“SO HOW MUCH is it?”
“Two thousand pounds.”
“For a mirror.”
“It’s a very old mirror.” David Barlow, the owner of Antiques and Oddities, smiled and folded his hands together expectantly while shifting his weight in the desk chair.
A tingle of excitement ran up Elena McCreary’s spine as she realised that once again she’d come across something no one else owned. Agatha Christie’s hatbox, a quill thought to have been used by Queen Victoria… This mirror would be the perfect addition to her ever-growing collection if it were as special as David claimed.
“Who’s selling it?” Elena leaned closer to David, who sat across from her at his office desk under the watchful stare of a shrunken head kept in a case on a high shelf. A hint of disgust appeared in his smile. Despite the fact Elena was one of his best customers, her wealth revolted him—she’d seen it in his eyes whenever he thought she wasn’t looking.
She absently twisted a white gold ring on her finger. It’s because he’s jealous he can’t be you. Be nice to the man. Maybe he’ll give you a deal.
“Mrs. McCreary,” David said evenly, “I told you the seller wishes to remain anonymous.”
“I can pay an extra thousand if you tell me.” Elena hid a smirk. In reality she would do no such thing. Three thousand for a mirror? She might as well go on holiday for a few weeks.
David looked for a moment like a man torn but then shook his head. “I can’t do it. The mirror really did belong to the Earl of—”
“Yes, yes, so you’ve said.” Elena was growing impatient. The mirror in question, an oval measuring two feet wide and three feet long, was currently wrapped in brown paper sitting three shelves below the shrunken head. “Let me see it.”
“Mrs. McCreary, I—”
“Now, David.”
With a sigh, David pulled the package down and set it on the desk. Elena reached for a seam in the paper and made to tear it apart when David pulled it back from her. “I wouldn’t do that here.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a very special mirror.”
Very old, very special—what will it be next?
When Elena opened her mouth to argue, David added, “You’re never going to find another like this anywhere.”
“I know that.”
“Then do we have a deal?”
ELENA unwrapped the mirror in her bedroom and was almost disappointed to see it was a perfectly ordinary oval-shaped mirror spotted with age and framed in a twisting silver pattern that could do with some polishing. But it had once belonged to an earl (one said to have gone mad in his old age), and that single fact made it worth the price.
She took her old mirror off the wall above her cherry wood dressing table and hung the “new” one in its place. The tarnished frame didn’t look so bad against the textured indigo wallpaper now, did it? She should just keep it as it was instead of restoring it. Gave the room a proper bit of character it had always been lacking.
Elena admired her reflection in the spotted glass. She was a chestnut-haired woman of forty and looked much younger, thanks to genetics. Why, there wasn’t even—
Wait a minute.
Something wasn’t right about her reflection—something subtle she’d missed at first glance, because how could a reflection ever be wrong?
Elena blinked and lifted a hand to brush aside the hair in her face.
Her reflection didn’t.
Clapping a hand over her mouth, Elena staggered backwards out of her room and onto the landing, where she stood trembling for an indeterminate number of minutes.
“That can’t have happened.” She spoke in a whisper. “It just can’t have.”
Once her pulse had resumed a more typical rate, she ventured back through her bedroom doorway to regard the mirror a second time. There was a chance she’d imagined the whole thing like a dream—it had been a long day, after all.
“Of course you imagined it,” she muttered. Mirrors didn’t just decide to show something other than what sat in front of them.
Elena closed her eyes as she took the last few steps towards her dressing table, then counted out half a dozen heartbeats and opened them.
The Elena in her reflection looked worried; possibly more so than Elena did now. Her shirt was different, too. The other Elena wore a black blouse Elena didn’t recognize.
Elena held still while her reflection parted her hair to reveal a single white strand nestled among all the brown ones.
Then the mirror’s surface rippled, and Elena saw herself just as she was.
Somehow managing to keep her composure, she parted her hair in the same manner her reflection had done. None of her hair was white.
Thank goodness for that.
THAT night, Elena thrashed back and forth under her duvet, unable to get the image of finding the white hair out of her head. When at last she did fall asleep, she dreamed she crawled out of bed and looked into the mirror only to learn she’d grown old overnight: her flawless skin now a mass of wrinkles and age spots, her hair a snowy white mane.
