Another Me Read online

  ‘What the hell,’ she bawled. ‘The diet’s not working anyway!’

  Dawn always seemed to have so much fun with her family. I was almost jealous of her.

  The odd lift was actually working for once but as I hurried into the entrance I could hear the machinery whirr into life and hear the doors creaking as they began to close.

  ‘Hold it! Please!’ I shouted.

  I broke into a run, but I didn’t make it and in the second the doors slid closed I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirrored steel at the back of the lift.

  Now I would have to wait until the lift came down again. I watched its progress in the lighted numbers above the doors.

  7-9-11-13.

  It came to a halt at my floor. Someone getting in? Someone getting out?

  The doors of the even lift opened and one of our neighbours stepped out. ‘Oh, is that one actually working?’

  I nodded, noticing that the lift had begun its descent again. 13-11 . . .

  ‘Makes a change, doesn’t it?’ I said.

  ‘I wouldn’t trust it, hen. The men have been working on it all day. Sure you don’t want to go up in this one?’

  But even if I’d wanted to, the doors had begun to close as the lift was summoned by someone on another floor.

  9-7-5.

  ‘No. I’ll take the chance,’ I said, laughing as I remembered Dawn’s mum and her diet.

  The neighbour went off muttering. ‘We want to do something about that lift. It needs to be totally renewed. Or, better still, the council needs to be renewed.’

  3-1.

  The odd lift arrived and the doors slid open. I hesitated, half expecting someone to step out. The someone who had perhaps got in at my floor. But the lift was empty. Someone must have got out at my floor.

  I stepped inside, and pressed 13. The doors creaked shut and the lift began to rise, trundling almost painfully, floor by floor. Doesn’t sound too healthy, I thought, hoping it would hold out, at least until it reached the thirteenth floor again.

  It was then that something struck me as odd. Do you ever get a feeling like that? There was something that, for a moment, I couldn’t put my finger on.

  Something strange and out of place.

  Something about the lift.

  Something—

  Suddenly, I thought I knew what it was.

  My heart began to thump like a drum. My spine turned to ice. I began to turn around, ever so slowly.

  The shock of what I saw took my breath away.

  No, it wasn’t what I saw. It was what I didn’t see.

  I didn’t see me!

  I should have been looking at my reflection staring back at me. Instead, there were only breeze blocks and girders. And a sign.

  WE REGRET ANY INCONVENIENCE CAUSED BY REPAIRS TO THIS LIFT.

  The stainless steel mirror was gone.

  But only minutes ago I had glimpsed my reflection in it.

  Hadn’t I?

  Or had I, for the very first time, glimpsed the other one?

  Chapter Eleven

  What was happening? It couldn’t be true. Couldn’t. I went over in my head exactly what I’d seen. My reflection staring back at me as the lift doors were sliding shut.

  My reflection.

  Same clothes. Same hair. Same surprised expression.

  Yet...

  It couldn’t have been my reflection. There was no mirrored steel wall at the back of the lift. Only the workmen’s sign, and brick wall of the lift well behind it.

  So, what had I seen?

  Who?

  Me?

  No. That was madness. Crazy thought.

  Yet, people were seeing me, where I wasn’t. It was happening too often to be coincidence. All this was beginning to make me really afraid.

  And then, another terrifying thought hit me.

  Where had this other one gone to?

  The lift had stopped at level 13. My floor! No one had got in. So, someone must have got out! The someone whose image I had seen? Was that someone, even now, waiting up there? Waiting for the lift doors to open?

  Waiting for me?

  I watched as the lift rose steadily upwards. The ninth floor. The eleventh.

  Almost there.

  I was breathing so fast it hurt.

  Waiting for me? And then what? Suddenly, I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to find out. I jabbed my fingers at the buttons.

  EMERGENCY STOP!

  But it didn’t stop. It wouldn’t.

  For once, the odd lift wouldn’t stop.

  13.

  I was here. And I had never been so afraid in all my life.

  I pressed myself back against the side of the lift as the doors creaked their way open. If I could have melted into the concrete I would have.

