Overcast (The 01:23 Bardo – Book 1)
Copyright © Ryan O’Riordan 2011
Smashwords Edition
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used ficticiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2011
Summary: Rebecca Conner imagines an entire world where she is a detective with her best friend and missing brother. When she is hit by a car, her escape world overwrites reality and she joins with a boy she doesn’t know in order to rescue her brother from the criminals she created.
Print edition ISBN: 9781466239777
To anyone
who has ever wished
they were someone else,
doing something else.
Rebecca stepped out of the barn onto the veranda. The night air was cold and crisp.
They’re coming, she thought, as she strained her eyes onto the landscape. It looked as peaceful as could be.
She didn’t believe it for a moment.
Somewhere out there in that blanket of dark, out in the normally serene countryside, was a group of men coming to kill them.
She cursed herself for so often thinking how lucky they were to have the barn out in such a remote location, where they were free from being disturbed. Now she regretted that they didn’t have a place underground, or somewhere hidden in the town, somewhere that didn’t expose their whereabouts like a big red ‘X’ on a treasure map.
Her brother, Ben, appeared at her side.
“Are you ready for this?” He asked, with no hint of worry in his voice.
“I am.” She lied believably, sounding as resolute as he.
“There might not be any going back after tonight, you know.” He said gravely.
“We gave up going back a long time ago.”
He laughed his knowing laugh and Rebecca smiled slightly.
“Is Valencia ready?” She asked.
“I think so.” He said and moved back inside to check on her.
Rebecca started to follow him in. It was no bother that she was abandoning her observation post; they had the tech inside to track the incoming – and unwanted – houseguests.
“Rebecca?” The call seemed distant. The voice snapped her out of the illusion.
Everyone was looking at her. No one was saying anything.
“Do you want to answer the question?” said Mr Broscof, the Science teacher.
“Um, sorry.” Rebecca replied meekly. Some of the class sniggered.
Mr Broscof tutted, unconsciously shushed the class and said “Pay attention, Miss Conner, ‘cause I’m telling you, it won’t help you in your exams to be away with the fairies.” The same people sniggered again, only this time, he allowed it. Mr Broscof naturally exuberated the intoxicating calm required to captain a class of teenagers.
Rebecca didn’t think his argument was fair given the danger of what she was thinking about; it was actually the exams that wouldn’t do her much good at staying alive.
Thankfully, Mr Broscof turned his attention back to his lecture and she sighed with relief.
“Did you not get much sleep last night?” Came a barely audible whisper to her left. It was her classmate, Saskia.
“I wasn’t asleep.” Rebecca hissed back, defiantly.
“Sure seemed like it. You were in a daze. I tried prodding.”
“Quiet!” came the autonomous bark from Mr Broscof, though he wasn’t paying enough attention to see who was talking and continued his lecture. Luckily, a few other pairs in the class were talking amongst themselves so when they went quiet, so did Saskia.
It wasn’t that Rebecca didn’t like Saskia; she did enjoy being seen talking to someone who was considered popular, as it meant that through not a lot of effort, she could quell most of the rumours of her loner-status. It was just that she found almost everything Saskia had to say utterly deplorable.
Saskia was not known for her niceties and their acquaintanceship had been the sole positive by-effect of Mr Broscof’s set seating plan.
Until then, Rebecca only knew her as the girl who had been seen with almost every guy on the school football team and yet somehow hadn’t been thrown from the higher standing social circles. Saskia intimidated some of her popular rivals, but none of that mattered to Rebecca; if anything she enjoyed being intimidating-by-association. Anything was better than being known as painfully ordinary.
Rebecca had initially shown her disinterest in Saskia’s ‘status’ by purposefully mispronouncing her name. “Sure, Sasha.”, “I’m fine thanks, Sassy.” (She really hadn’t liked that one). Somehow though, this had bought her street cred with Saskia who seemed to have a playful interest in the life of Rebecca Conner.
On occasion it benefited her – if she hadn’t been so invested in her thoughts, it would have helped her today. The only annoyance was that Rebecca had misguidedly revealed to Saskia that she was actually from Matlock originally, which prompted her to ask around and find out the story behind Ben. That had been an awkward conversation, though one that had involuntarily bonded the two girls…albeit superficially. The news had got out soon after and for a while Rebecca had to endure the curious glances of strangers, as they whispered amongst themselves “Is that the one?”
The door squeaked open and someone sauntered into the classroom. It was a blonde-haired boy who casually planted himself on the front row, in a seat that was normally empty.
When Mr Broscof’s thunderous glare met him, the blonde boy smiled cheekily and muttered,
“Sorry, sir.” In that obligatory ‘sorry-but-not’ kind of way, then removed his messenger bag and black military jacket.
Rebecca couldn’t help but be distracted by him. She didn’t understand why no one else in the class seemed surprised by the new addition or his late arrival. Mr Broscof seemed the most agitated and simply said, “Honestly Mr Sherman, I don’t know what time zone you’re working to but it isn’t going to help you to keep interrupting my class.”
The boy remained silent and dragged a dog-eared science folder out of his bag, crammed with haphazardly-filed worksheets and lined paper.
Rebecca was even more confused: she was sure he had never been in her class before and she hadn’t missed a lesson all year, even during Saskia’s betrayal. The stool he had taken had been empty for the six months since September. Mr Broscof’s main reasoning for the strict seating arrangement was to help him check attendance without calling an actual register and he’d intentionally left that seat blank, she presumed so that he could see down the classroom aisle with ease.
But Mr Broscof leant over his own desk, picked up the red biro he used for marking attendance and clearly muttered, “Sherman…Sherman…is present. Just about.” He checked his class list and a few students chuckled amongst themselves again though the Sherman boy didn’t seem bothered by Mr Broscof’s failed attempt at embarrassment.
