Another Me Page 10

  ‘There’s a first time for everything,’ I said, touching his arm. He recoiled as if I had burned his flesh.

  ‘But now, Fay, you don’t know how to answer me. That was always how I was going to know the difference. That was our code.’

  ‘I see. A code?’ I tapped my nail against my teeth. ‘I love puzzles. Those were your favourite lines ... so, logically, I’m supposed to answer with something like . . . my favourite lines?’

  The longer I hesitated, the whiter Drew’s face became.

  I flashed him a smile. ‘Like . . . “Here’s the smell of blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia shall not sweeten this little hand.”’

  He almost collapsed with relief. He began to laugh. The colour flooded back into his face. ‘You are something else, Fay. You really are!’

  I laughed too. ‘I can’t believe you fell for that.’

  ‘I know. Again.’

  ‘Again?’ I asked, but he wasn’t listening.

  ‘I was pure scared there. I was sure, for just a minute, that you were that other one. That maybe I had seen her chasing you last night, and that she’d caught you. She’d taken you over. That maybe she was the one who had changed the rules. She didn’t want you to die at all. When she spent the day as you, taking Hardie’s test, she realised she liked life. She just wanted your life.’ Relief was written all over his face. ‘I’m so glad I was wrong.’

  I wanted to tell him part of it anyway. ‘I did come face to face with her, Drew. And yet, I’m the one who’s alive.’

  ‘Do you know what I think, Fay ... I think she was a portent of your death, coming closer all the time. I think, you were meant to die in that lift . . . End of story. A portent of your own death. And yet, in a strange way, she actually saved your life. Because of her, you were too afraid to take the lift. You took the stairs instead. The lift crashed, and you lived. It actually makes my blood run cold to think about it.’

  I hadn’t thought of it that way, but perhaps he was right.

  ‘But do you know what really scared me, Fay?’ He looked so serious.

  ‘What?’ I asked him.

  ‘I realised that if you were the other one, how could I really prove you weren’t the real Fay?’

  I smiled. ‘The code, of course. Hadn’t we worked out a code?’

  ‘But if the other one had taken over as you . . . wouldn’t she know your favourite lines? Maybe she’d even know mine.’

  ‘Don’t say that, Drew. Does that mean, you’re still not sure?’

  He studied me carefully, thinking that over.

  I grinned. ‘Drew, it’s finished. Trust me.’ This time when I touched his arm, he didn’t move. In fact, he drew just a fraction closer. ‘I don’t think I’m going to have any more problems. I’m the one who is alive. Trust me.’

  The Christmas disco was before me, and a holiday in Majorca. And Mum and Dad together. Forever.

  And life. Life now lay before me as well. Wonderful, exciting life. I threw back my head and I laughed loudly.

  Because she was the other one, and I was going to make sure it stayed that way.

  Loved Another Me?

  Then turn the page to find out about Cathy MacPhail and her inspiration for this gripping story

  Why I wrote Another Me

  A few years ago, I heard on the radio they were looking for a Scottish ghost story for a competition. A Scottish ghost story? I knew I could write one of those, and so I began to think of a misty loch and a ruined castle with a ghostly piper on the battlements. Then I thought, hey wait a minute, I live in Greenock on the west coast of Scotland, with not a ruined castle in sight! But this was still Scotland, and so I wrote something set in my own home town, about something that always scared me.

  I used to take a shortcut to my school up a long flight of stairs with high walls on either side and trees that hang over them. The stairs were always dark and gloomy and sometimes on a dark winter afternoon on my way home the fog would drift in from the river and it was as if I was in another world. Whenever I heard footsteps coming behind me, I would frighten the life out of myself imagining the scariest things that could come out of the fog . . . and the scariest thing was another me.

  In Celtic mythology, there is something called a ‘fetch’. A fetch is your double or your doppelganger and some people say it is your other self, without a soul. But what scared me most was, it was said, that if you came face to face with your fetch, it meant you were going to die very soon. So I wrote a story about a girl who was being haunted by herself and it won the competition. That’s the story that became Another Me. The girl in the story is called Fay. I love that name. It’s a family name, but if you spell it ‘f-e-y’, it means strange or weird, which seemed to fit in well with my story. Fay lives in a tower block on the thirteenth floor. I once lived on the thirteenth floor too – some places don’t even have a thirteenth floor. And some people will never sit in the thirteenth row on a plane. Why? Because thirteen is considered to be an unlucky number – that seemed to fit in with my story too. I chose MacBeth as the school play, not just because there is murder and magic and witches and ghosts, everything I needed for Another Me, but because it is supposed to be an unlucky play. In the theatre, they won’t even say ‘MacBeth’, they call it The Scottish Play.