She let out an endless scream unheard in the void of dreams.
ELENA did her very best not to think about what she’d seen in the mirror while at work the next day. She approved a new marketing slogan, sacked the new girl from accounting, and sat through a long and dull meeting with a client. By the time she made it home that evening, exhaustion had won her over.
She threw her keys on the table and ran her hands through her hair when she got in the door. A bit of wine would be good with dinner, but first she would get into more comfortable clothes.
She remembered the mirror the moment she entered her room, and she drew up short. From her position near the door she couldn’t see her reflection, as she’d hung the mirror on the left-hand wall across from her bed. What would the mirror show her tonight?
Realising how absurd that question would sound to anyone else in the world, Elena braced herself and stepped up to the mirror.
The Elena in the mirror was not the Elena she was now. Her reflection had let her hair down, and her eyes seemed to be searching for something beyond the oval pane of glass. Elena didn’t breathe as her reflection picked up a hairbrush and started working out tangles, her eyes haunted by whatever she had or had not seen.
Elena waited a minute longer before rummaging through a box under her bed and finding a spare sheet. She draped it over the mirror and left it there, satisfied for the time being.
When she returned to the kitchen in a t-shirt and a pair of gray joggers she would never be caught dead wearing outside the house, she poured herself her customary glass of wine while ruminating about what the mirror had shown her.
Once finished, she decided to break her habit by pouring another. It made her feel much better.
THE next weekend, Elena met up with her old friend Martina Brinkman for dinner and shopping. They laughed over chicken tetrazzini at an Italian bistro that had recently opened near Marty’s office. Elena hadn’t felt so happy in ages, what with the divorce and idiots at work and all.
“We could stop at that new shop on the corner before we go to Westfield,” Marty suggested once their meal had been paid for. Marty wore a shocking pink headband more befitting a younger woman, contrasting with her short, dark hair. Like Elena, Marty had always done her best to defy her age.
“Perfectly all right with me,” Elena said, feeling rather full. “My money isn’t about to go spend itself.”
Marty threw her head back and laughed. “Your money? More like your ex’s money.”
“Don’t be silly. It hasn’t been Tom’s for six months.” Elena winked.
The pair walked from the restaurant to the shop, which was called Melinda’s and appeared to sell only women’s clothing and accessories. Elena preferred to spend her money on rare collectibles, but one could never go wrong with a new outfit now and then.
A bell jingled overhead when they walked into the cluttered shop, and a plump woman behind the counter offered them a cheery hello. “Are you looking for anything today, or just browsing?” she asked them.
“Oh, just browsing,” Marty said with a smile. “I find all the best things that way.”
“Including two ex-husbands.” Elena winked.
“I didn’t say they stayed the best things, now, did I? Oh, Elena, look at this one!” Marty pulled a blouse off a rack and held it up for her to see. “It would look perfect on you!”
Elena’s heart stuttered. Marty held the black scoop neck blouse she’d seen her own reflection wearing the day she brought home the mirror. “Yes, I think it might.”
She realised Marty was holding it out for her, and one of Elena’s hands reached out of its own volition and took it.
“What’s the matter?” Marty asked. “Did Tom get you this same shirt?”
Elena forced a smile onto her face. “Oh, no. Never had one like this in my life. I’ll go try it on.”
She took the blouse into the fitting room and slipped it over her head. It fit so well she would have thought it had been tailored just for her if she hadn’t known any better. She admired herself from different angles in the full-length mirror (which thankfully reflected back precisely what it was supposed to), and let out a sigh. There was no logical reason not to buy the blouse. It wasn’t as if not buying it would tear a hole in the fabric of reality, or some such rubbish.
She left the fitting room with the new blouse in hand, feeling much better than she had minutes earlier. She laid it on the counter for the clerk to scan. “I’ll take it.”
THAT night, Elena sat at the foot of her bed, swirling wine round and round in her glass as she regarded the sheet-draped mirror. She’d put on the new blouse the moment she got home, and she still wore it now along with the knee-length black skirt she’d worn while dining with Marty.
The sheet seemed to taunt her. Take me down, it whispered. Something so valuable should never be hidden.
Elena’s lip curled in disgust at herself. “I’m forty years old. I shouldn’t be afraid of a mirror.”
She stared at the sheet until she could no longer stand it.