  What was waiting for me on the thirteenth floor?

  Nothing.

  The doors slid open, and stood silent waiting for me to step out.

  No one was there. Still breathing hard, I took one tentative step forward, hardly daring to look . . . to my left . . . to my right.

  My heart jumped as I glimpsed a shadow! Coming round the corner. Rushing towards me. Someone was here!

  I closed my eyes and screamed. I screamed as loud and as long as I could. Screamed even louder as someone grabbed me, their fingers biting into my shoulders.

  Doors were pulled open. Every neighbour we had ran from their flat. They flooded on to the landing. Including my mother. She was the first person I saw when I finally opened my eyes. In her dressing gown, her hair just washed, panic etched on her face.

  The second was Mr Reynolds, our other next-door neighbour. He was the one holding my shoulders and trying to calm me down.

  ‘I’m sorry, love. Did I frighten you?’ He glanced at my mother apologetically. ‘I rang for the lift and then went back to check I’d locked the door. She was getting out just as I turned the corner. I must have frightened the life out of the wee lassie.’

  I could see that some of our other neighbours weren’t so understanding.

  ‘I thought somebody was getting murdered,’ I heard one of them complain.

  ‘I’m . . . I’m sorry,’ I stammered. I looked at Mum. ‘I’m sorry.’

  She was apologising, too, for me. Looking around the neighbours, trying to get them to understand. ‘It’s because it’s so late, and the landing’s so dark. Sorry.’

  When Mr Reynolds went off in the lift, and the neighbours had closed their doors again, satisfied but perhaps a little disappointed there hadn’t been a murder, my mother led me inside the house. ‘My goodness, Fay, that was a bit OTT just because a neighbour darted round the corner to catch the lift.’

  I wanted to confide in her. I suppose I wanted someone to explain it all away logically so I could understand. But not to my mum. Not then. Because even then I could sense an icy atmosphere in the house. Dad was in the kitchen eating his dinner as if it had been poisoned. And Mum began banging dishes about angrily.

  They’d had another argument.

  The last thing they needed was for me to ask them to explain what was happening to me.

  I didn’t sleep well that night. But by next morning I had made a decision. I would confide in Kaylie and Dawn. They seemed my only hope. My best friends. Who else could I trust? Even though I knew when I told them they would think I was even loopier than they had thought before.

  They listened, Dawn with her mouth open and her eyes wide like saucers. Kaylie with a milk-lined grin. I told them everything, finishing with the apparition (if that’s what it was) in the lift.

  Dawn shivered. ‘That’s dead creepy,’ she said, excited.

  Kaylie sounded annoyed. ‘I thought you didn’t like ghost stories?’

  Why couldn’t she understand? ‘It’s not a ghost story,’ I told her. ‘It really happened. I want you to help me find a logical explanation.’

  A logical explanation was the last thing they wanted. But it was Dawn who came up with one.

  �
��Have you ever thought you might have a twin? An identical twin?’

  I must have gone pale for Kaylie pulled me close. ‘Are you all right? Do you think that might be the answer?’

  ‘But, why would my mum and dad keep me, and give away my twin?’

  Dawn couldn’t meet my eyes. ‘Maybe your mum kept a lot of secrets from you.’

  She was talking about my mum’s secret boyfriend. Hinting that if a mum could have a boyfriend, what was to stop her having other secrets?

  I shook my head. ‘No. I don’t believe that.’

  Dawn didn’t let it go. ‘Well, maybe not a twin. But a sister. A sister so like you no one can tell the difference. Maybe your mum had her before—’ She almost said, ‘before she was married.’ But she blushed and just said, ‘It could happen.’

  A sister.

  ‘Maybe she’s just found out about you, and she’s jealous because she was given up for adoption and now she thinks you’ve got her life.’

  ‘And she wants it back,’ Dawn finished.

  A sister. Was that the explanation?

  I thought about it all that day, not knowing if it was better than the alternative. But I knew I had to find out. I had to know the truth.

