Chapter 4 - Cat Tales Part 2

The Twenty-First of November Two Thousand and Eleven. Monday.

The whole family rushed to the stairs to see the commotion. Ceri's father ran upstairs to comfort his daughter. Ceri's big brother and cousins gaped in horror at the still form of 'Monica', lying at the foot of the stairs. Accusations were thrown around and tear-stained explanations were gabbled. A picture formed between what was said and what was imagined. There was sympathy for Ceri, sympathy for 'Monica' and the calm centre of all this, even though she was terribly upset herself, was Mrs Akinyemi. Turning down offers of help from the rest of the family she was the one who went to fetch a blanket so that the deceased could be taken from the scene of the accident (that was the word that had arisen through unspoken consensus – 'accident').

The only person who hadn't seen what had happened was Lisa. She'd been outside during all this drama and for a moment had been forgotten. Nobody heard the clatter of the kitchen catflap or saw her as she padded into the hall looking for her sister.

By now, Ceri had been persuaded to come downstairs. Something like the truth had come out and while there had been mention of punishment the poor girl was so devastated that for now all anybody could do was offer hugs and comfort. It was while she was in her mother's arms that it happened.

Everybody jumped at the flurry of hissing and spitting. Lisa had arrived and seen her sister's corpse. She was consumed by fury and animal rage. As everyone shuffled to move away from the angry cat Ceri was revealed. It took Lisa a second to make the connection. This bawling child was responsible, the protective way the adults were huddling around her. This pathetic infant was responsible for the death of her sister. She would pay.

Lisa launched herself at Ceri, claws extended. Still dazed from recent events no-one was quick enough to respond. Nobody human.

Before Lisa reached the child she was knocked to the ground – by Lucia. There was a tornado of fur and screeching as the two cats fought. Ceri screamed and the tears came once again. The other children ran away – except for Ceri's cousin Amanda who held onto her mother's hand and stared at the spectacle in fascination.

Mrs Akinyemi's sons dived in to separate them. At a shouted instruction the front door was opened. The two men grabbed the two cats steeling themselves for the expected scratches. They bundled them out of the door, throwing them over the threshold. Amanda, grinning from ear to ear, slammed the door shut. Reviewing the aftermath it appeared that only Lisa had drawn blood, a single shallow scratch across the back of a hand. Mrs Akinyemi arrived with the blanket. She hadn't seen any of this. She held her hands up to stem the tide of stories crashing toward her, accounts high and low, from child and adult. There were conflicting entreaties. Get rid of the dangerous animals. Keep the fighting pets and sell tickets. Sensible, concerned grown-up suggestions and youthful flights of fancy that had been inspired by this extraordinary turn of events.

Mrs Akinyemi paid no attention to any of them. The cats were nowhere to be seen and could not be found that day or the next. But when they returned the day after that, Mrs Akinyemi saw only the two friendly moggies that ran up to her and rubbed the back of their heads against her ankles. She dismissed the tales of her family and invited them back in to be fed.

'You do know what immortal means, don't you?'

'I was angry. Regardless, the child must be made to pay.'

'You almost ruined everything. After all these countless years have you no patience?'

'No! I was once a princess in the ever-burning fire. I have eaten my last scraps! I have drunk from my last saucer!'

'It is here.'

'….'

'This is the end of our torment, sister. The Chianti Lodestone is here. This is where my spell hid it. I know that now.'

'Then let us be free! Let our plans begin again!'

'Soon, sister. The time is not yet here for the taking of our final soul.'

Lucia quite enjoyed Coronation Street. The sisters had arrived in the UK in the late 1950s and one of the first homes they had occupied had watched the venerable soap opera from its first instalment. Lisa had not understood her sister's preoccupation with such low art, but Lucia had insisted that everywhere they had stayed was somewhere that watched the programme regularly. It had irritated Lisa how on occasions they had abandoned a plush or welcoming house in favour of a less desirable abode with more appropriate viewing habits. But as time moved one and the cats moved further and further north, like so many of Lucia's pointless idiosyncrasies, Lisa learned to live with it.

Mrs Akinyemi was a regular viewer. She had a Sky+ box and usually recorded the evening's episode while she was having dinner and would then watch it later that evening as a treat before bedtime. She was not one to eat in front of the television. The late Mr Akinyemi always set the table for dinner and this was a tradition his widow continued to this day.

Lucia would curl up in Mrs Akinyemi's lap to watch Coronation Street with her. Mrs Akinyemi would find this comforting. It would turn Lucia's stomach. But Lucia knew it was necessary. It was something she never discussed with Lisa but there was something about these parochial little dramas that spoke to her on a fundamental level. She didn't know what it was until a fateful night in 1976 when everything became clear.

Lucia and Lisa had made their home among the cats of London back then. They were always treated with fear and respect by feline society. After the odd deaths of two of the families they'd adopted during their time in the capital their reputation was enough to ensure they were never challenged. But Lisa always despised her sister's soap addiction. She saw it as a weakness, this fascination with the smallest things of the mortal world. Lucia, however, recognised that it was something more. A calling, an itch, something compelling her to keep watching all these years. When she finally saw it she could hardly believe it.

The familiar opening theme played, but the titles were different. A montage of shots of the town as before, but there, near the end as the music swelled, there it was.

A cat. Just like her and her sister, a cat that was not a cat. After all these years there it was: The Chianti Lodestone transmuted into the form of an animal made of light. The same spell that made cats out of the demons also hid the Lodestone in feline form. But hid it in plain view, in front of millions of people every week.

Lucia was well versed in the art of making the real unreal and vice versa. She knew that what was needed to recover the Lodestone from its imaginary hiding place. It took some years more but eventually she pinpointed the exact location where her plans – plans she didn't share with her sister – could come to fruition.

Two months after the incident with Ceri, in Mrs Akinyembi's house on Coronation Street – the real Coronation Street in Salford – just a few doors down from the Salford Lads Club, Lucia prepared to retrieve the Lodestone. She and Lisa held the memories of the dying screams of every victim that had perished in the wake of their destructive quest. With the Lodestone back in her possession she could harness the power of those screams to reverse the centuries-old enchantment that had trapped them both as animals. A final scream from Mrs Akinyembi was all that was needed. That would come tonight.

Bedtime. Lisa stalked away from her sister in disgust. There is no trust between demons. Lisa tolerated Lucia's behaviour not out of any belief that she could rely on her. It was only her track record of success that bought her any compliance. A track record that was wearing thin these past few years. For tonight Lisa would let Lucia have this sickening time with a mortal – again – but if nothing was achieved soon there would be a reckoning.

