Another Me (2 page)

A sigh fluttered around the room, but no one was very surprised. Drew Fraser was always favourite to land the main part. No wonder half the boys hated him.

‘And, after careful consideration, the part of Lady Macbeth . . .' There was an ever so slight hesitation. I glanced across at Monica, already preening herself for stardom. ‘. . . goes to Fay Delussey.'

To say I was gobsmacked just isn't strong enough. I hadn't heard him properly, surely. Me? The main part?

Dawn and Kaylie were jumping about and hugging me, but I couldn't say a word. Monica's face had gone red as a beetroot as she tried to look as if she didn't care a bit, and failed.

‘But why me?' I whispered to my friends. ‘I don't understand.'

Dawn thought she had the answer. ‘Sometimes, when I catch you looking out the window in class, there's something about you. Strange. As if you were in
another world. As if you weren't quite right in the head . . . exactly like Lady Macbeth. She goes mad, doesn't she?'

I wasn't sure for a moment if she was joking or serious. ‘Are you trying to be offensive? As if I “weren't quite right in the head”?' And she was supposed to be my friend. ‘Thank you very much,' I said, but I was laughing. ‘Mad indeed!'

‘No, I didn't mean totally mad ... I meant, just kinda daft looking.'

‘You're digging yourself in deeper and deeper, Dawn!' Kaylie said, clamping her hand across Dawn's mouth. Now we were all giggling again.

The other parts were finally allocated, and Dawn and Kaylie were to be two of the three witches. But, as for Monica, there was not a mention. And was she mad! When Donald was finished she couldn't keep quiet any longer. ‘And what about me, sir, am I not going to be in this play at all?'

Donald grinned at her. ‘Of course you are, Monica. I want you to be Fay's understudy.'

I was sure I saw Monica's blonde hair stand on end. My understudy! She would go bananas about that. Monica glared over at me. I tried to smile back at her,
but it just wouldn't come. The look on her face was just too scary.

‘Me! An
u-u-understudy
!' She stuttered out the words.

Donald was nodding again. ‘Yes. There is a resemblance between you two girls, same colouring, same height. So I don't want you in the play together. People could get mixed up. Especially people in this school, who are a bit thick anyway. You'll be a wonderful understudy, Monica. You'll get the lead in the next play, I promise.'

Monica sucked in her cheeks and looked as if she was about to explode.

We all left for home after that. My friends and I bustled out of the school, still laughing at the thought of poor old Monica being only an understudy.

An icy mist had descended on the November afternoon and the smirr of rain seemed to seep deep into the bones.

Suddenly, a furious Monica rushed up behind me.

‘Don't look so smug, Delussey!' She pulled me round to face her. ‘You know how you got that part, don't you?'

‘Talent?' I teased, pleased I had actually had the nerve to say it and not just think it.

‘Talent, nothing!' she snapped. ‘Daft Donald feels sorry for you. Everybody knows about your mum and her boyfriend. Your mum and dad'll be splitting up soon. That's how you got the part!'

I was so angry I wanted to lash out and slap her. I wanted to cry, but I wouldn't, not in front of her. Monica looked so smug. Dawn and Kaylie pulled me away from her.

‘Don't bother with her, Fay. She's not worth the trouble.'

Monica just couldn't let it go. ‘I'll get you for this, Delussey,' she called after me. ‘I'm going to make you really sorry.' There was a viciousness on her face that was really frightening. ‘I'll get that part, you see if I don't. One way or another.'

As Dawn and Kaylie walked with me to the top of the long stairs that led down to my tower block, they kept trying to make me feel better about what Monica had said.

‘Don't listen to her, Fay. She's so full of hot air.'

‘But why
did
Donald give me the part?' I kept asking them, knowing they couldn't know the answer either. I hadn't shone in any of his past productions, hadn't had any part even near the lead. So why choose me to play Lady Macbeth? Did he just feel sorry for me?