Rebecca considered the possibility he was from another class, possibly also taught by Mr Broscof, catching up on their lesson. She stared at the boy unscrupulously, trying to place him, but knowing he was unfamiliar. She found herself burrowing such gaping holes into the back of his head, that he actually looked over his shoulder and their eyes met fleetingly, causing her breath to catch in her mouth a bit and she unattractively spluttered out a cough.
His blonde hair was short and messy and topped off a thin, lively face that seemed to be animated even though he wasn’t doing anything other than looking at her. Was it curiosity? Was he realising that he’d never seen her before either?
She hastily looked down at her notes and pretended not to have been staring but the damage was done. Saskia’s unparalleled radar had clocked the awkward moment and she whispered to her neighbour, “Calm down? Your face looks like your blazer.”
Rebecca took a deep breath and tried to ignore the diabolically unhelpful advice. She hadn’t a clue how to look less embarrassed. If she knew that, she would make it so she never had to turn a lobster red anyway. With the boy’s attention back on Mr Broscof’s lecture, she found herself sneaking guilty glances at his back. He was tapping his foot incessantly on the foot bar of the stool. She considered asking Saskia what she thought about him, but she was already preoccupied with a secret text conversation, her phone concealed underneath the desktop.
Eventually, the lesson was nice enough to end and Rebecca wanted to clear the room before Saskia could say anything else. She noticed how easily the Sherman boy had made friends as he walked out of the room laughing with some other boys. How conventional. Rebecca thought glumly. They were considered popular kids as well.
Rebecca was in year ten at North Hill Comprehensive School, the penultimate year before moving onto college. It wasn’t a majorly endearing location, especially not for a fifteen-year-old girl. She was one of the eldest in her year, though it didn’t particularly matter to her. While she would never dare think it, her face was quirkily pretty, but she refused to obsess over the mantra of make-up or the principles of perfectly straight hair – she kept to the basics. The maroon and white school uniform was helpful in that regard, as it enabled her desire to just hide out in the background of everyone else. She kept her wavy black hair at a simple, manageable shoulder-length and though her vivid blue eyes sometimes acted as inadvertent headlights, she tried to keep them out of everyone’s sight by dashing between classroom locations as though her life depended on it. To the unobservant onlooker, she was just a geek rushing to her next lesson. But Rebecca had her reasons for not wanting to get into conversation with the locals.
The bus home was packed with the rowdy mob; aged from eleven to sixteen, without the restraint of an authority figure, they let loose, slapping, joking and heckling each other. Some pairs of friends spoke amongst themselves, though even these conversations had to be louder than necessary in order to be heard over the din.
Rebecca sat next to another of her loose acquaintances; a thirteen-year old Japanese boy she didn’t actually know the name of. They had a mutual unspoken understanding though – they would always save the seat for each other whenever possible. They both liked to travel in silence.
The truth was Rebecca just tried to get through each day as it came. School was mind-numbing at the best of times and she tolerated it only out of necessity. She used her brain as a distraction in order to keep her sharp against the bluntness of each repetitive week.
As soon as Rebecca stepped off the bus, the doors snapped shut behind her and it sped off into the wintery February afternoon, already cloaked by darkness and fog. She sighed, realising she had just stepped into a puddle where the road dipped into the grassy knoll. Shaking her damp feet as she walked, she started after her house which was nestled around the corner on a fairly hidden road called Nightingale Crescent.
Of course her parents would have to choose a Victorian house a few minutes’ walk from the bus route, why would they bother doing anything simple after all? The house had been her home for the past three years; they had moved in when she was 12. The move back up from Cornwall had followed three brilliant summers there, where she had been within walking distance from the ocean. Matlock, in comparison, was positively mundane. Sure it had its tourist trap up the road, appropriately named Matlock Bath, as it had a river rushing through it – but Rebecca had sampled where she really wanted to be and now she missed the ocean. A seaside town without the seaside was a poor substitute for the real thing. Tragically, no one she met seemed to share her disparaged outlook.
She bounded for the house automatically, ignoring the details of the route. She refused to acknowledge the green moss running along the aged brick wall around the garden, the empty milk bottles awaiting collection, or the lightly rotted front door as she unlocked it with her keys. She wouldn’t look at herself in the mirror in the hallway, unconcerned what her actual appearance looked like. Rebecca didn’t even look at the old family photo on the fireplace as she walked through the living room to the kitchen. What she did attempt to see was something worth eating.
Her mother, Barbara, was in the kitchen and was clattering about in the drawers.
“Hi,” Rebecca said as she flopped down into a chair. She was pleased to be greeted with a good-sized wedge of Victoria Sponge cake waiting for her. They had gotten into a pattern since moving back to Matlock, whereby her mother would usually serve her coffee and cake after school.
“Hello,” her mother cooed, busying herself with the kettle. “Good day?”
“It was alright,” Rebecca instantly responded with her usual response. Their initial conversation was a methodical template. “Did you learn much?” Her mother asked, coming to the table carrying two steaming hot mugs and planting them onto cork coasters. “I suppose so. More of the same.” Rebecca said picking up the fork that was set out for her and starting on the soft, springy cake. It was good.
“I had a good day.” Her mother said without invitation as she cut into her small slither of cake. “I got a lot done, luckily. Your father will be home soon.” That was another of her template sayings, always delivered without much credence as she knew her father actually arrived home at 19:00pm every day. Looking at the clock on the wall, Rebecca worked out that was still more than two-and-a-half hours away. Still, if she were at home all day, maybe she would dismiss 150 minutes as being ‘soon’ as well.