“That’s it.” Elena stood, slammed her wine glass down atop her dressing table, and tore the sheet off the mirror.
The Elena staring back at her wore her favourite silk dressing gown. Elena trembled but refused to run away again like a frightened child. She placed one hand against the glass and tried to wrap her mind around the fact that her reflection wasn’t doing the same.
“There has to be an explanation for this.” Of course there was an explanation, as all things could be explained given enough time and knowledge. But how did one explain a mirror that showed some other version of reality? Saying it was haunted would be rubbish. Elena had about as much time for the supernatural as she did for toothaches, the difference being toothaches were a real phenomenon and the supernatural was not.
“Then how do you explain the damned mirror?”
She picked up her glass and drained the rest of her wine, and the moment she did, the mirror rippled and reality returned to its surface.
A peculiar thought struck her then. She brought her face closer to the mirror and parted her hair to see a centimetre-long white strand nestled among the brown ones.
“IF I told you something extraordinary, would you believe me?” Elena asked Marty over the phone Sunday afternoon.
“Don’t tell me you and Tom are getting back together.”
“It’s nothing like that,” Elena said, wishing she’d called for something that simple. “I bought a mirror.”
“Sorry, I’m in the car. Did you say mirror?”
“Yes, a mirror. It’s an antique.”
“See, that was part of the problem with you and Tom. You’re only meant to be with something if it’s at least a hundred years old.”
“I’m not joking. I’ve bought this mirror, and there’s something very strange about it.”
“Please don’t say it makes you look fat. You’re thin as a razor blade.”
“Marty, please. Could you just come by? I’d rather you saw it in person.”
“Sure thing. I’ve got some errands to run, but I can swing by for tea.”
“Thank you—I’ll see you then.” Elena clicked off the phone and set it on the bed beside her, then risked a peek at her reflection. The Elena in the mirror held her face in her hands, and her shoulders shook with inaudible sobs.
ELENA served Marty tea in the lounge and hoped her friend wouldn’t notice the tremor that had overtaken her hands. She’d tried to calm herself prior to Marty’s arrival to no avail. “Keep calm and carry on,” the old saying went, but whoever coined it had clearly never hung a magic mirror in their bedroom.
Elena picked her filled teacup off the tray and dropped it.
“Is everything all right?” Marty asked, rising to help.
Grimacing at the brown puddle on the formerly-spotless white rug, Elena said, “I think I’ve gone off my trolley.”
“Well let’s get this cleaned up, and then we can talk about whether you’ve gone off your trolley or not.” Marty disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a roll of towels and a bottle of cleaner. “Nasty mess that made. You’re lucky that rug stayed white as long as it did; I can never keep white things clean.”
Elena murmured a soft thanks as Marty helped her clean up the spill. “At least the cup didn’t break,” she said, forcing another smile. “It belonged to my grandmother.”
“See? That’s the Elena I know, always looking on the bright side. Now what’s the trouble? Nothing to do with that mirror, is it?”
“It might,” Elena hedged. “You should just come and see.”
Elena led the way up the stairs and into the bedroom, then gestured towards the mirror. “Go on. Take a look.”
Marty cast her a suspicious glance before approaching it, her teacup still in hand. Elena held her breath as a sickening thought overcame her: what if the mirror didn’t work for Marty? What if Elena had truly gone mad?
All doubts dissipated when Marty held a hand to her mouth and said, “Oh!”
“What do you see?” Elena ventured when Marty failed to elaborate.
Marty blinked, her face now ashen. “I see you in bed.”
“Sleeping?”
“I hope. Is this some sort of trick?”
“I wish it were.”
Elena nudged Marty out of the way and regarded her own sleeping image. The room itself looked much as it did now with one key difference: a large bottle of Chase Vodka sat on the bedside table.
“I didn’t know you drank vodka,” Marty said as the Elena in the mirror rolled over and hugged a pillow against her chest.
“I don’t! I mean, not yet. That shirt you found for me? The black one? I saw my reflection wearing it days and days before we ever went to that shop.”
Marty sank onto the end of the bed as Elena had been wont to do in recent days, and Elena joined her. “Where exactly did you get this mirror?” Marty asked.
“From David Barlow.”
“He’s the one who sold you the Ming vase?”
