Jasmyn

by Alex Bell

  ‘But he was there in the stable,’ I said. ‘He has this beautiful black horse called Kini. You must have seen him.’

  I could believe that my grandfather might have forgotten Luke but it seemed very odd that he would forget such a remarkable horse. Then my grandmother came in carrying a plate piled high with toast. I asked her, but she, too, was quite adamant on the point - there was no stable-hand called Luke and there never had been.

  6

  Mischief-Maker

  My grandparents were very upset about the incident and my grandfather rushed straight down to the stables to check on the horses himself whilst my grandmother called the police. Everyone seemed to assume Luke must have been a thief and that he had simply been caught off guard by my timely return with Ed.

  But I knew that couldn’t be true. It didn’t make sense given our conversation. Luke had addressed me by name. And he had rubbed Ed down and looked after him as he’d said he was going to. If he’d been a horse thief, he would have simply taken Ed. I had handed him over fully tacked up and it would have been painfully easy to just lead him away.

  I had to give a description of Luke to the police and everyone seemed pleased by his unusual height, for that would make him stand out in a crowd and it wasn’t as if it were a feature he could do much to disguise. I also had to describe Kini in case he was a horse Luke had already stolen. But there turned out to be no reported thefts of a horse matching Kini’s description. Besides which, if Luke really had gone to all the trouble of stealing him from someone else, he would have to be an exceptionally incompetent thief to then allow the horse to escape whilst attempting to steal another.

  None of it added up but I didn’t point this out to my grandparents for they were already very upset about it all. My grandfather lost no time in increasing the security in the stable and putting surveillance cameras around the boundary of his land. At the end of my week with them there had been no further sign of Luke, and things had settled down a little by the time I left. As I drove home, I worried about whether I should have told them - or the police - my belief that Luke hadn’t been there to steal the horses at all but that he had been there watching me - just as Jaxon Thorpe had been watching me at home. Of course, Jaxon had denied being the man standing in the rain outside my house that night and now the thought occurred to me that perhaps it had been Luke beneath that hood . . . And now that my thoughts returned to Jaxon, I remembered one of the names he had thrown at me in my bedroom - Lukas - and the similarity seemed too big a coincidence to ignore. Surely they must know each other, they had both known Liam and now they were both watching me. And I couldn’t even begin to imagine why.

  I hesitated to phone the police because it all sounded so hazy and melodramatic and I was worried that they might believe it was all in my head - that I was making too much of a big deal over a couple of chance meetings with strangers. During the drive home I managed to convince myself to leave things as they were for now. I was only stopping at the house to pack anyway and then I was going to an airport hotel ready for my flight to California the next morning. I had arranged for a new security system to be fitted in a couple of days and my mother had agreed to come round to oversee it.

  But everything changed when I arrived home. Its appearance was deceptive from the outside for there were no broken windows and the door was not open. But it was unlocked and that was the first thing that alerted me to the fact that something was wrong. And as soon as I walked in, dragging my case behind me, I saw that somebody had ransacked my house from top to bottom.

  Every drawer, cupboard, desk and bookcase had been emptied, the contents strewn about the floor. The mattress had been cut open and the stuffing pulled out. The same thing had happened to the couch and the armchairs in the living room. Every single carpet had been ripped out, rolled up and shoved into a corner; the chimney had been unblocked and the desk in Liam’s study had been completely taken apart, piece by piece.

  At first I simply couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I picked my way through the wreckage, numbly checking every room. The sense of violation I had felt at the idea of Jaxon sneaking into my house to do something to my wedding photos had been nothing compared to this. Finally I went outside and called my mother and when she arrived I burst into tears, feeling desperately sorry for myself.

  ‘I just wish that something good would happen!’ I sobbed. Recently it seemed to have been one relentless blow after another and I didn’t think I could face any more of it. My mother called the police and, this time, I told them everything I knew about Jaxon Thorpe and Luke and my sense of being watched, no longer caring if I sounded paranoid or hysterical.

  I spent the rest of the day with my mother, wearily making a start on the huge mess in the house. We spent hours on it but still weren’t even halfway through by the end of the day. As far as I could tell, nothing had been stolen. Certainly nothing valuable had been taken. We found all the jewellery Liam had given me scattered about in the bedroom. The plasma TV was still there, as was the CD player and the computer and my laptop and all the other expensive things that would usually go in a robbery.

  The police said either the perpetrator had been looking for something or they had simply been trying to make mischief. As it seemed highly unlikely that either Liam or I had ever owned anything that warranted that sort of desperate searching, the police said it was probably the latter explanation. Someone had picked my house at random. I had just been unlucky. None of the neighbours had seen or heard anything, so the vandalism must have been carried out during the day when everyone was at work.

  The police asked if I could cancel or postpone my trip to California until all of this was sorted out but I wailed pathetically into my tissue that I couldn’t get a refund on the plane ticket; that my husband was dead; that all I wanted to do was go to America and see my friend. I must have been a dreadful sight but I didn’t care how I looked at that moment and the embarrassed policemen said hurriedly that if the trip was that important to me then it was best I should go. After all, nothing had been taken, there were no obvious leads to follow and my new security system was to be put in next week. They were clearly profoundly relieved to get away and leave me to the care of my mother, with promises to be in contact if they should find whoever was responsible.

