‘Wait, what …’ My breath is coming out in weird half gasps. ‘I don’t – you’re saying Mouse is real? An actual person? She isn’t – you’re saying she’s an actual person?’
Ross’s face changes. He looks at me with a dull kind of dislike, which might only be confusion. And when he finally opens his mouth to answer, I already know what he’s going to say. ‘Of course she is, Cat.’
CHAPTER 15
I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to think. What to even begin to think. And so I just keep shaking my head over and over again. ‘But she lived in Mirrorland. Like … like Annie and Belle and Chief Red Cloud and Old Joe Johnson … Of course she did! Come on, Ross! Ross?’ But I’m losing my certainty now, it’s draining away through a hole I can’t see, one I didn’t make, and I’m fast filling up with panic instead. Mostly for what being wrong about this means for me. Worse, what it means – what it could mean – for El. ‘She was called Mouse, for God’s sake!’
Instead of answering me, Ross marches from the room. I hear his boots stamping up the stairs. The rain is much heavier now; the whole kitchen has turned dark. My phone vibrates. It’s Vik. I don’t answer, look across at the two tiles in front of the Kitchener, the cracked line of grout that bisects them. Reach for the vodka and swallow all of it.
I don’t think Ross is going to come back until he does. His face looks no less grim, and when he drops something onto the table in front of me, I jump. ‘El found it in the loft.’
It’s a photo album, vaguely familiar, opened to a page with only one photograph. El and me, standing at the kitchen table making lemon cakes. We’re maybe eight, nine, wearing twin aprons and covered in flour. But I look at us for only a second, no more, because sitting on a chair, right on the edge of the shot, is a pale-faced, wide-eyed Mouse.
I realise that my fingers are pressed against my mouth only when I try to draw in a horrified breath. ‘My God.’ My body is too cold, my cheeks too hot. Shivers chase one another from the top of my scalp to the base of my spine. ‘God.’
Ross sits down. ‘You really thought she didn’t exist?’
I keep turning the pages of the album, my anxiety rising, afraid that I’ll see her again. As if that matters. As if seeing her once isn’t proof enough. The photos are few, each page containing one, sometimes two disparate shots. Some are black and white, some so old that the people in them are only silhouettes. Ghosts. I pause at an impossibly young Grandpa, just as impossibly handsome in a dark suit and bow tie, a blonde woman sitting alongside him, formal and unsmiling. Mum’s eyes. My grandmother.
And then, on the next page, a colour portrait taken outside the house, in the front garden. Mum, aproned and uncomfortable, grimacing a smile. And standing taller next to her, in head-to-toe black—
‘The Witch,’ Ross says, his mouth a grim line.
‘The Witch.’ My voice is unsteady. ‘Who is she?’
Ross glances at me. He looks worried, concerned. ‘Your aunt? I don’t know. She was Mouse’s mum. Do you really remember none of this?’
I shake my head. ‘We didn’t – don’t – have any other family. I’d remember that. I’d know that.’
Ross is quiet for too long, and then his reply is too careful. ‘You didn’t remember Mouse either.’
‘I did!’ I say, even though I know my defensiveness is ridiculous.
‘A family friend, then?’ Ross shrugs. ‘They were at the house often enough. We always had to be quieter when she was around; you were terrified of her.’
All that venom and hate. Bared teeth and blood-filled gums. That oval locket glittering in her fist.
How could I remember every corner and code of Mirrorland, and yet twist my memories of two people enough that I thought them as imaginary as a monstrous Tooth Fairy or a sly, grinning Clown? And why? Because if I’m not crazy, then I’ve deliberately chosen to remember them that way. To misremember. Not even now that I know they existed is anything any clearer – they remain vague and indistinct, like smoke blown on an angry wind.
I KNOW THINGS. THINGS YOU’VE MADE YOURSELF FORGET.
I close the album, turn back to Ross.
‘You said she’d – Mouse – that she’d come back?’
‘Round about mid-October last year.’ Ross folds his arms. ‘Ding-dong, the Witch was dead. Apparently.’ He stops, and I can see that he’s trying to hide his anger, stamp it out. ‘I don’t know how she knew we were here. I don’t know why she waited until the Witch had died to come. She looked a complete mess. Worse than when we were kids. Said she wanted to get to know El again. And El was so happy about it at first, you know?’ He looks at me. ‘Maybe she saw Mouse as a substitute for you, I dunno. Nothing El did in the last six months made much sense.’
‘What happened?’
He shrugs. ‘Like I said, Mouse was delusional. She needed help. She’d turn up at all hours of the day and night. Crying, inconsolable, and then the next minute lit up like a kid at Christmas. She hated me. Wanted El all to herself. One day – get this …’ His anger wins, and he stands up, hands clenched as he paces. ‘She waited until I’d gone to work, and then turned up at the house with two one-way plane tickets to bloody Ibiza, of all places.’
‘Ross—’
He makes a visible effort to calm himself down. Sits, and takes two long, slow breaths.
‘When El tried to get her to back off, she started following her, spying on her.’ He shrugs. ‘Us.’
‘You thought she was sending the cards.’
‘She was the first person we thought of when they started arriving. The police followed it up, found no evidence to prove it either way. But it did the trick because she left us alone, didn’t come back. And we figured she’d turned all that crazy on someone else.’ His eyes go cold and hard; he looks suddenly like a stranger. ‘When we were kids, all she ever wanted to do was keep the three of us apart, turn us against one another. That’s what she has to be doing now. It makes sense she’d have El’s diaries, she probably stole them when she was here.’ He pauses. ‘You really don’t remember her?’
What I remember is that the Mouse I knew wouldn’t have said boo to a goose. She was timid and kind, most often submissive. A sponge for all our fears and weaknesses and secrets. A cabin girl, a powder monkey, a skivvy. Our favourite piñata. The Mouse I knew refused to fight pirates, refused to take sides, refused to choose punishment.
Ross is still shaking his head, still sporting that cold, hard expression that I’ve never seen before, when suddenly his shoulders slump. I see the pity in his eyes before the kindness or the love, and he reaches for my hands, grips them tightly enough to hurt. ‘El didn’t send those emails. I’m sorry, Cat. Christ, I’m so sorry. But she’s gone. She’s just gone.’
There’s a squall coming in from Cuba. I can see the smoky grey clouds on the horizon: a tropical thunderstorm near the Bight of Bayamo.
The day grows darker as I scramble down from the crow’s nest and run across the main deck. The Satisfaction is already listing hard to port, and the wind is picking up. I can feel hot splashes of rain against my face. When I look over at El, she’s already fighting to hold the wheel steady.
‘There’s no time to get to Port Royal,’ I shout. ‘We won’t make it!’
A scream, then a splash, and I’ve time to see a pirate slip over the port side and into the swirling, climbing sea as a wave washes high over the stern.
‘Heave to?’ El shouts. Her grin is big enough that I can see all her teeth.