“Yes, and Agatha Christie’s hatbox. He’s always finding things he knows I’ll like.”
“Blimey, Elena, if he knew about this, I’d say he has it out for you.”
Elena bristled. “What do you mean?”
“It’s obviously showing the future, right? That’s why you saw the shirt before you got it. A person could go mad looking at her future self, day in and day out. By the look of it, you’re partway there.”
“It’s a good thing I’ve told you about it, then.”
“Unless we’re both mad.”
“Don’t even go there.”
The mirror rippled as it always did, and the reflection revealed the two women sitting side by side.
“What do you think we should do?” Elena asked.
Marty paused to take a sip of tea. “Have a long talk with David, and maybe ask for a refund while you’re at it.”
Elena started to agree, but something stopped her. As terrifying as it was, the mirror still belonged to her and was arguably the most valuable item in her possession. Agatha Christie’s hatbox certainly didn’t show the future.
“If I go talk to him—”
“If?”
“—will you come with me? He should be in his office tomorrow.”
“Lucky for you I have the day off. Should we bring it with us?”
Elena gazed into the mirror; into her own brown eyes. “Yes. I think so.”
ELENA left work early the next day and picked up Marty from her flat in Shepherds Bush, then drove the fifteen-minute route to Antiques and Oddities.
The shop sat between a pawn shop and a café and displayed sculptures and old paintings in the window that David swapped out every so often when they didn’t sell. “I’ve never actually been here before,” Marty said as they stepped inside the dimly-lit shop. “I was expecting a bit bigger. Goodness, there’s a lot crammed in here.”
Elena tightened her grip on the mirror, which she’d bound up in the old sheet. “The best things don’t even get put on display. David saves them for me.”
“I’m sure he does.”
Elena strode past glass cases of old books and jewellery and cleared her throat to get the attention of Barbara, David’s business partner, who seemed to be captivated by an episode of EastEnders playing on a boxy old television in the corner behind the counter.
“Afternoon, Mrs. McCreary!” Barbara beamed as she turned and muted the television. “David told me he’d sold you the Earl’s mirror.” Her gaze flicked to the oblong sheet in Elena’s arms. “I assume it wasn’t to your liking.”
Refusing to answer, Elena said, “Tell David I’d like to talk to him.”
“He’s very busy. Perhaps you could come back later?”
“I’m here now.”
Barbara pursed her lips, some of her cheer evaporating. “Very well. I’ll tell him you’re here.” She bustled down a dim hallway leading out of the main room, accompanied by the tap-tap-tap of heeled shoes.
Elena shifted the mirror’s weight from one arm to the other. “Do you think that was rude of me?”
“Not at all. She could be in on it, too.” Marty looked towards the television and wrinkled her nose. “Honestly, I don’t know how you can stand it here.”
Elena strained her ears to hear what Barbara might be saying to David within the walls of his office but could only make out low murmurings. Then the door squeaked open and Barbara called, “David will see you now.”
David wore a smile that barely masked extreme distaste when Elena and Marty entered the small room. His bald head gleamed in the light cast by the ceiling fixture, and the shrunken head seemed as watchful as ever.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. McCreary,” David said, eyeing the wrapped mirror when Elena placed it on his desk. “How may I help you today?”
Elena gave him the sternest glare she could muster. “Unwrap the mirror.”
David’s brow furrowed. “What?”
“I said, unwrap it. You didn’t want me to the day I bought it, which means you’ve always known.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. The seller expressly stated it was not to be unwrapped by the buyer until he or she brought it home, and I respected that request.” David’s smile turned smug.
“You have seen the mirror, at least? It’s the only way you could have appraised it.”
“What I have or have not done is none of your concern.”
Elena resisted the urge to raise her voice. “Please unwrap it, David.”
“I don’t see the point of this.”
“You need to see what you’ve sold me.”
“Are you returning it? Because you know that’s against our policy.”
“I could sell it back to you.”
“I don’t sell the same items twice. You know that.”
“Well maybe you should start making some exceptions to your bloody policies!”
“Elena!” Marty hissed. Elena kicked her in the shin to silence her.
David cocked an eyebrow. “If I might ask, why do you wish to return it?”
Elena and Marty exchanged a glance. “There’s a certain feature you neglected to tell me about,” Elena said. Marty nodded in agreement.