  I emptied the suitcase I’d taken to my grandparents and then filled it with clean clothes, which I seized at random from the floor. I hated the thought that someone I didn’t know had touched them and, if I’d had the money, I would have thrown them away and bought new ones. Anyone could have broken into my house but, somehow, I couldn’t help thinking that it must have been Jaxon. After all, I was almost sure he was responsible for the doctored wedding photos. Perhaps he’d just wanted to get his own back for the stone through his car window.

  I spent the night at my parents’ house and my father drove me to the airport the next morning.

  ‘I know it’s hard, Jaz,’ he said when he dropped me off, ‘but just try to enjoy yourself, okay? And by the time you get back your house will be as good as new.’

  ‘Don’t let Mum spend too much money,’ I said.

  The day before, my mother had hinted at finding some new furniture for me. I knew it was hard on her, seeing me go through all this. I knew that she wanted to put everything right and so was likely to go out and spend more money than she should. But my father dismissed my concern with a wave of his hand. ‘You’d better go,’ he said with a smile.

  I hugged him, waved as he drove away and then went into the airport. It didn’t occur to me until then that I had never travelled abroad on my own before. Not once. There had been holidays with my parents and friends and then there had been holidays with Liam. I checked in and then went through to departures where I hesitated. I was hungry. But when my eyes fell on Garfunkel’s I cringed at the thought of going inside. Whenever Liam and I had been at the airport about to go on holiday we had always started with a fried breakfast at Garfunkel’s. The thought made me lose my ap
petite, so I bought a coffee to drink instead whilst I waited for my gate number to appear on the screens.

  I was being stared at. It was not my hair that was the problem so much as my white skin and pale eyes. People found them creepy, especially children who didn’t know what albinism was. My appearance had always set me apart from everyone else. I held my violin closer - feeling a little less lonely because it was there - its presence warm and familiar like an old friend. It hadn’t occurred to me not to bring it. Leaving it at home would have been like leaving a child behind. I was only glad that it had been with me at my grandparents’ when the house had been broken into for I would have been beside myself if something had happened to it. It was precious to me and there could be no replacing it.

  As I hunched self-consciously over the paper cup of coffee, one arm draped round the violin case, I wondered if I should get my hair cut so it wouldn’t be quite so obvious. I had only kept it long because Liam liked it that way. When we lay in bed at night he would run his fingers through it, splaying it out on the pillow in the silver moonlight as he told me how beautiful I was. I could always believe it when Liam said it. When my mother had said it, or my father, in a desperate attempt to make me feel less like an alienated freak, I would cringe at words that seemed to bite mockingly into me.

  With Liam, not only did he find me attractive himself, but it simply didn’t seem to occur to him that other people might not see me that way - that they might find my white skin ghostly and my blue eyes cold. When he touched me, when his hands ran over my body, I found that I didn’t cringe within my own skin any more. I loved my white hair because he did. To Liam my appearance made me special, made me unique, made me beautiful in a way that other women could never be.

  I should have known as I lay there warm and safe in his arms that it was all too good to be true. With Liam gone I found it almost impossible to see myself that way any more. It was like a dream I could only barely remember. Now I was just a freak to be pointed at.

  A great wave of aching longing rose up in me once again and this time I had to fight hard to thrust it back down. The bustling airport around me was filled with families and couples about to go on holiday. It seemed that I was the only person in the whole building who was there on my own. Liam should be here with me . . . we should be sitting together in Garfunkel’s having a fried breakfast as we always did, talking, laughing . . . I should not be here alone preparing to go and visit Laura by myself, leaving his unused plane ticket tucked away in an envelope on the mantelpiece at home. And once again I was swept with this desperate yearning for things to be other than the way they were.

  The flight seemed to drag on so much longer without anyone to talk to. I couldn’t even sleep for I was used to leaning my head against Liam’s shoulder when I got tired on planes. On my own, the hours crawled by excruciatingly, torturously slowly.

  After the eleven-hour flight I was glad to be off the plane, stretching my legs and breathing normal air. I collected my luggage and then went through to arrivals where Laura was waiting for me. We were complete opposites physically. Laura had gorgeous chocolate-coloured skin in contrast to my own ghostly white complexion. Her eyes were a warm brown where mine were a cold blue. And she was so petite that the top of her head only just came up to my chin when she hugged me.

  ‘Sweetie, I’m so glad you came,’ she said, squeezing me tight.

  To my relief she didn’t say anything about my being alone. She didn’t ask me how I was or whether I was coping. She didn’t say she was sorry about Liam or any of the other things people usually said to me. It wasn’t their fault. Those were the things you said to someone who had suffered a bereavement. It was polite and it was good manners. You didn’t just pass over the fact that someone had died. But Laura had been friends with both of us and so she didn’t need to say all the things I knew she felt.

