I said nothing and shrank back into my shaking shoulders.
Those feet stayed stood in my space.
I kept my eyes on the ground. She was so close, I could feel her breath on my forehead.
Don’t look up don’t look up don’t look up.
After a few agonizing seconds, she backed up and laughed, gentle as if I’d just told her an amusing story. My shoulders relaxed away from my ears.
Before I could stop myself, my eyes flickered up.
Her head was twisting back to keep facing me as she walked away. The wrinkling in her neck was red with torsion.
But it was her face close up that frightened me most.
I ducked my eyes back to the road.
I’d seen too much! She knew! She must know!
She kept walking. And laughing. I waited until she had disappeared into the fog on the way to the village, then I pulled myself out of the hedge and ran. I just left my phone. I didn’t care about it. There was no way I was turning my back on her unless that was to run.
Up close in the fog, I now understood Viv’s confusion.
I swear I’ve seen your sister. You look uncannily like—
The eyes, the nose, the mouth—even pulled wide. Now I knew what had bothered me so much about her face, why she was so familiar.
I realised I’d never had a proper look at her until now. Hidden in the dark at her front door. Spied through the crowd at The Curtyard. Painted and coiffed until she looked like someone new.
I’d read somewhere that none of us really know what we look like because we only ever see ourselves mirrored. Even our phone cameras present us with a mirror image because that’s what we’re used to. If anyone ever saw a double of themselves, they wouldn’t immediately know it because everything would be—to them—inverted.
I knew now why Viv had wondered if my neighbour and I were related. Because under the make-up, the hair style and the brighter, more confident expression, my neighbour looked just like me.
She was my perfect double.
Into
the Woods
CHAPTER 36
I ran all the way back to 1b Sgàthan Sìth. By the time I reached the elm tree at the base of the driveway, the sky had turned murderous.
My neighbour looked just like me. How was that even possible? What was she?
Fairy mirror
The mist had soured and spoiled, and the sky had curdled into thick clouds, casting the world in a foreboding, violet light. I looked up at the symmetrical frontage of the Sgàthan Sìth cottages perched upon their tiny hill. The bedroom windows stared down like hollow eyes; the shared awning over the front doors gaped open like the mouth of a corpse.
But it’s just a house, I told myself. Just bricks and stone and mortar and roof tiles and wooden beams and copper pipes.
I clutched my sore hand close to my chest. I couldn’t urge myself any further toward the house, not even for fear of all my belongings abandoned inside. I’d planned on packing and running, but now I couldn’t even bring myself to go in. Not after what I’d seen on the road.
But I couldn’t turn back either, couldn’t retreat to Carlinsrest to Fergus’s laughter, to the sneering children, to all the horrified faces, to Rowan’s pity. But I couldn’t stay here in the drive. She would be back soon enough and I couldn’t be here when she did.
I had to escape. I had to run.
I urged my feet to move. I didn’t care where. I turned a sharp right and marched away under the trees.
