I LEFT ALICE’S ROOM AND dressed quickly, pulling on my smartest jeans and the least scuffed trainers I could find. I emptied my rucksack and placed Alice’s notebook and purse inside it and, after hesitating, a pair of Dad’s old glasses that had no lenses. I’d had them for years, and started out by wearing them when I was playing dressing-up games, like being a doctor, or a detective. I didn’t wear them now, but carrying them somehow made me feel smarter, like they were a good luck charm. Alice had always told me that if you looked clever, people would treat you as if you were clever, and that was what I needed to be now if I was going to find out what had happened to her.
I went downstairs through the living room, where Mum was laughing at something on the television.
‘Mum, I’m going into town,’ I called, heading into the kitchen. ‘I need a few things for my Likeness.’ The room was still warm with the scent of sugar and lemon. I rooted around under the sink and found a pocket torch and stuck it in my rucksack, then unplugged Alice’s phone and put that in, too.
‘Shall I come with you?’ Mum answered, appearing in the doorway, still in her dressing gown, with a guilty look on her face.
‘No!’ I squeaked. The last thing I wanted was for Mum to tag along, not before I really knew what was going on anyway. ‘I mean, you stay here and relax. Catch up with your soaps. I won’t be long.’
‘You don’t mind, do you?’ Mum asked. ‘We’ll all go again later for the Summoning.’
‘I don’t mind,’ I said. ‘You should enjoy your day off.’
Mum yawned, not noticing anything was amiss. ‘Well, don’t be long.’ She turned and shuffled back into the living room. ‘I’ll have a nice cup of tea in a minute, I think . . .’
I mumbled a goodbye, then zipped past her into the hallway, snatching my keys from the hook and shrugging into my coat before stepping outside. It was a crisp, bright morning. My breath misted the air as I walked, trying to put my thoughts in order. At the moment, there was no evidence that Alice was definitely missing. All I knew was that she had left in a hurry, and that it must be linked to the story, which meant one of two things. Firstly, Alice could have gone somewhere to hide until she figured out what to do. She had vanished a few times in the past after arguing with Mum, sometimes for a few hours and once for an entire night.
The other possibility was that one of the characters had caught up with her. I felt a nasty little twist somewhere deep inside and pushed this thought away. I had to stay calm and use my head. I had to treat this like it wasn’t Alice I was trying to find, like it wasn’t someone I cared about. Like I was a real detective.
The first thing that a real detective would be thinking is that, when someone goes missing, the first two days of the investigation are the most important. This is because any clues are still fresh, witnesses can still remember things, and the missing person might still be close.
Missing. The word made me feel a bit sick. Missing people belonged on the television or in newspapers. It couldn’t happen to someone like Alice. It couldn’t happen to a family like us.
I reached the shop on the corner of our street and stopped outside. This was where I’d seen the girl, Gypsy. Finding her might also lead me to Alice, and I was hoping that she might have gone into the shop before I’d spotted her.
A bell jangled above the door as I went in. Gino, the shopkeeper, was stacking tins on a shelf near the counter. He looked up and smiled. He was a large, red-faced, friendly man, though Mum said he was a gossip.
I got a bottle of lemonade out of the chilled cabinet, then took it to the counter. A moment later, Gino got up, ringing up the drink on the till. A straw Likeness with black hair in a little bun and button eyes was propped next to the charity tin.
‘Who’s this?’ I asked.
‘Is my mama,’ Gino said, patting the doll with a beefy hand. ‘She die many years ago without sharing her best lasagne recipe.’ He rubbed his tummy wistfully. ‘I try to make myself, but is never the same. If she come tonight, I ask her secret! And who do you make?’
‘I haven’t decided yet,’ I said.
Gino wagged his finger. ‘You’ll run out of time!’
‘I’ll get my sister to help me,’ I said, hoping the mention of Alice would jog his memory of the other girl. ‘She’s always got good ideas.’ I pointed to some jars behind the counter. ‘Can I have a pound’s worth of rhubarb and custards, too, please?’
Gino beamed and weighed out the sweets, giving me an extra one ‘for luck’ as he always did. ‘Your sister, she is in here earlier,’ he said, his smile fading. ‘I ask her who she make for the Summoning, but she act like she don’t know what I’m a-talking about. Like she never hear of the Summoning before.’
My heart quickened. The real Alice knew all about it, as did everyone else who lived in Fiddler’s Hollow. It had to be Gypsy.
‘Then she ask me directions,’ Gino continued. ‘Very strange.’
‘Directions to where?’
‘The library,’ said Gino. ‘So I tell her, then I ask if she is a-feeling all right.’ He scratched his beard. ‘She say yes and give me a funny look, and that she just got lost. And the strangest thing is, she don’t speak. She write everything in a notebook and show me.’ He shrugged. ‘And so I think to myself that maybe she is playing a trick on me. And I have a busy morning, so I forget about it until you come in.’
