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

I’m struck, then, by how easily, how vividly I can remember that day. Its colours, its smells. It was spring cold, coal-smoke sharp and white-pink with blossom. I was leaning against one of the pillars of the Scottish National Gallery, bored, chilly, waiting for El to come out. She could spend all day in an art gallery, from opening to closing, and even though we were barely speaking by then, I was still determined to at least try.

I saw Ross on the other side of Princes Street, coming out of a department store, carrying bags. Even now I can’t describe how seeing him again made me feel. By 2004, the prospect of leaving the Rosemount loomed no longer as an opportunity, but a terrifying prospect. The carers kept talking to us about ageing out as if we were a hundred and fifty instead of seventeen approaching eighteen. They also kept talking us through our options, enough that we knew we had very few. Ross was such a large part of our first life, already long abandoned and left for dead. So when I saw him – taller, bigger, just the same – that first initial bolt of joy and excitement was straightaway tempered with a sense of loss. Unease.

I didn’t move, but he saw me anyway. My heart fluttered and my stomach cramped as he crossed the road, started running. He stopped only when he got to within six feet of me, his breath fogging the space between us, his smile warm and big.

‘Cat.’

‘Hi, Ross.’

There were tears in his eyes before there were tears in mine. But I couldn’t swear to who initiated first contact. One minute, Ross wasn’t in my life any more, and the next his arms were tight around me and my face was pressed up against his chest. And he was all I could smell, breathe, feel.

‘Where have you been? Are you okay?’ The end of his nose was rosy red. His eyes shone. ‘I tried to find you. I tried to find both of you, but …’

‘I’m sorry.’ Because we, of course, had always known where he was. That was part of the deal we’d made with each other at Granton Harbour – nothing from our first life could survive, no matter how much we might want it to.

His grin returned. ‘It’s okay. I’ve found you now.’

And then I know I was the one to hug him, because my face burned hot with working up the nerve to do it. To throw my hands around his neck, feel the broader span of his shoulders under my palms, feel the stranger adult scratch of his cheek against mine.

I didn’t want El to come out of the gallery any more. She would ruin this, I knew. But just as surely as if I’d conjured her, there she was.

Ross let go of me. ‘El?’

If it was a question, she didn’t answer it. I was dreading the moment he stepped past me to her. The moment he touched her, kissed her, pulled her close. The moment when we resumed our old roles; where both of them forgot I even existed.

It didn’t happen. When Ross moved forward, El moved back. Only a few steps, but enough to make Ross pause. ‘El?’

‘Why are you here?’

‘I … I just saw Cat standing there, and …’ I saw him swallow hard. His face was a study in hurt confusion.

I turned to look at El, and I could see her annoyance, her frustration with me. I balked at it, because it wasn’t undeserved, but I also wanted to thumb my nose at it too. We were equal, we were separate. She wasn’t the boss of me.

We stood awkwardly, none of us speaking. Eventually, El relented enough to kiss Ross on his cheek.

‘We have to get back.’

‘To where?’ Ross looked at me first, her second.

‘Rosemount Care Home,’ I said, ignoring El’s glare. ‘It’s in Greenside. You could visit?’

‘Come on,’ El said, grasping me by the elbow and hauling me down the steps to the gardens. ‘We have to go.’

‘Just ignore her,’ I said, privately both delighted and ashamed that I was delighted. ‘She’s like this with everyone now.’ Because she was.

El didn’t say a word until we were on the bus and halfway to the home, and then she turned to me, face flushed and furious. ‘We had a deal. This is our new life, and we don’t need anyone else in it.’

I couldn’t understand why she was so upset, but I felt bad. It was her biggest display of emotion in years. ‘But it’s Ross.’

Her expression hardened, but her eyes were wet. ‘I don’t care. We had a deal. And you broke it.’

‘It’s weird,’ I say to Ross now. ‘The things I’m remembering. What happened then and … after.’ I’m in dangerous territory here, I know, but the wine and El’s She thinks if she pretends something hasn’t happened then it hasn’t happened have made me feel reckless. Defensive. ‘The reason I left.’

The candlelight flickers. Our eyes meet.

He drops his gaze first. ‘Maybe some things are better left forgotten.’

‘Maybe. Probably.’ And under the sudden hot flash of hurt, what I’m thinking is definitely. That was, after all, exactly the same philosophy that sent me running for America in the first place. But it’s hard to turn off an engine that someone else has turned on, especially when they still have the keys.

‘I’m thinking of hiring a marine investigator,’ Ross says. He glances at me. ‘You think it’s a bad idea.’

I drink my wine, more annoyed than I should be at the abrupt change in subject. ‘Why did El use that harbour?’

‘What? You mean why did she moor her boat at Granton?’

‘Yes.’

He shrugs. ‘It’s the nearest one. As far as I know it’s the only one. There are no yacht clubs at Leith Docks. Why?’

‘I just wondered, that’s all. I don’t know.’ I rub my fingers over my temples. ‘You really think it’s an accident, don’t you?