The Forgotten Sister. Nicola Cornick
‘They made me be a page boy.’ Johnny sounded disgusted. He looked down at his miniature three-piece suit with loathing. Lizzie could hardly blame him. It was horribly twee. ‘I hated it,’ he said. ‘I’m six years old, not a baby.’
Lizzie smothered another smile. ‘Life lesson, Johnny. People are always trying to make you do stuff you don’t want to do. You have to stand up for your rights.’
‘Arthur says sometimes you have to do what other people want to make them happy,’ Johnny said.
‘That’s true,’ Lizzie acknowledged. She wasn’t great at putting other people’s happiness first. She’d had to struggle too hard for her own. She thought Arthur, whoever he was, sounded a proper goody-goody. ‘It’s complicated,’ she said. ‘Next time, though, ask Arthur whether he’d like to be a page boy instead of you.’
Johnny giggled. ‘Arthur’s too big to do that.’ He cocked his head to one side. ‘Did you really see nothing in the crystal?’
‘Not a thing,’ Lizzie said lightly. She remembered now that Amelia liked all the flaky stuff, though with the amount of drugs she and Dudley took sometimes they didn’t need a crystal ball to see things. Lizzie didn’t do drugs. She’d grown up seeing her father offer Ecstasy to his dinner guests along with coffee and mints. No thank you.
‘The crystal called to you,’ Johnny said. ‘I heard it.’
OK, so he was an odd child, Lizzie thought, but then so had she been. She felt a tug of affinity with him.
‘I thought I heard a harp playing,’ she said, ‘but it must have been the wind. That must have been the sound you heard too.’
‘There’s no wind today,’ Johnny said.
‘Then it must have been the band,’ Lizzie said.
She saw Johnny watching her with those bright blue eyes and thought, He knows. He knows I’m lying. How can he? He’s only six.
‘Amelia says that the crystal speaks to her,’ Johnny said seriously. ‘Maybe that’s what you heard. She says it has healing powers.’
‘That’s nice,’ Lizzie said, wondering how many more of Amelia’s new age philosophies her little brother had absorbed. Not that she could criticise. She might not like possessing woo-woo powers but she could hardly deny they existed.
‘Johnny?’
This time they both jumped. A man was crossing the hall towards them, young, tall, unmistakably related to Johnny with the same lean features and dark blue eyes. Where Johnny had ruffled blond hair, this man’s hair, however, was black, and unlike Johnny he looked good in a morning suit. Lizzie thought he also looked familiar and wondered if they had met before. There had been such a crowd in the church, and she knew so many people, but she couldn’t quite place him. Perhaps she’d seen him on a billboard; he looked like a model.
His gaze focused on her and Lizzie saw that he recognised her and, a second later, saw equally clearly, that he did not like her. It was a novel experience for her to be disliked. She worked hard to be sweet and appealing. There was no reason to dislike her.
‘Hi, Arthur,’ Johnny said. ‘This is Lizzie.’
‘I know,’ Arthur said.
Arthur Robsart, Lizzie thought, of course. He was not a model but he did do something on TV, not that she ever had time to watch, and he had some impossibly glamorous fiancée who wasn’t at the wedding because she was about to make it in Hollywood. He was also Amelia’s older brother, or half-brother, she thought – Amelia’s family was almost as complicated as hers – which, she supposed, explained his dislike for her. Her heart dropped a little. She’d tried to be nice to Amelia; after all, she was Dudley’s oldest friend so she should be Amelia’s friend too. But somehow it hadn’t worked and evidently Arthur knew that and like some other mean people, thought she should get out of Dudley’s life.
Johnny scrambled up from the step and held out his arms unselfconsciously to his brother, asking to be picked up. Arthur’s face lightened into a transforming smile.
‘Where have you been?’ he asked, ruffling Johnny’s hair. ‘Your mum’s looking for you.’
‘I want to get out of this stupid outfit,’ Johnny grumbled, fretful as any ordinary six-year-old now.
‘Come on then.’ Arthur swung him up onto his shoulders. ‘Let’s go and get changed.’ He gave Lizzie a cool nod, nothing more. Her heart dropped a little further, which was weird since his dislike mattered not at all. She was seventeen years old and she’d already learned not to care about other people’s opinions. She’d also learned not to get entangled with handsome men. Or any men, for that matter; the life lessons she’d already absorbed would probably make even a psychiatrist wince.
As Arthur’s footsteps died away, silence washed back into the hall and with it the plaintive echo of the crystal’s song. Unwilling but unable to resist, Lizzie moved back towards it. The glass had turned a pale violet colour now. It seemed too beautiful not to touch. And surely something so beautiful couldn’t be dangerous.
Her fingertips brushed the surface of the ball. It felt cool and smooth, the drifts of mist within following the movement of her hand. Immediately Lizzie saw a vision of the crystal sitting in the window of a shop in Glastonbury surrounded by a whole variety of other bogus magical items from joss sticks to druids’ robes. She could see Amelia exclaiming in delight, pointing it out to Dudley who had his habitual expression of bored amusement plastered across his face. Dudley shrugged:
‘It’s total rubbish but buy it if you want…’
Lizzie withdrew her hand. Psychometry gave her the ability to pry into other people’s lives sometimes but she really didn’t want to know what went on between Dudley and Amelia. She absentmindedly rubbed her fingers over the lines of the stone angel’s wings, tracing the intricate carving. It was a beautiful piece, the hands cupping the crystal ball, the head bent. As she touched it, she heard the thrum of the harp again but this time it wasn’t sweet and plaintive. There was a cold edge to it like shards of ice that sent a shiver down her spine.
The world exploded suddenly around her. She felt a rush of movement and a blur of colour; she felt a hand in the small of her back, pushing hard, then she was falling, falling. There was a rush of air against her face and the lightness of empty space beneath her. There was fear screaming inside her head. Then, as quickly as they had arrived, the sensations passed. She was lying on the floor and people were buzzing around her like flies.
‘What happened?’
‘I heard her screaming…’
‘Trust Lizzie Kingdom to try and steal the limelight today of all days…’
Lizzie sat up. Her head was woozy as though she had had too much champagne. Pieces of the crystal lay scattered about her in glittering shards, one of which had embedded itself in the palm of her right hand. It stung fiercely. She could hear Amelia in the background, wailing that Lizzie had broken her gazing ball.
The stone angel lay next to her, unbroken. Lizzie felt dazed, her mind cloudy, sickness churning in her stomach. What the hell had happened? She knew she hadn’t smashed the crystal.
People were still talking. No one seemed bothered about helping her up. She could hear Dudley’s voice: ‘For fuck’s sake, what’s the matter? It was only some cheap ornament.’ Amelia’s wails rose above the chatter. Lizzie focussed on keeping still and not throwing up. That would be the final humiliation. She felt like a pariah, abandoned in a sea of glass.
The crowd fell back a little, crunching the slivers of glass beneath their stilettos and hipster brogues. Arthur pushed through to her; he didn’t say anything, simply held out a hand to help her to her feet. Lizzie grabbed it and scrambled up. She had no pride left. She followed him down what felt like an endless succession of dark corridors into what looked like