I paid him and left, turning out of Cuckoo Lane. If I hurried to the library, perhaps I could find her. I headed for the town centre. Saturdays were always busy, but the weekend of the Summoning saw it packed out, the square near the town hall especially. The library was at the back of the town hall and, as I neared its huge doors, I slowed a little. They were shut and the board displaying the library’s opening hours confirmed it had closed fifteen minutes ago.
I felt a little of the wind leave my sails. My first lead and I’d lost it! I shrugged the bag higher up my back. There were still other clues and my biggest one was the notebook. If there were anything else I needed to know about Gypsy, I’d find it there. Plus, I had another place in mind that I wanted to go – but there, instead of Gypsy, I would be looking for Alice.
I cut through the centre of town to the church, taking the path that wove through the gravestones. At the back of the churchyard, there was an overgrown mass of trees and shrubs. I stopped, taking a quick look about to make sure no one was watching me, before pushing through a gap in the greenery. Twigs and leaves brushed against my cheeks as I crawled between them, the winter ground dampening my hands and knees.
The Den was a short way in and a bit of a scramble through what appeared to be a dense thicket. Once you were through, though, there was a hollow space like a leafy cave beyond. It was completely hidden from view and, if you were quiet enough, no one would ever know you were there. Alice had shown me the spot a couple of years ago, but made me promise not to tell anyone.
I came to a halt and spat out a leaf, searching the ground for any sign that someone had been here recently. Last year, Alice and Mum had argued and Alice had stormed out of the house. She hadn’t returned until the next afternoon and wouldn’t say where she’d been, but the next time I came to the Den I found Alice’s name traced over and over in the soil. Later, she told me she’d been there all night.
Now, however, there was no sign of her at all. I reached into my bag and popped a rhubarb and custard into my mouth, then took out Alice’s phone and notebook. I tried the phone first – perhaps there was a message on there, or maybe a call from someone Alice had gone to meet? I was quickly disappointed, for the phone was locked with a password to stop anyone from looking at it. I put it back in the bag, frustrated, then opened the notebook.
It was hard to see in the gloom, but I remembered the pocket torch and shone it at the paper. There were three pages of character notes on Gypsy, mixed in with doodles, diagrams and even little pictures of outfits that had been cut out of fashion magazines. At the top of the page, a word had been written in capital letters: CURSED.
‘Just like Alice,’ I whispered to myself.
A flowery doodle had been drawn heavily round two words: Gypsy Spindle. I traced it with my finger, remembering the night Alice had first mentioned the curse. The day she’d come back after going to search for her father. She’d been looking at the book of fairy tales: Sleeping Beauty about to prick her finger on the spindle of the spinning wheel. About to fall under the spell. Alice had always liked using weird names, and Gypsy Spindle was straight out of a fairy tale. I read through the notes. Some of it was very familiar: her mother was a Romany traveller and her father had worked with a bookbinder. It sounded a lot like our mother, who had worked in a bookshop before going into publishing, and Alice’s father.
I continued reading, discovering more. There were lots of notes about Gypsy’s favourite music and books. She had a tattoo of a scorpion on her neck, just below her ear. She had been betrayed by a boy she once loved. She had lived with her curse, which was Silence, for six years.
‘That’s why she didn’t speak to me,’ I murmured aloud. ‘She couldn’t.’ I reread the profile, lingering over the scorpion tattoo. It seemed such an odd choice for a young girl. Had Alice secretly got a tattoo? She couldn’t have – it would be too difficult to hide from Mum – and besides I was sure she would have told me if she had. The more I looked, the more convinced I became that Gypsy was a mixture of who Alice really was and who she wanted to be. Even the curse tied in with it all. She had never told me what her own curse was, but I knew it must be something to do with her father. It made sense that part of the story would be about Alice’s character finding a way to undo her own curse.
I scanned the rest of the notes, and then I saw something that made my heart hammer: Lives on a narrowboat called Elsewhere. I snapped the notebook shut and put it back into the bag, squeezing out of the Den. If I hurried, perhaps I could still find Gypsy.
The canal ran just on the edge of the town, behind the shops and alongside the train station. I left the churchyard and went along Buckle Lane. From there, it was a five-minute walk down a couple of side streets, then the canal was in front of me. Green, sludgy water glugged at its sides, moved only by a flock of swans. There were a couple of narrowboats moored further up. I headed for them, the air damp on my face.
The two boats were on the other side of the canal just past a bridge. Was one of them Gypsy’s? I wasn’t close enough to see the names yet. I crossed the bridge, but hesitated as I drew nearer. What would I say to Gypsy if she were there? I had no idea how much Gypsy was aware of. I knew that she was a character from Alice’s story, but did she know that? I doubted it.