  Instead she tucked her arm through mine and led me out to her parked car. I had decided not to mention the break-in to her because if she knew about all the misfortunes I had suffered recently, it would make it harder for me to put up a cheerful facade. But now that I’d seen her it didn’t feel quite so much like a facade and, for the first time since I’d got up that morning, I felt like I was on holiday.

  It was almost 10 o’clock at night local time and Laura insisted on stopping at a diner on the way back to her house for coffee and doughnuts.

  ‘You’ve lost weight, haven’t you?’ she said in the first reference she’d made to Liam’s death since I arrived.

  I shrugged it off and, to my relief, she dropped it, for I was already fed up with being pestered about this by the rest of my family. We sat on red and white striped vinyl seats in one of the booths, ate doughnuts and talked as if we’d never been apart. I hadn’t realised quite how much I’d missed Laura until that moment and it felt wonderful to be with her again. Her house was only a few minutes’ drive from the diner. When we got there she gave me a tour - it was small but beautifully decorated. There was one spare bedroom with a large, comfortable double bed covered in crisp, white sheets that smelled of freshly done laundry.

  When Laura said goodnight and left me in the room alone, I tried not to dwell on the bed and the fact that I was going to be the only one in it. Instead I took out the framed photo of Liam I had brought from home to put on the dressing table and then went into the bathroom to brush my teeth. When I came back and pulled my pyjamas out of the case, something metal and black fell out with them and I bent down to pick it up, realising that it was the little knight I had found with Liam’s things. It must have got caught up with the clothes on the floor in my bedroom. I set it down on the bedside table beside the framed photo. The fact that it had been in Liam’s pocket when he died made me feel oddly attached to it despite the nail some kid had shoved through its helmet.

  As I got into bed I promised myself that I was going to make the most of this trip and not dwell on what had happened at home. For now, at least, I was far away from it all - far enough away from both Jaxon and Luke that for the first time in a long while I actually felt safe.

  7

  Bones and Roses

  Over the next week Laura and I went shopping and sightseeing and out to coffee houses and wine bars. She had taken the time off from work to be with me and at the end of the week, Laura said she had arranged for us to go and eat on the Queen Mary with Charlie, the new boyfriend she wanted me to meet. I did not feel at all comfortable about doing this. Being with Laura was one thing, but this man was a stranger to me and the last thing I felt like doing was making conversation with someone I hardly knew. Besides which it was bound to be awkward. Liam’s death was still so recent that this man wouldn’t know what to say to me either. In fact he was probably dreading it as much as I was.

  But it was clearly important to Laura that I meet him and so I really didn’t have any choice - I couldn’t voice my recent insecurities and antisocial feelings without sounding childish. I hadn’t brought any posh clothes with me so, as there was a dress code for dinner aboard the ship, Laura said that this gave us an excuse to shop for something to wear and, somehow, she managed to talk me into buying a long, dark-blue velvet dress. Usually I tried to avoid dark colours because they clashed so horribly with my freakish skin but Laura insisted I try it on.

  ‘I can’t wear this,’ I said, staring at myself in the mirror in the changing rooms. ‘It makes me look even whiter than I am.’

  ‘Rubbish. It’s stunning on you.’

  ‘People will stare.’

  ‘You look beautiful in it,’ Laura said, ‘so of course they’ll stare.’

  I glanced at my reflection again and failed to suppress the cringe. ‘I look ghastly,’ I mumbled, already fumbling to undo the zip.

  But Laura reached out her hand to stop me.

  ‘How can you not see how lovely you look in that? You’d have worn it if you’d been going out with Liam,’ she said quietly. ‘Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘He made me forget I was ugly,’ I s
aid.

  ‘No, he made you see that you’re beautiful,’ she replied sharply. ‘That dress is striking on you. It’s more striking on you than it would be on anyone else. You know how you look in it, don’t you?’

  I bit back the obvious range of sarcastic responses that rose in my throat and said nothing.

  ‘You look like a snow princess,’ Laura said, echoing what she knew to be the first compliment anyone had ever paid my albinism.

  As an only child who had spent most of the time with her doting parents, I was unprepared for the cold shock of the other children’s reactions to me when I first started school and was horrified to see them pointing and asking their mothers:

  ‘Is that girl a ghost, Mummy? Is she? ’

  Being an albino did not do anything for first impressions. At lunchtime everyone ran outside to play noisy, energetic games but I stayed in the arch of the doorway, sitting against the wall with my knees drawn up to my chin trying to be invisible. A couple of children ran past yelling, ‘Ghost! ’ at one point but soon forgot me and went back to playing with the others. I was utterly miserable. I missed my home, I missed my mother and I missed my dog. I hated this school place and all the people in it.

  And then a ball rolled into the archway, stopping right next to my feet. I picked it up hurriedly with the intention of throwing it back out to the playground before anyone could come looking for it, but it was too late. Running feet skidded to a halt before the entrance right in front of me. They were boy’s shoes, scuffed on the toes and with the laces half-undone. Without looking up I held the ball in the air, hoping he would just take it without laughing at my appearance or making some cruel joke or asking me if I was a ghost.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, taking the ball from my hand.