I mean, he’d have looked at the front page first, right?  So he wouldn’t have actually read any of it?  Help me out here, Anja. (Also, his eyes landed on the front page?  Did they then roll under the sofa?)

The headline read, in white letters against a black background, All Three Of These Smiling Friends Are Dead.  The photograph next to it showed three teenagers in dorky school uniforms, smiling falsely at the camera.  All three looked as if they were willing the cameraman to hurry up so that they could start chatting again.   

I’m glad that Anja took time out from describing this tragic scene to tell us how dorky their school uniforms were.  Because that’s clearly the most important detail here.

The person on the left-hand side was (you’ve guessed it) Gary.  He was gripping the arm of the person in the middle, who looked suspiciously similar to the girl he’d drawn in his sketchpad.  Her eyes were lit up with annoyance, but apart from that I wouldn’t have been surprised if someone had told me she was a model or a pop star or something, she was so pretty.  The third person was the girl from the memorial programme, Shell. 

Oh, good.  The giraffe in the padded bra.  I’ve missed her.

Gary looked as if someone had punched him in the ribs.  “See, Anja,” he gasped, “That’s what I meant when I said I ruined people’s lives.”  He handed me the paper.  “Read it out, then throw it away.  I don’t want to read it.” 

Normally, I’d roll my eyes at this point and talk about how unnecessarily wangsty Gary is being, but actually, he’s completely right.  Shell’s death is his fault.

I breathed in.  To say I was alarmed would be a major understatement. 

Brilliant prose, now-sixteen-year-old me.

“‘A principle witness in a murder trial has committed suicide, leaving a note saying ‘I can’t live with this fear.’  Michelle Glass, 18, witnessed the brutal murder of her schoolfriend Topaz Seaman last year.  Another witness, Gareth Wolf, was killed in the Anja Cleary disaster two months later.  Michelle’s suicide note suggests that the tragedy may not have been as accidental as previously thought.”  They’ve got that right.”

What they haven’t got right, of course, was the part where Gary didn’t actually die, and has in fact been living the high life in Wild Cherry House and not attempting in any way to get in touch with his doubly-bereaved best friend.  Silly newspapers.

Gary was doubled up with shock.  “Don’t stop,” he whispered.

“OK.  ‘In their statements, Gareth and Michelle claimed that Topaz Seaman, then 16, was killed by Gareth’s stepbrother.  She allegedly confronted Jordan Albright, now 20, over her friend Gareth’s years of abuse at his hands, at which Albright smashed her head repeatedly against the wall, shattering…’ Gary, are you sure you want me to read this?” I asked, noticing definite tears appearing in his eyes.  It was hardly surprising.  He hadn’t seen how Topaz had been killed, and presumably Shell had never been prepared to tell him.  And now she never would.

She never would because she’s dead.  And she’s dead because she killed herself.  And she killed herself because she believed her best friends were both dead.  And she believed her best friends were both dead because Gary never bothered to tell her he was alive.  And Gary never bothered to tell her he was alive because… er… the plot said so, I guess.  The point is, this is all on Gary.

“Please, just tell me.”

“‘Albright denies these charges, and claims that Topaz’s injuries occurred when she tripped over a bag on the floor.  Michelle Glass’ suicide means that there are no surviving eyewitnesses in his trial…

So Gary’s actions haven’t just caused the death of his supposed friend, but may also mean that a sadistic murderer ends up walking free!  Good job there, Gary!

…but her note, in which she claimed to be fearing for her life after Albright ‘had Gary [Wolf] killed,’ may be used as evidence for the prosecution. 

I’m not a lawyer, but I’m almost certain that wouldn’t stand up in court.  OK, it proves that Shell believed Jordan was a threat, but it doesn’t prove that she was right.  And that’s only if you manage to convince the jury that the note isn’t somehow forged.

Michelle’s mother, Gladys, was quoted as saying, ‘Jordan Albright has claimed his third victim- our beautiful, intelligent Shell.  She could never live properly after Topaz and poor Gary died- she thought it was only a matter of time before she was killed as well.’ 

“Gary could, of course, have got in touch and told her he was still alive at any point in the last six months, but that would have cut into his angsting-and-flirting-with-Anja time.”

The trial continues.’  Gary…” I didn’t get any further, because he collapsed sobbing onto my shoulder.

“See?” he sniffed, “She died because I was too selfish to get in touch with her!  And Topaz died because she tried to defend me!  I can’t believe I was so bloody stupid!” 

No arguments here.

“Listen…” I said as I hugged him, feeling useless, “I haven’t got in touch with any of my friends either.  It could just as easily have been Trixie who…”

Yes, but you’re not exactly a paragon of virtue either, are you, Anja?

“Yeah, but none of Trixie’s friends were supposed to be witnesses in a murder case!  Your death wouldn’t have looked like murder, so none of your friends would have worried about being next!  None of your friends knew that there was an evil bastard out to get you!”  He started trembling with fear at the memory.  “If you’re going to leave me, do it now, please.  I don’t want to have to watch you leave. I think it’s possible to be so miserable that you just die there and then, and that’s how I’d feel.” 

Brilliant.  No attempts to contact Shell’s family or the police, no attempts to atone for his gross, gross carelessness- just passive-aggressive wangsting about the possibility of Anja dumping him.  You know what?  I’m glad that awful things happen to Gary in  the last few chapters.

(Oh yeah- SPOILERS.  But the first sentence of this chapter kind of gave it away, didn’t it?)

“Gary!” I squealed, alarmed at how depressed he was.  He hadn’t been this miserable since I’d met him, which for Gary was really saying something.  As I hugged him, I felt like I was containing a massive storm in my skinny arms.  “I’m never going to leave you, ever.  And what’s more, nobody’s going to hurt you again as long as you stay close to me, babes.”

“Babes.”  Feckin’ “babes.”

He looked up at me imploringly, as if I was about to save his life.  “Thank you.  I feel like you’re my guardian angel sometimes, you know.” 

You’re my guardian angel…  Whaaat do you saaay?…

Oh, come on.  ‘What Does The Fox Say?’ is a whole lot less annoying than a scene featuring Gary and Anja.

He started to look angry.  “But you know what, Anja? I’m being selfish to you, which is typical of me. 

YES.

You shouldn’t have to comfort me all the time. 

THIS IS ALSO TRUE.

You only just turned sixteen, and your biggest worry should be how you’re going to get rid of the spots on your forehead!  You shouldn’t have to worry about being someone’s girlfriend, psychiatrist, agony aunt and surrogate mum rolled into one! 

…OK, I’ve been talking a lot about the Oedipal overtones, but I love the fact that Gary outright acknowledges them here.  Neither he nor Anja does anything about it, but at least they’re not under any illusions.

I’m causing you a whole lot of pain, Anja, and don’t deny it because I can tell that I’m hurting you! 

Shell has now been completely forgotten.  Gary’s world revolves around Anja once again, as it always should.

Like I said, it’s typical.  All I’ve ever wanted in my life is for someone to love me, and whenever someone does I wreck their lives!”

“For heaven’s sake, do you ever stop whinging?”

Hee!  Best line in the whole book.

I recognized this voice as Joe’s.  Rather than being concerned about Gary like he’d been in the first week at Mark and Estelle’s, he was staring at him as if Gary had done something extremely annoying. 

I think Shell’s parents would use a stronger word than “annoying.”

“If Anja says she’ll love you forever, she means it, alright?” he snapped, “If she says that you’re not wrecking her life- as she’s done about a hundred bleeding times- she means it!  So can you please stop feeling guilty about everything!  It’s doing my head in!”

By now, sixteen-year-old-me had been writing this story for about eight months, and was getting completely sick of the characters.  I stuck to my original plans for the story, but I didn’t enjoy it much.  So at this point in the story, Joe is speaking for me.

(Oh, and I love the fact that Joe thinks Gary’s problem is “feeling guilty about everything.”  Rather than “being a passive-aggressive little herbert.”)

I was giving Joe daggers. 

“He used those daggers to slaughter me and Gary, thus freeing the world from our wicked influence.”

He couldn’t see that Jordan had sucked Gary dry.  In the space of a few years, he’d taken his few friends, his self-esteem, and worst of all, his will to live.  It was only through extremely good luck that Gary was getting any of this back.  But Joe was giving him a look that people usually only reserve for kids who are overreacting.

Worse still, Gary was acting like this was a perfectly reasonable reaction.  “Sorry, Joe,” he sniffed, “It’s just that someone I knew had died, and that sort of brought it all back.  I just don’t want to hurt Anja like that.” 

Once again, he’s utterly forgotten about Shell.  Whose death was COMPLETELY HIS FAULT, in case you needed reminding.

“Gary,” Joe said through gritted teeth, “Read my lips; you won’t.  Anja can look after herself.”  He grinned.  “I think she proved that around the time she kicked Mr. Daly’s butt.”

Angry with Joe for bringing that up on top of everything else, I said the first thing that came into my head.  “Joe?” I asked, my tone cold with rage, “Who’s Violet?” 

FINALLY.

This is the point where Chapter Sixteen ends, having achieved nothing but making our main characters all the more loathsome.  Onto the next one.

“Violet,” Joe groaned sarcastically, “Now I wonder who told you about her.”  He looked as though he thought that this was yet another thing to annoy him.  “And I suppose Dad told you I killed her.” 

Actually… No, he didn’t.  He said that you did something “unforgivable,” but that could mean anything.  You wouldn’t last five minutes in a police interrogation, matey.

I had only ever been more furious once in my life, and that was with Mr. Daly.  “You said,” I hissed slowly, “that you didn’t know why your dad never liked you.”

He shot me that slimy grin again, as if I’d just walked into a trap.  “And I didn’t.  The whole reason he blamed me for what happened to Vi was because he couldn’t stand me.  It was like that ever since I was born.  It just got worse after Vi died.”

“So,” I said in a voice that could freeze the Sahara Desert, “How did she die?” 

I love how Joe isn’t reacting at all to Anja’s slow hissing and freezing deserts.  You might almost think that Anja’s fury was completely ineffectual!

“Well,” he replied, sitting down, “it was a while after Leah was born.  Mum decided we needed a break in order to ‘bond with her,’ so we went off to Cornwall for the summer.  Emily’s family went as well.   

“But don’t worry, they’re not important to this story at all.”

Jack and I were eleven and Vi was eight.  Vi had always been our dad’s favourite until Leah put on an appearance, I think the worm was beginning to turn around then.  But Dad was still keen for Vi to stay inside and read with Emily and her older sister rather than watch telly or mess about on the beach with us rowdy boys.  That went against all Vi’s instincts- she was probably in the running for the queen of tomboys- and she kept sneaking out with us.”  Joe sighed.  “So one day, when Mum and Dad had taken Leah and Robbie to this historical site… 

Who takes a baby and a toddler to a historical site, and leaves behind the older kids who might actually understand what’s going on?

…Vi managed to slip out of Emily’s clutches and run off with us again.  Emily’s parents didn’t really mind- they thought it was good for us to get exercise. 

Note how neither Emily’s parents nor her sister get names.  Even though they’re apparently old family friends.

So Jack, Vi, Vick and me were looking for interesting things on this beach- I think an ice-cream stall was top of our list- when Vi suggested we go swimming.  Vick said ‘We can’t, the red flags are up.  That means the water’s too dangerous.’   But Vi said she didn’t care, and she was going swimming regardless.  So then, one of us- I can’t remember which one it really was, but Dad always assumed it was me- said ‘Bet you won’t,’ and she replied, ‘Bet I will,’ and it basically turned into a big argument, and we all ended up daring her to go to the end of the pier and dive in.” 

Wait, why would you dare somebody to do something they were going to do anyway?

I guessed the end of the story.  “And she drowned?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Joe replied, “I mean, we all thought it would be alright, because Vi was the best swimmer we knew.  And for the first five minutes or so, she was fine.  When she stood up to try to get out, though, the trouble started.  Someone must have thrown a broken bottle in or something, because she cut her foot and sunk.  Vick tried to get in and save her, but when he got to the bottom her other foot was caught in something, and before he could free it he had to come up for air, so a lifeguard spotted him.  They got Vick out in time, but not Vi.  I think Dad felt guilty because he wasn’t there, so he had to pick out a scapegoat.  I was the one he didn’t like, so guess what?”  The sullen anger had returned to Joe’s face.  “Mum stopped him from telling me I’d killed her after it happened, but he kept throwing it in my face from then on.  His favourite had died, and it was the black sheep’s fault, that’s what he’d decided.  I seriously think if it hadn’t been for my mum, he would have thrown me out and not let any of the others speak to me again.  And bear in mind I was only eleven.  The fact is, that man is too weak to admit his own guilt, so he had to blame the whole thing on a kid who’d made a mistake.”  He looked up, still furious.  “So there you have it.  That’s what happened to Vi.” 

Hmm.  OK.  That provides a reasonable explanation for James’ hatred, without making Joe unlikable as a character.  After all, eleven-year-old boys do stupid things sometimes, and only somebody driven mad by grief would try and infer some sort of malice there.  Hopefully now that she knows the facts, Anja and Joe can make up.

I don’t know why I didn’t believe him.  Maybe hating him had been a habit for so long that I couldn’t break it now. 

GAH.  You’re what’s wrong with humanity, Anja.

But the fact is that I might have said something that I’d have regretted if Cherry hadn’t come home then.

“Hi, y’all,” she muttered from the hallway, “Tell you what, Joe, you’d have liked it at our date today.  That Vick is obsessed with you.  Last time I go for a drink with him, that’s for sure…” She came in and saw our faces- mine defiant, Joe’s angry and Gary’s distraught.  Cherry folded her arms.  “Who died?”

“Well, recently, a friend of Gary’s.  Not so recently, my sister Vi.”  Joe grimaced.  “That’s what we were talking about.”

Cherry frowned.  “I’m sorry, Gary,” she said, “And I can tell exactly how sympathetic Joe’s been.”  She glared at Joe for a minute, then lost her train of thought. 

…Cherry, he just told you they’d been talking about his dead sister.  OK, the readers know that he wasn’t sympathetic towards Gary, but how would Cherry work that out from what he said?  If anything, she’d assume that he’d been commiserating with Gary over their shared losses.

“Speaking of Violet, that was one of the topics of romantic conversation Vick termed suitable for our date.  Such a seductive fella, your Vick.  I can see where all the tact went in your family.”  She smiled, then saw that her semi-compliment was having no effect on Joe whatsoever.  “I mean, does he seriously think that constantly going on about how his dead brother killed his equally dead sister is going to endear him to me?   

