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For Janice, with love.
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Contents
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Also by Cathy MacPhail
Imprint
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CHAPTER ONE
POW! POW!
PZAM! BANG!
1,800 points! MIGHTY MAX IS NOW THE CHAMPION!
DO YOU WISH TO CONTINUE OR SURRENDER?
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Surrender? The word wasn’t in her vocabulary. She punched the machine to continue.
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SPLAT! KERPOW! PZAM!
BANG! BANG! BANG! YOU ARE NOW DEAD!
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The 1,800 points disappeared from the screen. She was champion no more. Mighty Zola had won.
‘Cheat!’ she shouted at the musclebound figure, standing hands on hips, jeering at her from the screen. She was suddenly angry at him. Angry at the world.
‘Cheat!’ she said again, louder this time. Others in the arcade stopped playing their machines to look up at her. Let them look, she thought. She’d give them something to see. She banged the screen with her fist. Lights began flashing all around the edges. She’d like to wipe that superior grin right off Mighty Zola’s face. Smash it off! She lifted her rucksack and threw it at him.
‘Cheat!’ she screamed.
‘What’s going on down there?’ A sudden yell came from the back of the arcade. Mr Simms, Simmy, leaned out of his booth. His eyes flashed when he caught sight of her. ‘You!’ He began to try to pull his great bulk from the tiny booth.
‘I know you, Maxine Moody! If you’ve broken that machine, I’ll have the police on you!’ His great belly wobbled and jiggled as he struggled to free himself. Maxine stuck out her tongue at him. He trembled with anger. ‘I’m coming!’ he warned her.
‘Christmas will be here sooner,’ she shouted back, then she whooped with delight and raced from the arcade.
‘I’m phoning the police!’ His shout followed her onto the street. He wouldn’t phone the police, though. Not Simmy. He’d be the one in trouble because she was there in the first place. She was only thirteen. Underage. She should be at school. Simmy knew that. What did he care? Her money was as good as anybody else’s. The Mighty Zola was her best game. She was better than anybody at it. Highest Points Champion, except when Zola himself cheated and beat her. She skipped along the street, her good mood back defiantly. No wonder she was good. She’d had plenty of practice. She spent a lot of time at Simmy’s arcade. Had done since ...
She pushed the thought from her mind. She wouldn’t think about that now. It was too nice today.
Elated, she whirled about in the street, flinging her rucksack around her. It caught someone full in the stomach. They grabbed her bag and almost pulled her off her feet.
‘Hey!’ she shouted, still dizzy. ‘What do you think –’
A face glared back at her. She knew him. Cam. In her school. Two years above her. A swot. A clever clogs. His father owned one of the local Chinese restaurants. She’d never seen Cam smiling once.
Well, she could glare as good as he could any day.
‘You got a problem?’ she asked.
‘You missed school again,’ he said stiffly.
‘So clever of you to notice. No wonder you’re top of the class.’
‘You’re a very stupid little girl.’
‘Little girl! I’m thirteen!’
‘With the brain of a five-year-old. Amazing.’ Was he trying to be witty? She’d show him.
‘At least I’ve got a brain.’ Which was just about the stupidest thing she could say. Cam was on the school quiz team, and they always won the championship hands down because of him. She suddenly realised she couldn’t stand him. She hardly knew him, but she couldn’t stand him.
‘Why do you do this?’ he went on. ‘Haven’t your parents suffered enough?’
Now at least she had a reason to hate him. It was all she needed.
‘Mr Perfect!’ she yelled at him. ‘Don’t you ever do anything wrong?’ She yanked her rucksack from him. ‘You don’t know anything!’ And she began running away from him.
No one understood. No one ever had. No one cared. Not her parents. Not anyone.
Hadn’t THEY suffered enough?
Well, hadn’t she?
Ten months now Derek had been gone. Her big brother. He’d been the same age as she was now when, on a day like any other, he’d gone off to school and just never came back. Missing. Like so many others. Months of waiting and praying and doing everything possible to find him had resulted in nothing. Not a trace. Mum and Dad had even gone on national television to appeal for his return. He’d been getting into trouble at school, playing truant, fighting. Mum and Dad were always on his back about something, and that morning there had been another stupid quarrel. Maxine couldn’t even remember what it had been about. But if he would just come back, everything would be all right, they assured him. All they wanted was his safe return.
But he didn’t come back.
And as the months dragged on, hopes for his return began to fade. Sightings of him at bus stops, in parks and railway stations all led nowhere. Derek had disappeared into thin air.
Yet her parents never gave up hope. Never stopped trying. Derek became their whole life, all they thought about.
And that was when Maxine realised that her parents hadn’t any room in their thoughts, in their hearts ... for her. Everything was Derek. When news of him came from London or Birmingham or Cornwall, she was packed off to her gran’s or some neighbours while her parents followed up every sighting. Their holidays were spent tracing every clue which might lead them to their son, while Maxine was deposited with whoever could be bothered having her. It had taken her a long time, but the truth finally dawned on her.