  That night, I waited for the right moment to confront Mum. My eyes didn’t leave her all the while we sat in front of the TV. Watching her, wondering if she really had given my sister away and if that sister was back now, watching me.

  When Dad went in for his bath she turned to me and asked, ‘Is something bothering you, Fay?’

  I wet my lips nervously. ‘Mum, have you got any secrets you haven’t told me?’

  Her face grew stern. ‘I don’t have secrets any more. Right!’ She nodded towards the bathroom. ‘Has he put you up to this? Is he telling you I’m still seeing—’ she blushed. ‘I go to work. I come home. I don’t even go out with my friends. No secrets. Not any more.’

  I shook my head. ‘I didn’t mean that. Honest, Mum. I meant ...a long time ago. Before I was born.’ I was trying to find the right words. Not making a very good job of it. ‘Have you ever had another baby?’

  Her face crumpled into a relieved smile. She was suddenly on the sofa next to me. Hugging me close. ‘You know I lost two babies before you. I am so lucky to have you. My only precious baby.’ She kissed my brow. Normally I would be dead embarrassed if she did that, but now it comforted me. It felt good to be hugged.

  ‘Now, what brought that on?’ she asked.

  ‘People keep seeing someone who looks like me. They think it is me. She seems to be following me. I thought maybe . . .’ I let the words drift into the silence.

  ‘You thought you had a sister somewhere? A daughter I’d given up before you were born?’ She shook her head. ‘You read too many books. This girl probably doesn’t look a bit like you really. Not half as pretty. She’ll be jealous of you, I bet.’ She pulled me to my feet. ‘Come on. Let’s make some cheese on toast for supper. We’ll have it ready for Dad when he comes out of his bath. Give him a treat.’

  I knew it wasn’t a satisfactory explanation, but I pushed it away, refusing to think of it anymore. Because this was what I loved best. Me and Mum and Dad, sitting round the table eating cheese on toast, just like old times.

  I decided that night would be the end of it. It would never happen again.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘So, no sister?’ Dawn sounded disappointed.

  Kaylie was still determined that a sister had to be the explanation. ‘What about your dad? Did you ask him?’

  ‘I think Mum would know if she’d had another baby.’

  Kaylie tutted. ‘I don’t mean your mum’s baby, silly. I mean ... maybe your dad had a girlfriend, and she had a baby. A girl. Same age as you. And now she’s stalking you, because you’re the one with the dad.’

  She really did have some imagination. ‘You watch too many soaps, Kaylie. This is real life, remember.’

  ‘Truth,’ she said, with a sniff, ‘is stranger than fiction.’

  I dismissed her suggestion. ‘Even if that was true, she wouldn’t look so much like me. I don’t look like Dad at all.’ I looked just like Mum. Same fair hair, same turned-up nose, same smile. Her mirror image, people who had known her as a girl would say.

  ‘Well, I’ve run out of ideas then,’ Dawn said. ‘Are you sure you’re not just potty?’ She grinned at me, and Kaylie giggled. So did I. Not letting them see how scary that suggestion actually was.

  I was hardly listening as Mr Hardie the science teacher droned on. It was not my favourite subject, and I had another rehearsal tonight. Under the desk I had my Macbeth script open and was trying to memorise the lines.

  Suddenly, I was given a dunt that almost sent me flying off my seat. I looked up and Dawn was mouthing at me, wide-eyed, urging me to listen to the teacher. I looked up at him, baffled, and then I did listen. As I realised what he was talking about, my eyes went as wide as Dawn’s.

  Clones.

  He was talking about clones.

  How, by taking a simple DNA sample from one creature we now had the technology to copy that creature exactly.

  Hair by hair, bone by bone, cell by cell.

  ‘Can they do it with human beings, sir?’ I called out, interrupting him and taking the whole class by surprise. Taking myself by surprise too. I was thinking aloud.

  Mr Hardie blinked, surprised too by my interest. ‘In the realms of science fiction, yes. They’ve been cloning people for years in movies. But so far, in real life, it’s never been done.’

  ‘As far as you know?’ I said.