So, wait, if Cherry wasn’t shocked by this, does that mean she already knew how Violet died?  So she could have told Anja at any point?  So this whole plotline could have been avoided?

I suppose I should just be grateful it wasn’t his mum, else I’d have been expecting to get stabbed next time I took a shower.”  She grinned.

Huh.  A cultural reference that isn’t just there for the sake of being there.  Sixteen-year-old me is learning!

“My entire family obsesses about Vi,” Joe replied morosely, not getting the joke, “Well, except Jack.  Even Leah’s really curious about her.”

(It wasn’t just curiosity on Leah’s part, I found out later.  Leah suspected that her parents wanted to remake her in Vi’s image, so she was rebelling.  Leah found out everything she could about Vi and tried to be exactly the opposite.  The result was that Leah was turning out to be an incredibly quiet girl who spent most of her time reading and got good marks in school.  Strangely enough, I don’t think that her rebellion was backfiring- while Melissa was understandably relieved to have such a well-behaved daughter after four loud and annoying sons, James was still hoping that one day Leah would be more like Vi.)

“Why not Jack?” Gary asked.

“To be honest, I have no idea.   

SPOILERS- It was for exactly the reason you might think.

I think he was just so freaked out about what happened that he avoids reminding himself of it.   

SPOILERS- Exactly the reason you might think.

Though why he thinks marrying Emily will help him forget, I have no idea.  She’s fascinated with anything bad that’s happened to anyone else, the stupid tart. 

“Also, she tells people that their mothers love their nonexistent sisters better than them.  She should be burned at the stake.”

She never shut up even when we were kids.”  He sneered out of the window.  “It’s just typical of Jack to marry someone our parents love so very much.   He’s such a complete toady, it just makes you want to throw up.”

I rolled my eyes.  “So, to recap, you hate everyone.  Got it.”  

LIKE YOU CAN TALK.

“Well, I have to,” Joe snarled, “‘Cause it looks like everyone hates me, don’t they?”

Nothing got any better over the next few weeks, either.  Joe was rarely seen outside of his room, and when he was I felt like telling him to go right back in there and never come out.  Cherry and I never even tried to talk to him…

Oh, that makes a change.

…and Gary’s one conversation with him was pretty messy.  I only caught the end of it from outside of the kitchen, but whatever it was about, Joe was very unreasonable.

“…He could turn up any minute, Joe, and I know she’ll stick by me and everything, but I still won’t last five minutes.  It’s not clear how much time we have, so I want to make the most of things while I’m still…  So what do you think?” 

“Whatever it was about.”  Who do you think it’s about, Anja?

“I think you two lovebirds should stop rubbing it in that I haven’t got a girlfriend, that’s what I think.” 

Joe is now thirteen years old.  Good to know.

And with that, Joe stormed back up into his hideout.  Even Ben was starting to complain that Joe was no fun anymore.

Speaking of Gary, by the way, that conversation spoke volumes about his mentality around then.  The “she” in the conversation was me, as you’ve probably guessed, but the “he,” I can tell you now, was Jordan.   

…So you did know who it was about?  Then why…  Oh, never mind.

Gary was terrified that the complications in his trial would mean that Jordan would be released on bail, or even escape. 

Those complications are your fault, Gary.  No point complaining about them now.

I’d told him that, in the unlikely event of Jordan seeing daylight at any point in the next twenty years, he still thought we were dead and would therefore come nowhere near us.  That did no good whatsoever.  Gary started to worry that James Foster would bail Jordan out and lead him to us.

“James might have worked out that we’re all alive, so he’s looking through the lists of people that want one or more of us dead.  Who’s he going to find?” Gary had whimpered. 

SPOILERS- This doesn’t happen.  Once again, that would be far too interesting.  It would also require James to be an actual threat.

“Calm down, OK?  Number one, nobody can bail him out now, especially after all this business with Shell, number two, James Foster is hardly…”

“He could help him escape, though.  I mean, prison can’t be that hard to escape from, can it?  People do it all the time in films, so it’s probably possible for a really cunning and smart person to do it in real life.  And Jordan is cunning and smart, so if he has someone on the outside to help him then…” Gary’s face looked like it was about to crumple with terror.  If people are really scared, they can believe anything.

When the phone rang one day, Gary was in such a tense state that he nearly jumped five metres into the air.  I think Mark would have been insulted that Gary found his phone call so terrifying, especially when you consider that Mark was over the moon to be calling us. 

Once again, no idea where to put the comic relief.

“Hi, Anj,” Mark squeaked with exhilaration.

“Hi, Mark.  What incredibly great thing do you want to tell me about?”

“Well, put it this way- it’s a girl!”  Mark paused for long enough for me to congratulate him, then carried on.  “Anja, this is the greatest thing that’s ever happened!  I can’t believe I’m a dad!  I mean, she’s so beautiful you wouldn’t guess I had anything to do with her genes, except…”

“So what are you going to call her?” I squeaked back.

Mark’s voice sounded slightly gloomier when he replied, though anything would have sounded more gloomy than his original tone.  “Well, we thought we’d call her Eugenia.  Jean for short.  You know, since I wouldn’t have even met Estelle if it hadn’t been for Jean.”  I could practically hear him start to grin over the phone.  “Oh, and we thought we’d make her middle name Svetlana.  You know, to get on Cherry’s nerves.”

That’s a great way to pick your child’s name!  Annoying your friends and relatives!  To this end, my first son is going to be called Southend United Suck.  His middle name will be Eric.

I started laughing, and wondered if the birth of Eugenia Svetlana Freeman (poor kid) would hail the start of a new era for me.   

“For me.”  “For me.”

Maybe, now that there was a new life involved (loosely) in this, everything would work out alright after all.

It didn’t.

Nor did you deserve it to.

Just three chapters and an epilogue to go!  Join us again for Chapter Eighteen, in which Melissa doesn’t strangle Anja, even though no jury in the world would convict her.

(Note- the last bit should have been Part Fourteen, but I screwed up the labels. Sorry about that.)

Here we are on Chapter Fifteen (or, to put it another way, “only five more to go after this one.”)  Remember how I mentioned Anja’s psychic powers before?  Well, you ain’t seen nothing yet!

“Auntie Annie?” Ben asked.  We were in the kitchen, cooking dinner.  Well, I say “we”- I was cooking, he was clamouring for me to let him lick the spoon.  I didn’t want to see the look on his face when he realised I was making chilli con carne.

Oh, Ben.  You and your self-destructive ways.

(Do people really eat chilli con carne on New Years’ Eve?  It seems like more of a summer food.)

“Yes, Ben?”

“Think you and Gary should get married.”  Ben had clearly been thinking this through for quite a while.

SPOILERS- Just because a two-year-old tells you to do something doesn’t mean that you have to do it, Anja.  Honestly…

“Really, Ben?” I replied, “And why do you think that?”

His reply was probably not the best thing to say considering the way I was feeling.  “‘Cause then,” he replied, “my mummy could marry Joe.  Joe’s cool.”

“Hmm,” I replied.  I wasn’t going to tell Ben that Joe just might have had a hand in a girl’s death.   

Because he’s two.  And because you’d be talking bollocks anyway.

Cherry had tried to calm me down earlier, snapping, “Anja, James said it!  You know, James Foster?  Tried to kill Mark and Joe a few months ago?  Tried to kill you not long afterwards? 

Cherry takes her turn as the only sane character.  But despite absolutely everyone pointing out what a bonehead she’s being, and despite not being able to come up with any counter-arguments, Anja still persists in believing that Joe is pure evil.  Because we need a cheap source of tension, you see.

He’s an attempted murderer himself, got that?

“Attempted”?  Does Jean not count?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but shouldn’t you be taking everything he says with a pinch of salt?”

You are not wrong, Cherry.  Frankly, in your shoes, I’d be phoning up my aunt and uncle, telling them that Anja was still alive, and letting her take her chances with them.  But then, that’s really what you should have done in the first place.

I knew Cherry was right, but I still couldn’t shake off my suspicions about Joe.  Somehow, he was just a little bit too creepy.  When Joe and Gary had first met, Joe had been all protective urges, but now they barely even spoke.  Gary put it down to nerves and unrequited love, but I wasn’t that trusting.  Or, as I sometimes cruelly thought, that stupid.  The fact is, being that nice often requires you to be a bit dim. 

There you have it.  Anja thinks that being nice makes you stupid.  This explains quite a lot about her.

Ha.  There was one thing cheering me up.  It was New Year’s Eve that night, but Joe wouldn’t be celebrating with the rest of us.

“Aw, yeah!  The best part of this super-fun, worldwide celebration is the part where we’ll be purposely excluding the person who’s just lost his beloved aunt!  Break out the champagne!”

Most of the Foster family had decided to make themselves regular features of our lives, and that included “seeing in the New Year” at Wild Cherry House.  Quite apart from getting rid of Joe for the entire night (he’d be hiding in the attic somewhere, probably)…

How festive.  Will he be singing a wistful “I Want” song with his gargoyle pals?

…we might be able to find out something else about Violet.

OR YOU COULD ASK HIM.  WHICH YOU WERE TOLD TO DO THREE MONTHS AGO, AND HAVEN’T BOTHERED ABOUT.

We then get several paragraphs about some characters who will not be appearing in the story, and, in fact, has nothing to do with anything:

“You know, Ben’s got a point.”  Cherry had come into the room, smiling.  “Joe would be a big improvement on any of my previous boyfriends, for a start.  Mind you, anyone would be an improvement on some of them, wouldn’t they, Anja?”

I knew what she was talking about, because I’d heard my parents talking about it at the time.  When Cherry had found out she was pregnant, Ben’s grandparents hadn’t taken it well.  I don’t mean Cherry’s parents, who were over the moon (although her mum, my Aunt Irene, complained that she was far too young to be a granny), but her ex-boyfriend’s parents.   They couldn’t believe that their little angel had even spoken to someone as “not our sort” as Cherry, let alone have a kid with her.  She only managed to persuade her ex-boyfriend to pay child support when she threatened to take him to court. 

“You should have seen the look on his mum’s face,” Cherry laughed, commenting on the story I already knew, “You’d think she’d just sat on a porcupine!  Probably shocked that I’d dare to question my betters,” she reasoned with a mock-horrified expression, “To think!  A lowly commoner like me being so impertinent to folk so refined that they fainted if anyone called the sofa a settee…” She broke off, sniggering.

“Did she want to keep it hushed up, do you think?”

“Probably,” Cherry shrugged, “But I think my ex just wanted to get the whole thing over with without any fuss.”  She looked out of the window for a second, then turned back, smiling.  “Anyway, what are we talking about that prat for?   

My thoughts exactly.

The Fosters are going to be here in a minute.  Help me get the table ready.”

James couldn’t make it.  Something to do with work.  Melissa had apologised profusely for this, but Cherry and me could hardly have been more relieved.  We hadn’t forgotten that James had killed his aunt.   

Oh yes you had.  See above.

He probably knew that we’d worked out what he’d been up to.  But he also knew that, so far, we hadn’t spoken to anyone else about it…

…for some reason.  Seriously, there is no reason on Earth for them not to go to the police.

…so chances were he was off the hook.

Why would he come to that conclusion?  You came to Southend with the express purpose of bringing him to justice.  Yes, the reader knows you’re not a threat, because you get distracted every time you see something shiny, but James doesn’t know that!  For all he knows, you’re just making him sweat for a few weeks before you start to blackmail him!  Now would, in fact, be the optimum time for him to kill you!

Anja is quite possibly the worst detective ever.  The fact that she’s still alive at the end of this book is actually kind of painful.

He was never going to get his hands on the money or Estelle in any case, and he probably still thought Joe was dead.  He had no reason whatsoever to strike again. 

Except for the fact that you know what he’s up to.  Or desire for revenge against Cherry for taking his inheritance.  Actually, it would be more accurate to say, “He had no reason whatsoever not to strike again.”

But it was still a relief to know that he wouldn’t be turning up.

Yes.  It’s still a relief to know that the known murderer won’t be there to spoil your New Year’s party.

About 50 metres away, the doorbell rang.  A few seconds later, I heard the door open, and the various noises associated with the Foster family echoed down the hall and into the kitchen.

“Happy New Year…  Err, it’s Gareth, isn’t it?”  Melissa’s uncertain tones brought a massive smile to Ben’s face.  “Auntie Melissa’s here, Auntie Annie!  She’s here!” he whispered.  He hadn’t been this excited to see me.

NEITHER SHOULD HE HAVE BEEN.

Anyway, there’s several paragraphs of boring dialogue in which Melissa apologises for not being certain of Gary’s name and her children tease her for it, and then Leah comes in to see Ben.

Leah, with the speed of a cheetah or something, had rushed from the front door to the kitchen in five seconds.  When I saw her, she was trying in vain to pick Ben up.

“Leah’s a wuss!  Leah’s a wuss!”  I turned round to see Robbie, dressed in what must have been a very smart outfit before he went within a hundred miles of it.  He looked up at me with an evil grin on his face. Evil grins definitely ran in the family, I decided.   

Great.  Now she’ll develop an irrational grudge against Robbie, too.

“Ben’s just a baby and she can’t pick him up!” he told me, “She’s such a wuss!”

“Am not a baby!” Ben snapped, wriggling out of Leah’s grip and squashing her in the process, “Am nearly three!”

“I can pick Ben up, Cherry,” Leah argued, “He was just being wriggly just then.”

“I know you can pick him up, Leah…”

“Welcome to the Foster family experience,” someone groaned in my ear.  It turned out to be Jack.  By the look on his face, he was ready to leave at the slightest excuse.  I knew how he felt. 

I know, right?  Children trying to pick each other up.  It’s probably that that drove their father to murder, y’know.

“They’re not that bad,” I lied.  At that precise moment, Robbie had discovered the jelly and was making sure everyone got some.  Around the face area. 

So Robbie’s gone to somebody else’s house, found the food, and started painting the walls with it?  And Anja and Jack are just going to carry on whispering to each other instead of trying to get him to stop?  Righto.

“OK,” I admitted, “Robbie has a few bratty tendencies, but he’s not a patch on my little broth…  cousin.” 

“I don’t mean just Robbie.”  Jack looked around to check that his mother wasn’t watching (she wasn’t.  She was trying to get within a metre of Robbie without getting covered in jelly), then whispered back to me.  “Just be glad my dad isn’t here.  He’s always been one to make an idiot of himself in front of other people. Ask your sister.” 

“Like, at my tenth birthday party, he murdered all my friends’ parents!  It was really embarrassing!”

I saw by the angry expression on Jack’s face that he would have said a lot more than that if he hadn’t thought that Melissa might overhear him.  I guessed, though, that he didn’t know that Joe’s accident wasn’t. 