They just didn’t care about her.
Sometimes she would catch her mum looking at her strangely. It didn’t take her long to figure out what that look was.
Her mother was thinking, Why couldn’t it have been you?
Hadn’t her parents suffered enough?
They at least had each other. She had nobody.
There were times she almost hated Derek. He was only a vague figure to her now. Sandy hair hanging over his forehead, a mischievous grin – that was as much as she could picture of him. And yet she hated him.
Sometimes she wished that he had just died.
Oh! She hadn’t meant to think that. It was a sin! Yet it seemed to come to her mind so often these days.
She realised she was close to St Jude’s, their local church. She would go there and pray. It was the only place she ever found any comfort.
They’d be expecting her home. Well, let them wait. She could use popping into the church as her excuse. They
couldn’t fault her for that.
St Jude’s it was. She looked up and down the street. Busy with shoppers, people coming and going. Not one of them looking her way, and yet ... She stood still for a moment.
Why did she always have the feeling someone was watching her?
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CHAPTER TWO
The church was cool and quiet. The traffic passing outside could have been a million miles away.
Maxine lit a candle and pressed it into place. She looked up at the statue standing above her. St Anthony. He was supposed to find lost things, but she had been praying to him since her brother disappeared and he hadn’t found Derek.
His look seemed to be accusing her. Maybe she hadn’t prayed hard enough. Maybe he knew ... knew she didn’t want Derek back? That she wanted the memory of him out of her life for ever. Gone.
Oh no! Why did she think terrible things like that? She came here to ask for forgiveness and here she was, sinning again.
‘Hello, Maxine. Can I help you?’
Maxine turned round guiltily as if she’d been caught with her hand in the poor box. Father Matthew stood in front of her. Young, red-haired and freckled, he always seemed to Maxine to have a permanent grin on his face. He was smiling now. ‘Did you want anything?’
Silly question, she thought. What did he think she was here for? The weekly shopping?
‘I was just going.’
She stood up. Father Matthew didn’t move. Maxine felt as if he was barring her way. ‘You come in here quite often ... during the week.’
Meaning, of course, she wasn’t here on Sunday when she was supposed to be. Maxine always assured her mum and dad that she was simply going to a later mass, then spent her Sunday morning with the Mighty Zola.
Did Father Matthew know that? She had a feeling that he knew something.
‘Have to go.’ She began pushing past him. ‘Mum worries if I’m late.’
Surely even he wouldn’t be so thick as not to understand that. He actually blushed and stepped aside. ‘Of course. Sorry.’
Her shoes clattered as she hurried up the tiled floor of the church. As she reached the door she turned to say goodbye to him. There he was, framed against the stained-glass window, his red hair glowing in the late afternoon sun. He looked almost like a saint himself.
Except for his eyes. They were watching her strangely. Just as her parents sometimes did. Was he trying to understand her too? Or could he see through her, see her for what she was? A sinner.
Her father was waiting for her in the hallway when she returned home. ‘Where have you been?’ he asked grimly.
She put on her most saintly expression. ‘I’ve been to church.’
A look of hurt passed over his face. ‘You little liar,’ he said through his teeth.
That hurt. She shouted back, ‘It’s true, actually. Ask Father Matthew.’
‘You went there then ... after school?’
As he spoke he was pushing open the living-room door.
‘Yes, I ...’ Uh-oh. The first face she saw, even before her mother’s tear-stained one, was that of Miss Ross, her class teacher.
They knew.
Miss Ross stood up. They called her Smiler at school. She always looked so happy, with her short, glossy hair that shimmered whenever she laughed. However, she wasn’t laughing now. She was growling. Growling at Maxine.
‘Did you really think you could get away with it, Maxine?’ she asked. Her voice was cold. It wasn’t usually like that. Usually Maxine could talk to Miss Ross. She understood how she felt. Tried to, anyway. ‘You promised me you’d come to school every day.’
Her mother’s eyes filled with tears. ‘You promised me too!’
She didn’t want to hurt her mum. She wanted, right at that moment, to run to her. In a second she might have done it.
‘Do you know what we thought when you didn’t come home?’ Her father’s voice was angry. ‘Do you know what your mother thought?’
Her mother crumpled into a chair, her face in her hands.
‘Now you see what you’ve done!’ Her dad sat down beside Mum, arms around her, comforting her.
Her mum looked up at her, drawing back a sob. ‘It was just like Derek. Can’t you see that, Maxine? You went to school, or so we thought, and then we found out you didn’t. Just like ... just like ...’
Just like Derek. Why did everything always have to come back to Derek? He was never out of the conversation for long, nor out of anyone’s thoughts. No matter what she did to get their attention, it always came back to Derek.
She might as well not exist.
‘Where were you?’ her dad demanded.
Maxine only shrugged.
‘This has got to stop!’
