by Mary Hooper
‘What could you do?’
‘Look, the so-called Sexylegs appeared when you were trying to make up your mind whether to go down there or not, didn’t she? She’s there and she’s so obviously up for it.’
I nodded slowly.
‘Then, by mistake, she calls you a name that he calls you.’
‘Yeah.’
‘And then it turns out he knows something that you’ve only told her.’ Beaky looked at me. ‘You can guess what I think, can’t you?’
A shiver ran through me. ‘I think so.’
‘He’s getting into that office somehow and using two different computers to pretend he’s two different people.’
‘But actually … ’
‘But actually Zed and Sexylegs are the same person. He’s both of them!’
I gasped, feeling cold, shivering. What had I got myself into?
‘That’s it,’ Beaky went on. ‘Let’s face it – Sexylegs is sexy. She’s got a sexy job and a sexy name and she’s the sort of girl that you think could easily take your boyfriend. So how much of a coincidence was it that she appeared, out of the blue, just when you were wondering whether to go down and meet him or not?’
‘So … what … what shall I do now?’ I asked shakily.
‘Drop him straight away, of course,’ Beaky said.
I stared at her.
‘Look, put it down to experience. You’ve met someone on the Internet, he’s turned out to be a weirdo and you’ve finished it. The end.’
I nodded. ‘I could block his emails – change my own email address.’
‘Do that.’
I was amazed at how definite, positive, Beaky was. I’d thought her a sap, but she wasn’t at all. ‘But what about my ring?’
‘That’s it – you’ve lost it,’ she shrugged. ‘It’s sad but, well, it could have dropped off anywhere.’
I hesitated. ‘There’s something else, though,’ I said, feeling myself go red. ‘I had this strange, horrible dream about him.’
She looked at me curiously.
‘It was really weird, and more than a dream. It was like something I’d remembered. And I had another one when I was awake – like a flashback.’
‘And what happened in the dream?’
‘It was horrible.’ I shuddered. ‘He – Zed – had no clothes on. Nor did I.’
Beaky pulled a face.
‘I was lying on the sand dunes and I was sort of unconscious, but I could open my eyes if I tried really hard. And he was just looming over me, moving my arms and legs about and taking photos of me everywhere. It was just so real,’ I added in a whisper.
‘Do you think it really happened, then?’ Beaky asked in a low voice.
I shook my head slowly. ‘I don’t know. I fell asleep in the sun when I was with him, you see. I was asleep for nearly three hours.’
She looked at me in astonishment. ‘Three hours!’
And then I remembered. ‘There’s something else,’ I said, and hesitated. ‘Something tiny, but … when I got back and got undressed, I noticed my sun-top was on back to front. And I was sure I’d put it on the right way that morning. So maybe … maybe … ’
‘Maybe he’d undressed you.’ Beaky looked at me, concerned. ‘Did anything else happen? In the dream or really?’
I shook my head. ‘Not a thing. He didn’t even try and kiss me when I was down there.’
I looked at her and knew what she was thinking, and my eyes suddenly brimmed with tears of fright. ‘You think it’s true, you think that what I dreamed, really happened, don’t you?’
She didn’t reply. I found a tissue and blew my nose. ‘So, so what d’you think I should do?’
She was silent for a while, then she said, ‘Look, we finish school on Wednesday. Leave it until then, and I’ll come round Thursday morning and we’ll try and ring him at that office – find out if he really and truly works there. We should be able to find that out, at least. I’ll ring if you don’t want to do it yourself.’
I nodded. ‘OK.’
‘And then we’ll take it from there, right?’
‘Right,’ I said.
Section 11
Resume at 5.00pm after check of recording equipment
As if there weren’t enough odd things happening, on Thursday morning I had another shock. There was a knock on the door downstairs and whoever it was came in and said hello to Mum in the shop.
I heard Mum’s rather surprised ‘Hello! How are you? Haven’t seen you around for a while,’ and heard a murmured reply. Then Mum said, ‘Yes. Go straight up. I think she’s in her room.’