But he didn’t get to say that, because a loud voice pierced the airwaves.

“Hey, Honour!” darling little Robbie yelled, “Vick and Jack said that our dad fancied you!”

What I thought at that moment is probably unprintable, especially the bit about the elephants.  So I will settle for saying that I wasn’t happy. 

Heh heh, elephants.  Oh, and a known serial killer has developed an unhealthy fixation on an underage girl, but that’s incidental.

(From this point on, James will completely forget that he’s attempted murder to win the heart of Estelle, and transfer his affections to Anja instead.  This is actually probably quite realistic, since serial killers aren’t the most logical or stable of people, but it would have helped if there was some sort of explanation.)

“I don’t know whether James fancies you or not,” Gary whispered at dinner, “but there’s definitely something between Vick and Cherry.  Check out the way he keeps looking at her.”

“A bit like the way she keeps looking at you, you mean?” I teased.  It was true, though, that Cherry definitely looked a lot happier when staring in Gary’s direction than in Vick’s.  Despite the freezing December weather, someone had thought it was a good idea to eat al fresco.  

“Someone” being the author.

We were currently sitting at a table in the light of a few lamps, cocooned in coats and jumpers.  Leah and Ben had shot off halfway through to go and see Sammy, completely ignoring Cherry and Melissa’s assertions of, “There’s starving children in Africa who would be delighted to have a meal like this.”

Hey, look at their role models.  Anja doesn’t even care about her own grieving parents, so why should Leah and Ben care about starving children?

“I don’t wish to alarm you,” Melissa was saying, having realized that getting her daughter to finish eating was a lost cause, “but the press seem to have got it into their heads that Joe and Mark and those other poor souls were murdered!  I was reading the paper earlier this week, and someone had sent in a letter saying that the police should start a manhunt for whoever…  Oh, how did they put it?  They said that someone ‘stole their lives’ or something.  The police always told us they thought it was an accident!”

I was seriously impressed.  For once, the papers had actually worked out something obvious for themselves! 

Oh, like you can talk, Miss “Why does James want his daughter to turn out like his mistress”?

“How ridiculous is that?” Jack snorted, “I mean, who’d want to murder Mark and Joe?”

At that point, something very, very strange happened to Melissa’s face.  It was as if I could actually see the thought process in her brain.

Or as if the author had suddenly realised the hole she’d dug herself into by writing this story in first person.

Since she’s recently told me a lot about how she felt, in order to help me with this book, I can give you a small insight into what she was thinking.

Oh, don’t be so modest, Anja.  We know all about those psychic powers of yours!

The last time she’d heard Mark and Joe’s names mentioned in association with death (or at least horrible injury) was while she was helping Estelle plan for her wedding.  She couldn’t help her eyes creep over to the statue involved, on which her daughter was playing with Ben.  Someone had looked both angry and guilty when Cherry Hughes had moved the snail back onto the ledge.  Someone whose name was James…

 If she noticed he looked angry and guilty at the time, wouldn’t she have worried about it then?  Or is she used to people getting annoyed at their friends for saving other people’s lives?

“Uh, Cherry?” Vick asked, sounding as if he was about to throw up (or worse) with terror, “Sorry to change the subject, but can I talk to you for a moment?”

I could see Melissa come to the inevitable conclusion.  Her eyes were huge with shock.

“Sure, Vick.  What’s on your mind?”

And if it’s true, Melissa thought, So many things would make sense.  The freak accident, the fact that he still can’t forgive Joe, the fact that…  Oh my God!  Jean!

“Well,” Vick stuttered, “I know I don’t have much of a chance, but would you have a drink with me on Friday?  Only I know this place, it sells really brilliant…”

“Sounds great.  I could use a night out.  Honour?  Could you and Gary baby-sit?”

I love how the woman realising that her husband murdered two members of their family is juxtaposed with two really boring teenagers arranging a date.  It’s basically this story in a nutshell.

As the conversation went on around her, Melissa realized that her suspicions, if confirmed, would spell the end of her marriage, and possibly even the end of more lives.  Despite not being completely sure of what was going on, she decided to “forget” to mention something to Cherry, Gary and me.

It had seemed like such a friendly idea, including us in her family holiday.  After all, Cherry was practically one of the family herself, especially since she and Joe had been so close.  And her little boy, such a lovely child.  And Melissa was sure that Cherry’s sister and that shy boyfriend of hers would open up like a dream given a nice beach.  But suddenly, the holiday didn’t seem like such a good plan.

The part of Spain the Fosters were going to was a nice place, but it had a lot of scope for “freak accidents.”  Hazardous roads in the mountains, steep cliffs jutting out into the tropical sea, forests where people might get lost for weeks on end…

Again, that sounds like a much more interesting story than the one we’re reading.

I love how Anja and pals avoid being taken to Spain and murdered because Melissa doesn’t ask them.  Not because of their own quick wits or bravery or anything.  They’re pretty dependent on the kindness of strangers, this lot.

Melissa didn’t want to believe that her husband had looked at us with those thoughts in mind.  But she remembered another holiday that had gone disastrously wrong, she remembered how angry James had looked when Cherry had inherited Jean’s house and money, and she remembered what had happened to the other person who had stood by Joe.  By keeping quiet, chances are she saved our lives.

 “Because if James and Melissa had asked us to come to Spain with them, we’d probably have been stupid enough to say yes!”

By the way, this is James’ last sinister plot until the climax.  He basically spends six months sitting around and twiddling his thumbs.  Our scary, scary villain, ladies and gentlemen.

Join us again for chapter sixteen, in which Gary suffers.  Again.

I’ve got to admit, this has become a bit of a hard slog for me.  Coming back every week to analyse my youthful pretensions in great detail…  It takes a lot out of me.  But I’ll soldier on, because there’s only six chapters after this one, and after that I’m free.  Free, I say.

Oddly enough, this is around the point where fifteen-year-old me started getting fed up of this story, too.  It took me three or four months to write the first thirteen chapters, but a whole year to write the last seven.  I can’t remember exactly why- I think I just got fed up of fannying around with no plot in sight.  So I started writing a story in which most of the world’s population suddenly disintegrated instead, which was much more fun.

This chapter is called “Shrinking Violet.”  That’s probably not the worst pun in this story, but it comes close.

I could hear the cries of “Mummy!  Santa’s been!” from Cherry’s room.  Apparently Ben had decided it was time for us to wake up.

Cute Ben moment number 167.

Gary was still asleep, as usual.  As I looked at him, I wondered how a person could get away with looking as gorgeous as he did. 

He doesn’t get away with it.  He pays for it in sheer woobiedom, as well you know.

If you ignored his daft haircut and the worried look he always seemed to have, you noticed.  The first things I noticed were that his eyes were the size of saucers and bluer than any ocean I’d ever seen (mind you, since I live in Britain that isn’t much of an achievement), and aside from a few faded scars I wasn’t allowed to ask about, his skin was just, well, pink. 

“On closer inspection, Gary was made entirely out of candyfloss.  He was delicious.”

You might think that’s normal, but there aren’t many people in the world whose skin is pink (or brown for that matter) all over.  I know mine is covered by moles, pressure marks, spots, and the BCG scar that just won’t go away.  But Gary was lucky as far as his looks went.  Well, he had to be lucky somewhere. 

Shut up, Anja.  Remember what Gary said.  You’re not allowed to feel sorry for him.  Even now, years later, after so much has happened, I’m still not allowed.

Fifteen-year-old me was protesting a bit too much with this whole “Anja isn’t allowed to feel sorry for Gary” thing.  I think I realised that I hadn’t really written Gary to inspire any emotion but pity.  And, while fifteen-year-old me most definitely thought that pity was enough to sustain a relationship, I decided it was probably best not to be too blatant about it.

I stuck my hand on his shoulder.  “Hey, Gary,” I whispered, “Ben the Destroyer reckons it’s time to get up.”

Gary looked up at me with a lazy smile.  “We’d better do what he says.  It sounds like Cherry’s suffering enough already.”

He was right.  Cherry had clearly refused to move from her bed, and in response Ben was jumping on it.  Such is the desperation of a two-year-old boy to get down to some serious present opening.   

Cute Ben Moment number 1020.

Joe was the last to get up.  I couldn’t believe his nerve when he gave me a creepy grin, which I was almost certain was directed at my chest.  It probably was, now I come to think of it.  Even though I was wearing a turtleneck jumper.  That probably shows something about his character, but I can’t think what right now.

Oh, come on.  You were coming up with creative insults for Joe all last chapter- no need to be shy now.

“Merry Christmas, Ginger,” he sniggered.  My dye job was beginning to look slightly less glaring red by now, admittedly, but I still wasn’t having any of it.

“Name’s Anja, Joe,” I mumbled, “Having to call myself Honour half the time is bad enough without you adding ‘Ginger’ to the mix.”

Joe seemed to take this as a joke.  Well, he might have.  It was hard to tell with someone who spent a lot of time making fun of everyone.   

…When was the last time we saw Joe making fun of anyone who wasn’t Mr Daly?

In any case, he didn’t seem to acknowledge my wariness around him.

This is how Anja confronts all her enemies.  By thinking evil thoughts at them until they can take no more.  It’s not very effective.
By the time we got downstairs, the living room already looked like a bombsite.  In the dim, colourful light of the Christmas lights, Ben was enthusiastically ripping the paper off all the presents under the tree.  Apparently he’d never heard of labels, especially since he looked so shocked when Cherry told him that maybe, just maybe, not all of the 50 to 100 presents under the tree were for him.   

Cute Ben Moment number 1,000,003.

Viewing the carnage, I suggested that everyone opened three of their own presents (not half of Joe’s like Ben had done) before having breakfast.

When we eventually managed to eat something (Ben was very choosy about which gifts he opened), poor old Cherry only managed to take a bite or two out of her toast before the doorbell rang.

“Who do you think that is?” I asked.  In my family, the tradition was to deny the existence of the outside world on 25^th December. 

Well, in this story, your tradition has been to deny the existence of your family and any grief and suffering they may have experienced due to your actions.  So I don’t think you get to complain about somebody disrupting your Christmas.
Cherry shook her head in confusion, and opened the door to a nervous dark-haired boy who seemed creepily familiar.

“Um… Hi, Cherry,” he said in a strangled way.  Apparently, Joe wasn’t the only one who had feelings for my cousin. 

“Hi, Vick.  What’s up?”

Vick…  Where had I heard that name before?   

Well, there are fewer than twenty named characters in this thing, so it shouldn’t take you too long to guess

Before my memory could answer, this Vick person was talking again.  “Well, we’re going out to this restaurant at around seven tonight, and my dad said it would be good if you and Ben could come.  He also said to bring your sister and her boyfriend, too.”  He smiled awkwardly.  “It could be fun.  I haven’t met your sister before, see, and neither has Robbie.  So, can you come?” 

Gosh, they’re going to the This Restaurant!  The most exclusive place in town!

Cherry looked worried for a moment, but she managed to hide it with a jokey reply.  “Well, there was this Christmas special I wanted to watch on telly, but I guess I could tape it.  OK, V, pick us up at seven.”

By the time Vick closed the door, I’d worked out who he was… 

…two or three paragraphs after the readers did.

…and why it was a very, very good thing that he couldn’t see Joe in the kitchen. 

These people fail at being in hiding, don’t they?

“Hey, Joe,” Cherry shouted, “Your brother just came round.  I said we’d go out with him and your parents at seven.  Is that OK?” 

At seven-thirty, I was sitting at a restaurant table with Gary, Cherry, Ben, James Foster, Melissa Foster, Jack, Robbie, Vick and Leah Foster, and, surprisingly enough, Ditsy Emily from Blaze.  I’d known her for nearly two months and she’d never mentioned that she was Jack’s fiancée.

Maybe she mentioned it but you didn’t listen.  After all, you’ve managed to memorise exactly two of your co-workers’ names- you don’t seem like the sort of person who’d take an interest in their love lives.

“I proposed to her in September,” Jack was explaining, “But we’ve known each other for ages.  She got the job in Blaze so I could see her more, didn’t you, honey?” 

This is how people in a long-term relationship talk.

As he looked at Emily, my heart jolted.  Jack’s smile had turned into a smirk that reminded me that he and Joe were identical twins.  For a minute, I thought that Joe had turned up to surprise us.  That would quite possibly have ruined the whole night. 

“Yeah!  We’re having a lovely time, eating dinner with a murderer.  We don’t want Joe to turn up and ruin it!”

“It’s such a shame,” Melissa trilled…

 How do you “trill” the words, “It’s such a shame”?  Is Melissa a budgie?

…”I thought your wedding would be the thing that brought the family back together, but there’s so many people whose seats are going to be empty.  Joe’s, Jean’s, Vi’s…”

That got my attention.  First I was just vaguely wondering who Vi was, then I remembered about Violet…  Maybe Vi was Melissa’s name for her?  Maybe they were friends?  Maybe…  Why was Violet’s seat going to be empty? 

 Anja’s been pretty slow on the uptake for the last few chapters, hasn’t she?

James’ face dropped, Jack went red, and Cherry whispered, “Now she’s done it.”

“It might all have been different if Violet was still alive,” James sighed, “Violet might have persuaded Joe to stay with his family, and then he’d never have gone near the wretched bus.  Underneath it all, Joe was like the rest of us, always was.  He’d do anything she said…”

“So why do you never do anything I say?” Leah snapped.  Apparently all this Violet business was really getting her goat.

“He liked Vi better,” Robbie sniggered, prompting Leah to hit him on the head with her mat.  I wasn’t planning on telling anyone, but I made a mental note to buy Leah some sweets later as a reward.  Robbie had been a horrible little brat all evening, and he was finally getting what he deserved.  Also, I saw that Leah wasn’t the perfect goody-two-shoes Joe had made her out to be.  I should have known that I couldn’t trust Joe as far as I could throw him.

 “Joe has a slightly rose-tinted view of his sister’s behaviour!  Therefore, he is eeevil!”

Still, how come Leah and Robbie knew about Violet?  I don’t have first-hand experience of this, but usually if your dad’s cheating on your mum, he tries to keep it a secret from everyone. 

 Like I said- slow on the uptake.

And apparently, Melissa knew as well.  She looked as sad as James did, but she could still see the malign effects on her younger children.  “James, can you please stop talking about her?” she hissed, “You know Leah doesn’t like it.  She gets the impression that you’re comparing her to Vi.”

Now I was really confused.  Why would someone compare their daughter to an ex-girlfriend? 

OH, FOR CLIFF’S SAKE.