She stared at him defiantly. She shouldn’t. She knew that. There was a time when she wouldn’t have dared. Would never have wanted to. But what did it matter now? What did it matter what she did? They didn’t love her. They loved Derek. Always would.
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CHAPTER THREE
‘Are you all right?’ Miss Ross said.
Maxine had been sent to her room in disgrace as usual. Miss Ross had knocked gently at her door and found Maxine sitting straight-backed on the window seat, staring outside.
What had she expected to find? Maxine with her face down on the bed, in floods of tears? Not Maxine Moody! She didn’t answer and Miss Ross took her silence as an accusation. ‘I didn’t betray you,’ she went on in a rush. ‘I had to tell your parents you weren’t at school. They worry about you.’
Maxine shrugged. ‘I don’t care.’
Miss Ross sat beside her on the window seat. ‘You’re not making things any better behaving like this. You’re hurting them. You’re hurting yourself.’
Maxine shrugged again.
‘They’re afraid the same thing might happen to you.’
Sometimes she could confide in Miss Ross. Tell her little things. Miss Ross had never known Derek. She’d come to the school only after he disappeared, so she wasn’t one of the teachers who said that Maxine wasn’t the clever pupil her brother was, or that she was almost as much trouble as he had been at the end. Miss Ross only knew Maxine, and seemed to like her. ‘They keep hoping he’ll come back,’ Maxine said.
‘That’s only natural. Maybe he will.’
The thought appalled Maxine. Derek back? She couldn’t picture him any longer. His face was a blur, though photographs of him were dotted everywhere about the house.
But Derek back? She knew she didn’t want that. She wanted him wiped out of her life, all their lives, for ever. The way you erase a file on a computer or a tape on a video machine. If only getting rid of Derek was as easy as that.
She never wanted him back.
If he came back ... there would be no room for her at all. She would be shoved out, completely forgotten. No. Derek couldn’t come back. Why couldn’t he just be dead?
She gasped as she thought it, and Miss Ross glanced at her.
‘What’s wrong, Maxine?’ She waited for an answer. She always wanted Maxine to tell her more, to confide in her. ‘Confession is good for the soul,’ she would say, like Father Matthew. But how could she tell her what she’d been thinking? How could she tell anyone that? She was a monster.
Suddenly she wanted Miss Ross away. She wanted to be alone so she could cry or scream, do whatever she wanted.
Miss Ross sensed her withdrawal and stood up to go. ‘I’m on your side, Maxine. Please remember that. I might have to tell your parents when you don’t come to school, but I am your friend. Please believe that.’
Maxine smiled. Her friend. Over the last year, Maxine had lost all her friends. Their sympathy had turned to annoyance at her behaviour. She was glad of Miss Ross. Since she’d come to the school,
she had been the only one to try to understand. Maxine couldn’t risk losing her. ‘Thank you, Miss Ross. I am grateful. Honest.’
Miss Ross touched her hair gently. ‘I’m always here for you to talk to.’
‘I’ll try harder,’ Maxine promised.
Over the next few weeks, she did try. She didn’t miss a day at school. All the teachers had instructions anyway to tell on her if she did. She tried not to let it bother her when her parents shut the door on her to share their own private grief. She tried to be a model daughter. And did they appreciate it? Not likely. Her mother didn’t seem to care, and her father was only watching and waiting for her to step out of line again.
And school was no fun anyway. Sweeney was up to his old tricks – the most vicious boy Maxine had ever come across. Everyone in the school was either afraid of him or sensible enough to be wary of him. It was wise to keep out of Sweeney’s line of vision, or else he might just notice you and make your life hell.
For the moment Sweeney’s attention was taken up with a boy in Maxine’s class, Paul Wilson. He had been chosen months ago as the awful Sweeney’s new victim.
Once it had been Derek. When Derek first went to the high school, he had been so looking forward to it. Then Sweeney had come into his life and everything had changed. Sweeney with his meanness and his cruelty. Maxine could remember that time still, and the pain it caused. Derek hurrying home with disgusting spit all over his face and hair. Derek with dog’s dirt emptied into his rucksack and all his school books covered in it. Derek bruised and bleeding after being chased and caught by Sweeney and his cronies. It seemed Mum and Dad spent half their lives in the headmaster’s office complaining. And did it do them any good? Not likely. Sweeney always got off lightly. ‘A poor boy, from a deprived background. We have to make allowances,’ the headmaster would say. And Sweeney would be suspended for a few days, but then he would be back, back with a vengeance, and life for Derek grew even worse. The real problem was that Sweeney’s family were as bad as he was. Never out of trouble, they thought being a ‘man’ meant hurting people and humiliating them and making them suffer.
‘Fight back!’ her dad would tell Derek. But how do you fight back against someone who always has at least six to back him up? Sweeney didn’t fight fair. He liked his victims to be held down while he pummelled them. But eventually Derek had fought back. Only he hadn’t fought Sweeney. Instead, he fought just about everyone else in the school. And that was when he started getting into trouble.
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