“Very well,” David said with a long-suffering sigh. He peeled back the layers of sheet and stared blankly at the mirror’s spotted surface. “Right, then. What am I supposed to see?”
Worry knotted Elena’s stomach. “Look at your reflection.”
“I am.” David’s tone grew testy. “I don’t see the problem, unless it’s my face you’ve taken an issue with.”
“Oh, for goodness sake,” Marty said before Elena could get another word in. “Can’t you see it? The mirror doesn’t show you what you’re supposed to see. It shows you the future.”
Without a word, David lifted the mirror so Elena and Marty could see into it.
It reflected Elena, Marty, and a DaVinci print hanging behind them.
Heat rose in Elena’s cheeks. “Who owned the mirror before me?”
David lay the mirror back down. “I’m not at liberty to say.”
“I will pay you two thousand pounds if you tell me.”
“Mrs. McCreary—”
“Three thousand, then.”
David stood and placed his hands on the surface of his desk. “The problem with people like you, Mrs. McCreary, is that you think you’re entitled to bully people into letting you have your way. I signed a contract with the seller. If I told you who it was and word got out, I would have to pay such a high settlement I could lose the shop, but of course you don’t care about that now, do you?”
“How dare you patronize me?”
“Bribery doesn’t suit you, Mrs. McCreary.”
“Stop calling me that. I’ve been divorced six months.”
“Lucky fellow.”
Elena was about to bite back with another retort when Marty butted in. “If the mirror wasn’t dangerous, why would the seller require you to sign a contract like that?”
David brushed at the sleeves of his jacket and folded his hands together, making a point not to look Elena’s way. “It’s the nature of this business,” he said to Marty. “I deal in items that have a history. Let’s say someone comes to me wishing to sell a candlestick said to be cursed, for example, and let’s say someone else buys it from me and suffers an unfortunate accident not long after. If the seller’s identity were known, the buyer’s family might be tempted to hunt the seller down. It’s an unlikely scenario, but not impossible.”
Elena found herself on her feet without remembering she’d stood. “Are you saying you’ve sold me a cursed mirror?”
“I’m afraid I must get back to work.” David shuffled a stack of papers in front of him as if to prove it. “Good day to you both.”
Elena and Marty spent the next ten minutes trying to wrangle more information out of him and finally retreated to the car in defeat when David threatened to call the police.
“He’s loyal to his sellers, you’ve got to give him that much,” Marty mused once they were on the road again. “If I wanted to get a cursed mirror off my hands, I’d want him to sign a contract, too.”
Elena was almost too angry to speak. “I suppose I could pick up some of that vodka I saw in my reflection. My nerves could use a bit of it about now.”
Marty goggled at her. “Are you daft?”
Elena drummed her fingers on the wheel when they stopped at a light. “What’s daft about it? I know I’ll be getting that bottle from somewhere sometime soon. I might as well get it myself and save someone else the trouble.”
“Don’t you see?” Marty asked. “That’s what the mirror wants you to do! It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy. You’d only be getting the vodka because you saw yourself with it. I say don’t buy any and see what happens.”
Traffic lurched forward. Elena fell into a brooding silence. Marty was right—she shouldn’t purposely steer her life in the direction foretold by the mirror. I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t bought that blouse.
“Do you suppose David has a file somewhere full of these contracts?” Elena asked.
“I don’t see why he wouldn’t. Why?”
“Oh, just thinking.” Elena smiled to herself. David had been right about one thing. Wealth did enable her to accomplish her desires, and she knew just the person who could get what she wanted now.
“I have a job for you,” Elena said into the phone late that afternoon, keeping her voice low even though no one was around to hear. “It should be an easy one.”
She could hear her contact chewing something, as if he’d just stuffed his face full of crisps. “Okay.” Crunch crunch crunch. “What is it?”
Elena told him.
“But there is a catch,” she added.
“What’s that?”
“You bring me with you.”
THE alleyway behind Antiques and Oddities was dim to the point of being black, seeing as the corner streetlamp had conveniently burned out. Sirens wailed in the direction of the motorway—no doubt some fool had forgotten how to drive again. It was too unlikely that the sirens were meant for her.
Elena felt her way through the darkness, taking small steps so as not to make much noise, when a sudden profanity mere feet away made her nearly leap from her skin.