I couldn’t find out about anything, because Jack and Vick were giving me strong “Don’t ask” signals with their eyebrows.  Fortunately, someone had enough sense to change the subject.

“I fell over outside!” Ben announced to all and sundry.  Leah wasn’t the only one I’d be buying sweets for.

“Poor Ben!” Melissa squealed, more out of relief than concern really, “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” Ben replied, “Gary picked me up.”  Gary was rapidly becoming Ben’s favourite person (not least because he did everything Ben said), and one of the advantages of that position was that Ben talked about him all the time.  “Gary draws all the time, Auntie Melissa.  And he likes Auntie Annie a lot.  And he…”

 Cute Ben Mo…  Oh, forget it, we’ll be here all day.  It is nice to see somebody appreciating Gary without harping on about his tragic, tormented soul, though.

Cherry told me later that she was worried that any minute Ben would mention Joe, which would require an elaborate cover story…

Again- these people fail at hiding out.  And why would you put a two-year-old in a story and then not have him do the things that a two-year-old would do in real life?  Like, for instance, blab the big secret to everyone he meets?  That could have been a useful source of tension, there.

…(we’d already had to make something up about why he called me “Annie” instead of “Honour”). 

We will not actually hear this elaborate cover story, but trust Anja when she says it was a good ‘un.

But at the time, I had no idea why she suddenly turned round and said, “Robbie, do you want to take Leah and Ben to get some ice-cream?  They’re 20p each, I think.”  She ferreted around in her purse for three 20p pieces, then handed them to Robbie.  This, in my opinion, was a bad move.  Robbie would probably try to use all three 20ps to buy something big for himself.  (He did, but fortunately his plan was thwarted when Leah twisted his arm behind his back and took the money.  Definitely not a goody-two-shoes.  I know all this because Ben delightedly told me in the car on the way home.)

Ben’s very articulate for a two-year-old, have you noticed?

Emily looked from side to side.  “It was funny, you talking about Vi earlier,” she said, changing the subject back and therefore ruining all of Ben’s good work, “‘Cause I can still remember what she was like.  She and Leah definitely look and sound a bit like each other.  Did Leah ever know her?”

“Not really,” Vick replied, “Leah was only… um… five or so months old when Vi died.”

Apparently, this wasn’t as important a piece of news to Emily as it was to me.  “Oh, right,” she replied, staring into her pizza, “Only I thought Leah might have copied the way Vi spoke or something.  You know, so you wouldn’t miss her as much…?”

James nodded, still looking miserable.  “In a way, Violet’s spirit lives on through her little sister.  But nothing can stop us missing her.  You never get over losing a child.”

Suddenly, everything made sense.

THANK YOU.  You know, when the murderer you’re trying to catch has to spell out a vital piece of information before you get it, you’re really not that great a detective.

Violet hadn’t been James’ girlfriend at all.  No wonder he felt free to talk about her in front of Melissa and his children.  No wonder Leah thought her dad was comparing her to Violet.  Violet had been her older sister, someone she was expected to take the place of.  Expected by James, anyway.

And the “unforgivable” thing that Joe had done to his sister wasn’t necessarily something he’d done to Leah.  It could have been something he’d done to Violet.

And considering that Violet was dead, one guess seemed glaringly obvious.

 Join us again for chapter 15, in which Anja reads Melissa’s mind, and I wonder why Melissa wasn’t the protagonist.  I think she’s the third character I’ve said that about.

I started a new job last September, and, in the mornings, I had to walk through a cemetery to get to the station.  One thing I noticed was how idiosyncratic a lot of the gravestones were.  You had heart-shaped stones, pink and gold lettering, poems by members of the family, photos of the deceased embedded in the stone, kites, windmills, and balloons.  Loads of balloons.  All of which, in my opinion, beats the hell out of just leaving a cactus on the grave.

“Christmas tree!” Ben yelled, “Christmas tree!  Come on, Auntie Annie!”

I followed Ben into the living room, where Cherry was struggling to put up something large, bendy and green.  The plastic tree was hard to get in position, so I could see why she needed Joe to help her.

I still felt a sense of impending disaster when I thought about Joe.  His slimy act had been shaken by Jean’s death, but it had rallied well. 

This is the closest Anja will come to expressing her condolences to Joe.

Joe was once again the person who acted like everyone was about to walk into his traps.  I’d noticed, though, that he refused to go anywhere near the balconies in Wild Cherry House. 

Geez, I wonder why?

I knew that if he ever did anything he’d regret (though I doubted he’d regret anything), that was where I could hide.  If only I’d known that I wasn’t the one he’d go after.

See, Anja, there’s foreshadowing, and then there’s just spoiling the rest of the story.  The readers certainly aren’t going to stick around for your sparkling personality, I can tell you that.

It was a huge relief to get shot of Mr Daly, even if it had happened in such a terrifying way.  Joe had thanked me personally for getting rid of him, which I’d thought was bad taste. 

Said the girl who referred to one of the mourners at her funeral as “Super-Blob.”

Then again, I thought that practically everything Joe said around that time was bad taste.

I want to give fifteen-year-old me some credit for recognising that Anja’s sudden grudge against Joe is completely illogical, but that’s kind of tainted by the fact that I know Anja’s grudge is going to be spectacularly vindicated near the end.

He did, however, seem to be genuinely worried about Gary.

“Between you and me, Anja,” he’d said that morning, “Gary’s been looking all edgy since Mr Daly attacked you.  He looked as if he was going to throw up when you told him.  There’s something wrong with that kid, I can just tell.”

You mean besides the Oedipus Complex and the constant weeping?

I’d just put it down to Gary caring about me a lot.  I knew I’d want to throw up if someone attacked someone I loved.  But still, Joe was right about Gary being edgy.  He was acting as if something horrible had actually, rather than nearly, happened. 

“Bloody hell, Gary, I was only nearly strangled to death!  Why don’t you relax?”

In fact, he looked as if his life had turned sour right before his eyes.  And, considering all that business with Jordan, it had turned sour at least twice before.

“I should warn you, mate,” Cherry told me after she’d finally wrestled the tree into submission, “We aren’t going to get a white Christmas this year.  Not with the weather so far.  You’ll probably be able to get a suntan on Christmas Day.”

“Ah well,” I replied, “That’s global warming for you.”

Cherry laughed.  “Yep.  Rudolph and his pals might have to wear jet skis if the ice caps melt, and they don’t look good on hooves, believe me.”

Fifteen-year-old me practices her stand-up routine.

This reminded Ben of something.  “Carrot for Rudolph,” he said firmly.

Cherry nodded.  “OK, we’ll leave out a carrot for Rudolph.  Just as long as he doesn’t leave wet hoof-prints on the carpet, what with the jet-skiing and all,” she said before bursting into peals of laughter along with me.  Ben clearly didn’t approve.  “Gary,” he whinged, “Mummy and Auntie Annie are laughing at Rudolph!”

Cute Ben Moment number forty-five.

Gary smiled, closing his pad.  He was a bit awkward with little kids, but Ben liked him anyway.  He liked anyone who was prepared to give him chocolate.  “They aren’t laughing at Rudolph, Ben.  They’re just being silly.  They like Rudolph really.” 

This didn’t seem to satisfy Ben, since he turned back and glared at us.  “Santa won’t come if you laugh at Rudolph!” he warned.

“OK, OK,” Cherry spluttered, “We’ve stopped laughing now. 

They’re still laughing after that long?  I guess they have to make their own entertainment in these parts.

Come on, Anja, let’s get the tinsel on.”

I was saved from being attacked by the amazing tinsel worm when the phone rang.

I’d just like to point out that, at the same time as these heartwarming Christmassy antics are going on, Anja’s parents are contemplating their first Christmas without their beloved daughter.  How much do you think they’re enjoying the decorating?

“Hey, Anja!” the voice on the other end shrieked, “It’s Estelle.”

“Hi!  Haven’t heard from you in a while!”  Since October, in fact.  I was beginning to think she and Mark had abandoned us.

Actually, they just snuck out of the story while nobody was looking.  And good luck to them, that’s what I say.

“Well, Joe’s been phoning me every week or so, so I know all the news.  I heard about Cherry inheriting Jean’s old place, for instance.”

“I didn’t bother to come down for my mother’s best friend’s funeral, though.  That would have been far too much effort.”

“Well, it wouldn’t have been too polite of her to move without telling you.  But… um… listen…”

I love how that’s the big news that Joe needed to tell Estelle.  Not about Jean’s mysterious death, or anything.  That’s incidental.  What Estelle really cares about is that Cherry got to move to a bigger house.

“Yeah?”

“About Joe… Did you ever hear about something bad happening between him and Leah?”

“No,” Estelle replied, sounding confused, “Joe always told me he liked Leah.  Why, what’s been going on?”

“Nothing…  But did Joe ever mention someone called Violet?”

“Oh, Violet!” Estelle whined, “No, Joe didn’t, but James sure did.  I kept telling him it wasn’t polite to go on about old girlfriends in front of his wife, but did he ever listen? No way!  Every time I told him he said I was too young to understand!”

“She was an old girlfriend?”

“Why else would he go on about her like that? 

SPOILERS- Violet is actually Joe’s other, long-deceased sister, and Estelle is a conclusion-jumping numpty.

It was so embarrassing for Joe, having to listen to stories about how great Violet was.  It was always awkward, just after my mother left for America.  Obviously I was staying with Jean…

“Obviously.  You can tell how close we were from my tearful speech at her funeral.  OH WAIT.”

…but James seemed to think that I needed a dad as well, which I didn’t.  I never even thought much of the dad I had, before he left.  Anyway, there’s James acting as though I’m some poor little waif he has to take care of, so I get exposed to their family arguments, which was embarrassing.

I love how even James’ nicer actions get spun into symptoms of pure eeevil.  “He felt protective towards an abandoned child?  HOW EMBARRASSING!  He gave the eulogy at his own aunt’s funeral?  STRING HIM UP!”

Me and Joe were the heirs to Blaze, because if you remember this was a couple of years ago and Cherry wasn’t on the scene yet…

And, once again, this story would be much more interesting if it turned out that Joe and Estelle were trying to bump Cherry off for the inheritance.  But it won’t.

…so we had to work together, kind of against his family, and of course when I met Mark…”

“So,” I asked, “Do you know what ended up happening to Violet?”

“That’s enough character development for you, missy.”

“No, but I’ll tell you this- James was crazy about her.  I swear, every time his dad mentioned her name Joe would cringe.  James was just so damn tactless.  Don’t tell Joe I said this, but the Fosters are one mixed-up family.”

“You’re telling me,” I snarled, watching Joe flirt with Cherry, “I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something wrong with all of them.”

I can see her point.  Flirting with any relative of Anja’s is a sure sign of a sick mind.

Unfortunately for me, Estelle worked out what I was implying.  “Anja!” she retorted, “I don’t know what you’ve got against Joe all of a sudden, but despite being the son of a psycho, he’s turned out fine!”

Fifteen-year-old me didn’t know what Anja had against Joe all of a sudden, either.  But she needed conflict, and for some reason she didn’t want to get it from the serial killer.

I was caught off-balance.  Estelle had never been angry at me before, but I could tell from experience that I’d better change her mood quickly, or I wouldn’t like the consequences.  “Sorry!  It’s just something James said about Leah…”

“Oh, him,” Estelle replied, pronouncing the second word as if it was some evil curse, “Come on, Anja, you know about James!  He’ll say anything to turn people against Joe!”

Hee.  I’m sorry I called you a numpty, Estelle.  You speak words of wisdom.

“I know,” I replied, “OK, sorry.  But it does make you wonder, doesn’t it?”

“What?”

“Why would someone just turn against one of their kids like that, especially when they treat their other kids normally?  It doesn’t make sense.”

Anja Cleary, champion of abused children everywhere.

Also, please note that Gary’s stepbrother turned against him, and he seemed to treat the rest of his family normally.  But, of course, Gary is the love interest, so he can’t be evil.

Estelle was clearly fed up with me. 

SO AM I.

“Anja, it might seem strange, but it happens all the time.  Trust me.  You don’t have to worry about Joe.”

Estelle was wrong.  Something had happened, I was sure.  Joe might have been able to charm Cherry and Estelle with his slimy act, but he wasn’t fooling me. 

Anja is much smarter than people who’ve known Joe for years!

I knew I was right.  Joe was just as mixed-up as James was.

Never mind what he’d done to Leah.  Every time Cherry made a teasing remark to Gary, I saw a look on Joe’s face that could have curdled milk.

*

“I seriously don’t see your problem with Joe,” Gary told me as he sat on a shelf in the wardrobe, drawing.  Yes, I really do mean a shelf.  I looked at him.  “I just don’t like him, OK?” I replied.

“Why?”

“Well, there’s the whole Leah thing, and I think he’s a bit jealous of you.” 

“Well, that’s me convinced!” said Gary, getting out a pitchfork, “Let’s have a good old-fashioned witch-burning!”

“Jealous?”  Gary smirked.  “Why would he be jealous?”

“Because…” I wasn’t sure how to put this.  I couldn’t exactly say, “Because he’s got a crush on Cherry the size of Mount Everest, and she has a thing for you, much to my annoyance I might well add,” so I changed the subject. 

…Why?  Why can’t you say that?  It’s the only part of your anti-Joe campaign that makes any sense!

“Actually, is there room for two people on that shelf?  It looks more comfortable than this chair.”  Said chair looked as if it had been dragged through a hedge backwards twenty years ago, and hadn’t been upholstered since.

Gary moved up, and I sat down beside him.  “I’ve always liked enclosed spaces,” he told me, “I’d always hide in my wardrobe when I felt upset.  Childish or what?”

(to the tune of “The Lollipop Song”)  Oedipus, Oedipus, oh, Oedi-Oedipus…

“Yeah, but I’ve felt like that.  Like when I was being picked on at school, or when my dog died, or when…  Oh, Gary!”  I pulled him towards me with such force that our heads nearly collided.  Gary, needless to say, looked very frightened.  “What?” he squeaked.

Anja will now hug him and squeeze him and call him George.

“Well, I feel like such a cry-baby next to you.  Here I am, whinging about my dog, when you’ve been through things that…”

“Anja!” he said sharply, “You’re not allowed to feel sorry for me, remember?”  

“I’ve developed a new character trait now!  I can be impressively meta!”

“Oh.  Sorry, I forgot.”  We’d agreed that whatever had happened to Gary before was in the past, and his life was, according to him, perfect now, so there was no point in dwelling on the time when it hadn’t been. 

I’m sure every psychiatrist in the country would agree.

Personally, I wasn’t a hundred per cent happy with this arrangement, but it kept Gary from going off into bouts of misery and fear, so it was OK.  Well, that’s what I thought.