Neither Kaylie nor Dawn knew what to say. The story had been a bit of a scandal at the school not long ago. It seemed everyone had known long before Dad or I that my mother had a boyfriend. I'd seen her with him once, the man she worked with, sitting in a car and I hadn't even realised there was anything suspicious about
it. She was my mum after all. Mums didn't have boyfriends. Not mums like mine.

But she had. And when she'd finally confessed to Dad there had been arguments and discussions and for a while, a terrifying while, I was sure she was going to leave. But she didn't. Instead, she had given him up. She had even changed her job. The arguments had stopped, but in their place an atmosphere as cold as the grave had settled on our flat. Dad didn't trust her any more, and Mum never looked happy.

No wonder I was always lost in a book. With my nose in a book I could forget for a while what was happening at home.

When we reached the top of the stairs I said decisively, ‘I'm going to tell him tomorrow he can stuff his part. I don't want anyone feeling sorry for me.'

Kaylie was shocked. ‘Don't be stupid. You can't let Mucky Monica get that part. Especially not after what she said today.'

Dawn agreed. ‘No way, Fay. Just think of the fun we're going to have watching her face every day, having to be
your
understudy.'

In the end, very reluctantly, I agreed. To make Monica suffer like that had to be worth something.

As I left them and began the trek down the stairs the mist thickened into a fog, swirling round the dim lights that hung over the walls on either side of the stairs. Dad didn't like me coming home this way. The stairs were long and narrow, with high walls on either side, with only the odd light dimly illuminating the path. Trees hung over the wall too, and even on a bright summer day the stairs were dark and dismal. But on a night like this, with the fog drifting in and out of the branches, they were worse than dismal. They were eerie. But it was a shortcut everyone used. If I didn't come down these stairs the route home through streets and avenues would take at least another fifteen minutes.

It was always busy.

Except for today.

Funny, I thought, that there was no one on the stairs today. It was true that most of the school had left earlier, but I had never known it to be
so
deserted.

The fog, I supposed. More people taking the bus home, or finding the idea of the stairs too eerie in the dark afternoon.

Even sounds were muffled in the fog. Hoots from cars, a distant fog horn sounding on the river, all had a strange weird sound.

I was halfway down when I heard them.

Footsteps clipping behind me. Someone coming down the steps at exactly my speed. I stopped for a second and the clipping stopped too. It made me smile. It was an echo, I realised. A muffled echo of my own steps.

And yet—

When I began to walk again, there they came behind me, clip, clip, clip. I had never before heard my feet echo on these steps.

I began to hurry. The feet behind me speeded up as I did. Surely, it had to be an echo. Still, the sound was making my heart beat faster. It was as if they were after me – coming down behind me, the footsteps and whoever they belonged to, shrouded by the fog.

I stopped again, abruptly, and so did they. But surely, this time, they stopped a moment after me?

But, not an echo.

Someone else.

Someone else, hidden in the fog.

‘Who's there?' I called out.

There was no answer. Still, I was sure there
was
someone, out of my sight, standing waiting in the fog behind me.

Who? What?

Without realising it I was pressing myself against the wall, holding my breath. I was afraid, and I wondered what I was afraid of.

What was the most frightening thing that could come out of that fog?

I didn't have time to think about that. There was a sudden rush and something, someone, came lunging at me.

I let out a shriek and almost fell.

It was Drew Fraser.

It had been him all along.

‘Look who it is, Lady Macbeth. I've always wanted to be married to a wimp.' He made a face at me. They wouldn't think he was so good looking if they could see him now, I thought.

‘Don't you dare call me a wimp!' But my voice was soft, not harsh the way I wanted it to be.

‘Well, let's face it. You as Lady Macbeth isn't exactly typecasting, is it?'

‘I suppose you would have preferred Monica.'

He shrugged his answer. An answer that seemed to say anyone would be better than me.

‘Was that you up there, trying to frighten me?'

He rolled his eyes. ‘I wouldn't have to do much to frighten you, would I?'

I wouldn't let him see he'd managed it.

If I'd had the nerve I would have asked him if he would walk down the stairs with me, but then he would definitely think I was a wimp. I just didn't want to walk home alone through this fog. Not today.