“Phil, it’s me,” she whispered, recovering from her surprise.
“Bloody hell, Elena. I told you not to come.”
“As if you’d really think I’d stay home from this one.” In fact, this was the first time Elena had ever called Phil. It was always Tom who’d recruited the burglar to do his bidding, normally to swipe information from his business competitors.
Elena looked towards the mouth of the alley. “How did you manage the streetlamp?”
“Trade secret,” Phil grunted. “Now shush before someone hears us.” A quiet click and an unoiled squeak indicated an opening door, which revealed the back corridor leading to David’s office.
In the faint spill of light from within, Elena could see that Phil had dressed all in black and wore a set of goggles she supposed must let him see in the dark. “In, in!” he hissed.
Elena obeyed without hesitation.
Inside, an alarm panel blinked along the left wall. Her surge of anxiety was stifled the moment Phil plopped his kit on the floor and keyed a code into the panel.
“Alarm’s off,” he said.
Elena silently thanked the heavens for Phil’s success. “How did you know the code? Is it another trade secret?”
Phil snorted. “I spent the evening researching this David bloke. He’s exactly the sort to set his own birthday as the alarm code. Now hurry up and get this contract you’re looking for.”
Elena nodded. Praying there weren’t any security cameras in this part of the shop, she went to David’s office door and took great delight in the fact he hadn’t locked it.
This feels like a trap, she thought as she flicked on the light, grateful the small room had no windows. Her gaze raked the ceiling. No cameras here. Good.
Now that she was actually here and not just daydreaming about it, Elena’s mind froze. How would she know where to find David’s contracts? Would he keep them in a drawer or on a shelf? What if the contracts were digital and saved on his computer?
What if he kept them at home?
Fully aware that the night was steadily ticking by without regard to her needs, Elena scanned the shelf behind the desk, seeing files labeled “2012,” “2013,” and so on, but none that indicated they might be reserved for contracts.
Just to be sure, she pulled out the one labeled “2016” and paged through it, seeing only copied invoices for items David had purchased from other dealers, not from private sellers.
Elena replaced the file and started tearing through cabinets and desk drawers, her panic increasing all the while. “It has to be here,” she hissed, knowing full well that it did not.
Phil poked his head through the doorway, scowling. “Need me to help?”
“Not yet. I’ve got this.”
Elena tugged open the bottom right desk drawer, and her heart made a little flip when she laid eyes upon a crisp yellow file labeled “Contracts.”
Her first instinct was to grab the file and run, but David could not be given any hints that someone had broken in and rummaged through his things, so she flipped the file open and pulled out her phone.
It took her a moment to register the fact that only one contract had been tucked inside the file, and oddly enough, it had been handwritten. Scanning it, she glimpsed the word “mirror.”
Elena’s blood simmered. David had lied to her about needing contracts with his sellers. By the look of it, he’d only ever needed one.
She photographed the contract and put it back where she’d found it. Before leaving, she waved at the shrunken head. It stared at her accusingly with dead eyes that seemed to know more than they should.
She briefly wondered if a camera might have been hidden inside the head and then chided herself. Sometimes a shrunken head was just a shrunken head.
If only her mirror could have been as simple.
ELENA’S mobile rang in her pocket the next day at work. She’d thought about calling in sick since she’d had such a late night but knew she must avoid all suspicion, and therefore came in at her usual time.
She had, thus far, drank more than her usual amount of coffee, so it was with a jittery hand that she held the phone to her ear and said, “Hello?”
In her exhaustion she barely glanced at the caller. There came a long pause and a bit of a crackle, and then a faint voice said, “Elena? It’s Victoria.”
Victoria McCreary was Elena’s ex-sister-in-law. Something in her tone made Elena’s muscles tense. “Yes, what is it?”
“Elena, I’m afraid I have some bad news. Are…are you sitting down?”
Elena’s heart began its descent to the region of her bowels. “What’s happened?”
“It’s Tom. I suppose you figured that already. It was last night on the motorway. Someone in a Ford Fiesta wasn’t looking when they changed lanes, and I—I’m afraid Tom didn’t make it.”
The room swam before Elena’s eyes as she tried to process Victoria’s words. Tom—the cunning man she used to love—was dead.