Rebecca wanted to communicate her gratitude to her mother for the dedication she put into their cake tradition, with this one being a particular success. She baked them all herself, as it gave her something extra to do in the daytime. But Rebecca didn’t know what words to use that felt natural enough, so she hoped her mother could feel her appreciation implicitly. Like a gulf that had opened between them all, the family said less to each other than they used to. That wasn’t to say that they sat in silence; just that on some level, everyone was still sad and didn’t know how to move past what had happened.
As she finished the coffee and cake, Rebecca forced herself to deliver a painfully irregular “That was delicious, thanks mum,” to which her mother smiled and said “I’ll have to bake another one. I always forget how easy they are to make.”
Rebecca got up from the table and headed for her bedroom. An average evening for her would now consist of wasting time, doing homework, eating dinner and sleeping. Licking the sugar off her fingers, she hit the top of the stairs and rounded left to get to her room.
Her bedroom door was shut, which was the last thing she did before leaving the house in the morning. Her parents at least respected her privacy and had even taken to knocking when they wanted to come in.
Rebecca’s room was an ode to an earlier time. While most girls her age canvassed their walls with photos of their friends and of their obsessions with male celebrities, Rebecca kept all her walls but one painted white. The fourth wall – her mural – was something she created not long after moving back to Matlock, when the throng of the seaside was all she could think of, as she experienced the crushing return to middle-England lifestyle. She had painted a clear sky, a beautiful crystal clear ocean and later had added in a bit of beach at the bottom to aid recognition. The painting was a little too eerie for her parents, who wanted nothing to do with it. Her father had gone so far as to ask her to paint over it as it “Didn’t match the rest of the room.” Well yes, she had said, “That’s the point.”
She knew that her parents found the painting sadistic and that their reluctance to enter her room was in part because of the bad memories it served up, though she didn’t share their hesitation. To her, the sea was a miraculous thing, to be feared, sure, but to be hated, never. The sea was one of the most explicit forces on the planet; it offered no disguise as to its intentions or danger. It was what it was, an irrevocably powerful force bigger than all of them. She liked being near it. But so long as she was in Matlock, this would have to do.
Her dresser and window sill were cluttered with things that meant something to her, unusual though they were. Most prominent was the last picture of herself and Ben from Cornwall, sat at an outdoor café eating ice cream cones. It was rare proof of sibling interaction. She also had a collection of shells, some tacky plastic bracelets she couldn’t bear to throw away and some rock still in the wrapper, which – though it looked the same – had probably gone bad.
Her school supplies were strewn across her desk next to her laptop. Her typical practice was to ignore these for as long as feasibly possible.
Her imaginary occupation also had its ties in the real world: relics from childhood resided in a dusty old shoebox on the top shelf of her wardrobe, which she needed to pull over her bed and stand on top of it to reach.
Inside was a magnifying glass, discovered years earlier in her grandmother’s attic, in a set of two. The young Rebecca had missed the short-sighted reasoning behind these and had just presumed they were for detective clue solving. The larger of the two was now missing and Rebecca couldn’t remember what had happened to it, though in her mind she liked to think that Ben still had it. Also in the shoebox was the journal Rebecca had used to write her case notes in. Now looking like untidy scrawls, at the time, these were her undisputable hard facts.
Rebecca didn’t really look in the shoebox anymore, but she knew it was there should she need it.
She dove onto her bed and plotted what her next move was going to be. Soon deciding, she retrieved her mobile phone from her bedside table – they weren’t allowed at school and could be confiscated if discovered – and decided to call the only person she considered to be a true friend – Valencia.
Valencia Graham had basically always been Rebecca’s undisputed best friend. A number of variables had led to this conclusion; that Valencia had been her childhood friend from nursery the first time she had lived in Matlock was a large part of it. Also that Rebecca hadn’t exactly taken in a swarm of friends at the secondary school meant that Valencia’s occupation still stood. The Graham’s had always been reasonably good friends with the Conner’s and when Ben went missing, Valencia convinced her parents to drive down to Cornwall to support the family. Rebecca had loved seeing her again; she only wished it hadn’t taken something so awful for the visit to occur. The friendship of Valencia’s parents over such a stressful time was a large decider in what made Rebecca’s parents want to move back to Matlock.
Valencia went to a private school but Rebecca still saw her most weekends. She lived in a huge house, because her father was a doctor. Unlike Rebecca, who tended to drift into the shadows, when Valencia smiled, the world stood up. This warranted a high amount of interest from the opposite sex, though Valencia was rarely amused. To her friends at least, she was so unapologetically feckless it was actually endearing.
While she wasn’t rude to Rebecca, her strategy for boys who asked her out was ‘take-no-prisoners.’ Of course, she did herself no favours by looking formidably beautiful at all times. Rebecca had voiced her adulation about this one night during a sleepover, eventually ensuing in Valencia getting a face full of ice cream. She had taken it in good spirits though and got her back just the same.
The ringer dialled until it hit answer phone. Rebecca sighed, hung up and waited. This was typical Valencia; she had once admitted she never wanted to be thought of as having nothing better to do than answer her phone. For this reason – unless there was absolutely no alternative – Valencia would purposefully not answer her phone, instead she would get back to the person later. It wasn’t that she would be left holding a ringing phone, but if she heard it in her handbag she wouldn’t rush to get it out in time. Valencia’s belief was that other people would wait for her. Having always been the focus of attention whenever she entered a room, it was no surprise how this trait had developed.
A few minutes passed before Valencia called back. Rebecca hadn’t even moved in the interim.