But Drew paused only for a moment. ‘See you at rehearsals!' He laughed, and gave my bag a punch that lifted it from my arms and sent books and jotters flying all over the ground.

‘Oops, sorry,' he laughed. Then he was gone, taking the stairs two at a time, swallowed up by the fog.

‘Hate you, Drew Fraser,' I shouted after him. I bent down and began to pick up my books. ‘I'll show him who can act!' I muttered to myself.

He had only made me more determined that I would take the part. I'd show him, and Monica, and even Daft Donald, that Fay Delussey was no wimp. I wasn't someone you could feel sorry for. In a way, I thought, I was glad I had bumped into Drew. Nothing was going to stop me playing Lady Macbeth now.

I began again to clip down the stairs, and even my
steps seemed to echo my determination. They sounded sure of themselves, just like me at that moment. Not like Drew Fraser's soft tread as he'd run away from me.

I stopped dead.

Drew Fraser's soft tread.

Those footsteps behind me. Those clipping footsteps so like my own. They couldn't have belonged to Drew.

Because, I suddenly realised, Drew Fraser had been wearing trainers.

Mum wasn't home. Only Dad, sitting by the heater pretending to read his paper. But I could see him all the time glancing at the clock as it ticked the minutes away.

‘Fog's awful,' I said, and he grunted. ‘That's probably why Mum's late.'

He stared at me over his glasses and didn't say anything for a minute. Then he smiled and put down his paper. ‘You're probably right, honey. Now, how about you? Did you have a good day?'

He got up and followed me into the kitchen while I told him about getting the part.

‘
Macbeth!
' He whistled. ‘Your teacher's being a bit ambitious. That's a hard play even for adults.'

‘Oh, he's adapted it for us, to make it easier, he says.'

‘So, who's Macbeth?' But he answered the question himself. ‘Not Drew the heart-throb? He seems to get
picked for everything these days. Football, drama. You name it and he's the star.'

I tutted. ‘He's bribing someone if you ask me. I certainly don't think he's a heart-throb.'

‘That's because you've known him so long. You can remember him growing up. Skin and bone, with legs like sticks. If ever there was a case of an ugly duckling turning into a swan, it's Drew Fraser.' We both laughed at the memories. Drew Fraser's mum and mine had been friends for a long time. Now, his mum drove mine potty with her tales of her wonderfully talented son. She had forgotten the years when Drew couldn't walk in a straight line without tripping over his shoelaces.

Dad shook his head. ‘So he's landed the star part.' He started to peel potatoes. ‘You know,
Macbeth
is supposed to be an unlucky play. In the theatre they won't even call it by its real name.'

‘Donald told us. The “Scottish Play”, they call it.'

‘Yes, it has a history of weird things happening when it's on.'

I remembered then the weird thing that had happened to me on the stairs, in the fog, and that strange feeling I had that someone was there watching me, following me. I was just about to tell Dad, when we heard
Mum's key in the lock and my dad stiffened. He dropped a half-peeled potato into the sink and headed for the door. I was forgotten.

‘Couldn't get a bus!' Mum shouted. ‘The fog's so thick some of the buses have been taken off so I had to walk.'

‘That's what we thought,' I said quickly and ran past Dad into the hall to kiss her. ‘Didn't we, Dad?'

He didn't answer. He just looked at her, as if he wasn't sure she was telling the truth. There it was again, that icy atmosphere. They would spend the rest of the night talking to each other without really saying anything, and never meeting each other's eyes.

I told her about the part and she made all the right noises.

‘My daughter the star! Wait till I tell Drew's mum that! At least it's not just her wonderful son who can get star billing!'

But she wasn't really listening. Just as Dad hadn't really listened. And later as I lay in bed I could hear them arguing softly in the living room. He still didn't trust her. She still wasn't happy.

I cried myself to sleep. I so much wanted them to stay together. They were the two most wonderful
people in the whole world. Why couldn't they be happy? If they split up, I didn't know what I'd do. I'd be torn between them. I loved them both.