“Thank you for telling me,” she heard herself say. Her voice seemed to belong to someone else.
“I mean, a Ford Fiesta. Can you believe it?” Victoria said it as if it would have been more dignifying for Tom to have been killed by a Bentley. She let out a sniffle. “Anyway, I thought you ought to know. We’re having the funeral on Wednesday at St. Mark’s. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”
“I’ll…I’ll think about it.”
“Take care, Elena. And I’m sorry.”
“You too.”
Elena laid her mobile down on her desk. Part of her felt numb. During the bitterest parts of the divorce proceedings, Elena would have rejoiced to hear of Tom’s demise. Perhaps she’d matured a bit since then, or maybe their time apart had mellowed a portion of her rage.
In any case, sorrow began to fill her. Sorrow of what could have been, but wasn’t.
“I was such a hateful fool,” she muttered as memories of their happier days together flashed through her mind—days before the arguments, days before the accusations of infidelity. Elena hadn’t even been seeing someone else. Her time away from the house had been spent with Marty, or at her favourite shops, but Tom wouldn’t believe it.
A knock on her office door made her jump. She dabbed at her eyes and said, “Come in.”
The door opened, admitting Jonathan, one of her younger assistants.
He clutched a paper bag in one hand.
“What is it?” Elena asked, hoping she didn’t come across sounding too testy.
Jonathan looked as timid as a sheep. “Pardon me if I’m overstepping, ma’am, but a friend of mine gave me this for my birthday, and I don’t drink anymore.” He slid a bottle of Chase Vodka out of the bag and turned it so Elena could see the label. “I’ve been asking around and no one else seems to want it. I wondered if you’d want to take it.”
Elena eyed the bottle with some trepidation. Yes, it was the one from her mirror—she was sure of it.
Don’t take it, Marty’s voice advised her. See what happens if you don’t.
“No thank you, Jonathan.” Elena gave him a tired smile. “I’m sure you’ll find someone who’d love to have it.”
“I hope so.” Jonathan dipped his head and ducked out of the office, closing the door behind him.
Elena kneaded her eyelids, too weary to feel any satisfaction from defying the future she’d seen in the mirror. Tom was gone. How could she think of anything else?
SHE left the office at three o’clock and stood blinking in the sunlight. She felt the need to go somewhere, to do something, but drew a blank. She should call Marty. Yes, that was it. Call Marty and tell her about Tom, and Marty would impart some words of wisdom that might take the edge off of her sorrow.
Elena climbed into her unlocked car and went to put the key in the ignition when she saw the brown paper bag sitting to her left in the passenger seat.
Someone had taped a note to it. She tore it off and read:
Elena—Jonathan forced this upon me earlier despite my objections. I noticed you looked upset today and thought you might want it. –Gemma
Elena crumpled the note and tossed it out the window. So much for avoiding the future from the mirror. The future had literally delivered itself into her hands.
“I learned who owned the mirror before me,” Elena said to Marty. She paced back and forth in her kitchen with her phone to her ear, too agitated to sit.
“How did you manage to pull that one off?” Marty asked.
Elena sipped at her mug of coffee. “Trade secret.”
“Who is it, then?”
“George Alistair McPherson. Did a search on his name and found out he lives in Croydon. Want to pay him a visit?”
“Now?”
“I’m taking the day off.”
“Well, I can’t. You want me to come with you, you’ll have to wait until tonight.”
“I’m not waiting.”
“Good luck, then. Tell me how it goes.”
“Sure thing.”
“Elena?”
“Hmm?”
“Is everything all right?”
“What? Of course it is.” Elena hadn’t told Marty about Tom. She hadn’t the strength to bring him up.
“Take care, then, and don’t do anything too stupid.”
Elena ended the call and set the phone on the counter. She would head out to see George McPherson the moment she was properly dressed.
She wondered what in the world she would say to him.
IT wasn’t often Elena ventured down to Croydon. She squinted out the windscreen at rows and rows of unfamiliar shops offering everything from Indian cuisine to Thai massages. This didn’t seem the sort of neighbourhood people who owned cursed mirrors might call home.
Then again, her own home didn’t look like it should house a cursed mirror, either.
Her GPS instructed her to turn left, and Elena obeyed, finding herself on a street lined with brown brick houses. She scanned the numbers in search of 16, where the internet had told her George McPherson lived.