“Hello! Sorry I missed your call I was in the car coming home.” Valencia said all in one breath. Her girls’ school was much further out than the distance of North Hill Comp, so that was at least a credible excuse. Valencia also didn’t like answering the phone when her parents were in the vicinity, lest the conversation take a crude or romantic turn as the details of her social life were dissected in real-time detail.
“It’s alright.” Rebecca said drowsily, not sure if she was lying or not.
“What’s up?” Valencia asked. Admittedly it was unusual for her to call midweek. “Nothing much, just at home, bored.” Rebecca said. She sort of wanted to talk about the boy from science, but could already hear in her head just how creepy that would sound: ‘There’s this boy in my class, I don’t know his first name, or why I haven’t seen him already but I just thought it was interesting. Don’t you think?’
She could already hear what Valencia’s first response would be too; ‘Do you like him?’
“You need to do something! Aren’t there any clubs or anything you can join at school?”
Rebecca laughed dismissively at the notion; the kind of clubs at school revolved exclusively around sporting achievement or musical and/or acting brilliance. She gravitated toward neither field of expertise and existed co-dependent of it on principal.
“What are you doing tonight?” Rebecca asked, knowing Valencia would have at least one prior social engagement. “Gym when I get changed. Then I might meet Sophie for a drink in town, then probs get a taxi home I think.” Valencia had been subscribed to the gym for 3 months now. Her parents shared her belief that young people should exercise and the silly restriction of an 18-year-old minimum age was just an obstacle to be overcome.
Valencia didn’t ask ‘What about you?’ not out of meanness or neglect, but because she already knew that Rebecca would be doing what she had perfected doing; nothing. Sure she might waste some time on the net, or on the rare occasion even watch some TV, but she had nothing planned and that was the weekly routine.
The problem with Rebecca was exactly that; she had nothing to do. Valencia provided her only friendship activities and she had to wait a week each time for that to roll around.
“Sounds fun.” Rebecca said, not entirely sure that she meant it. She’d never be caught dead in a gym.
“Yeah it’s alright. I’m only doing it so I can go on holiday in the summer.”
Valencia had a disproportionate body-image issue and saw herself as overweight when she wasn’t at all. She was someone who could eat anything and never reap the consequences. “Where are you going?” Rebecca asked intrigued. She hadn’t been invited on this holiday. “I think with some people from school. Possibly Ibiza.” Rebecca wasn’t surprised that Valencia was going to try and get around Ibiza at 16, or that her classmates shared the notion. Being at an all-girl’s school, they were boy-starved, which contributed to their wild behaviour by night. Rebecca’s unspoken fear was that she was going to lose Valencia to this world, filled with its boys and underage drinking and that would be that for their friendship. She couldn’t see herself being invited to hang out with ‘the Intolerables,’ as Rebecca had quietly dubbed them. The girls from Valencia’s school were like banshees.
“Sounds good.” Rebecca replied and then felt idiotic for not having anything interesting to say.
“Are you coming over this weekend?” She blurted out, hoping it sounded as casual as she wanted it to. “Of course!” Valencia replied instantly, “Wouldn’t miss out on that would I? In fact I’d better go if I’m going to manage Saturday, I’ll need to hit the gym hard right now.”
“Cool, ok.” Rebecca said with as much panache as she could muster. “See you Saturday.”
“You too. Bye!”
“Bye.” Rebecca said but the call had already disconnected.
Rebecca went back to the barn that night, with no time lost between the visits. The bloodbath end to the battle against the operatives was a victory for herself, Ben and Valencia. Except that one of the assassins got away from them.
There always had to be one.
The sad truth was, there was very little to do in Matlock. Unless of course you approved of knick-knack boutiques, arcade games and fish and chip shops.
There was a way out though, the only way Rebecca had found to survive the mundanity. Imagination was a powerful thing and Rebecca frequently put hers to good use, deliriously relying on a version of the world where things had worked out better. It was effectively her dreamworld, only she never thought of it that way as she was always awake when she visited it. It was a fantastic creation that had grown intrinsically in the three years she had perfected it. The escape world could be anything to anybody, after all.
She knew exactly what had caused her to start imagining the world as something else. She was eight when she and Ben (two-and-a-bit years her elder) had become obsessed with watching old detective shows on television. They were more alike in the old days and they had the same black hair, though Ben also had brown eyes and a thin, angular face. She had suggested that they start playing detectives themselves in the village and he had reluctantly agreed. It was small stuff at first, like who had taken Ben’s marbles from his bag while at school (they eventually discovered it was a girl in his class called Lucy who had taken a preteen liking to him and hoped it would spark up a conversation point) and later, where Mr Bramwell (the town baker) really got his delicious bread from so cheaply (They had spied on him meeting his brother-in-law, a local bread tycoon at the nearby factory and uncovered a shady deal where Bramwell resold the factory bread under a local label). Then when she was nine they moved to Cornwall, Ben, then eleven, became obsessed with surfing with his new friends and didn’t want to play detectives anymore. For a while, Rebecca tried to go solo but it was much harder and far less enjoyable without backup.
This is where it started.
She embellished their game and imagined that Ben was still playing along with her, effectively inventing a personality duplicate of her brother and coming up with the backstory that they had needed to ‘relocate’ to solve wilder crimes. The imagination round only survived its set up though, as she soon fell in with a group of girls from her class and started doing what every girl her age wanted to do; learn to ride a horse.
The three summers passed gloriously, each with their respective group of friends and Rebecca basically forgot about their year playing detectives together. Then, when the accident happened, everything changed.
Towards the end of the season, Ben had been trying to cram in surfing every day – before the weather changed. It was a Wednesday in late August when without warning, the waves started to crash treacherously against the shore and Ben never came back home.