  I love putting things in the story that hopefully make you think. For instance, if you take the ‘A’ away from the title, you’re left with the words, NOT HER ME, which represents the story perfectly. Everyone always asks me which Fay survives at the end. I never tell them. That’s for the reader to work out, though there is a clue in the story.

  So, this is the story of the scariest thing I could imagine coming out of the fog. I wonder what the scariest thing you could imagine is? Here is an exercise that might get you thinking. What are the five spookiest things that could happen when Fay steps into the lift in the tower block, the doors close and the lift begins to move, and all she can see around her is her own reflection in the mirrored steel walls?

  Meet Cathy MacPhail

  Cathy MacPhail was born and brought up in Greenock, Scotland, where she still lives. Before becoming a children’s author, she wrote short stories for magazines and comedy programmes for radio. Cathy was inspired to write her first children’s book after her daughter was bullied at school.

  Cathy writes spooky thrillers for younger readers as well as teen novels. She has won the Royal Mail Book Award twice, along with lots of other awards. She loves to give her readers a ‘rattling good read’ and has been called the Scottish Jacqueline Wilson.

  One of Cathy’s greatest fears would be to meet another version of herself, similar to the young girl in her bestselling novel Another Me. She is a big fan of Doctor Who and would love to write a scary monster episode for the series.

  Cathy loves to hear from her fans, so visit www.cathymacphail.com and email her your thoughts.

  Q&A with Cathy MacPhail

  What are your favourite things to do when you’re not writing?

  When I’m not writing, I’m usually reading or visiting family – I love spending time with my children, turning up on their doorsteps when they least expect me! I enjoy going on cruises too because it’s the perfect way for me to visit new places. Like most people, I also love going to the cinema. I always have done.

  What are your favourite films?

  Oh, there are so many films I love. It’s a Wonderful Life is one of them. The hero is an ordinary man with just a few problems that are getting him down. Then he is visited by an angel who shows him how life would have been if he had never been born and he realises that his life is worthwhile after all.

  Another fantastic film is The Searchers. A story set in America in the mid nineteenth-century about a man’s struggle to find his niece who has been kidnapped by the Sioux. It explores issues of racism that were common at the time.

  But at the top of my list is Some Like It Hot. Two men pretend to be female musicians to escape gangsters and one of them falls in love wi
th Marilyn Monroe! It’s so funny and it has the best last line of any film I’ve ever seen, ‘Oh well, nobody’s perfect.’

  If you could be a character from a book, who would you be?

  I have thought and thought about this because most books I’ve read have at least one wonderful character that I’d like to be, but I think Elizabeth Bennet has to be my first pick. She is so bright. Then there’s Cathy from Wuthering Heights. I like her passionate nature, and we share a first name! Also, both of them are admired by fantastic men! When I’m really old, I want to be Miss Marple. I will go around annoying people and solving murders.

  What would I do if I met my doppelganger?

  This was always a fear for me, even from childhood. I think at first I wouldn’t believe it possible. I would think it was someone who looks a bit like me, or perhaps I had a long lost twin – all the things that Fay thinks in the book – because the fact that there might be another you out there somewhere is so mind-blowing. I would probably run, or faint, or just scream! But I recently discovered that there is a way to get rid of your fetch. It is an old Whitby legend. There the fetch or the doppelganger is called a ‘waft’. You have to confront your ‘waft’, challenge it and tell it to bog off! But you have to do it quickly before it steals your soul. Isn’t that creepy?

  Cathy’s Choice

  My Three Favourite School Stories

  I loved the Chalet School books. They are set in a girls’ boarding school and these seemed so glamorous when every day I attended my little primary just round the corner from my home. I still love reading books like that.

  Cat Among The Pigeons by Agatha Christie. A murder mystery set in a girls’ boarding school. What a treat!

  The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, by Muriel Spark, is the story of a wonderful teacher who manipulated her favoured little group of girls. It is only a short novel but I really enjoy it. It is the kind of book you can read again and again.