The idea was, if we brought up the Things Of Which We Didn’t Speak, we had to change the subject as soon as we realised our mistake.  After looking out of the window for a second, I thought of something.  “We haven’t done anything about James Foster for a while, have you noticed?”

“Anyone would think we were incompetent protagonists.”

“What’s the point?” Gary asked, “We haven’t seen him since Jean’s funeral.  He hasn’t been bothering us.  The only reason for tracking him down would be revenge, and what would that achieve?”

…Putting a known murderer behind bars?

For some reason, that was a real weight off my shoulders. 

Once again, everyone’s encouraging Anja’s baser instincts.  Imagine if she got bitten by a radioactive spider- every time she tried to go out and fight a supervillain, her friends would tell her that she’d do much more good by staying on the sofa and watching Eastenders.

In the past month, underneath everything had been a tiny worry that one day I would have to confront James and probably get myself killed. 

“Tiny.”  “Tiny.”

And now, Gary had explained that worry away in about five seconds.  And I wasn’t about to dismiss it as part of his great desire not to cause trouble. 

“You know what?” I said, “You’re right.  And it’s not like he can still get anything he wants.  Estelle’s still with Mark and Cherry’s got Jean’s cash.”

“Now that he’s unsatisfied and frustrated, I’m sure his urge to kill will just go away!”

Gary laughed as he kissed me on the forehead.  “Stop worrying, Anja.  He isn’t coming back.”

Part of me wishes that the story just stopped there, and that was the happy ending.  Not only would it be hilariously terrible and completely in character, but it would also mean that I didn’t have to put up with these characters for another seven chapters.  Ah well.

Christmas is supposed to be the one day of the year when you can focus on all the nice bits of the world without being called short-sighted, isn’t it? 

Well, that’s what Mr Hankey the Christmas Poo says.  And if he’s wrong, I don’t want to be right.

Well, that’s the theory.  And the Christmas of that year was going so well, too.  But I would soon find out that, calm, peaceful and reasonable though my Gary was, he could still be horribly, horribly wrong.

Join us again for Chapter Fourteen, in which we finally get a full-length scene with our villain.  I know, I was surprised too.

The slimy one sighed as he closed Cherry’s front door.  “Is it me, or is Cherry Hughes the most amazing girl on the face of the planet?”

Joe is now “the slimy one.”  And yes, this is exactly how teenage boys talk about the girls they fancy.  On Saved By The Bell, that is.

I rolled my eyes. I’d been suspicious of Joe for nearly 24 hours now.  He didn’t seem to notice, and that was annoying me. 

Those three sentences do a neat job of summing up exactly how much impact Anja has on the world around her.  You can imagine her spending an entire day glaring at the back of Joe’s head and trying to communicate her distrust through sheer telepathy. 

“Knock it off, Joe,” I snapped, “If you really like her, what’s wrong with asking her out?”  Maybe then she’d stop flirting with Gary, I thought. 

Joe shook his head.  “Do women as beautiful as Cherry usually give guys like me a second glance?  No they don’t, so why should they start now?” 

Everything we’ve heard so far indicates that Joe is quite attractive and Cherry likes him already, so, really, this is just angst for the sake of angst.

“Women!” Mr Daly snarled, “Trust me, you’re better off without them, Mr Foster.  All they do is blind you with their beauty, then throw you away when they’ve no further use for you.  We don’t need them.”

This will be the last chapter in which Mr Daly will appear, so we’ll never find out whether the “all women are evil seductresses” philosophy he’s expressed in the last couple of chapters is based on any real-life bitterness and heartbreak, or if it’s just another aspect of Straw Daily Mail Readerhood.  Personally, I think we could easily have skipped some of Gary’s backstory to allow room for Mr Daly’s.  As it is, his first name has only been mentioned twice.

I was about to go into a colossal rant about Mr Daly’s misogyny, but Gary beat me to it.  “For your information,” he snapped as those icy blue eyes flashed with fury, “If it hadn’t been for one specific woman giving up her life, my stepbrother would have killed me.  So I need women.”

“Oh, and my dad says that one of them gave birth to me, but that might just be an urban legend.”

“We all know what you need,” Mr Daly replied bitterly.  I would probably have hit him if Cherry hadn’t rushed out of her door and chased us. 

“How dare you have heavy-handed conversations about sexism where my neighbours can hear you!  You’re for it now!”

Her shocked, tearful face made my heart jump.  Something absolutely terrible had happened, and I only had ten more seconds of safety left before I found out what it was.

“Joe!” she sobbed, “Your mum just phoned.  Your aunt’s had an accident- they don’t reckon she’ll pull through.  I’m really, really sorry.”

It’s probably for the best.  She was far too intelligent to be in this story.

Joe wasn’t the only one who was horrified by this news.  Even though I’d only met Jean the day before, the sharp, doubting woman’s image stuck in my head.  She could probably have brought James to justice in half an hour if we’d told her all we knew. 

…I’m pretty sure they did.  In fact, Jean seemed to know everything they told her in advance.  Why wasn’t she the protagonist, again?

And now, we’d never get to tell her anything.  She had only confirmed my suspicions, and added something about someone called Violet, who I was too wary to ask Joe about. 

Despite Jean specifically telling you to do so.

Worst of all, James had finally succeeded in killing someone.  Not Mark or Joe, who had been his main targets, but someone who’d known too much.  The only person clever enough to work out exactly what was going on.   If Jean could get killed, we didn’t stand a chance.

“What happened?” Joe choked.

“She fell off a balcony,” Cherry replied. 

Pfft.  Yes, James truly is a criminal mastermind to be reckoned with.  Only a true genius could work out how to shove people off balconies!

“Well, I say fell, but Mel said she might have jumped…” She knew as well as I did that none of this was true.  Jean hadn’t fallen or even jumped.  She’d been pushed, and we all had a good idea of who’d done the pushing.

At that point, Gary put his arm around me, reassuring me that we weren’t doomed.   

Joe might have lost the only person in his family who truly cared about him, but it’s Anja who needs to be comforted!

As I looked at him, I saw the hidden pain that always seemed to be on his face…

“Hidden,” she says.  That’s a laugh.

…and I remembered what had happened to the last girl he’d loved.  I started to panic.  Maybe I’d end up as dead as Topaz.   

“We will all end up sacrificed to serve his tragic backstory!  Nooo!”

Fragility was an important part of him, but maybe Gary was too fragile to stop something happening to me. 

Girls are completely incapable of defending themselves, you see.

Or maybe he was too fragile to stop something happening to himself.

SPOILERS- Yup!

(Paragraph break.)

“This is the last will and testament,” the lawyer had read, “Of Eugenia Beatrice Foster.”

I hadn’t been there…

“…but I know what the lawyer said, on account of the fact that the author started to write this scene with me present, but then rapidly became aware that she didn’t actually know anything about will-reading.”

…but for some reason Cherry had been invited, along with Joe’s family.  I could guess why.  The lawyers had invited the people who had been mentioned in the will. 

Understandably, I started to vaguely wonder what Cherry had inherited as I sat in the hotel restaurant. 

“If I’d been in the swimming pool, of course, I’d have wondered about something else.  Maybe about why sharks don’t go to the dentist.”

With me were two people I didn’t trust as far as I could throw them, and one person I loved.  Guess what?  I was talking to Gary.  Not that Joe would have talked much anyway.  He’d been very quiet since Jean’s death, and all his sliminess seemed to have worn off.  But I still couldn’t forget that he’d done something unforgivable to Leah.

Anja could comfort him in his obvious shock and grief, but she vaguely heard that he’d done something wrong in the past, so that’s out.

(Rereading this, I’m pretty sure I initially planned for Anja, Joe and Gary to end up being a love triangle, but then got over-invested in Anja and Gary’s EPIC LOVE.  This may explain Cherry’s existence.)

“I hate waiting,” I moaned.  Gary looked up from his pad and smiled at me.  “You also hate November, tulips, people who make assumptions about your love life, Mr Daly, and apparently Joe.  What do you like?”

Heh.  Even Gary’s starting to get fed up.

“Apart from you, you mean?”  Gary smiled.  “I’m serious,” I sighed, “Without you, the last three weeks would have been dire.  They just seem to have been custom-made to antagonise me.

Yes, Anja is clearly the person who’s suffered most over the last three weeks.  Never mind her parents’ grief, Gary’s guilt, Mr Daly’s ostracisation, Cherry and Shell’s mind-numbing terror, and Jean’s death.  All of this happened solely to get on Anja’s nerves!

For a start, I had to sleep on someone else’s floor, in the same building as an old git and a complete slimeball…

…Aren’t Joe and Mr Daly sitting right next to you?  RUDE.

…while the whole nation made me out to be a cute little girl.   

Which you previously said you enjoyed.

Then Mr Daly kept accusing me of being a slapper, and now, to top it off, I’m living in a hotel, shortly after someone’s died.”  I folded my arms in annoyance, while Gary looked up at the ceiling with a philosophical expression.   

Yep, that’s her reaction to Jean’s death.  Annoyance.

“Do you miss your family?” he asked.

I hadn’t expected him to ask me anything like this.   

Me neither.  Gary’s being impressively meta in this scene, isn’t he?

“Well…  The thing is, I hadn’t seen them much in the months before the bus thing.  My brother was always hanging around with his mates, not that he liked me much anyway.  And my parents were always at work or going out for the night.  But for some reason, I wish I still lived at home.”   

We could have used this backstory eleven chapters ago.  It’s too late to make your family look like the bad guys now.

I’d managed to sum up my feelings exactly.  Whenever I had time to stop and think about it, there was a tight, uncomfortable feeling in my stomach that came from my unfamiliar surroundings.   

And it’s also too late to try and convince us that you have actual human emotions.

“I’m guessing you don’t feel like that?”

Gary shrugged.  “Well…  I miss Helen a lot.”

“Your stepsister?”

“Yeah.  I think she liked me really, but she would have liked me a lot more if she hadn’t thought I was going to die if she wasn’t careful with me.  I think she’d have talked to me more if I hadn’t had that heart attack…”

“Phone call for Honour Cleary!”

It took me a while to recognise my fake name and turn around.  

Right!  That’s enough half-hearted character development- on with the half-hearted plot!

The shout had come from the receptionist’s desk, and I had to doubt whatsoever that the phone call was from Cherry.

“Anja!” she squealed on the other end, “You’ll never guess, it’s brilliant!”  Her tone had changed dramatically from the miserable one that had announced Jean’s death.

All in all, Jean is forgotten fairly quickly.

“Why?  What happened?”

“Well…  First the lawyer went, ‘This is the last will and testament of Eugenia Beatrice Foster,’ and I thought, This is great.  We’ll sit through a whole load of legal jargon and then it’ll turn out she’s left me an ornamental tea set or whatever.  And I was wondering what the point was in coming along, you know, especially after the funeral had been so miserable- ‘Born into sin and dying in sin,’ what a load of cobblers…”

Fifteen-year-old me had never been to a funeral, which is why this bit is ripped off from Adrian Mole.

“Yeah, I know.”  The eulogy had clearly been written by someone who hadn’t known Jean and had assumed that she was a stereotypical old woman.  James had read it, which in my opinion was just typical. 

A few things:

1. A woman in her fifties isn’t old enough to be a “stereotypical old woman.”
2. Murderer or not, James presumably knew Jean a lot better than a girl who only met her once.
3. We never find out how the eulogy made her out to be a stereotypical old woman (“born into sin and dying in sin” doesn’t really qualify.)
4. Nor do we find out what made Anja feel it was inaccurate, since she, as I said, only met Jean once.
5. James is (as far as anyone knows) Jean’s closest living relative.  Of course he’s going to read the eulogy.
6. Why was Anja at the funeral in the first place?

But I needed to know how the reading had gone.  “So, what happened?”

“Well, James and Mel looked pretty confident that they’d inherit Wild Cherry House and Blaze.  The lawyer went through all the things everyone had been left- a few hundred quid each for Jack, Leah, Robbie and Vick, with pretty strict instructions that their parents couldn’t tell them what to do with it.”  Cherry cackled.  “But then, it said ‘If anything should happen to my nephew Joseph before I die, I leave my home, my business, and my entire estate to’- drum roll please…” She paused to do a drum roll effect.  “Svetlana Irene Hughes, baby!”

We’re now completely in the “dancing on Jean’s grave” stage of proceedings.  And no, we don’t get any reaction from Joe over Cherry stealing his inheritance.

(Irene is a Greek name.  This family really is from everywhere.) 

“Oh my God!” I squeaked, “So you’ve inherited everything?”

“You bet I have!  And I’ll be moving into Will Cherry House ASAP; you can count on that! 

“Some people would have waited until they’d scrubbed the bloodstains out of the patio, but not me!”

I’ll be in there at six, so you can check out of the hotel and I’ll pick you up at seven.  Bring Gary and Joe, too.”

Uh-oh.  I could see a potential problem here.  “Just Gary and Joe?”

“Yep.”

“Not Mr Daly?”

Cherry snorted.  “Get real, Anja.  I don’t want to live in the same house as that creep.  I could just about stomach him being in my living room for a few hours a day, but living in my house?  No way.”

“So what should I tell him?”

“Tell him exactly what I said.  You don’t have to be polite to him or owt!  You hate him, remember?”

I love how everyone in this story constantly tells Anja to give in to her baser instincts.  It’s not like she needs the encouragement. 

Putting the phone down, I thought, Svetlana doesn’t understand how hard it is to get rid of him.  

Neither do the readers, since this hasn’t been demonstrated at any point in the story.

I knew that telling Mr Daly would be hard, and that he might react violently.  But I never guessed that his resentment of women, and especially me, could lead to something potentially horrific.

At five to seven, I was pulling on my top.  Knowing that Mr Daly wouldn’t be there to disapprove, and that Joe would be too depressed to look at my chest, I’d picked the most attractive top from my wardrobe.  

Priorities!

Most of my clothes were either borrowed from Estelle or bought when I’d got to Southend, and this top fell into the second category.  For some reason, Estelle’s stuff looked terrible on me.  There was no denying that she had a better figure than I did, even if she was pregnant.  But my thoughts about what I was wearing faded out when someone rammed their fist into the door.

“Let me in this instant!”  Mr Daly’s sour voice echoed through the hotel room. 

Couldn’t he just have knocked?  She’s more likely to let him in if she doesn’t suspect anything.

I sat down on the stool, determined not to let him in.  “Why should I?”