Police, coastguards and local reporters all joined in the perilous search for him, but it never got any more mainstream than that. The press had a nasty habit of neglecting the disappearance of teenage boys, dismissing it more as tomfoolery than anything newsworthy. It meant that no one outside of Devon would have heard about his disappearance unless they were privy to picking up news from other regions. Ben’s surfboard was recovered, but nothing else.
Rebecca didn’t really know what to do with herself and her parents went to pieces. She refused to cry though, believing that to do so would really commit his memory to death. Then, one night three weeks into the hunt, after the Graham’s had returned to Matlock and when hope was all but lost, she dreamt Ben had come home and woken her up. It was a cruel dream, but at the time had seemed miraculous.
“Ben?” She asked indeterminately, pleased when her vision self-corrected in the dark room to confirm her suspicion.
“Hi Bec.”
She was instantly wide awake in the dream and leapt from under her duvet to cling onto him in a tight embrace. He had called her Bec from an early age (apparently before he had learned to say ‘Rebecca’) and it had stuck. “Ben! Where have you been?”
He gently pushed her to arm’s length, looked her in the eye and resolutely said, “Bec. You can’t tell mum and dad that I’m alive.”
Confusion swarmed her as she tried to comprehend his request. “What? Why? We’ve all been looking for you-”
“I know. I had to hide. It was for all of us.” Rebecca was mercilessly confused by his confounding request and pushed further, simply by asking, “Why?”
But, as though a mental synapse of logic snapped into action, her body refused her answers as she awoke, alone in her room. She felt betrayed by herself for waking up at so inopportune a time. She also felt comfort in seeing and hearing Ben again. The memory of the dream was cyphering away and Rebecca wanted to act quickly before a trivially unimportant one took its place.
She forced everything she could remember about the dream to the forefront of her mind, elaborating what she could recall, adding to the specifics she was already losing track of. She looked around the room at all the objects and considered how Ben would have disturbed them. Because she couldn’t remember how Ben came to be in her room, she looked to the oak tree outside of her open window and decided this is how he would have gained entry so silently (avoiding the creaky staircase). She decided that Ben, (who in the dream had appeared immaculately clean) would be wearing his favourite jeans and green hoody, muddied with three weeks of earth and pretended he was still sitting opposite her.
“Why?” she mentally replayed, picking up exactly where her dream had stranded her.
But then she paused and considered this. Why would Ben have to hide? Why would he ask her to keep his survival a secret from their parents? She looked around the room and noticed her grandmother’s dusty magnifier glinting at her from her dresser. It was enough to make her fall back on their secret detective games from childhood.
It explained everything.
“Have you ever heard of Frank Magnus?” The imaginary version of Ben asked her.
“No. Should I have?” She replied vacantly. Admittedly, it was the first name that popped into her head and ‘Frank’ was their neighbour’s dog’s name.
“No me neither, but that’s what they kept calling him. I was down at the beach before the holidays started when I first saw him. It was late and I saw this Merc roll up and a really fat guy in a white suit got out with some heavies. It was weird, y’know? What five guys in suits would want with the beach? So I stuck around and they hadn’t seen me cause I was behind the sheds, and this other guy turns up, and he’s basically explaining something – I don’t know why, but he was apologising for something – and then suddenly the Magnus guy gestures to someone to his right, and he pulls out a gun and shoots the man.”
Rebecca actually gasped, not at the senselessness of the murder, but that Ben had been so close to it. “Were you alright?”
He looked at her gravely, “It wasn’t nice. He just collapsed, you know.” In truth, the nature of Ben’s disappearance had got her fixated on death a bit. She goaded him for more details, holding an inexplicable new interest in mortality. “Don’t be sick Bec, I don’t want you hearing all this, ok?” He said protectively (as he would do) and she nodded.
“Anyway. Somehow, they saw me. I ran and got away, but I realised a few days later that they were following me.” Rebecca was stunned by this revelation, but mostly wished he’d shared it with her sooner. “Always the same; a flash car no one around here would buy – you know how often we see ones like that? Like three times a year? Well I saw one four times in a week. Always the same, always where I was. It spooked me, Bec. I knew they’d figured out who I was.”
“But how?”
“I didn’t work that out for a while, but I’d left my uniform in the shed when I changed into my wetsuit. I went back and it was gone. I know they got it.”
“Er, what creeps.”
“I know.”
The ramifications were obvious: their mother always stitched their names into every item of school clothing, to safeguard it from being claimed by the wrong hands. What an epic mistake this now seemed in hindsight. If they had his school uniform, they had his name and his location for five out of seven days of the week.
“Damn.” Rebecca said as the reality of her unreality hit her.
“I know. So you can understand what I had to do.”
“What?”
“I hid. In a roundabout kind of way. I surfed out as far as I could go and then ditched my board. Then I swam back in but you shouldn’t have been able to see me 'cause it was overcast. And I got to the other end of the beach and ended up hiding out in this old building.”
“That closed down care home?”
“Yeah. It’s not pretty but at least it’s private. I knew everyone would be looking for me. I had this planned for a while but I needed to make sure I could actually get away with it.”
“So you hid because you think they’re going to catch up with you?”
“Well, yeah.” Rebecca knew that if she was in his position she would have attempted a different course of action. Though his resourcefulness was commendable, the hailstorm of confusion, upset and anger that he had brought down on the rest of the family was not. If he were anyone else, she would probably be congratulating him on the perfect cover. Separating herself from the scenario helped her gain some perspective as she reasoned he would not have come home just for a social.
“How come you’re here now?” Sure enough, the explanation was still to come.