Lucia approached Mrs Akinyembi. She was seated in her customary chair, the television was on some random channel. An advertisement for a smell was followed by one for the removal of pain. Centuries among the mortals and the ways of their world were no cleared to Lucia. No matter. She had determined the means of Mrs Akinyembi's demise tonight. It would be fire. She would recover the Lodestone from the television and then cause the screen to ignite as the power was released. At last. As Mrs Akinyembi started the recording she would begin the short but necessary recovery ritual.

Except Mrs Akinyembi wasn't starting her programme. As Lucia got closer she noticed that the television remote control was on the floor. And Mrs Akinyembi was slumped in her chair.

Lucia felt cheated. Mrs Akinyembi was at peace, but that was no use to the demon. She had depended on the fear of this woman as she expired being the catalyst to start the spell of reversal that would restore her and Lisa. The memories of all the other screams she carried with her were the fuel but a spark was needed to set them aflame.

For a second she considered the alternatives. Another house, another victim? No, this was perfect. Coronation Street on Coronation Street, the real and the hidden in conjunction. It had to be now. And that meant only one solution.

There are still superstitions about cats stealing the breath of sleeping children. Of course cats do not do this. But a demon in the shape of a cat could, just as that demon could return that same breath of life.

An extended claw picked out the correct buttons on the remote control, leaving a deep scratch with each touch. Menu; recorded; play; slow. Silently, sluggishly, the familiar images of the soap's titles began to play out on the screen. Lucia chased her tail and rolled on her back, as if inviting someone to play. This was part of the ritual of recovery and soon it received its response. The cat appeared in the title sequence only this time instead of settling down upon a roof it turned around and leaped out of the television. There was a momentary clash between the two cats, as they scrabbled at each other that was quickly interrupted by loud, shrill pop. The television cat disappeared and there in its place sat the cubic frame of the original Lodestone.

Lucia hesitated. What she was about to do would not sit well with Lisa. Then again, if she was successful the world would soon be rewritten as they wished it and any errors of judgement could be rectified then.

She climbed upon the chair and balanced its arm close to Mrs Akinyembi's face. She closed her eyes, recalling to the front of her mind the hundreds of screams she had witnessed during her journey of terror through the centuries. They were weighty things, heavy with fear. She gathered those memories and breathed them gently into Mrs Akinyembi's mouth. How many would it take to stay the flight of a departing soul?

Now Lucia began to worry. If she gambled away too much of the screams' power, there wouldn't be enough for -

Mrs Akinyembi sat bolt upright and let out a howl. A long, desperate, hope-shattering cry begging for a relief that could never come. Lucia drank it up, let it wash over her and the Lodestone and smiled as she felt the transmutation begin.

The room fell silent. Mrs Akinyembi's soul had finally departed, successfully, if painfully, escaping the feigned attempt to pull it back down. There would be more screams later, when Mrs Akinyembi would be discovered by her family. It had infuriated Lisa that Lucia had insisted on waiting to witness this. But even she couldn't help but admire the ruthless way Lucia had finally exacted her revenge on Ceri. As the distraught little girl caught sight of her deceased grandmother Lucia planted a simple thought in her head that would stay there for the rest of her life despite it being unfounded and irrational: 'This is your fault.'

When Lisa entered the living room, drawn there by the excruciating noise, she was confronted by her transformed sister, holding her hands out apologetically.

'I am truly sorry,' said Lucia. 'Something went wrong with the spell. There was only enough power to restore me. And as you can see, even that wasn't a complete success.'

Lucia stood upright as a woman, but her body was still covered in the fine black fur of her cat incarnation. Her features were human enough, perhaps a slight point to her ears and pupils that weren't as round as they could be. And she had a tail.

'Rejoice, sister!' exclaimed Lucia. 'Our grand scheme begins anew!'

It was at that precise moment that Lisa decided that she would destroy her sister, preferably sooner rather than later.

More soonliest.

Chapter 4 - Cat Tales Part 1

The Seventeenth of November Two Thousand and Eleven. Thursday.

Chapter 4 Cat Tales

Hello, my name is May. I'm Carl and Amber's big sister and I come in to this story a bit later on. I'm just popping up now to do Carl a favour. You see, he wasn't there for this next bit and so when he was telling the story he realised he'd have to make this section up. That's not really his strong point. He's very good at all the true bits, but when it came to this chapter he was coming up with every excuse under the sun not to do it. In the end I offered to write it. It's not all made up. Some of it is based on stuff we found out later on. However, there is a decent chunk of this that is just me trying to fit the pieces of the story together and make it interesting. I have no idea what really happened. I hope you enjoy the version of events that I've come up with.

Our family has had three cats during my lifetime. When I was tiny there was Trixie, who was a grey and brown tortoiseshell. For a while, there was two when Ginger (guess what he looked like) came along. Trixie was quite old to begin with and I remember being really upset when she died. She'd had a kidney infection and I cried buckets when Dad took Trixie to the vet to put her to sleep. Ginger didn't stay around much longer after that. I never saw him again so he must have gone a fair distance. I hope he was ok. Thirdly, there was Deedee who was only a kitten. She was part of the litter of Carrie who was the cat from my Mum's works. She stayed with us for a little while before she went to a permanent home with one of my Mum's workmates. Mum had never intended to get another cat. She'd been too upset after Trixie had died. But Deedee kept coming into her office and when it came time to find homes for the litter it was if Deedee had already decided where she was going.

That's the thing about cats. They choose you, not the other way around. Both Trixie and Ginger were strays. Ginger was just a nickname for the tom that kept hanging around Trixie and the house, but by the time he had decided to make his home with us the name had stuck.

You might think you've chosen a cat, but if they don't care for you they'll just move out. That's why there are so many strays. At best a cat might tolerate someone they live with that they haven't chosen if the food and lodgings are good enough.

I think Mrs Akinyemi must have been chosen by Lucia and Lisa, the demon sisters trapped in the shape of cats. She'd be the right sort of person, a widow whose children had all grown up and moved away. Not lonely by any means, Mrs Akinyemi had plenty of friends and an active social life with craft clubs and computer clubs and all sorts of evening classes most nights. But there'd be a hole in her life somewhere in that big empty home that the sisters could exploit with a well-timed show of affection.

This is how the immortal sisters had sustained themselves for nearly 500 years. In their feline forms they were as good as powerless. They could never die, but they still felt hunger and cold, still needed somewhere to lay down when the voices inside their heads were silent and they could rest. There is no kindness within these creatures. Having to feign affection in order to be taken in would be alien to them. If they weren't insane before, half a millennium of acting against their nature would have driven them mad.

Even if they had wanted to there is no way they could have stayed with any one person for too long. Their black hearts would not allow it. It would be difficult for a cat to find a way to torment or destroy a human but not impossible. Over the centuries there had been many, many accidents and fires, fatal injuries and falls. If anyone had took the time to look into the patterns they would see a very definite progression from Italy across the continent and eventually ending up in Britain. A trail of inexplicable deaths with seemingly no purpose behind them. But even as the demons gave vent to their frustrations and disgust there was a small reason behind every death. Trapped in the form of animals, they could not call upon the spells or demonic powers that they had used to hoodwink and bamboozle the town of Santa Lucia. So, painstakingly, decade after decade, they would collect the dying screams of each of their victims in their tiny cat memories. It would take them all the while until the 21^st Century for them to gather enough to reverse the alchemist's spell. They would have to recover the Chianti Lodestone that they had hidden during their last battle with Cabriatti. Long, patient work, but they had toiled for centuries before Santa Lucia to achieve their goals, they didn't baulk at the prospect of as much time passing again.

By the time they had reached Mrs Akinyemi they knew that their time was almost done. It had been ten years since they had first turned up at her back door, mewling and begging pathetically for attention. She had fed them and petted them and they had made themselves more and more at home. She'd made half-hearted enquiries to see if anyone had lost a pair of cats but she didn't look too deeply for answers. That first night that the sisters slept inside the house they knew their long wait would very soon be over.

Mrs Akinyemi had named them Phoebe and Monica. For a while Lisa had been Chandler until Mrs Akinyemi had realised that they were both female. As they strutted and purred about her kitchen, Mrs Akinyemi believed she was receiving some much-needed love from her loyal pets. She had no idea that she was being used.

In their time with Mrs Akinyemi there was one occasion when the truth of their evil was almost exposed. There had been times before, in previous households, where something had threatened to reveal something of what Lucia and Lisa truly were. It was usually soon after that the inevitable accident that forced their eviction took place. It was a little more complicated with Mrs Akinyemi. She had two sons, each of whom had a family of their own, who would visit their mother regularly – sometimes together. It was during one of these large family gatherings that Mrs Akinyemi's five-year old granddaughter Ceri started to tease Lucia.

Ceri was sat at the top of the stairs. Without instruction from anyone else she had discovered one of the fundamental truths of the animal kingdom: cats like string. This particular example had been tied to a Spongebob balloon that Ceri had been given at the fair the previous day. Spongebob hadn't lasted long when he'd got home – Lisa had seen to that. Perhaps it was some expression of resentment at this act that caused Ceri to do what she did. She had dolefully kept the string with her even after the balloon had been burst, trailing it along behind her wherever she had gone. Her father had tried to get her to leave it, to throw it away but it had been Grandma, kind, thoughtful Mrs Akinyemi who had recognised Ceri's need to mourn and had encouraged her son to let Ceri be.

It was as Ceri was leaving the bathroom that she was surprised by a sudden tug on her string. As had been the case all day, she was dragging it behind her when she felt something pull it back. That 'something' was Lucia, who in her guise as Monica had been avoiding the stifling hubbub and jollity that was going on downstairs. It was all a bit too wholesome for the average demon. She had been keeping out of the way on the upstairs landing when she saw the string worming its way past. You can't spend nearly 500 years as a cat without picking up some habits and before she knew it Lucia had pounced on the string and given it a good savaging.

Ceri soon picked up on what was going on and entertained herself by making the string – and as a consequence, the cat – dance. Lucia leapt and twisted, rolling on her back and kicking with her hind legs as she grappled with her prey. Ceri giggled at Lucia's antics, and somewhere deep inside the cat stirred feelings of pleasure that came not from hate, wickedness and destruction but from the simple joy of playing. It was because she had been weak enough to let these feelings take root that made her anger at what happened next all the more vicious.

When Lucia and Lisa formulated their evil schemes it was done with a slow, deliberate pre-meditation that ensured they got every last drop of foul satisfaction from the consequences. They enjoyed their corruption and revelled in it.

A five year old might do something wrong but that's usually because it doesn't know any better. The idea to do what she did popped into Ceri's head without any sense that it was naughty. But as soon as it was done Ceri knew she'd crossed a line.

Gradually teasing 'Monica' into position, Ceri had strategically dangled the string in order to get the cat to the top of the stairs. With perfect timing she jerked the string to tempt 'Monica'. The demon was happy to let the cat part of her take charge and she leapt for her prize. At the last second, Ceri whipped the string away and 'Monica' went sailing over the edge and in to thin air. Such was the force of her leap she missed the stairs altogether and plummeted directly to the hall floor below with an ugly thud. Horrified, Ceri looked down on the small motionless body at the foot of the stairs and began to cry.

More soonliest

Chapter 3 - Secret Identity Part 3

The Sixteenth of November Two Thousand and Eleven. Wednesday.

Immediately, the golden arrow began to twitch in its cradle.

'It's working!' cried Amber.

It was all very exciting stuff but I was still covered in Amber's snot. 'Has anybody got a tissue?'

Dan handed me one. 'Does she do that a lot?' he asked. 'Is she like a snotty Midas?'

'Yeah!' said Amber enthusiastically. 'My snot turns things into gold! Find me something else to sneeze over!'

Sensibly I ignored my sister's rantings and took a closer look at the Lodestone. As I tilted it the arrow righted itself, always pointing in the same direction. The rest of the cube hadn't changed, although I noticed one curious thing. The writing on the frame now read, 'Country of Origin: Italy'.

'That's clever,' said Dan. 'Disguising it as a fake version of itself. That's a good way to keep something hidden.'

It was an odd thing for him to say but since it was true and his tone suggested the thought had only just popped into his head I didn't fret about it.

'Transmutation,' I said. No-one seemed impressed at this so I said it again. 'Transmutation: turning base metal into gold. The secret of the alchemists.'

'Is pewter a base metal?' asked Dan.

Hah! So it was pewter.

'How do you know which way to go?' asked Amber.

'I'm sorry?'

Amber took the Lodestone off me and tilted it experimentally. With every movement the double-arrow at the centre stayed true to whatever it was pointing toward.

'The arrow's pointing both ways,' she said. 'How do you know which is the right way?'

'Oo, that's a good point,' I said.

'That's two good points,' said Dan. 'Now, I'm going to take a wild guess here. There isn't a play or a Kevin Curtis, is there? Is anybody going to tell me what this is really about?

'No,' said Amber.

We all stood there in silence looking at each other for about ten seconds or so. That doesn't sound like much but you'd be surprised how uncomfortable it gets in that short time with no-one speaking.

I crumbled first. 'Ok, then, yes.' I had already written most of Chapter 1 by then – in freehand in my journal, I've typed it all up by now, of course, and added in the bits that I missed at the time (spoiler alert! I don't die at the end! Shame on anyone reading this who hopes that I do). Easiest thing to do was to hand over what I'd written so far to Dan and let him get on with it. In the meantime Amber and I tried to puzzle out which way we should be going.

'We could split up,' was Amber's suggestion.

I scoffed at this. 'That's not going to work, is it? We can't both take the Lodestone. How would we know which is the right way?'

'I'm not bothered about that,' said Amber. 'I was just looking for an excuse to get away from you.'

'Har, har.'

'Done it,' said Dan, slamming my journal shut with enough noise to nip in the bud any potential argument between Amber and me.

'That was quick,' I said.

'I'm a fast reader,' admitted Dan. 'So you're going to use this Lodestone to find these scrolls that can bring about the end of the world? Cool.'

'Once we've figured out how it works,' said Amber.

'I suppose you'll be wanting to take it with you?' he asked.

'Well, yes, obviously.' I was getting a bit fractious at this point.

Dan smiled. 'Excellent, that'll be £24.99, please.'

'How much? For that?' I think the next category on the dial after 'fractious' is 'crotchety'. ' It's just plywood and string. And anyway, didn't you read the bit about being on a quest to save the world. Don't you think that's more important?'

'I do think it's important,' said Dan. 'I think it's so important that it's not worth carping about the twenty-five quid it's going to cost to save it. Besides, it's worth a lot more than that now, what with the gold and everything.'

'That's true,' agreed Amber. 'I think Daddy's credit card will be coming to the rescue again.'

'Would you like it wrapped?'

Dan and Amber went over to the till to sort out the purchase of the Lodestone, leaving me to ponder what to do next. Why wasn't there an instruction book? It's all very well it pointing toward where these scrolls are but what were we supposed to do? Keep walking in that direction until we bumped in to them? It was only now as we faced this first setback that I realised just how ridiculously under-prepared we were. Cabriatti had cleared off and we couldn't turn to our parents. And there was no point relying on my idiot sister for inspiration.

'We need to go and see someone who knows about this sort of thing,' was her brilliant idea. She had bought the Lodestone and Dan was handing her an upmarket paper bag decorated with the shop logo. It was far too big for the modest gift box containing the Lodestone inside it. 'I went to a psychic off Oldham Street with Louise Collier a couple of months ago. She was amazing – she knew everything about Louise, even stuff Louise didn't know herself.'

I looked toward Dan for sympathy, shooting him my best 'can you believe this?' look, but he was miles away, gazing off into the distance, blankly. He wasn't listening to a word of what was going on, but something caused him to frown. Then, unexpectedly, he gagged and his face went pale. He didn't speak but he held his hand up and shook his head as if to say 'it's nothing,' and steadied himself. I turned my attention back to Amber.

'There are no such things as psychics!' I said. 'They're just frauds using tricks to con the gullible out of their money. Don't you ever watch Derren Brown?'

'No,' said Amber sulkily. But I know that she does because she kept on harping on about that one where he performed a séance. Then again, if she didn't watch it to the very end she probably thought it was all real, that wouldn't surprise me.

Now you might be wondering why if we've had conataurs, alchemy and time travel, I don't believe in 'psychics'? It's a question of simple proof. Before yesterday I didn't believe in conataurs either, and I will gladly revise my opinion of 'psychics' if – like cone creatures - one of them decides to chase me through my kitchen at night.

'I'm really sorry,' said Dan out of nowhere. 'But I think there was something wrong with that egg custard; I'm going to be sick.' All the colour had disappeared from his face and a slight sweat had formed on his forehead. 'Could you keep an eye on the till for me – Gail'll be back off lunch soon. Sorry!' Without another word he rushed off toward what I presume must have been the toilet.

Don't let any problems with the cakes put you off the pasties. They are fantastic, honestly.

Amber hadn't yet given up on her suggestion.

'You haven't come up with any good ideas recently, have you?' she pointed out, a bit unfairly if you ask me. 'I've had to do all the thinking – I'm sick of it. So unless you come up with a better plan in the next five seconds, we're going to see Miss Booty and get our palms read.'

I can't remember what my reply was going to be because at that point there was an explosion of noise. It sounded like a thousand blackboards being scraped at the same time and it was getting louder and louder. It culminated in an tremendous crash as the glass of the front window shattered and a tram – yes, a tram – smashed into the shop. This all took place in what must have been nothing more than a split-second, but I can recall the order of events perfectly: the noise, the screeching, the window and then the tram, the huge, monstrous tram bearing down on us, going to kill us, going to smash right into us.

I didn't close my eyes. I wasn't being brave. I think I was so paralysed with fear that even my reflexes stopped working. But that's how I saw him, before he disappeared. He wore overalls and one of those reflective jackets that firefighters have so at first I thought he was with the emergency services. Then I realised that he was hanging on to the front of the tram for dear life and the truth of the situation occurred to me. Whoever this man was he'd caught the tram, literally. There was glass and rubble and dust everywhere but you could see that if the man hadn't been there the tram would've careered right through the shop, killing me, Amber and about a half-dozen or so other customers. I grabbed hold of Amber, I wanted to know if she had seen what I'd seen. But she was in shock – I was in shock! - and when I looked over to the tram once more the man had gone. A chorus of alarms assaulted my already battered nerves. I opened my mouth to speak but all that came out was a croak, I couldn't form any words, nor could anyone else in the shop. Until a lone voice, back from the toilet made itself heard above the racket.

'Oh my God,' said Dan. He doubled over and threw up.

More soonliest.

Chapter 3 - Secret Identity Part 2

The Fifteenth of November Two Thousand and Eleven. Tuesday.

When I sat down and began writing this account of the adventures of me and my idiot sister I was determined that it should be a no-holds-barred honest and upfront account of everything that happened to us. I promised myself that I wouldn't compromise and that no matter what I would strive to maintain the integrity of this work. There would be no way I would be swayed by commercial interests or allow anything as crass as product placement. So you can believe me when I say that the vegetable pasties from Patrick the Baker are the finest savoury pastry-based food item on the high street.

Despite my large breakfast I had found room for one when Dan, my inadvertent rescuer, had offered to buy it for me to calm my nerves. Amber had joined us – the hideous noise of the crashing lamp post having brought a number of people out of the shops – and we were sat, with Dan, on a bench outside the branch of Golden Olden Times where he worked. He was on his lunch break and had opted for soup and a roll. Oh, and a small egg custard for afters. Amber had accepted a cheese straw but clearly would have preferred to continue shopping. I had convinced her that we had reached our goal though when I introduced her to Dan.

'Yep, that's the address of the shop,' he confirmed, handing the scrap of parchment back to me. 'And I'm Dan Burdock. Who did you say gave you this?' He took a sip of his soup. It was Broccoli and Stilton. That's another reason to go to Patrick's – they always do good soups.

'He said his name was Kevin Curtis.' This is my sister's idea of a bluff. Kevin Curtis? Where did she get a name like that from? 'He's pretending to be an Italian from long ago in a play or something. For school. We just met him. He's new at our school. He asked if we were coming in to town today and could we get this prop for him. He gave us this address, but he didn't know what the shop was called. He doesn't speak much English. Kevin Curtis isn't his real name. He's really from Europe and has a different name. Kevin Curtis is his English name. He gave us your name off of your Facebook, where it says you work selling old Italian stuff. That's what he said, I don't know if that's true. Do you sell old Italian stuff?'

I'd been mouthing 'shut up!' at Amber all through her babbling but she'd chosen to ignore me. Dan didn't look like he had a problem with anything she'd said, but he couldn't have been that dumb. Could he? His glasses had flown off when he'd bumped into me but he'd got them back on now. Sat there, all hunched over, squinting through them with breadcrumbs all down his front he looked a bit gormless if I'm honest. Maybe he took what she said at face value.

'Nothing in there's really old,' Dan told us. 'It's all repro stuff. Some of it's Italian, I think. I mean it'll say “Made in China” on the bottom but it'll look like it's from Italy. Mostly it's mancala sets and posh bookmarks. Let me have my egg custard and we can have a look.'

Amber cadged another cheese straw. Down the street we could see the police and highways van looking at the smashed remains of the lamp post. It looked like it was an accident – I'd overheard somebody say something about recent work on a gas main that had probably weakened it. Didn't look like a demon attack, but then over Christmas my dad let me see The Omen and there's a really cool bit in that where someone gets their head cut off by a sliding pane of glass and it looks like an accident but really it's the Devil. Maybe it was something like that (hope I haven't spoiled The Omen for you. That's only part of it. There's lots more).

After a decrumbing session we went into Dan's shop. He said hello to Gail, who was his supervisor, and then goodbye to her as she went off to take her turn for lunch. He went over to his till which was one of those touch screen ones with different buttons for different items.

'Give us a second, I'll see if we've got one in stock,' he said. 'What's it called again?'

'A lodestone,' I said. Difficult to say that casually. I don't think I managed.

He tapped the screen a few times, scrolling through a few options then gave an 'ah!'.

'”Chianti Lodestone”: it's in with the ornaments and collectibles. This way...' And off he went to the back of the shop, past candles, necklaces, DVDs and other stuff all piled high and reduced in price as though nobody they'd been stuck there for some time and no-one wanted to buy them.

Amber hesitated before following him. 'I think I'm going to sneeze,' she said. 'Only I'm not.'

'What?'

She wrinkled up her nose. 'There's something tickling my nose. Something in the air. It's like smelling something that isn't there. It's making me want to sneeze, but not letting me.'

It really annoys me in films and books and on the telly when something like this happens and the person involved says something like 'oh, it's probably not important. Forget about it,' and they carry on about their business and you scream at the screen 'of course it's important! Are you not paying attention! Weird and dangerous things have been happening to you all day, why have you chosen to ignore this when it's clearly connected!' Well, you probably don't scream all that, but you go 'Arrgh!' anyway.

But that's the weird thing. When you are actually in that situation that's exactly what you do! I know! It's stupid, isn't? But I said to Amber, 'It's probably nothing. Come on.' Even as I'm writing it I can't believe I said it, but I did. I was so into what was going on I didn't want to get sidetracked and I strode off after Dan. Amber came right after me, and that should have been a clue of sorts because she almost never does anything I say without making a fuss about it.

'I should have guessed this is what you were talking about.' Dan was unlocking a glass case that was bolted into the wall. Inside were all sorts of knick-knacks: pendants, brooches, figurines, even tie-pins and cuff links. All mimicking designs from ancient Egypt or the Aztecs or the Celts. Except for one. There, in the centre of the case, as if whoever had placed it there had decided it was more important than all the other items, was the cube frame that Cabriatti had described. It was definitely the Lodestone – there was the metal double-arrow at its centre, dangling from threads attached to each corner of the cube. It looked brand new, like all the other items in the case. I remembered what Dan had said, about everything in the shop being a reproduction and I could feel disappointment arriving before I'd even had the chance to get excited. There was no way this thing was 500 years old. Then Dan said something that perked me up again.

'You're not the first people to be interested in this. There was a woman with a cat in here yesterday who wanted to take a look at it. A lodestone, so that's what it is. I never knew.' He removed it from the case and passed it to me. 'She must be doing the same play,' he said without the slightest hint of irony. He really had believed Amber's story. 'She said she was looking for something authentic, though. This wasn't good enough for her. Look.'

He turned the Lodestone over and showed me, just as he had mentioned earlier, the words 'Country of Origin: China'.

I swore then. Sorry about that.

'I don't think I've ever seen a woman with stubble before,' said Dan.

'I beg your pudding,' said I.

'The woman looking at your lodestone. She had a proper five o'clock shadow. That's not something you see everyday.'

I was thirteen when all this was taking place so it's fair to say I didn't know much about women or demons at this point. But I had a really horrid sinking feeling (no, worse than when I heard they were going to do a movie version of The Space Carpenters and I knew they'd make a right hash of it and miss all the stuff that makes the original cartoon funny, clever and brilliant) that the woman Dan was talking about – and her cat – were exactly who Cabriatti had warned us about. What if they'd come today instead of yesterday? We could have bumped right into them! Looking at this knock-off of the Lodestone I didn't know whether I was disappointed we hadn't found the real one or relieved that the demon sisters hadn't found it either. I turned to Amber.

'Achoo!' Amber sneezed right on top of me.

It was disgusting! She didn't even cover her mouth. Half of her spit and snot combo went on me and the other half on the Lodestone.

'I'm sorry, but you're going to have to pay for that now,' said Dan. I'm not sure if he was joking or not. Because before I had time to shout at Amber or challenge Dan another one of those bizarre things happened that seemed to be cropping up with more frequency these days.

Amber's foul mucus had dripped from the threads within the frame of the Lodestone onto the metal hanging at its centre. Now I hadn't thought about what that metal arrow-thing was made of. I want to say 'pewter' because that seems to be what these sort of things are usually made of and it's a really good word – 'pewter' – but I haven't the first idea. But what I can tell you is that when the remains of Amber's sneeze reached it, it began to glow. Dimly at first, but then with an incredible brightness that reminded me of when they set fire to magnesium in chemistry at school. With that thought, for a second, I believed that was what was happening – the Lodestone was burning up. But the glare soon died down and revealed that the arrow, and the threads about it, were still intact. With one crucial difference.

I might not have known what metal it was before, but there was no mistaking what it was now.

Gold.

More soonliest.

Chapter 3 - Secret Identity Part 1

The Fourteenth of November Two Thousand and Eleven. Monday.

Chapter 3 Secret Identity

I usually like to have a quiet Sunday. As a rule I will try and get all my homework done on a Friday night or Saturday morning. This isn’t because I’m a brainiac – ok, maybe I am a little bit – just the sooner I get it all out of the way I know that whatever time I’ve got left then is my own. Saturday afternoon I’ll probably go in to town with Sohil or Kyle and trade in a game or DVD and have a bit of a mooch around – that’s what all three of us did yesterday. But Sunday I like to do nothing.

I remember Winnie the Pooh stories from when I was little. When Christopher Robin told Pooh that his favourite thing was doing nothing I completely identified with that. And when he went on to tell Pooh that when you grow up they don’t let you do nothing any more I remember being horrified.

For a Sunday I have a heck of a ‘to-do’ list.

I have to make sure a bloke from 16^th Century Italy gets back to his own time so that he can make a device that will help save the world.

I’ve then got to help my sister find where this device is hidden in the present day because she’s the only one that can use it to do this saving of the world thing.

And then I’ve got to figure out a way to save my parents and get them back to normal because a pair of demon sisters has turned them in to conataurs – creatures with the bodies of humans and the heads of, well, traffic cones.

At least we had time for breakfast.

‘I don’t know how you can eat all that.’ Amber wrinkled her nose in disgust as she nibbled at her toast. Every now and then she’d decide to be a vegetarian and she was in the middle of one of those phases now. To give her her due, she did look properly annoyed at the bacon and sausage of my full English. Cabriatti had very specifically asked for beans on toast, and was tucking in to them with some relish. He told me he’d hoped he’d have the opportunity to sample British cooking. He was overjoyed when he saw they had brown sauce.

We were sat in the cafeteria of the Holiday Lodge Express where we had spent the last night. I’d had a room to myself! We all had. Cabriatti had paid for it all from a huge wad of £20 notes he’d been carrying around.

‘Where did you get all that money,’ I asked him between mushrooms.

‘It isn’t money,’ he confessed. ‘It’s ordinary paper. It’s coated with an oil that dulls the senses on contact. It's then very easy to suggest to the holder that they're holding something much more valuable. It’s one of the first things they teach you at alchemist school. So you’ll never have to look for a proper job when you graduate.’

‘Could you teach me how to make that?’ asked Amber.

‘I think you’d be able to create it very easily, Chosen One,’ replied Cabriatti.

‘Don’t call her that,’ I said, sighing. ‘Even if she is, don’t call her that. Her head’s big enough as it is.’

‘Jealous much?’ she said.

‘Speak properly,’ I said.

‘Can I have that toast if you don’t want it?’ said Cabriatti. Amber sulked and handed over the unwanted slice.

I think we all needed an ordinary morning like this after the bizarre goings on the previous night. When we had first discovered Mum and Dad with their cone noggins we had half expected to have to go through with the whole pitched battle with the green death rays scenario again. But Mum and Dad went through the paces as if everything was perfectly normal. Everything – they didn’t even seem to notice the damage from the battle with the first conataur or that it was still bright daylight outside. It was creepy to say the least.

‘Isn’t it time you were in bed, Carl?’ Dad had asked as he poured tea down his conical face, aiming for a mouth that wasn’t there.

'They're taunting you,' explained Cabriatti. 'The sisters. Effectively your parents are being held hostage against your good behaviour.'

'Turning my mum and dad into conataurs isn't much of a threat if they're planning on destroying the world as we know it anyway,' I pointed out.

'True,' said Cabriatti. 'But never forget your adversaries are demons. Whether they think you will pit yourself against them or not they will delight in tormenting you along the way. This may not be the last thing sent to test you.'

'I don't care, I just want Mum and Dad back.' Amber said this very matter-of-factly. I was surprised. She's usually more whiny than that. But although I wasn't going to admit it to her I felt exactly the same way. The end of the world? That was too big to even begin to have an idea of what was involved. But saving Mum and Dad – that made perfect sense. 'If I'm supposed to be this “Chosen One”,' continued Amber, 'then tell me what I have to do to get Mum and Dad back.'

'Destroy the demon sisters,' said Cabriatti equally to the point. 'All the spells, curses and hexes they put in place will then be lifted.'

'Let's go then,' said Amber. 'Where's this thing you said we had to find?'

'In a shop run by half a man,' answered Cabriatti. 'Come on, we can't stay here.'

We left for the hotel, leaving our conataur parents to continue their oblivious lives. Cabriatti made his plans to return to his own time, using a disposable digital camera he'd bought to take photos of the seed heads of several dandelions. He'd already taken an egg timer from our kitchen and it was this along with the pictures of the dandelion clocks that would form his 'time machine.' The Holiday Lodge Express was situated off the roundabout that led to the motorway than ran past Eccles on its way to the centre of Manchester. It was a ten minute walk to get there and within another ten minutes we were all checked into our own rooms.

I didn't sleep a wink that night.