  There was a giggle from the back of the class. Monica. ‘Maybe that’s the answer, Fay. You’ve been cloned.’ She laughed like a horse and explained to the teacher. ‘You see, sir, our Fay here, keeps thinking somebody’s impersonating her. Pretending to be her. As if one of her wasn’t enough.’ She made a face at me when she said that. I swear if she’d been sitting close to me I would have slapped her. ‘Do you think that’s the answer, sir? Has she been cloned?’

  Mr Hardie answered kindly. ‘Probably there is a much more mundane explanation. Mistaken identity, Fay. Happens all the time. That’s why the reliability of eye witness identification is being called into question.’

  He smiled at me. But I had to know more, in spite of the amusement I was causing for Monica and her friends. ‘But, sir, if they could actually clone human beings, could you ever tell the difference?’

  He sat up on his desk. ‘Let’s put it this way, Fay. If I was to clone you, no one could tell the difference. Not at first. But if your clone wore different clothes, cut her hair in a different style, or dyed it a different colour, if she started developing different habits to you, smoking, biting her nails. You’d soon hardly see the resemblance. Do you understand?’

  I thought I did. A clone was only your mirror image in those first few seconds of creation. After that, it took on its own identity, became its own person.

  As we sat in the auditorium for rehearsals that night Monica couldn’t resist having another go at me. ‘You really are pathetic. Clones! Do you realise how stupid you sounded?’

  ‘What is all this anyway?’ Drew Fraser came over and joined in. ‘I’m really fascinated by the idea of clones. I’m always looking up things like that on the Internet.’ He was staring at me as if for the first time. ‘I mean ... are you the real Fay, or the clone? And how would I know which was which?’

  I was sure he was making a fool of me. ‘Stop talking as if I was someone out of one of your stupid horror films!’

  ‘I’m trying to be serious for once. I really am interested.’

  Of course I didn’t believe that. I knew Drew Fraser too well.

  ‘Anyway, why would you care!’ I snapped at him, and began to push past him.

  ‘Because I’m your husband, Lady Macbeth! It’s my business to know!’ he shouted after me, and that had everybody laughing.

  Everybody except me, and Monica. I could hear her say loudly to Drew, ‘It wo
uld be easy to tell which was which, Drew, son. The clone would be the one who could remember the lines.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Now, another idea had taken hold. Clones. Was that the answer? Had I been cloned without even knowing it?

  I decided that as soon as I had the chance I would raid the library, read everything I could about cloning and find out more.

  Next morning I left for school after Mum and Dad had gone off to work. In the hall I looked at myself in the mirror, at my shiny fair hair, at my bright blue eyes. It was hard to believe there was another, somewhere, just like me. Exactly like me. Almost impossible to believe.

  But it had to be true. There was no other explanation.

  As I came out of our house the door leading to the stairs was just banging shut. I could hear footsteps on the landing. Oh no, I thought, please don’t let the lift be broken again!

  But to my relief there was Mrs Brennan, waiting patiently. It was Tuesday, her pension day.

  ‘The lift’s definitely working?’ I asked her.

  She pursed her lips. ‘Oh, talking to me now are you? I’ve just told you the lift was working and you ignored me. In this day and age manners seem to be a thing of the past.’

  I grew cold. ‘You told me—? When?’

  She looked annoyed now. ‘Just now.’ She pointed a finger to the stairway doors. ‘Did you change your mind about going down the stairs?’

  Just now. Going down the stairs.

  I had seen the door banging shut. Heard the footsteps.

  Her. The other one.

  I gasped. That must mean . . . she was there now, on the stairs.

  Mrs Brennan stepped towards me. ‘What’s the matter, hen? You’ve gone as white as death.’

  But already I was turning away from her, ignoring her. This time, if I ran, I would catch her. I was going to find out the truth.

  I hauled open the door to the stairs and listened.

  Clip-clip-clip. Feet on the stairs, tapping out their descent. Shoes just like mine.

  I stepped on to the landing and looked over the railing. From here I could see all thirteen floors spiralling down through the gloomy stairwell.