Mirrorland by Carole Johnstone (books for 6 year olds to read themselves txt) 📕

at the grave and I think about that I LOVE CAT, and perhaps inevitably, I think about the Rosemount.

I’ve never had the same difficulty remembering our second life as I do our first. My chest aches when I think of the Rosemount Care Home, a Victorian mansion that had once been a Catholic orphanage. The kind of cold, high-ceilinged, gargoyled monstrosity that makes you think about lunatic asylums and mass graves in the cellar. The carers were nice enough, not kind exactly, but sympathetic to our plight inasmuch as they could be. No one in the Rosemount was ever of any real use to us, because we didn’t allow them to be. We were twelve-year-old runaways and that was it, that was all we had sworn to tell anyone. Including that Old Salty Dog who found us at dawn, waiting patiently at the harbourside for our pirate ship to arrive. It was probably the one promise we ever made to each other that we actually kept.

I cried more, but I suffered less, I can see that now. El stayed angry, defiant. Untouchable. She withdrew from everything and everyone, until I was the only one who kept trying to make her stop. Her elaborate plans for our future were furious, impervious: as soon as we turned eighteen we would leave Edinburgh and move abroad. She would be a portrait artist and I’d be a novelist, and we wouldn’t need anyone. She had to have seen the lie in it, the fantasy. Because when we were alone in our room, she would talk incessantly, obsessively, only about Mirrorland and everything, everyone, in it as if they were what was real, what was important, what was unchanged. I miss them, she would say, over and over again like a mantra, like a wish while clicking ruby-red heels. I understood why, even then. Lies and secrets are hard, but pretending you don’t care is harder. And I had a bad secret of my own back then. It wasn’t Mum or Grandpa that I missed the most. It was Ross.

I hear him come back. His expression is still hard. Unreadable. ‘You okay?’

I nod, and he hunkers down to put the roses in the vase. When he stands up again, the atmosphere between us pulls thinner, even more tense. I want so badly to tell him about the tracker, but that would mean explaining the emails, why I haven’t told him about the emails or the hidden diary pages, and everything between us still feels too raw, too fragile, too much like this. I don’t have the courage.

I remember sitting next to him on a crate in the Three-Fingered-Joe Saloon. El had temporarily defected to the Indians, and was planning a surprise attack on Boomtown, and we were pretending not to be waiting for it. It must have been autumn or winter; the air was cold enough to fog the space between us. It had to have been close to the end of Boomtown and the beginning of the Shank too, because it’s one of my last memories of the saloon.

Ross had been quiet, almost pensive, until finally he turned to me, his gaze sharp, unblinking. ‘Tell me about The Island.’

And I smiled. Glad that he was talking to me. Glad that he wanted something from me. Even though I knew it was only because El wasn’t there to ask.

‘It’s called Santa Catalina, and it’s in the Caribbean, and it’s amazing. It’s got beaches and lagoons and mangroves and palm trees. Captain Henry’s going to take us there because it’s his favourite place in the world. He built a fort there and a huge house, and the islanders have named streets and villages and even a big rock after him because they love him so much.’

And Ross gave me that same sharp dark look. ‘Why doesn’t he come back and do it, then? Your dad. Why doesn’t he take you there?’

‘I don’t know.’ I stopped smiling. I stopped feeling glad. ‘Mum says he will come back. One day.’

His eyes became even fiercer than before, the silver flecks inside them flashing, and I was suddenly afraid of him, of his anger, of what he was going to say. His lips turned thin. Mean. ‘Don’t believe her. People lie, Cat. They lie all the time.’

Perhaps that memory gives me courage, because I turn towards him now, put out my hand to stop him walking away.

‘Are you going to tell me why you’re pissed off with me?’

‘I’m not pissed off with you.’ But he presses the heels of his palms against his eyelids.

‘I would have told you about the second card, Ross. There just wasn’t any time before—’

‘You need to be honest with me, Cat. You need to tell me everything. We need to present a united front to the police, okay?’ He grabs hold of my hand; his is icy cold. ‘I told you that Rafiq isn’t taking the investigation seriously.’

I don’t think that’s true, but then again, I don’t think that a lot of things Ross believes are true. I look down at our hands. ‘Okay. I will. I’m sorry.’

He exhales, long and low. Lets go of my fingers.

‘Look,’ I say. ‘The other night—’

‘Was a mistake,’ he says quickly, looking away.

I nod. Ignore that old melancholic ache.

‘We were both tired, upset. That’s all it was.’ A smile. ‘That and Laphroaig.’

I try a smile of my own. It’s probably as convincing.

‘I didn’t …’ He clears his throat. ‘Cat. I want you to know that when I kissed you back it wasn’t because I thought … it wasn’t because you reminded me of El, or, you know, because I was imagining that you were El.’ He looks at me. ‘I don’t want you to think that.’

‘I don’t,’ I say. Because that, I have to allow him. Ross always saw us as separate. As different. He was one of the very few who ever did. That should make me feel better, but it doesn’t.

*

We return to the house. And as