Gypsy probably thought she was a real person. If she discovered she wasn’t, what would she be capable of? She’d be afraid, confused, unstable even. A shudder rippled over me. All those things could make her dangerous. One wrong word from me might blow it . . . and if there was a chance Gypsy could lead me to Alice then I couldn’t afford for that to happen.
I took out the notebook again. Perhaps if I could skim some of the story and get more information it would help me know what to say to her. I looked past the notes on Gypsy and the cat. There were several other characters: a boy named Piper who was some sort of street performer, two other girls listed on the same page – Dorothy Grimes and Dolly Weaver – and another character called Sheridan Ramblebrook: the curator of the Museum of Unfinished Stories. I flicked past these. I could come back to them later. For now, I needed to get to the actual story itself . . .
I never got the chance, though. I looked up as a moorhen started to squawk and saw that, on the bridge behind me, a familiar figure was crossing the water. I squinted, unsure for just a fraction of a second. Was it my sister?
No. It was her. The other Alice. My heart raced again. She was coming towards me, heading for the boats. I watched as she came closer, seeing things I hadn’t noticed this morning. Unlike Alice, she walked tall, carrying herself with confidence. She was dressed differently to Alice, too. My sister lived in jeans and shapeless T-shirts, but this girl’s clothes were daring and colourful. Under her black leather jacket she wore a long, sea-green dress with a crimson sash tied at her waist. On her feet were scuffed boots that went right up to the knee. The sort of boots that looked as though they had walked many roads and had many adventures.
I was aware I was staring, but couldn’t seem to stop. The girl appeared not to notice, barely glancing my way. She looked half in a daydream as she approached, passing the first boat and taking out a chain from around her neck. A silver key dangled from it. She lifted the key, then paused, noticing me. A flicker of recognition crossed her face. I moved closer to her. Sure enough, there it was, painted on the side of the boat: Elsewhere. Gypsy opened the notebook she was carrying and wrote something in it, then held it out to me.
Did you find Alice?
I looked into her eyes.
‘No,’ I mumbled, noticing a leaflet poking out of the pocket of her jacket. I recognised the library emblem. It was a list of opening times.
‘I’ve just been to the library, too,’ I said. ‘Looking for Alice. But I didn’t make it in time; it was closed.’
I didn’t find what I was looking for anyway, she wrote.
I saw an opportunity to get her to stick with me a little longer.
‘There’s a bookshop not far from here. I could show you where if you like?’ I offered.
She stared at me just long enough to make me squirm. Why are you so keen to do a favour for a stranger? she wrote.
For a moment, I faltered, taken aback, but a plan was forming in my mind.
‘Well, I’m going there now anyway, to look for Alice. She loves books, you see.’ I tried to read Gypsy’s expression, but it gave nothing away. ‘Plus, if I help you, perhaps you could help me in return.’
How?
‘By pretending to be Alice.’
The girl rolled her eyes.
‘I’m serious,’ I said. ‘This isn’t the first time Alice has . . . disappeared. If our mum finds out, she’ll be in big trouble. I need to find her, but our mum can’t know that she’s gone.’
At this Gypsy laughed. Lookalike or not, there’s no way you’d be able to fool your own mother.
‘You think?’ I reached into my rucksack and took out the photograph of Alice from her purse. ‘You don’t realise just how much you look like her.’
Gypsy snatched the photo, blinking. The smirk slid right off her face. Her fingers shook as she wrote two wobbly words.
That’s impossible.
‘Now you can see why I thought you were her this morning.’
But she looks just like me. She practically is me.
I went to take the photograph from her, but her grip was too tight. I had the horrible feeling I’d blown it by scaring her, but as she looked harder at the picture some of the stiffness dropped out of her shoulders and she released it into my hand.
She’s thinner in the face than me, and her eyes are blue, she wrote. Mine are green.
‘Well, yes. You don’t look exactly like her. That’d be impossible. But you look enough like her to fool Mum for a few minutes,’ I said. ‘That’s all it would need to be.’
I suppose there’s no harm in that. She studied me again, watchful as a bird. My name is Gypsy Spindle.
I nodded, pretending the name was new to me. ‘I’m Michael Pierce, but everyone calls me Midge.’
Gypsy tucked the silver key around her neck out of sight. Come on then, Midge, she wrote. Lead the way.
We set off, away from the towpath, and headed towards the town centre. As we walked, I heard Gypsy’s footsteps next to mine, heard her breathing, saw her shadow falling across the path, just as solid as mine. I remembered Alice speaking about characters from books and how real they were to her.
I wondered if this was what she had meant.