There was the sound of someone climbing the stairs, and when I went to look, thinking it was Beaky, I had the surprise of my life. It wasn’t her: it was Bethany.
I just gawped at her for a moment, and then I stepped across into the kitchen and she followed. I was desperately trying to think why she’d come. Had I said anything particularly horrible to either of them recently? Was she going to tell me to leave them alone? Or maybe, let’s look on the bright side, they were having another party and I was going to be invited.
‘Guess you’re surprised to see me,’ Bethany said. She brushed back her hair (same as Lou’s), with a hand which was wearing a friendship bracelet (same as Lou’s).
I nodded. Surprised? I was astounded.
‘Well, I’m surprised to be here,’ she said. ‘Only … only I’ve been feeling really bad about what’s gone on between us three girls, and I want to try and put it right again.’
‘Oh,’ I said, trying to take this in.
‘I just feel that to carry on not talking to each other … well, it’s so childish, isn’t it? We ought to be able to be friends. After all, we’ve known each other for years.’
I just didn’t know what to say. All the Lou and Bethany business had been pushed right to the back of my mind over the last week or so. I’d almost forgotten about it, I had other things on my mind. But still, now that she’d actually come round to see me, well, it was brilliant that she wanted to be friends again. So why did I feel so woolly about it?
‘Where’s Lou?’ I asked suddenly.
She shrugged. ‘Still in bed, I guess.’
‘Does she know you’ve come round?’
‘Don’t think so. Well, no … ’
‘Because, because I don’t really know if it will work again,’ I said. ‘Especially if Lou knows nothing about it. What’s she going to say?’
Bethany shrugged again, looking awkward.
‘I mean, threesomes don’t really work, do they? When we were going round together before, I just kept getting left out. And that would happen again.’
‘It doesn’t have to,’ she said, and it was then that I thought to myself that there was something she wasn’t telling me. Had she fallen out with Lou?
‘Have you two had a row?’ I asked.
She opened her eyes very wide. ‘’Course not! Honestly, I just wanted to make things better between us all. I thought about all the time we’ve got before we go back to school, and realised that you probably wouldn’t have anyone to go round with and might want to do something.’
‘You felt sorry for me, did you?’
‘No! It wasn’t that.’
‘Because I actually do have other friends and other things going on in my life,’ I said, and then I hesitated, thinking. Once the Zed business was over and done with, would I still want to see Beaky? Was she really my friend? Wouldn’t it be better to be going round with Bethany and Lou, almost back to normal again?
But before I could decide or say anything one way or the other, there was another bang on the door down below and I heard Mum’s voice again, telling someone to go up. Steps sounded on the stairs, and a moment later Beaky appeared. Two friends round to see me in one morning! Suddenly I was Miss Popularity.
Both girls said hello to each other warily, and I thought to myself that it was probably the first time Bethany had spoken properly to Beaky, rather than just making bird noises
at her.
No one knew what to do after that – we all just looked at each other. I guess I could have offered to get them a drink or something, or told everyone to sit down, but, well, for some reason I just didn’t. It was all too awkward.
After a moment Bethany said, ‘Oh well. I’d better go. See you sometime in the holidays, then, Amy?’
‘I expect so,’ I said. ‘See you.’
When she’d gone there was another awkward silence and then Beaky turned to me to say something. I hoped to myself that she wasn’t going to ask anything about Bethany, because I wouldn’t have known what to say, but instead she said, ‘D’you want to try and ring him, then? Find out what’s going on.’
I nodded and shivered as something like an electric shock suddenly ran through me. Into my mind flashed the scene of me on my back with the hazy sun above and the parched dunes underneath. I clenched and unclenched my hand and could almost feel the sand, hot and dry, running through my fingers. To one side I could see my pile of clothes, to the other there was a clump of green, stringy grass with one small blue flower growing on one of the stalks.