A woman leaned out of a window to water a box full of petunias at number 2, and a small boy in front of number 8 pedaled a tricycle up the pavement.
“It’s too normal,” Elena said out loud. “All of it.”
Number 16 looked as normal as the rest at first glance. Elena parked alongside the road, got out, and shielded her eyes against the morning sun. She checked the address she’d scrawled down on a used envelope for the thousandth time to make sure she’d read it right, then stuffed it back into her handbag.
“Here goes, then.”
She straightened her shoulders, took one step, and stopped. Two pots of withered flowers sat on either side of the front door, and in front of it lay several days’ worth of rolled-up newspapers no one had bothered collecting.
She suddenly felt silly. Here she was, forty years old, and snooping around on strangers like this was some bad episode of Scooby-Doo.
“I ought to be ashamed of myself,” she said as she pressed the doorbell.
Elena sensed rather than heard movement behind the door. She took an involuntary step in reverse when a young woman with a pinched face appeared in the doorway. She looked Elena up and down and said, “What do you want?”
It was hardly the greeting Elena had expected. She did her best to appear friendly but felt somewhat self-conscious for having worn one of her nicest blouses and skirts. In contrast, the woman at number 16 wore a wrinkled Muse t-shirt and ripped jeans long overdue for the dustbin.
“I wondered if I could talk to George McPherson,” Elena said.
The woman, likely in her early twenties, gave her a rather guarded expression. “Is this a joke?”
“I—I may have gotten the address wrong,” Elena said. “If you could point me in the right direction—”
The woman cut her off. “This is the place. I’m Amanda McPherson. George is my granddad.”
When it seemed Amanda wouldn’t say more, Elena said, “Is he home?”
Amanda’s dark eyes bored twin holes into her. “You really don’t know, then. Maybe you should just come in. What’s your name?”
“Marty.” Elena felt herself blush. “Marty Brinkman.”
Amanda led her down the hall to the lounge. “Go on, sit down. Can I get you anything? Water? Tea?”
“Tea, please. And thank you.”
Amanda let out a displeased grunt as she vanished through a doorway. Elena sat in an olive-green armchair and let her gaze rove over the room. Sunlight spilled through sheer drapes, illuminating someone’s rather cluttered lifestyle: a curio cabinet was filled with a collection of odds and ends like glass angel statues and hand-carved crucifixes, a brass floor lamp with a ghastly yellow shade stood in the corner, several dusty paintings she didn’t recognise hung on the papered walls, and on the low table in front of her sat a large ceramic bowl she was sure she’d seen in the window at David’s shop.
She wondered if it was cursed, too.
Amanda returned with a tea tray and set it next to the ceramic bowl with care. Elena smoothed out a wrinkle in her skirt while Amanda set about filling the cups.
“Right, then,” Amanda said as she took the other chair. “What do you want with Granddad?”
Elena cleared her throat. “I’m a collector, and I’d heard some compelling rumours about his collection.”
Amanda’s face lit up a bit. “It’s not just him who collects. I’ve started, too. See that bowl? That’s mine. Granddad said…he said one can never be too young to appreciate good antiques. I think maybe he was partly talking about himself.” Her expression sobered. “What did you hear?”
Elena measured her words with care before saying them. “I’ve been told he’s in possession of a rather fascinating mirror.”
It grew so silent in the McPhersons’ lounge that Elena could hear her own heartbeat. Pink splotches appeared on Amanda’s face, and Elena knew she’d said exactly the wrong thing.
“Who told you about that?” Amanda’s voice was low and even despite the storm Elena could sense brewing inside her.
“I—I can’t remember.”
“You’re lying. I know you are.”
Elena paused for a sip of tea, then said, “Why does it matter who told me?”
“Because only me and Granddad knew about the bloody thing! About what it could do, I mean.” Tears welled in Amanda’s eyes. “He was so excited when he bought it from a dealer in Paisley. He traveled a lot looking for deals on antiques. The bloke who sold him the mirror couldn’t wait to get it off his hands, he said. Granddad bought it for only a hundred quid.”
Elena’s grip tightened on her teacup. “Only a hundred?”
“I know! Granddad couldn’t believe it, either. Something that old he’d have gladly paid a thousand or more for. He thought it was his lucky day.” