Searching for Arthur (The Return to Camelot #1)(8)

Eventually she went to lie down in her bedroom. She said she had a migraine. Clearly the slurps from Arthur and SS didn’t bother her. It was three o’clock in the afternoon. A Sunday. The 20th September and a new school week was approaching. As if to prove the point, a large pile of English homework was on the kitchen table, mocking me.

But I couldn’t drag my eyes away from the back garden. The rain lashed against the small leaded windows. Large red leaves streamed down from the trees, like enormous droplets of blood. The wind was frenzied in its assault of the garden, relentlessly whipping branches and stems back and forth, back and forth. It was hypnotic. The teak-stained garden chairs were already lost to the storm. In the distance I saw the spindly legs of one, poking out from under a bush like the Wicked Witch of the East after Dorothy’s house has landed on her.

Only the ghosts knew where the other three chairs had landed.



My ears were waiting for the sound of whispers, but above the combined noise of Arthur’s bed and the weather outside, they would have been impossible to hear unless they were breathing in my ear.

I knew the ghosts were there though. I could sense them.

Waiting. Biding their time.

My thoughts drifted to Mr. Rochester, and a surge of white hot anger rose from my stomach where it spiked in my mouth. It tasted bitter. He was only a floppy-eared baby. Barely two months in my possession and he was gone, stolen from me in the most brutal of ways. It was murder and someone needed to pay. I shouldn’t have run from the voices. I could – I should – have saved him.

“Where are you?” I whispered through gritted teeth. “Where are you, you cowards?”

I looked down. In my right hand was a large kitchen knife. I couldn’t remember reaching for it, but my fingers were clasped so tightly around the silver metal handle that the tips of my blunt nails were turning white.

“Titch, what the hell are you doing?” cried a voice behind me.

I pirouetted on the spot. Arthur and Slurpy were standing at the kitchen door, their faces frozen in horror.

Without replying, I slipped the knife back into the large wooden block on the kitchen worktop as my rage dissolved into embarrassment.

My eyes went back to the garden, but I knew my brother and his girlfriend were still behind me because I could hear them breathing: short and shallow. I had frightened them.

You do realise how that looked, said my inner voice, as my stitched head throbbed. Arthur and Sammy walk in and find you holding a kitchen knife, just a few days after your rabbit has been filleted. Could you appear more psycho?

“It wasn’t me,” I said.

“No one said it was,” said Arthur, slowly walking up to me, “but you gave us a scare there, Titch. Some people shouldn’t hold sharp objects, and you are one of them.”

I looked at him with as much disgust as I could gather, but I’m not a very good actress. I probably looked constipated.

“Shock, horror, Natasha is in the kitchen with a knife in her hand. Call the police, the Foreign Office, the FBI, call our bloody mother, because clearly the world is about to implode.”

“Don’t get snarkey with me. I am better at it than you, little sister.”

“You don’t need to remind me, big brother. I’ve been told for seventeen years that you are better than me at everything.”

We stood there on the cold limestone tiles, eyeballing each other. Then the corners of Arthur’s lips – which were miraculously still in place despite Slurpy’s best efforts to remove them – started to twitch.

I thumped him. Hard.

“Don’t laugh at me, Arthur.”

“I’m not laughing at you, Titch,” he replied. “It’s just when you are angry, that big vein on your forehead starts to vibrate. It looks funny, that’s all.”

I moved my hand up to my forehead and rubbed at it. Arthur was right. It felt like I had a long strand of cooked spaghetti above my left eyebrow.

“I’m stressed out.”

“Do your homework then,” replied Arthur sarcastically, walking over to the fridge. He grabbed two cans of soda from the top shelf and threw one to Slurpy. He didn’t bother passing one to me.

“There’s no point. I’m not going into school tomorrow.”

“Why?”

“Because I can’t concentrate on anything. I may as well go mad here at home where people can’t see me.”

“Titch…”

“Arthur, can you drive me home now?” interrupted Slurpy, with a nasal whine.

“Just a second, Sammy,” replied Arthur, finally passing me a soda can. I opened it and sprayed frothy coke all over my newly washed, white skinny jeans. “Look, Titch, leave the homework for a couple of hours, and come for a drive with us. The fresh air might help clear that banged-up head of yours. Plus I could do with the company on the way back. If the car breaks down, you can get out and push.”

My brother: the chivalrous knight, but I didn’t have the energy to argue anymore. I nodded pathetically and reached for my short leather jacket, hanging on a hook by the back door. My eyes wandered to the back garden again, just in time to see the fallen trellis fly through the air.



And then I saw him.



My stomach fell into my shoes and then bounced up into my mouth. I was going to hurl or scream.