‘Still … still … ’ I heard Zed whisper throatily. ‘Lie still, Babes. Lovely … you look lovely … ’
And then the scene went away and Beaky was holding my wrist and shaking it gently. ‘Are you OK?’
I blinked several times. ‘Yeah. Sure.’
‘You went off into a world of your own then. Was it one of those dream-things?’
‘I heard him speaking,’ I said. ‘It was like I could actually hear him.’ I stared at her, feeling panicky. ‘D’you think I’m going mad?’
‘’Course not,’ she said. ‘I expect it’s just some sort of daydream.’
‘It feels like more than that,’ I said. ‘When it comes over me it feels like, like something that I’d forgotten and suddenly remembered again.’
She looked at me, the birdy head-on-one-side look. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ she said. ‘I’ve never heard of anything like that before.’ She hesitated. ‘Look, d’you want to ring him or d’you just want to forget all about it? If you do, you could block his messages and change your email address. You could get him out of your life completely.’
I didn’t even have to think about it. ‘No,’ I said. ‘If I do that then I might have these funny dream-things for the rest of my life. I need to know what went on. If he’s … if he’s done anything to me I want to know about it.’
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Let’s ring, then.’
I got the cordless phone and we took it into my bedroom and closed the door. Mum hardly ever came upstairs when the shop was open, but this was just in case. I gave Beaky the number of Burlington Office Supplies and while she dialled it I moved as close to her as I could, so I could hear everything.
‘Oh hello,’ she said, when the girl had gone through her ‘Burlington-Office-Supplies-all-your-needs’ bit. ‘I wonder if you can help me. I want to get in touch with a guy called Adam. I understand he works there.’
‘That’s funny,’ I heard the girl say. ‘Someone else rang last week asking the same thing. I told her the same as I’m telling you – we haven’t got a salesman called Adam.’
‘Look, I know he works there,’ Beaky said determinedly. ‘He told me that you had a bit of a laugh in the office pretending he didn’t.’
The girl gave a short laugh. ‘I don’t think so. We’re a bit too busy for that sort of thing.’
‘Well, can I just describe him,’ Beaky said, and I looked at her admiringly – I hadn’t thought of saying that. She glanced at the photo of him that was still next to my bed. ‘He’s not very tall,’ she said, ‘he’s got very short blond hair, blue eyes … ’ I pointed to my own teeth and pulled a face ‘ … and he hasn’t got very good teeth. He’s got like a Dracula tooth in the front,’ she added.
I heard the girl laugh. ‘You’ve just described our cleaner!’ she said in an amused voice.
‘What?’ Beaky said, as I gasped. She and I made frantic eyes at each other. ‘Is his name Adam?’
‘Hang on,’ the girl said. ‘He doesn’t come in until after six so I’ve only seen him a couple of times.’ There was a pause and she must have asked someone else because she came back and said, ‘Yes, that’s him. Adam. He’s been working for us about three months now.’
Beaky and I stared at each other.
‘Shall I leave him a message?’ the girl asked.
‘No. No, it’s OK,’ Beaky said. ‘I’ll … er … get in touch with him myself.’
She put the phone down and we looked at each other, shocked.
‘The cleaner!’ I said.
‘God!’ Beaky’s face must have mirrored my own. ‘What’s his game, then?’
I shook my head. ‘He’s a liar.’
‘Weird or what.’
‘It’s not so much that he’s just a cleaner,’ I said slowly, ‘but that he made up so many things about that office. He said he was top salesman – a manager, and that his staff really thought a lot of him. He said he was important enough to have the keys.’
‘That’s why he only logs on in the evenings and at weekends!’
‘The cleaner!’
‘Will you tell him that you know?’
I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said, ‘because I want to find out more. I want to find out what he’s up to.’
‘You won’t find that out unless you go down again,’ Beaky said. She hesitated. ‘D’you really want to do that?’
‘No, I don’t!’ I said.
She looked at the photo of Zed and then she said, ‘If you like, I’ll come down there with you.’
‘Would you really?’