“You have to leave the room at some point!  Isn’t your sister expecting you?”  The word “sister” was dripping with sarcasm.  “I know what’s happening!” he continued, “You think you’re heading off with your lover to a glamorous lifestyle!  You’ve done nothing to deserve a life of luxury, you ugly little slut!  Nothing!”  At this point, he managed to get the door open.  I must have forgotten to lock it properly.  He took one look at my clothes, and he was off again.  “Here we are in a complete mess, intruding on a family’s grief already, and you and your cousin abuse our situation!  

Mr Daly makes one last attempt at sanity before the story turns him into a homicidal maniac.  It was a good effort, Mr D. 

I’ve seen the look you both get when you talk to that pale-looking lad!  Fluttering your eyelashes, wearing provocative clothes…  You’re disgusting!  Trying to seduce a sick boy for cheap thrills! 

“Trying”?  I’m pretty sure that Mr Daly already knows Anja and Gary have slept together.

Well, your cousin seems determined to keep me at arm’s length, but I can still teach you not to play with people’s emotions!  Someone’s going to teach you eventually, and it might as well be sooner rather than later!”

As soon as his fingers came within a centimetre of my neck, I grabbed his hands and started twisting his wrists round.  As soon as I heard that sickening snapping noise, I knew I was safe.  For once, something horrible was a sign of something fortunate.

“For once.”  This from a girl who reacted to a near-fatal explosion with “This is so cool!” 

The next thing I remember is picking up my bags and running out of the hotel while Mr Daly stayed in the room, screaming so loud that people in Kent could probably have heard him.  

None of the hotel staff bother to investigate, though.  Why should they?  They just give the customers their keys and never bother with them again.

As I rushed to get into Cherry’s car, I shivered.  I knew how close I’d come to something hideous, and it was much closer than Mark and Joe had come to being crushed to death.

Anja always suffers the most.  Are you noticing a theme here?

By the time we got to Wild Cherry House, Gary was crying.  He was trying to hide it from Cherry, Ben, Joe and me, but I wasn’t the only one who noticed.

“Gary’s sad,” Ben said forlornly.  I nodded.  “He’ll be OK.  Go and talk to your mum.”

Ben did as I said, and I put a hand on Gary’s shoulder.  Everyone else had gone inside, so we could talk properly.  “Why are you so upset?” I asked, “Mr Daly didn’t attack you.”

“Don’t tell me you’re feeling empathy for another human being.  We don’t do that in this story.”

He turned to hug me, his voice quavering.  “I’m sorry, Anja.  I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you from that bastard.  Why can’t I do anything right?”

“Gary!” I snapped, pushing him away so I could look at him properly, “You can do things right.  You couldn’t have known he’d attack me just because you left the hotel a few seconds before me.   And all that stuff about protecting me…  I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself, Gary.  

“In complete contrast to what I said after Jean died!  I think I’ve really matured in the last week or so!” 

He’s probably in an A&E department right now, getting his broken wrists seen to. 

Or still weeping on the hotel carpet, being callously ignored by the chambermaids.

And he doesn’t know my fake name, so when he tells everyone it was Anja Cleary who’d done it…  Well, everyone will think he’s a nutter!  Trust me, Gary, everything is fine.”  It wasn’t, though.  My fear was still hanging in the air around me.

He sniffed.  “When I think of him trying to hurt you, I feel sick.  Please don’t ever do anything dangerous.  I know this is kind of morbid, but if anything happened to you I don’t know what I’d do.”  He was telling the truth.  When I looked into his face, I could see more pain and terror than I’d experienced in my entire life.  I realised in surprise that what Mr Daly had done had scared him even more than it had scared me.

“Trust me,” I smiled, “I won’t get myself killed.”   As I said this, we stepped over the threshold and slammed the coloured glass-plated door behind us. 

Our life at Wild Cherry House had begun.

Join us again for Chapter Thirteen, in which there are Cute Ben Moments, nonsensical red herrings, and constant discussions of Anja and Gary’s Epic Love.  The plot?  Oh, there’s no room for that.

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.

Here we are in the tenth chapter of “Memory Lives On,” taking us to the approximate halfway point.  We just need to get over the hump, and then it’s all downhill.

“What if this Cherry person refuses to give us any information?” Mr Daly asked Joe for the millionth time.

“Despite the fact that she’s invited us to Southend specifically to do so?  Look, we already know that logic doesn’t run in her family.”

We were walking along the seafront, which, like beaches the world over, usually looks better in August than on Halloween.  Considering Southend is in Essex not the Caribbean, it never looks exactly tropical even during a heatwave, but today was even worse.  The sea was pencil-lead grey, the sand looked like huge pile of frozen biscuits that an elephant had sat on, and the sky was that white colour you only get when the weather is aiming a whole load of iciness at you.  If you ask me, beaches should try and hide during winter, and not just hang around depressing people.

But then where would the crabs go?  THINK OF THE CRABS, ANJA.

Joe smirked back at Mr Daly, but it looked like he was getting annoyed.  “I told you, she’ll tell us everything she knows.   Cherry can’t stand my dad.  Besides, she works for my aunt, so we’ll be able to talk to her as well.” 

“I haven’t tried to get in touch with her until now, but it’s perfectly safe to do so now that we’ve found out that one of her employees is Anja’s cousin!”

(Seriously, I wrote this, and even I don’t get the characters’ logic.  I’m not sure I got it at the time, either.)

“Hmm,” Mr Daly growled, obviously trying to give the impression that he was actually thinking about something other than his image, “Mr Foster, I feel I should warn you not to be too trusting of this Cherry.  She may have a pretty face, but many dangerous women have the same.

And now I’m reminded how much better a story this would be if it turned out that Cherry was plotting against them.  But nope, Anja trusts her, and therefore she’s on the level.

She won’t be the first woman who’s used the way men feel about her for her own gains.”  He gave me a pointed look that scared me.

…Wasn’t he trying to protect her innocence from the wicked boys just a chapter ago?

Does Mr Daly know about Gary and me? I wondered.  I’d have thought he was too dumb to work that out. 

Well, he knows that you shared a room, in defiance of common sense, and he knows that Estelle told the hotel you and Gary were a couple, in defiance of all that is pure and good.  So I don’t blame him for having suspicions.

And what business is it of his, anyway?  I didn’t stop to think that Mr Daly had never really felt like minding his own business, and if things had turned out differently that might have been the one mistake that ruined my life.

SPOILERS- “If things had turned out differently” translates as “if Anja was less inclined to break people’s wrists with her bare hands.”

Svetlana’s place wasn’t far from the beach.  We just had to avoid the occasional speeding car that zoomed along the road, walk up a street opposite the seafront, get lost about five times, argue, and finally walk into her driveway.  Nothing to it, really.

I could see Mr Daly’s disappointment as Svetlana answered the door.  He was clearly expecting a femme fatale type…

Anja knows this because…  Oh, you get the idea.  If fifteen-year-old me had wanted to include all these glimpses into other people’s thoughts and motivations, she should either have written this in third person or picked a more intelligent narrator.

…and that was something Svetlana was not.  She was quite pretty, I guess, but she looked worn out.  Her chestnut hair was all over the place, her T-shirt hadn’t been ironed and the laces on her trainers had snapped. 

…What, both trainers?  Wouldn’t she have replaced the laces for the first one that broke before the second one did?

But even so, I saw Joe’s face light up when he saw her.  I also saw something, which, like Mr Daly’s suspicion of me, I would later regret ignoring.

Just before running up to give Joe and me a hug, Svetlana gave Gary a look I didn’t like one bit.

DUN DUN DUN.

(This bit of foreshadowing actually is relevant to the plot!  It’s a miracle!)

“Halloween today!” Ben told us with delight.  Whoever had given him that tiger costume really hadn’t thought about the consequences.

“The consequences” being that he’d wear it.  Oh, what damage they wrought with their hubris!

“Sh, Ben,” Svetlana told him, “I’ve got to talk to your Auntie Annie about something important.  Put a lid on it, OK?”

Ben looked up at me.  “Hello Auntie Annie!  Halloween today!”

Ben had never really got the hang of my name.  To be honest, I don’t think I knew how to pronounce “Anja” when I was two, so I didn’t really mind. 

GAAAH.  IT’S NOT THAT HARD.  IT REALLY ISN’T.

Gary looked surprised, but Joe and Mr Daly had other things to worry about.  Joe was gazing moonily at Svetlana, while Mr Daly looked around disapprovingly.

“I didn’t realise you had a son, Miss Hughes,” Mr Daly sneered, as if having kids out of wedlock still came with a massive social stigma attached.  Svetlana looked at him like he was some kind of horrible insect she needed to squash, and replied, “Well, I do.  He isn’t bothering you or owt, is he?”  Her tone of voice could have frozen a decent-sized volcano, and it definitely put Mr Daly in his place.

That might have been really effective if fifteen-year-old me had bothered to paragraph it properly.  Or in any way foreshadowed Mr Daly’s disapproval of unwed mothers.  Or if Mr Daly had actually continued the conversation instead of wilting away at Svetlana’s brilliant comeback.

“So anyroad… 

I didn’t actually know anyone from Manchester at the time, so I lifted Svetlana’s entire idiolect from Coronation Street.

I need to go round Jean’s place to see if I need to open Blaze again today.  You come with me, Anja.  We can ask her about James when we’re there.  Gary and Joe, you stay here and keep an eye on things.” 

It’s not nice to call Mr Daly a “thing”!

She knelt down to talk to Ben.  “Now Ben, do you want to come to Auntie Jean’s house, or do you want to stay here with Joe and Gary?”  She left Mr Daly out, I noticed.  He noticed too, judging by the constipated pig look on his face.

Ben looked confused as he glanced from Svetlana to Joe.  “See Sammy?” he asked.

Svetlana smiled.  “Yes, you’ll see Sammy.  You coming with me?”

“Yeah,” Ben smiled.  He zoomed towards the door and tried to open it.  Nobody had told him that doors were more likely to open if an eighteen-year-old turned the handle than if a two-year-old rammed right into them.

Ben is not actually important to the plot at any point.  His entire function is to provide “cute” moments like this one.  But at least he knows how to pronounce his own name, Anja.

“Who’s Sammy?” I asked.

“You’ll see,” Svetlana grinned as she picked up Ben. 

For some reason, Ben seemed extremely enthusiastic about “Sammy,” whoever he or she was.  In the time I spent staring vacantly out of the window at the park that would probably have looked really beautiful if it hadn’t rained last night, Ben kept chanting “Sammy’s house!  Sammy’s house!  Sammy’s house!”

“Now, Ben,” Svetlana chastised, “It’s not Sammy’s house, is it?  He only lives in the garden.  It’s Auntie Jean’s house.”

Now I was really confused. 

Svetlana could have cleared up this confusion three paragraphs ago by actually explaining who/what Sammy was, but she didn’t.  Maybe she just enjoys seeing Anja squirm.

I started staring at the leaves that had fallen off the trees, looking vaguely like cloths that had just been used to mop up something truly disgusting.  I think Halloween is autumn’s only saving grace.  I mean, during the winter, you get Christmas, New Year and snow if you’re lucky (Svetlana’s parents usually spent half the winter phoning us up and telling us about the blizzards going on where they lived, which was a bit unfair considering we barely saw a snowflake).  In spring, you get Easter and nice weather.  And in summer you get a holiday unless you’ve got a really demanding job, plus weather hot enough to allow you to go swimming.

Oh, goody.  Another one of Anja’s inner monologues that have nothing to do with what’s going on, but are desperately needed to show you how DEEP and PHILOSOPHICAL she is.

But in autumn, you get no time off school/work at all, the weather’s lousy and barely anything interesting happens.  Oh, don’t try to tell me Firework Night is interesting.  I like watching fireworks as much as the next person, but any fun you get from that is tainted by legions of Mr Daly clones whinging about how dangerous and expensive fireworks are. 

Hm?  I thought Mr Daly was a moron and you didn’t care what he thought?

Halloween has a similar problem, with narrow-minded people going on about how evil and disconcerting it is, but nothing can ruin it for me. 

…But they can ruin Firework Night?  Why?

And in real life, the Mr Daly clones usually praise Firework Night to the skies as the moral, patriotic answer to Halloween.  So this makes even less sense.

And, judging by the fact that he was still wearing his tiger costume, Ben was the same. 

“It’s my fault, really,” Svetlana told me, “Ben saw all the Halloween stuff in Woollies and he got scared. 

It’s set in 2002, remember.  A simpler time, when Woolworths were still in business, e-mail didn’t exist, and exploding light fixtures could not only kill you but completely disintegrate your remains.  Ah, the good old days.

So I told him about Halloween, and how you can dress up as whatever you like.  And he got all excited and yelled, ‘Tiger!'”  She groaned.  “I don’t know what the obsession with tigers is.  Most kids his age are into dinosaurs.”

She parked her car outside somewhere that was probably a house.  Well, it had a garden and curtains at the window, so it couldn’t have been a multi-storey carpark.

I think the “multi-storey car park” simile is supposed to indicate that the house is really big, not that it’s a hideous concrete rectangle.  But you never know.

But nothing else made it look like a place where someone might actually live. 

“Svetlana!” I hissed, “Are you sure this is where Jean lives?”

“Yeah.  Why?”

“Well, it’s huge, for a start.  And look at this.”  I pointed to the sign.

Wild Cherry House

Owner/Occupier: Ms E.B. Foster

“I mean, it clearly has her name on it!  It can’t possibly be hers!”

“Impressive or what?” Svetlana grinned, “This is why everyone keeps calling me Cherry.  One of Jean’s family- might have been James, actually- called me ‘our very own wild cherry’ at a party for some reason- his idea of a joke- and everyone started teasing me afterwards.”  She shrugged, and carried Ben out of the car; nearly dropping him on the limo that was parked beside us.  “So if Joe tells you it’s because I have a reputation for seducing virginal boys, he’s lying.”

“Why did James call you that, exactly?” I laughed.  Some people have a very strange sense of humour.

“He’d just made this speech about how I spent so much time round Wild Cherry House, coming up with ideas for Blaze, I was basically like part of the furniture.”  She pointed at the haggard trees around the path, making the pine trees further on look freakishly healthy.  “Like these cherry trees, get it?  Not really all that funny, but everyone laughed anyway.  They were taking the piss for months afterwards.” 

See?  I told you the explanation was stupid.

She paused, looking a little nervous.  “Anja, could you take Ben into the garden while I go and talk to Jean?  Only she might still be depressed about Joe, see, and if Ben mentions him it’ll only make it worse.”

“She might still be depressed about the gruesome death of her beloved nephew last week.  Don’t ask me why.”