“I’ve been watching the house but it’s been quiet. I haven’t seen the black car anywhere, and I don’t think they’d want to hang around. They were only in town for that murder; I knew they weren’t from around here. Then the other night, I saw the car again, parked outside of that slimy bar near town, ‘Jimmy’s’. I got right up close to it, but it was empty so I figured they’d gone inside. I wrote this down-” Ben pulled out a small torn piece of newspaper with some pencilled writing over the blank margin. ‘Willowgate Wheels.’
“You know I can’t ask you to help me.”
“Well, good then. Because you don’t need to.”
Ben laughed lightly, probably for the first time in more than three weeks. “Knew I could count on you.” She nodded and took the paper. “Don’t get caught looking into this. I mean it. The last thing I want is for them to start on you next.”
“Don’t worry, geez.” She had always felt slightly belittled by his protectiveness. She was as capable as he was; more so perhaps for not being so foolhardy and rushing into things without getting the right support first.
“I’m going to check back in this time next week. Will you be home?”
“Of course.” She said lazily, then knew she had to address her parents’ state. “Mum and dad have gone to pieces, Ben. Why can’t you just tell them you’re ok and they’ll keep it really quiet?”
“I want to, you know I do. But as long as this is going on, I feel like Magnus’ men will be watching them to see what they know. I can’t jeopardise them and I can’t let this all be for nothing. We’ll tell them when the time is right and this is all over. Ok?”
She nodded reluctantly. Keeping this a secret would be impossible, but the loyalty she felt for her brother was unquestionable; if this was what she had to do, then she would do her very best to carry it out.
Of course, the secret she was really keeping from her parents was her own delusion. It wouldn’t do to admit to spending increasing amounts of time thinking about things that had never happened, as though they were happening live, in a reality parallel to their own. But once she started, she couldn’t stop. Rebecca had once read that without any new context to go on, people gradually moved on from the death of loved ones and replaced them with other more relevant things going on in their lives. She didn’t want that for herself: Ben’s vanishing was shocking and devastating, but the idea that her own memory would unconsciously betray her and lose him gradually was somehow worse.
She knew she had to actively engage with his memory and the best way of doing that in a way that corroborated with her parents belief that he was gone was through the secret life.
Rebecca imaged taking the address Ben had furnished her with to a public library computer, where she found out it was based in London.
She met with him again and he decided to leave for London immediately, to secretly get closer to Magnus. He promised to check-in weekly and to his credit, (at Rebecca’s invention) he did. Over time, Rebecca began to feel better about keeping his pseudo-survival a secret. It made her believe in the idea far more easily, plus it was necessary in order to keep him from being hunted; as his safety was concurrent with Magnus believing his little problem was dealt with.
In reality, Ben was still missing and their parents were far from recovering. The futility of their hope sapped with every passing week. Soon they slumped into long silences and barely referred to Ben by name. Rebecca often found her mother sitting out on the front decking in the morning, sipping her coffee, glancing over the paper and staring out at the autumn sun, as though expecting it to deliver a lost child.
Two months after Ben’s disappearance, their father, James, busied himself by returning to work, which was at a life insurance office. But his seemingly cheery demeanour was seen as insensitive by the customers who thought he should be grieving in peace. He hoped that over time their distrust would pass, though he had inadvertently alienated himself from the locals in the process. A few months after that, her father revealed that he had an option to transfer back to the office in the midlands, which meant that they could move back to Matlock.
It was winter and the coldness had relocated Rebecca’s mother from sitting on the front decking to the staircase in the hallway. The bleak, dark mornings had sucked the last of her optimism from her and she agreed that they should follow their roots back to Matlock. Rebecca’s friends had been very sympathetic to her as she transitioned into the secondary school, so it seemed awful to have to leave midway through the school year. But by then, she was willing to do anything to help her parents and did it without complaint.
The first week of February was their last week in Cornwall, during which they finally held a memorial for Ben, despite the fact that no body had been discovered. The police had closed the case, marking the cause of death as ‘lost at sea.’
The family moved back up North to their original hometown, though Rebecca continued her secret make-believe communications with Ben. When she told him that they were moving back, he said he would journey back too.
She had been installed in the local comprehensive school and they had another new house in a different area to their previous one. On the bus home from her first day of school, she noticed a large barn building for the first time in her life. As each day passed, (and though she only passed it very quickly) she observed that no one came in or out of it. She was caught looking at it one day by an elderly woman who was sat next to her.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Rebecca gasped and responded. “Yes,” then decided to pry for more detail. “How long has it been there?”
The woman shook her head and said, “As long as I can remember, and I’m pushing 70. When I was a little girl, it belonged to Mr Greenwell, he was the farmer. He kept so many cows! We always had the purest milk, it was fabulous! Of course he passed it down to Barnaby, his son, who was a good, honest lad. A couple years ago now though, he had to sell up.”
“Oh no,” Rebecca replied with as much enthusiasm as she could muster, “Why was that?”
“It’s those bloody supermarkets. He couldn’t afford the competition so he sold it off to them and they promised they were going to carry on the local trade. But what did they do? Went and abandoned it. They still own it now, not that they even remember it of course.”
Rebecca voiced her sympathy and joined in with the chorus of supermarket-bashing. It was the best way to stay beneath the radar; show your support for the local issues. Hearing the woman’s story evoked some anger, but she was mostly gleeful that there was now a potential location to house her continued idea of Ben.
*
Rebecca decided that Ben should meet her at the barn. Because of the support of her friends in Cornwall, she had only needed to ‘see’ him sporadically during his tenure in London. Now though, she hugged him warmly, immediately noticing how stern he had become. He was observant; he stopped and pricked up his ears for any passing noise.