She nodded. ‘It would be OK – you’d be all right if we were both there, wouldn’t you?’
I didn’t say anything. If I closed my eyes I could see him in front of me again, touching … straightening … almost licking his lips as he looked down at me.
‘What’s up?’ she said. ‘Are you having another one of those funny turns?’
I shook my head. ‘Those funny turns … ’ I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered. ‘If they turned out to be true, to have really happened, what would I do then?’
‘You’d have to go to the police,’ Beaky said. ‘No question about it. You’d have to turn him in.’
‘But then my mum would find out I’d been down there! And anyway, how would I prove it? How would I prove anything happened?’ And then, just as I said that, I realised how. ‘Wait a sec, when I have these visions or whatever, I’ve seen a birthmark on his back!’
‘What?’
‘A birthmark.’ I indicated where it was on myself. ‘It’s round the side here, across his back and down over his bottom. It’s a deep, purple wine colour. If he really has got one, then there’s no way I could have known about it unless I’d seen him without his shirt on.’
‘So, when we get down there, we’ve got to get him to strip off.’
We pulled faces at each other.
‘We could go swimming,’ I said. ‘Pretend that we’re up for skinny dipping.’
‘And make him strip first. And if he turns out to have a birthmark … ’
‘Then I’ve seen him with nothing on and it’s all true. And if he doesn’t, then that’s OK,’ I said, shrugging. ‘He’s just some saddo who likes to pretend he’s better than he really is.’
‘And what about those dreams you’ve been having?’
I shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’ve got an over-active imagination.’
She nodded. ‘Maybe. When d’you want to go?’
‘Saturday?’ I suggested. ‘The sooner the better. Get it over with.’ She nodded and I added, ‘I’ll get in touch with him tonight.’
Section 12
Begins with text conversation (viii)
Text conversation (viii)
B: Hi, Zed!
Z: Where U been, Babes?! I was getting worried.
B: Oh, got involved in end of term stuff. Really b
usy.
Z: I emailed U a few times.
B: I haven’t looked at my mail box for a couple of days.
Z: Thought U might still be ill from Saturday.
B: Nah.
Z: So UOK?
B: Fine! In fact, I was thinking I might come down and CU again.
Z: Cool. Will U stay the nite?
B: Maybe.
Z: U and me, we’d be GR8 together. U know that, don’t you? And don’t U worry about anything. I’ll look after U.
B: I’m not saying I definitely will stay.
Z: Maybe I’ll persuade U when U get here!
B: Perhaps. Heard from Sexylegs again?
Z: All the time. She was online and chatting just now. Talk about up for it. Bit obvious, if U ask me. A guy likes to do some of the running.
B: Right.
Z: So, UB down on the same train, will you?
B: Yes.
Z: We’ll go up on the dunes again, shall we?
B: If U like.
Z: Did U like it up there on the dunes? It’s R special place.
B: I wouldn’t mind a swim, as well.
Z: Thought U didn’t like swimming in the sea.
B: I’m trying to make myself like it. I’m not good at swimming and someone said it’s easier. The salt water holds U up better.
Z: Shall we go in starkers?
B: Don’t know about that.
Z: Go on. I bet U look fantastic with nothing on.
B: :-o
Z: Will U log on tomorrow?
B: I’ll be out in the evening.
Z: Anywhere nice? Not going on a date RU?
B: No. Just going 2 my auntie’s house with my mum.
Z: Because I wouldn’t want 2 think you were being unfaithful. You’re keeping yourself 4 me, aren’t U?
B: Sure
Z: That’s good. So I’ll CU at eleven-thirty at the station, then.
B: Bye!
Z: Bye, Babes! Can’t wait to CU.
I logged off and began to shake all over. Even just chatting to him on the computer made me feel sick. How was I going to face him on Saturday? How was I going to be nice so he wouldn’t suspect? Suppose he tried to snog me? And then I remembered that he’d said he’d just been talking to Sexylegs – and that Beaky had told me that you could scroll back over any previous conversation on the messenger service.