Ben was already racing across the grass, his tail trailing behind him, so I ran behind the house after him.  Even after the rain, the grass was the same colour as lime jelly with streaks of mud. 

In October.  I hope the local council knows that Auntie Jean’s lawn is genetically modified.

Ben stopped in front of a circular white figure on a ledge, partially hidden by the pine trees, and turned to me.

It was a stone statue of what appeared to be a snail.  The snail was about three metres tall, if you counted the antennae.

“Is Sammy,” Ben explained.

Well, I’m glad that particular mystery was solved!  I’m not sure I could have taken any more suspense.

“Oh, right!  Sammy the snail,” I replied, my confusion over who Sammy was replaced by confusion over why anyone would want a snail in their garden.

Why wouldn’t they?  That’s probably the single best idea in this whole story.

Ben saw I was interested, so he decided to elaborate.  “Is my friend,” he said proudly, “Sammy!  Say hello Auntie Annie!”

I paused for what seemed like a good amount of time.  “Yep, definitely heard that.  He said it very quietly, though.  Is he a shy snail?”

“Yeah.  Snails are shy.  ‘Swhy they don’t talk much.”  He grinned at me.  “Sammy likes you.”

And that was another Cute Ben Moment, ladies and gentlemen!  Don’t complain- he’s pretty much the only character who consistently acts like a real person.

I didn’t notice that Svetlana was behind me until she started talking.  “Jean said I had to open Blaze again.  Let’s go.”

She kept looking nervously at the snail.  For some reason, Ben’s beloved Sammy was really spooking her.  Ben gave her that angry look that two-year-olds are especially good at.  “Mummy doesn’t like Sammy,” he said grumpily.

“Don’t be silly, Ben,” Svetlana murmured unconvincingly, “Of course I like Sammy.”  She looked me in the eye, and mouthed something.  I couldn’t really tell what she was trying to say, but by now I know for a fact it was “I’ll tell you later.”

And we’ve reached the halfway point!  Next time, we meet Auntie Jean, who points out the plot holes for us.  I can’t wait!

We begin with the group on their way to Southend.  We will never find out where they started off from.  Let’s just call it the Town With No Name.

The day we went our separate ways was the 30^th October.  As we piled our stuff into the car, a strange smell of cheap sweets and bonfires reminded me it was going to be Halloween the following day.  I usually liked this time of year, even though my parents had never let me have a Halloween party or anything.  For some reason, they hadn’t liked the house being stuffed with my friends, which was odd because the house was stuffed with my brother’s friends on a daily basis and they hadn’t minded that.

“Therefore, they deserved to have their daughter fake her death and never contact them again!  You’d have done the same thing!”

“Are you really going to call yourself Maureen?” Gary asked me as we sat down in the back seat.

I thought for a minute.  “Nah.  I think I’d better stick to something that sounds a bit like Anja.  Do you think Honour’s a good name?”

He looked confused.  “Well, it isn’t spelt much like Anja…”

…Neither’s Maureen!

I was going to tell him that it didn’t matter, when I noticed his sketchbook.  “Hey, can I have a look at some of your pictures?  I haven’t seen any of them.”

He handed me the pad.  “Knock yourself out.”

As the others got in and Mark started the car, I opened the pad. 

The sketchbook, which will has only been mentioned once before and will not be mentioned all that much in the future, serves as a way of showing the readers how DEEP and TROUBLED Gary is.  Because that certainly hasn’t been pounded into our heads so far.

I was just looking at the burning fortress he’d drawn on the first page when Mr Daly started up.  “I presume you’ve come up with a plan of action?” he asked, “The others appear to regard you with a great respect, young Mr Foster.”  He said that grudgingly, as if he felt he should be regarded with a great respect himself.   Fat chance.

After eight chapters of declaring Joe to be his nemesis, Mr Daly has decided he likes him now.  Mr Daly’s personality and behaviour operate solely on the basis of what will be most annoying to Anja.

Joe looked surprised that Mr Daly had given him, if not exactly a compliment, something that didn’t really sound like an insult.  “I wouldn’t know about respect,” he replied, smirking at me and Gary, “but I know what we’re going to do once we get to Southend.  We’ll see what Cherry thinks.”  I could tell he was looking forward to seeing Svetlana.

So can the readers, Anja.  You don’t need to point it out.

Mr Daly actually seemed to be getting into the spirit of things for once.  “Should we really rely on this Cherry character?  How are we to know she’s not a double agent?  We’re in dangerous territory now, boy, and you must learn quickly that you can’t trust anyone!”

“Except Cherry,” Mark interrupted, “She’s never liked Joe’s dad. 

“And Joe’s brother Jack!  My wife says he’s a nice guy, so he can’t possibly be a murderer!”

Says she’s amazed that nice people like Jean and Joe could be related to such a bastard, doesn’t she?”

“Couldn’t that be a front?” Mr Daly asked hopefully.

 “No.  Sorry.  She keeps saying he makes her flesh crawl, and I can tell she really means it. 

He can tell.  Psychic powers, y’know.

I stared at Gary’s picture.  Most people draw fire in really basic red, yellow and orange colours, but Gary’s flames actually seemed to glow.  He’d done them in glaring white with yellow around the edges.  The fortress or castle or whatever it was looked ready to collapse in on itself, almost as if it was fed up of staying upright and wanted to implode at any minute.  And the evil-looking people at the door weren’t exactly helping by trying to hammer it down.

What could this subtle symbolism possibly mean?  Could it be saying that Gary is a perpetual victim, constantly under siege from “evil-looking people” who like to poke him just for a laugh?  Which we’ve been told about five hundred times already, and is in fact the only thing we know about him as a character?

Mr Daly was continuing with his “doomed hero” act. 

Dammit, Mr Daly, that’s Gary‘s job!

He put on a pained look.  “I didn’t have time to say goodbye to your wife, Mr Freeman.  In case she never sees me again, can you tell her that I wish you both all the best for the future?  And I hope your child is a strong, healthy boy.”

“Er… thanks,” Mark replied. 

Gary spoke out of the blue.  He’d mainly been looking out of the window at the chaotic fields by the motorway until now. 

How are the fields chaotic?  I’d much rather be hearing about that than about Gary’s sketchbook.

“I get what you’re saying” he told Mr Daly, a strange look on his face, ” According to you, boys can’t have any worth if they’re not strong and healthy, can they?”

“How dare…” Mr Daly began, before seeing me giving him the evil eye.  He knew that if he started on Gary, I might humiliate him again.

Yes, fear the Mary Sue, Mr Daly.  Your whole universe was designed to revolve around her.  You are but a troublesome speck in her eye.

Mark cut in instead.  “Easy, Gaz,” he pleaded, “He was just trying to be polite.”

Shut up, everyone.  Back to Gary’s sketchpad. 

Aww.  I wanted to hear about those chaotic fields.

The second drawing was pretty normal, at least compared to the first.  It showed a girl crouching in a room with mirrored walls.  She was surrounded by endless plants, multicoloured candles, lava lamps and what appeared to be tarantula cages.  The room was such a mess of colours that the girl fitted right in. 

The point of this paragraph is to show what a free spirit Topaz was (oh yeah, SPOILERS), but all I can think about is where she got the money for mirrored walls.  And whether or not candles are bad for tarantulas.

She was wearing a T-shirt that seemed to have been dyed using a rainbow with tie-dyed jeans.  The less said about her hair the better, but to say it was blonde would be like saying the hard shoulder of the M25 wasn’t a very good place to sunbathe. 

That’s some great prose there, fifteen-year-old me!

She was crouching while she reached for a CD, but she looked like a coiled spring about to snap straight.

Call me stupid if you want…

I do!

…but I didn’t work out who she was until I saw the cactus on her shelf.

*

There was barely a parking space left in Southend when we got there, and the one Mark eventually found was about half a mile away from the Black Heart hotel.  You try dragging suitcases across fifteen busy roads (Mark kept getting lost).  I think this was one of the reasons I was so angry when we found out how the rooms were arranged.  Well, I was angry about the rooms issue itself, but the fact that my feet were threatening to fall off didn’t help.

We will not see any of this anger in the scene itself.  You know things are bad when the writer forgets what she wrote less than a page ago.

Just after Mark had left, we walked through the dark, airy corridors to the lift, which stopped conveniently outside our rooms.  But when he squinted at the keys in the half-light (the architect had spent more money on the royal blue wallpaper than on the lighting) Joe had noticed that we only had three.  It didn’t take him long to work out that there were four of us, so we went back to the desk to complain.

They didn’t notice this at the reception desk because the hotel staff just handed over the keys without a word.  Because that’s how hotels operate.  No “That’s two double rooms,” no “Here’s the wifi password,” just “Here’s your keys, now bugger off.”  Who’d have thought a place called the Black Heart Hotel would have such lousy customer service?

The reception wasn’t well lit either.  The entire building seemed lifted out of some Victorian horror story, and this room, with its black and white walls and plain black flooring, was no exception.  I half expected to see candles on the walls, instead of the tulip-shaped lightbulbs hanging from the light fixture in the ceiling.  I hate tulips. 

I hate you, so shut up.

The receptionist squinted at her notebook, then looked up at Joe apologetically.  “I’m very sorry, sir,” she told him, “But Mrs Freeman gave us the impression that two of you were… um…” she looked flustered, “…a couple.”  She then started to stare at Gary and me, partly because Joe and Mr Daly were doing the same. 

So she’s booked a double room for two confused teenagers who met less than a week ago.  Estelle Freeman- de facto foster parent of the year!

“Well,” Mr Daly snorted, “I can see where she got that idea.  Am I to assume that it would not be appropriate for the two young men here to share a room?”

“Put it this way- there’s only one bed in each of the rooms.”   

…So?  From what we’ve seen, both Joe and Gary are heterosexual, so having them share a bed means there’s no chance of hanky-panky.  Problem solved!

Joe and Gary flinched, Gary looking suddenly scared.

“Huh,” said Mr Daly, turning to Gary, “I can only allow this if you agree to be a perfect gentleman towards Miss Cleary.  Remember how young she is- you wouldn’t want to be responsible for ruining her reputation, I hope.” 

If Mr Daly’s so concerned about protecting Anja’s virtue, why doesn’t he insist on the boys sharing?  Or on him sharing with Gary, so he can keep an eye on him?  There’s absolutely no reason for him to give in this easily!

“Sure,” Gary replied, “I’d never do that to anyone.”  And I can tell by the look in his eyes as he glanced at me that he meant it, then.  But I felt that my reputation had been damaged so much since I’d “died” that I had nothing to lose.

Anja’s newspaper obituaries failed to mention her love of Venus fly traps.  Therefore, she will forget about the fact that she’s underage and jump into bed with a boy she met less than a week ago.  I can’t fault her logic there.

Once we got up there, we could see what the receptionist meant.  Room 125 had a double bed just next to the bathroom door, and just by glancing at it I could tell that it had other purposes than to be slept in.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a duvet in that shade of pink before.

“That cheeky cow!” I gasped.  Gary looked at me in bug-eyed surprise.  “I mean Estelle,” I explained, “Should have guessed she was up to something, really.  Did you see the looks she kept giving me every time someone mentioned our names in the same sentence?”  I couldn’t help pretending to be annoyed. 

You see?  In ten paragraphs, we go from “I was angry about the rooms issue itself” to “I couldn’t help pretending to be annoyed.”

Basically, Estelle had done the same thing as Mr Daly- assuming something on the grounds of not very much.  But I couldn’t be really angry with Estelle because…

“…she’d completely condoned it and bought us an expensive hotel room.”

unlike Mr Daly, she hadn’t been a hundred per cent wrong. 

Unlike when Mr Daly assumed the exact same thing, she wasn’t a hundred per cent wrong!  Wrongness depends on who you are, after all.

Mind you, it was still unfair for her to spring this on us.

Gary was looking at me hesitantly, sitting on a chair at the table nearby.  “Um, Anja..?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m going to ask you something, but you’ve got to know that I’m only asking out of interest.  I’m not going to think you’re a tart or anything if the answer’s yes.  I was just wondering, have you ever…” He looked embarrassed as he tried to think of a good way to put it.  “You know…”

“Done it?” I guessed abruptly. 

Having the characters talk like twelve-year-olds is a brilliant way to show that they’re mature enough for sex!

(SPOILERS- And more than mature enough to get married a few months later.)

He nodded, relieved.  “Nah,” I said, knowing exactly why he’d asked, “Lack of opportunity really.  I’ve never fancied a boy who’s felt the same way back.  You?”

He looked right down at the table so I couldn’t see his eyes.  “Well, you know I told you about Shell?”

“Oh yeah?”  I hadn’t been expecting this.  “You two were an item?”

“Not exactly.  But after all the fuss about Jordan and Topaz had died down, everyone saw us together and…  Well, you know what people assume when a boy and a girl are spending all their time together. 

“Usually, they book you an expensive hotel room and tell you to go nuts, of course.”

“So we thought we’d try it out and…” He looked embarrassed again, but I wanted all the details.  Well, probably not all.  My imagination knows no limits, so it was probably a good thing that Gary eventually finished his sentence.  “Well, we didn’t really enjoy it.  I mean, we didn’t feel that way about each other.”  He looked at me awkwardly, and for some reason I started to feel uncomfortable.  “Anja, can I tell you something?”

There it was again.  My heart was making it loudly clear that it didn’t like what I was doing.  I wished the neckline on my blouse wasn’t so low, though come to think of it, why did I care?  If it had been some pervy teacher, or one of the maggots from school, I’d have known why I was feeling like that, but I liked Gary.  Actually, “like” is a stupid word for what I was feeling.  Look, the point is that I was feeling uneasy. 

Hmm.  It seems that Estelle’s plan has added a ton of awkward pressure to the proceedings.  Who’d have thought that openly encouraging two nervous teenagers to undergo a major rite of passage against their better judgement would have led to anything but happiness?

“Uh-huh,” I mumbled, “And I bet I know what it is you want to tell me, too.”

He stepped towards me.  “Yeah.  The thing is, I think I do feel that way about you.”  He grinned.  “You’ll hate me for this, but I was sort of glad when I realised what Estelle had done with the rooms.  Well, glad and nervous.”

I nodded.  By this time, I was biting my lower lip so hard I was going to turn into the amazing one-lipped wonder if I kept it up.  Happiness and nervousness were at the top of my mood statistics as well.  Oh, I’d feigned anger at Estelle…

Barely.

…but that just mysteriously disappeared the minute Gary took hold of my arm.  The nervousness followed it a few seconds later.

And a good thing too, because otherwise Estelle’s boneheaded decision might have backfired and made everybody miserable!  Oh, it’s great when things work out.