They broke into the barn with ease (Rebecca had brought some of her fathers’ tools.) Ben remarked how incredible the building was and he was right. It stood forty-feet high and had wooden beams midway up which showed potential for a second level.
“You think this will be alright?” Rebecca asked him.
“It’ll do. Needs sorting out though, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah. You can maybe roll out a sleeping bag over here,”
“No, I mean like refurbishment. You said it was abandoned?”
“Well sort of. It belongs to a supermarket. But they haven’t been back for it.”
“I bet we could buy it, refurbish it, the village would think it was all the supermarket, and then leave the building shut up tighter than ever with ‘no trespassing’ signs. No one’ll ask any questions.” Ben was getting excitable. “I know a little crew who will do it no questions asked.”
“You seriously think we can forge a job that big? Plus how do you expect us to pay?” Ben chuckled to himself, then replied, “I met a lot of people in London. I did some freelance snooping on petty things; jealous partners, jewellery theft – you know, games we could play in our sleep. But it paid well. Really well. And I even managed to find a few people who have bad blood to settle with Magnus. Believe me, we can afford this.”
She knew he had been getting by with some side-jobs but didn’t know he had managed to pull off the equivalent of an innocent bank heist. Ben had always looked older than his age (now fifteen) – and he had already grown taller than his classmates, so it didn’t surprise her that he had been passing himself off as older than he really was to strangers. He was even able to grow uninterrupted facial hair, which also helped him carry off the illusion of maturity. Rebecca was on board to go along with it and before long, work started on the renovation of the derelict cow shed into a hospitable environment.
Though she would never see the old woman from the bus again in her life, Rebecca imagined riding home again and bumping into her. She gave her a friendly smile of recognition. “Have you seen? They’re doing up the barn.”
“I know.” Rebecca said as it came into view; workmen busied themselves around the stone structure, some going in, some coming out. She wondered if Ben had got his way and the men were reinforcing the wooden roof with lead sheeting underneath. “What are they doing to it?” She asked, struggling to contain herself. “Modernising.” The woman said bitterly. “Though if you ask me, I think someone’s going to live there.” Rebecca, alarmed, shot back, “Oh really? How come?” And hoped the woman hadn’t notice her lose her cool. “Yesterday I saw all these electronics arrive. Even a fridge! Tell me that’s not for a person.” Rebecca ‘hhmed’ and tried to exit the conversation. Ben was currently sleeping rough in the woods somewhere; she hoped he hadn’t been discovered by anyone hiking through, though she knew he was fast on his feet. “I don’t know.” The woman sighed, “Someone living in a barn. Ridiculous.” Luckily, by the next day the builders had completed the renovation (a feat made possible through an extremely generous payment) and they left the building as instructed; with new high-security locks on the door.
So they had a location, hidden in plain sight. The barn’s inside bore little trace of its external appearance. The colossal establishment had been converted into a two-level headquarters for them. It was architecturally sound, with a modern interior all awash with white. The first space was a conventional living quarter – a living room and kitchen. But following on led to what Ben had playfully termed ‘Mission Control.’
The room was huge, with a large circular control desk at its centre, featuring computer panels and some workspace. The back wall was one huge grid of screens which was intended to monitor, well, everything. It was connected to the net, enabling them to see any TV station the world had to offer as well as a network of closed-circuit television, monitoring rooms of the barn and infra-red and satellite cameras tracking the outside surroundings. To the left-hand-side of the room were crash mats, punching bags and dummies – to the right, were the black lockers which would eventually house all the technology, equipment and weapons they needed.
It felt wonderfully secure to be in the barn and Rebecca was glad Ben had a place to stay that was close by.
For approximately a year, Rebecca continued the illusion in her mind that she and Ben were working on the Magnus case while also running a few other local jobs that kept their finances plentiful. She would explain her ability to get to the barn by being the master of sneaking out, or saying she was staying at Valencia’s house.
As her second year in Matlock began however, Rebecca was tiring of her secret world and was retreating to it less frequently.
Worry overcame her one day when she temporarily forgot the sound of Ben’s voice and so she decided that the best way of keeping her focused on the imaginary world was to add another person from reality into it. Valencia was to be the perfect candidate to join them. She never intended to tell her directly about her private mental retreat, but hated keeping it a secret from her best friend. Still, she knew that sharing such a quirky trait would gain her nothing more than sympathy and in the long run, distrust. So, as with Ben, she imagined a duplicate of Valencia who had followed her to the barn one day and saw her go in. Ben, who had seen Mission Control alert him about two incomings, had appeared at the door, armed with a handgun to protect his sister. Valencia, terrified, popped out of hiding. Alarmed, her face frowned in disbelief and she involuntarily stepped forward as she recognised Ben.
“Ben! Is that you? It can’t be…” She spoke slightly, as the pieces of the puzzle dropped into place.
Ben looked to Rebecca for support, wanting to know what his next move should be. The truth was, with the cat out of the bag, there was no hiding it. She gestured towards Valencia and nodded slightly, communicating her approval.
“Hi, Valencia.” Ben said.
“Ben. What the hell? What the hell?!” Her confusion broke into a hug with Ben, who looked a little awkward and surprised.
“Come in. We’ll explain everything.” With that development, Rebecca took charge for the first time. Because it was her friend and her brother, she felt a sense of leadership that seniority didn’t deliver. She had brought these people together after all.
Rebecca explained the whole Magnus case to Valencia, Ben’s need to hide and their shady detective agency. Valencia visibly went through every emotion during the session and it ended with Rebecca and Ben reiterating how important it was that she kept silent.
“Of course I will. You know me.” Was her reply. It was true; Rebecca did know her. She knew her enough to incorporate her into her second life.