After breakfast Cabriatti prepared to make his departure. We found a secluded corner of the hotel car park. Cabriatti lay down a circle of the photos he had taken of dandelions and then stood in the middle of them.

'Why don't you come with us now and help us find the sisters?' I asked.

He shook his head. 'If I fell during your quest and failed to return to make the second Lodestone then your efforts would be rendered useless before you even began. No, my task lies in my own time. There are years of toil ahead – it is now time that I met them.'

He then handed me a small piece of parchment with a name and address scrawled on it in biro.

'I have calculated where the second Lodestone will be found in this time. Here is its location and here is the name of the man guarding it.'

I read Cabriatti's appalling handwriting. I suppose alchemists are like chemists when it comes to bad penmanship.

'Dan Burdock? Is this where he lives?'

'It is where he is. Whether he still lives? That will be down to if Lucia and Lisa have found him first. Seek him out, find the Lodestone and save the world.'

Cabriatti punctuated his command by throwing the egg timer to the ground, smashing it to pieces and scattering the blue sand that was inside it. Nothing happened.

'I was hoping it would be a little more spectacular than that,' he said, promptly disappearing and leaving behind a fake lemony scent like you get from furniture deodorant. One by one, in an anti-clockwise direction, the dandelion photographs crumbled to dust, blowing away in the breeze much like the real seeds would.

Amber and I stood there for a moment, lost for a little while in the emptiness of the car park. We didn't look at each other, but if she was thinking the same thing I was the enormity of what lay ahead was just beginning to strike her.

'Have we got time to pop into New Look?' she asked.

We got the tram in to town. The address Cabriatti had given us was in the centre of Manchester. I wondered if it was a museum or gallery, somewhere where antiquities might be kept. We got off at the closest stop and made our way to the street in question. Nothing but shops.

'There's an H & M there, I'm just going to have a quick mooch while you find the place,' announced Amber.

'You did hear that bit about the end of the world, didn't you?' I asked her. 'You're supposed to be the only person who can get this Lodestone thing to work. What if I find it right away?'

'Look, I'm already getting stressed out about this whole enterprise!,' said Amber. 'If I've got ten minutes before everything becomes all about life and death then I'm going to use it to shop. I may never be able to again. And while my dad is living with a cone for his head he's a lot less bothered about his credit card bills.'

She held up my dad's Platinum Card.

'What's the betting his PIN is Mum's birthday on this one too.' All dad's cards used Mum's birthday as a PIN. It was an open secret in our family. That way he remembered Mum's birthday because it was the same as his PIN and he remembered his PIN because it was the same as Mum's birthday.

'All right, all right! I'll text you when I find the place.'

'You haven't got my number,' she informed me.

'Yes, I have,' I replied.

'No, that's a fake one. I didn't really want you texting me, if I could help it so I made a number up. Here's my real one.' She sent me a short text. It read :

'Ur a pig. Byee!'

When I looked up from my phone she had gone. I was about to set off when somebody bundled me to the ground. It didn't seem deliberate, whoever it was was yelling as if they had come a cropper and it was more like they were falling on top of me than grappling me. I wriggled to free myself and my accidental assailant promptly jumped off me muttering embarrassed apologies. He stood, then offered me a hand up which I gladly took. He was about to speak when there was a creaking sound followed by an almighty crash as a lamp post toppled over like a felled tree. Everyone in the street froze at the noise of it and a couple of car alarms went off in sympathy with the juddering vibration. Miraculously, no-one was in its path and no-one seemed injured other than perhaps a few shredded nerves and some upset children. There would have been though if this man hadn't bumped into me and knocked me out of the way...

He was in his early twenties with messy brown hair that didn't look like it got on well with brushes. He was wearing a branded burgundy polo shirt and the sort of neat trousers that nobody would ever buy – a shop uniform. The brand said Golden Olden Times and above it was a name badge that read 'DAN'.

'Blimey, that was a bit of luck!' he said.

More soonliest

Chapter 2 - The Daytime Night Part 3

The Twelfth of November Two Thousand and Eleven. Saturday.

Mum was going to kill me. Even though a drunk with a cone on his head that shot green lasers was trying to evaporate me I was more worried about the fallout when she saw that her Elvis picture with the little LEDs that spelled out V-E-G-A-S had been destroyed. She was going to be livid. I could see this weighed on Amber's mind too because she flung herself at the cone drunk in a rage.

'You pillock! You've damned us all to a living hell!' was her battle cry. She leapt on to the back of the drunk and attempted to pull the cone off his head. She succeeded – sort of. The cone came off but so did the head. It wasn't gory or anything. It popped off as if it was a bit of Lego, causing Amber to go flying onto her back. Whatever this creature was, it wasn't flesh and blood. She still had the cone in her hands until the headless body, seemingly undeterred by being decapitated, snatched it back off her. Amber scrambled away in the confusion.

'How can it see where its going with no head?' she yelled at me.

'The same way it can see with a cone over its eyes – I don't pigging know!' I looked over at Cabriatti to see if he had any explanation. He gave me a Renaissance shrug.

Back to the pressing matter of not being evaporated. The drunk now held its cone head in its hands and pointed it toward whatever target it chose. Either it was unable to reattach it or it had realised that it would get a better aim this way. I hid behind the kitchen door. Cabriatti and Amber had retreated to the living room. The deadly cone swung between the two extremes before finally deciding to come my way. Typical.

I ran for the back door and was grateful to find I'd left the key in even though Mum and Dad had made it quite clear not to do that. I fumbled to unlock and open it just as a blast of greenness streaked across the kitchen and disintegrated the penguin cookie jar on the windowsill. There was definitely an element of psychological torture about this – that was a favourite of Mum's too. I burst out into the back garden, momentarily disorientated by it being bright as day. I'd forgotten about that – there was, after all, enough to be going on with. There wasn't really much of a plan forming, I'm ashamed to say. I didn't fancy trying to get over the fence into one of the neighbour's gardens. I'm not really built for climbing, having been defeated by the spider-web in the park playground and the apparatus in the school gym. Without a strategically placed bin those sheer creosoted slats might as well have been the north face of the Eiger.

That left the shed. Funny how in the heat of pursuit holing yourself up in a tiny space with no escape routes seems like a good idea. In fairness, since the only other option was to stand on our tatty patio – or 'tattio' as my Dad likes to call it – and pretend to be invisible it seemed more inviting at the time. I bolted toward it.

Straight into the night.