Since some of you might be of a prudish disposition, I’m going to leave what happened after that to your imagination.

They played Cards Against Humanity for six hours, then passed out fully-clothed.  You can’t prove they didn’t!

Next time, we meet Cherry/Svetlana and her adorable kid, and there’s a snail statue.  That’s about it.  It’s a truly thrilling chapter.

Last time on “Memory Lives On,” Anja and Gary were hanging around in a graveyard for little or no purpose, and Gary pointed out something he seemed to find embarrassing.

It was doubled-up, a family vault.  Only one of the people the stone was for had been buried, because no body had ever been found. 

Because, as we’ve established, exploding light fixtures completely obliterate bodies.

Jessica Miranda Wolf

Loving wife of Paul and mother of Gareth

Born 12^th March 195_

Died 1^st August 199_

Gareth Richard Wolf

Son of the above

Born 15^th January 198_

Died 22^nd October 200_

“Keep climbing.”

Gary looked back at me.  “Well, now you know my birthday. 

Because that’s the most important thing to take away from this.

Incidentally, when I wrote this, I was convinced that “Gary” was always short for “Gareth.”  It turns out that, most of the time, they’re completely unrelated (“Gary” is German and “Gareth” is Welsh, and they mean different things.)  Some people do use “Gary” as a shortened form of “Gareth”, but it’s pretty rare, and it’s not where the name originally comes from. As you’ll find out later in the chapter, there are  actually a lot of names whose origins I wasn’t too bothered about.

Come on; let’s get back.  The others are probably worried about us.”

I didn’t follow him for a few seconds.  I’d just noticed something small and white between the tulips.  On closer inspection, it turned out to be a folded piece of paper anchored by a pebble.

Don’t ask me what made me pick it up.  I’ve always been too curious for my own good, and since the disaster I’d felt like being at the centre of things. 

“Since the disaster.”  Riiight.

It was always best to know what was happening to me, in case I had to remember later.

As soon as I read what was written, I wished I hadn’t.  It read, I should have looked after your baby, Jessie.  I’m sorry I failed.  Love from Paul.

Now, when it came to this bit of the story, my first instinct was to talk again about how awful Anja and Gary were for knowingly letting Mr Wolf torture himself with guilt instead of telling him that his son was alive.  Then I remembered that, on Mr Wolf’s watch, Gary was regularly beaten up, tortured into a near-fatal heart attack, and made to witness the death of his best friend.  So, really, Mr Wolf is probably right to feel that he’s let his late wife down!

At that point, I decided that from now on someone would be looking after Jessie’s baby, namely me.  I had an inkling that the vow would come back to haunt me, but I made it nonetheless.

What did I tell you about the Oedipal overtones?

I showed the note to Joe later.  “Poor guy,” he murmured, “Sounds like the world thinking he’s dead is the best thing that’s ever happened to him.”  His face looked so tragic anyone might have thought he was the one who’d had so much bad luck.

I sat down and faced him.  “By the sounds of it, your life hasn’t exactly been a fairy tale either.  I mean, what with your dad and all.”

“Actually,” he smirked lazily, “it’s been exactly like a fairy tale.  You know, the ones with all the witches and ogres that keep eating people.” 

How do you “smirk lazily”?

I wasn’t in the mood for messing about.  “You know what I meant, Joe.”

“We’ll have no humour in these parts, mister!”

“OK, OK.  But my life isn’t a patch on what happened to Gary.  I mean, when he was telling it to everyone yesterday, it was all I could do not to cry my eyes out.”  His voice was starting to quaver just remembering it. 

Isn’t it great how the narrative keeps telling you how tragic Gary’s past is, instead of letting you come to that conclusion by yourself?  That’s great literature, right there.

“No Anja, what happened to me was barely anything.  My dad was a complete bastard, that I’ll admit, but he never beat me up or wrecked my room or anything.  And he definitely wouldn’t have if I’d had something wrong with my heart.  All he did was make it very obvious that he loved the others and not me.”  He sighed.  “And that ended when Aunt Jean asked me to live with her in Southend.  I think I’d always been her favourite, which made a change from my parents and their Leah-worshipping.” 

This is probably the longest Joe’s gone so far without grinning sleazily or making Anja feel uncomfortable.  He must be growing up!

My mind was racing, putting together small facts I’d got.  The word “Southend” had reminded me of something, and now my train of thought was out of the station and zooming into the sunset towards a seemingly impossible conclusion.  A nightclub in or near Southend…  The owner’s relative called James…  A young single mother working there…  At the end of my thoughts, I had one question I needed to ask Joe. 

“Joe, you know Cherry?”

He did that grin again.  This time he looked a bit like a shark.  “I’d know her in the Biblical sense if I had my way, believe me…” 

Or not.

“Enough.  Listen, is Cherry her real name or just a nickname?”

He sniggered.  “No, it was a kind of stage name.  I can’t remember her real name.  She was the only one who could pronounce it.  

Eh?  “Svetlana” isn’t that hard to pronounce.  Not compared with, say, Pheidippides.  Or Gwenfrewi.

Oh, sorry- SPOILERS.

I think it’s Russian, those names are usually hard to work with, and that was weird, because she was originally from Manchester or somewhere…” 

We never do find out why Cherry/Svetlana has a Russian name, any more than we find out why Anja has a Russian first name and an Irish last name.  Best to put it down to their innate specialness and move on.

It was true.  “Not… Svetlana?”

“Something like that.  Why, do you know her?”

A shiver was starting down my spine, and even Joe looked slightly less apathetic.  “I think I might,” I whispered, “I’ve got a cousin called Svetlana who works in a nightclub in Southend…” My voice faded out when I saw Joe’s bored look.  Appearances can be deceiving, though; he was actually getting more interested by the second.   

Anja knows this because of those psychic powers we mentioned earlier.

He pursed his lips in thought. 

I can honestly say I don’t know anyone, male or female, who purses their lips while they think.

“How’s she related to you?”

“I just said, she’s my…”

“I know that, but is she your dad’s brother’s daughter or what?”

“Oh.”  I thought for a second.  “Her mum’s my dad’s sister.”

“So her last name is different from yours?”

“Yeah.”  I got onto the next step before Joe could say anything.  “Her last name’s Hughes.” 

See?  Welsh last name.  So we still don’t know where all these Russian names are coming from.

There was a silence which probably only lasted a few seconds, but seemed to be longer because so much was dependent on how the silence broke. 

I’m not sure that anything is dependent on how the silence broke, to be honest.  Unless they mean that they’ll have to stop lazing around Mark and Estelle’s house and actually do the detective work they’ve been talking about

Joe’s eyes bugged out in shock.

“Snap,” he said finally, “That’s Cherry’s last name too.”

That’s not really such a shock, now, is it?  We more or less knew that Svetlana and Cherry were the same person three or four paragraphs ago.

But apparently it’s enough of a Wham Line to end the scene on, because we pick up an hour or two later.

I’ve got to hand it to Estelle.  She didn’t fall off her chair when I told her that Blaze’s rising star was my cousin.  Well, to be pedantic she was standing up anyway, but she took it very well.

Boom boom.

I don’t know when she started the phone call, but I’m guessing it took quite a while to persuade Svetlana that I really wasn’t dead.  It would have taken a while to persuade me if it had been the other way round.

We don’t hear any part of Estelle and Svetlana’s conversation, because, once again, that would be far too interesting.

The first I heard of it was when Estelle handed the phone to me and shot out of the room.

“Anja?”  That was it.  There was no doubt whatsoever that Cherry and Svetlana were the same person.  Two voices can’t sound so similar, especially since they both had the same excited, high-pitched Mancunian accent.

“Hi, Svetlana.”

“Oh my God, Anja, this is amazing!   

That’s exactly how I’d react if I found out that my cousin had faked her own death and let me and my entire family grieve over her for a week!

I mean, I didn’t believe it when I heard you were dead!  I thought you must have been able to get out of the bus somehow! 

“I didn’t bother to tell your parents or the police about this suspicion, however, because I didn’t really care.  Couldn’t you just have stayed dead?”

And I was right!  Man, Anja, why didn’t you tell me before?”

This is the closest anybody other than Mr Daly will come to confronting Anja about her awful behaviour.

After I’d recovered from this flurry of emotive sentences, I could answer.  “I didn’t know the others knew you until about an hour ago!”

And Anja completely misses the point.  Were you expecting anything else?

“You’re kidding!”  She’d gone from overjoyed to vaguely put out.  “Joe didn’t mention me?”

Because that’s what you should be concerned about, Cherry/Svetlana.  Whether or not your previously-thought-dead friend mentioned to your previously-thought-dead cousin that he has a crush on you.

“He did, but he called you Cherry.  I didn’t know that was your nickname, that’s all.”

She laughed.  “Well, you can’t go dragging a name like Svetlana around all the time, can you?  I mean, not everyone can pronounce it.”   

YES THEY CAN.  IT’S NOT HARD.

I could hear Ben chirping in the background.  “Who are you talking at, Mummy?”

I thought of something.  “Does Ben know I’m supposedly…”

“Oh.  No, I didn’t tell him.  He only saw you every few months before, so I was hoping he wouldn’t notice you weren’t there.  I don’t think he’d have understood, anyway.”   

Nice side-stepping of potential guilt and plot problems there, Cherry/Svetlana.  “Oh, your Auntie Anja went to live on a farm with lots of other smug drunk sociopaths!”

Her voice brightened.  “But now he’ll be seeing a lot more of you!  Wow, and to think I thought…”

“Hang on, why will he be seeing more of me?”

“Oh, didn’t Estelle tell you yet?  She’s putting you, Joe and those other two guys up in a hotel near me.  You know, so we can confront Mr Foster and so on.

SPOILERS- By “confront,” they mean “go out to dinner with.”  And “let him pay for their wedding.”

I’m sure Jean will help us- she’s never liked him.”

“I don’t blame her.  Honestly, treating his son like that!  Where does he get off?”  There had been something strange about what Svetlana had said about the hotel, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

“I know!  Estelle wanted to come and sort him out herself, but Mark doesn’t think she should risk any damage in her condition…”

Aha.  That was it.  I’d forgotten about Mark and Estelle.  “What condition?”

“Didn’t you know?” Svetlana asked in surprise.

“No.  What’s wrong with her?”

“Nowt.  In fact it’s great as far as her and Mark are concerned.  They’re over the moon.”

“But you said she had a condition, so…  Oh, I see.”  I could only think of one ‘condition’ that was a good thing.  “She’s pregnant, isn’t she?”

SPOILERS- Estelle’s pregnancy, which wasn’t even hinted at until now, will have no significance to the plot other than giving her and Mark an excuse to disappear from the story.  Good luck to them, that’s what I say.

“Yeah.  Only two months or so, so she’s not showing yet.  But I’m surprised she didn’t tell you.  It were all she and Mark talked about before the accident.”  Her tone became more serious.

I realised something.  “You thought Mark was dead as well?  And Joe?”

“Yeah.”

“In the same accident as me?  Didn’t you think it was…”

“A big coincedence.  And I think I was meant to realise it.”

“Huh?”

“What I mean is, I think Mr Foster was trying to warn me.   

“Through body-disintegrating light fixtures and the deaths of half my friends.  He’s never been particularly subtle.”

I found out something a couple of months ago, see, and killing me would attract too much suspicion, so I guess he thought he could… 

…kill five other people, including his own son.  Nobody will be suspicious about that!

I must have mentioned at some point about having a cousin living in the same town as Mark.”

I knew that when I got to Southend, she’d probably have a whole lot more to tell me.  And so would Jean, probably.  We’d find our way out of this mess. 

If I’d known about all the things that were going to happen when I was in Southend, I’d probably still have gone.  I wouldn’t have been as excited about it, though.

SPOILERS- Neither should we be.

“It’s called the Black Heart Hotel,” Estelle told us.

“Funny name, that.  Can’t be good for their image.”  This was Mark, in case you were wondering.  It was all very well him saying that.  He wasn’t the one who was going to have to stay there.

“Actually it’s very good for their image,” Estelle replied, “Not many hotels have dramatic names like that.   

Because they know they’d get laughed out of business in the first week.

Black Heart sounds like exciting things are going to happen there.  Which they are.”  She turned to Gary Joe and me.  “For you, at least.” 

I love how Estelle is trying to make this sound like an adventure holiday.

“This is ridiculous,” murmured Mr Daly. 

The only sane character!  How we’ve missed you!

He’d been in a sour (well… sourer) mood since I’d shown him up about Gary, but he wasn’t prepared to go on any rants in case I did it again.  He was just sitting in the chair (he’d wanted to pick out a chair to be his ‘usual’, but today Joe had nicked it just to be irritating) grumbling.  I was wishing he didn’t have to go with us.  He’d just be a pain in the arse when we were in the car, and he’d probably want to see us first thing in the morning, just to make sure we had no fun whatsoever.   

And everybody knows there’s no point in bringing murderers to justice unless it’s fun.

Well, we’d see about that.  I’d already hatched a plan to get up really early and zoom off to Svetlana’s, leaving him behind.  But maybe that was too cruel. 

Oh, stop trying to convince us that you’ve got a conscience, Anja.

“I mean to say,” he moaned, “we’re going to stay in the Black Heart hotel whilst trying to catch the man who probably has nothing to do with the bus whatsoever… I suppose it has to be a nice hotel.  We wouldn’t want to run out of toilet paper while we’re busy making idiots of ourselves, would we?”

I’d changed my mind.  Nothing was too cruel.  Just so that everyone would know I thought this, I announced to the entire room, “Does he have to come?”

Thank you!  I prefer my sociopaths unapologetic.

“Excuse me, young lady!” Mr Daly snapped.  He was going to turn into a crocodile at this rate.  “Who’s ‘he’?  I have a name, you know!”

I decided to defend my title of ‘Only Person in the Room Prepared To Stand Up To Mr Daly’.   

But… Joe?  And Estelle?

“Well, so do I,” I replied, “You haven’t used my real name once in the past week.  It’s Anja, OK?  Not ‘young lady’, not ‘the girl’- Anja.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” Estelle butted in, “I’ve told the hotel your last name is ‘Cleary.’ I think that should be safe, especially if anyone else in the hotel knows Cherry.  They should know she has relatives called Cleary, especially now.  But if anyone asks for your first name, you should probably call yourself Maureen, like you said.  Pay no attention to what Mark and Joe say, it’s a good name.”

“For a forty-year-old,” Mark sniggered.  Estelle gave him a look, then suggested everyone start packing.

And so we come to the end of chapter eight.  Next time, we’ll have unsubtle symbolism and a really pathetic attempt at a sex scene.  See you then!