  Read on for a spine-tingling taster of another story by Cathy MacPhail, featuring Tyler Lawless, a brave and feisty sleuth with a very special gift

  Out Of The Depths

  I saw my teacher in the queue at the supermarket last Christmas. Miss Baxter. I was surprised to see her. She’d been dead for six months.

  She saw me. I know she saw me. In fact, I could swear her eyes were searching me out. As if she was watching for me.

  As if she’d been waiting for me.

  I hurried towards her, pushing people aside, but you know what it’s like at Christmas. Queues at all the checkouts, crowds with trolleys piled high with shopping, everything and everyone blocking your way. By the time I got to where I’d seen her, she was gone. No sign of her anywhere.

  And when I told them at school no one would believe me. ‘Typical Tyler Lawless,’ they all said. ‘You’re always making up stories.’

  Even my best friend, Annabelle, agreed with them. She’d sounded annoyed at me. Wanted me to be just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill best friend who didn’t cause her any embarrassment.

  I had let my imagination run away with me, everyone said. It was just another of my stories. It’s true I want to be a writer, and I do look for stories everywhere. You’re supposed to do that. But this time I wasn’t making it up. I really did see her.

  Miss Baxter had died abroad during the summer holidays. A tragic accident, they said. An accident that should never have happened. Her body had been brought back and she was buried somewhere in England.

  But I had seen her!

  I couldn’t stop thinking about her. Trying to find an explanation for the unexplainable. And I began to think . . . what if she hadn’t died at all? What if someone else’s body had been identified as hers? What if it was all a scam to get the life insurance?

  Or what if she was in the witness protection programme and had had to change her identity?

  ‘She’d hardly be likely to pop into the local supermarket then, would she?’ Annabelle scoffed at me. And if she couldn’t believe me, what chance did I have with anyone else?

  I had also seen Miss Baxter making furtive calls. At least to me they looked furtive. Snapping her phone shut when she had seen I was watching her. And I thought, what if she had a secret life, was an undercover agent, and she’d come to the school for some dark purpose? And then had to fake her own death so she could move on to her next assignment.

  It was those ‘what-ifs’ that were always getting me into trouble. My imagination had caused me a mountain of problems at my last school.

  I saw the French assistant, Mademoiselle Carlier, and the new science teacher going home together in her car one night after school. I had noticed them before, sharing a look, a smile when they thought no one was watching. But the science teacher was married.

  ‘What if they’re having an affair?’ I whispered.

  I whispered it to the wrong person. She passed it on and I was pulled into the head’s office and warned about spreading rumours. That had been my first warning. The first of many.

  But it was this story, this one in particular, my insistence that I had seen Miss Baxter, that had caused the most trouble. I wouldn’t let it go. I wouldn’t let them say I was making it up. I had seen her. It hadn’t been a mistake. I began to get angry when people ridiculed me. And that just got me into more trouble.

  My parents finally decided it would be best to take me out of that school and find somewhere else. It was a case of leaving before I was pushed. I was already on my final warning by this time. Unfair, in my opinion. I never caused real trouble. I wasn’t a bully. I was never disruptive . . . I just noticed things other people missed. And, in the end, I had been right about Mademoiselle Carlier. Her and the science teacher had run off together, causing no end of scandal. But, of course, no one remembered that! Oh no. In fact, it only seemed to make things worse. As if by telling people about my suspicions I had actually made it happen. As if I’d done something wrong.

  Sleekit, one of the teachers called me.

  Sleekit. A great Scottish word – it means sly and underhand and untrustworthy. A great word, but not when it was applied to me. It hurt. I wasn’t sleekit at all.

  I had promised myself that here, in this new school, St Anthony’s College, things were going to be different . . .

  Also by Cathy MacPhail

  Run, Zan, Run

  Missing

  Bad Company

  Dark Waters

  Fighting Back

  Underworld

  Roxy’s Baby

  Worse Than Boys

  Grass

  Out of The Depths

  The Nemesis Series

  Into the Shadows

  The Beast Within

  Sinister Intent

  Ride of Death

  Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Berlin, New York and Sydney

  This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  First published in Great Britain in June 2003

  by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP

  This edition published in 2011

  Copyright © Catherine MacPhail 2003

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 4088 1655 4

  www.bloomsbury.com

  www.cathymacphail.com

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