The first thing I noticed was the sudden drop in temperature. Then it dawned on me (or should that be 'dusked'?) that it had suddenly gone dark. I looked back toward the house. It looked like an ordinary building at night with drawn curtains dimly illuminated by the light behind them. Even the cone drunk looked like someone holding a green torch in the dark kitchen. It had become night-time again. Hiding from the creature seemed a little more possible now and with that in mind I moved away from the dead end of the shed and started to inch back toward the house, pressing myself against the fence between us and number 22. I had only taken a couple of steps when everything burst into daylight again, the house, the garden and me as a crouching target. I jumped back in surprise and night immediately fell again.

The washing line was doubling as an international date line, night time in Eccles one side of it and left over day time from Renaissance Italy on the other. To complicate matters further, the time of day appeared to be consistent from the point of view of whoever was looking. While I was in the night-time zone all I could see of the conataur was an indistinct shape in the darkness. To him, however, I was standing out in the open in broad daylight. I had to do something to get him into the darkness too. Another green blast, obliterating one of mum’s shirts that she’d forgotten to take off the line (more misery when the news got to her!) reminded me I hadn’t much time.

The shed it was then. I yanked open the door and found a suitable corner to cower in, amongst the abandoned tools and half full paint tins. Great. I had the cover of darkness but that was it: no plan, no idea, nothing. I closed my eyes and awaited my imminent demise.

As well as fate and destiny, luck was another thing that I didn’t believe in. Stuff happens and there are coincidences but in a rational universe there was no way the odds of something occurring could be affected by supernatural means. Which is why I completely accepted the news that the conataur got his cone knocked out of his hands when he ran under the washing line and was decapitated a second time (is it still decapitation when the head in question isn’t sat on someone’s shoulders?) The deadly cone somersaulted through the air and landed with a ‘whump’ a good three feet inside the night-time zone. I knew the creature didn’t need eyes to see – I expected it to recover its peculiar head in much the same way it had done from Amber – but I was relieved to see that it didn’t have infra-red body vision or something. In the darkness it was having difficulty finding its head again. It stumbled about – was it actually drunk or was that a disguise? – all the while its head was letting off random bursts of that unpleasant green light. Smelled funny too – if light can smell – like overcooked sprouts (yes, in our house that is a smell I am familiar with). So whether it was luck or not I wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity like this.

‘Oi, sprouty!’ I shouted. Rubbish insult, but I was under a bit of pressure. I just wanted a reaction. ‘Over here!’

No ears either, of course, but he definitely heard me. He swung round in my direction, took three stomps toward me and took a big green blast to his derriere as he stepped over his own head. Instantly, his body was consumed by green flames, shrivelling away in a cloud of sprouty smoke. I went up to the cone with a mind to investigating it, but it disintegrated in front of me leaving a horrible plasticky dust that I remembered from a previous encounter with one of these cones (oh, I forgot to mention it here but I had had a run-in with a strange traffic cone before, but that’s another story).

Amber remembered it too because when I went back inside – the daylight and the house – she was treating this as if it was somehow my fault.

‘That business with the cone – the one that followed me home from town – this has got something to do with this, hasn’t it?’ she shouted at me.

‘No,’ I calmly replied. ‘This is an entirely different strand of cone weirdness taking place. I can’t see there being any connection between the two incidents.’

‘What? You sarky little toad, Mum and Dad are going to kill us. Come here, I’ll save them half a job.’ I don’t know how serious she was but fortunately Signor Cabriatti interrupted before she got the chance.

‘Are these your parents?’ he asked. He was pointing to a photograph, a family portrait, framed and mounted above the mantelpiece. I quite like that photo. It’s of Mum and Dad with me, Amber and May. I sometimes think it’s a bit of a fib, the way we’re all calm and relaxed and even smiling a little bit. I mean, we’re never like that, certainly not all together. But it is still us. It’s difficult to explain, but I like the fact that it is us.

Compared to Elvis it was almost tasteful.

‘Yes, why?’ I answered, happy to seize upon any means of delaying my execution.

‘There are three of you,’ he said. ‘Three children, I mean. You have another sister?’

‘Yes,’ we both said.

He fixed me with one of those stares that meant he already knew the answer but was going to ask me any way. You know, the one teachers use all the time.

‘So you are not the second born of Nicola Thorpe?’

I’d thought it was an odd question when he’d asked me the first time, but I was in a bit of a daze back then so I’d answered as precisely as I could.

‘My mum? Yes, I’m her “second born”. May’s actually my step-sister – she’s got a different mum to me and Amber.’

‘Hold on, why has your mum got a man’s name?’ I think Cabriatti was genuinely confused by all this. Time travel was a doddle, but the English versions of names was clearly beyond him.

‘Are you calling my mum a man?’ This was Amber’s useful contribution to this discussion.

Cabriatti was muttering away to himself. It went something like:

‘When the Scrolls of Time mentioned a Nicola (there are a lot of scrolls, aren’t there? I’m not sure if he did say scrolls, but it did seem to be all a bit “Scrolls of This, Scrolls of That” so let’s roll with that) we assumed that was the name of your father. But you are your father’s third child!’

‘Dad’s name is Declan,’ announced Amber. ‘No relation to “Ant and Dec”.’

This is the sort of stuff that drives me round the bend!

‘Why would it be any relation?’ I asked her, very reasonably I thought considering the circumstances. ‘It’s only his first name that’s the same!’

‘That’s what I’m saying!’ replied Amber. ‘They’re not related!’

I’m glad I didn’t scream at that point because I wouldn’t have had anything in reserve for a few seconds later.

Cabriatti was on his knees again. Only this time he was in front of Amber.

‘You! You are the Chosen One,’ he cried up at Amber. ‘You will save us all.’

That's when I screamed.

With perfect timing we heard the rattle of the front door being unlocked and opened.

‘Hello, we’re home!’ came Dad’s familiar voice. I tensed, waiting for the reaction to the mess in the hall, or the daylight, or just the general atmosphere of oddness that seemed to be hanging around.

Mum’s voice soon followed. ‘I’m putting the kettle on. Does anybody want anything?’

All very calm and unperturbed and as a consequence very perturbing. Gingerly, we went to the kitchen to see what was – or wasn’t – up. It was worse than I could have possibly imagined.

Mum and Dad were still in their coats, Dad looking in the cupboards for teabags, Mum filling the kettle at the sink. It might have appeared perfectly normal, except...

The pair of them had traffic cones where their heads should have been.


More soonliest