It was Saturday night which meant Rebecca and Valencia were hard at work fattening themselves up. It had sort of evolved into a tradition soon after Rebecca moved back and the pair started seeing each other more, that every weekend they would go to one of their houses and start devouring a respectable feast.
Valencia had a spoon in one hand and a cheesecake box in the other. “Have you seen how many calories are in this?” Valencia said, to which Rebecca gently took the packet from her and put it face down on the table. “I don’t want to know.” She replied. Unusually, her mother hadn’t made them a cake for the weekend, so they had mistakenly bought a pre-packaged one.
They carried on eating regardless. It had been a standardly boring week and this chocolate cheesecake was the reward.
“What do you want to watch tonight then?” Rebecca asked and started reeling off the traditions, “Is it Beauty and the Beast, Titanic or Ghost?”
Valencia eyes lit up as she exclaimed, “Beauty and the Beast! I’m up for a happy ending.”
Just then, the girls heard the front door opening before slamming shut. Keys clanked down onto the dresser. But instead of taking off his coat and shoes, Mr Conner instead strode through the hall into the kitchen and did a quick glance around the room.
“Where’s your mother?”
Rebecca could tell that her dad was on edge for some reason, his eyes looked tired and face redder than usual. “Upstairs I think, why?” But he didn’t stay for a response and had already turned away.
“Huh.” Valencia commented. “Is your dad alright?”
“I don’t know.” Rebecca said thoughtfully. “They’ve both been pretty weird this week.” She didn’t reveal she had heard her mother sobbing in the bathroom the previous evening. Though she would tell Valencia practically everything, she drew the line at her parents’ involuntary emotional imbalance.
“Anyway, how’s your week been?” Rebecca said, hoping to change the subject.
“Ugh,” Valencia said disgustedly. “That guy’s been texting me again.”
Rebecca struggled to keep up, but guessed, “Oh, Danny?”
“Yeah,” Valencia said. “He seems to think I’m suddenly interested.”
“Didn’t you kiss him?” Rebecca erred on the side of caution, trying not to sound judgemental.
“Yeah, but,” She replied flippantly. “That wasn’t like an invitation to go out or anything.” It had certainly served as a trigger to keep him keen, however.
Rebecca had to love her friend’s tenacious nature. She didn’t doubt that Valencia genuinely thought she had done nothing unusual. Her antics seemed so surreal compared to how unmemorable Rebecca’s life was. They wouldn’t normally be friends given how differently they acted, but some bonds ran deeper than activities or interests and they had somehow found a middle ground from which to support each other.
“Will you see him again?” Rebecca asked despite already knowing the answer.
“I saw him last night.” Valencia replied sheepishly. Rebecca laughed and Valencia knew it was warranted. “Well! He offered to pay for a meal, I thought I’d give him a chance.”
“Oh, it’d be rude not to.” Rebecca teased.
“And what about you?” Valencia pushed, flicking her long auburn hair out of her face, “I don’t believe you’re permanently playing the ice princess.”
“What do you mean?” Rebecca stalled, knowing exactly what she meant.
“There’s a couple hundred boys in your year! Not to mention the next year up. How can you not be interested in any of them?” Her friend’s startlingly green eyes burnt into her like a hypnotist’s.
“I’m just not,” Rebecca managed. It was hard to be enticed by people who had previously ridiculed you for having a missing sibling.
As though she knew what she was thinking, Valencia said, “I know, I know. You don’t like the boys in your year. What about new people? That don’t know about-” She hesitated, not sure how to address it. “-What happened.” She said, choosing her words carefully.
Rebecca’s mind was instantly pulled into remembering the blonde boy at school, despite still not having a name to go with his face.
“Well?” Valencia pushed.
“Well,” Rebecca hesitantly began, “It’s really weird but I’ve just noticed this boy,”
“Ah ha-ha!” Valencia clapped in jubilation. “I knew there was a boy!”
“How?” Rebecca replied suspiciously.
“You do that thing where you try pretending everything’s normal but you get all shifty. It was a dead giveaway.”
“I do?”
“Yeah, you kind of drift too,” She said waving her hand vaguely, “Like you’re not quite with us.”
“Oh,” Rebecca said, worried about anyone else clocking onto her apparent giveaway tell.
“So, who is he?” Valencia asked.
That question wasn’t an ideal starting point given that she didn’t really know herself.
“I’m not sure,” She replied tentatively.
“Becky.” Valencia said doubtfully.
“I’m serious!” Rebecca admitted. “He’s new, at least I think he is. Maybe I’ve just never noticed him before, only-”
“-Only he’s hot and you don’t know how you missed him before?” Valencia said smugly.
“No,” Rebecca persisted and Valencia nodded with her eyebrows raised in disbelief.
“What’s he like?” Valencia delved, hoping for something to go on. Rebecca knew there was something annoyingly perfect about him and worst was he wasn’t arrogant about it. The whole thing made him seem better than everyone else.
“He’s alright.” She replied carefully.
They heard a door slam and Rebecca reasoned it to be her parents’ bedroom.
“Are they alright?” Valencia asked delicately.
“I think so,” Rebecca claimed but couldn’t be sure herself.
Not content with just one film, they had ended up watching Ghost after Beauty and the Beast, though Valencia hadn’t managed to stay awake for all of it. Rebecca jumped when she heard something smash against the ceiling, of her parents’ room above. She shook Valencia awake.
“What?” Valencia asked sleepily.
“I don’t know,” Rebecca yawned, noticing the clock was now pointed perilously close to 01:00am.
“I just heard something upstairs…”
“You want to go and find out what?” Valencia offered, sliding off her seat and standing up.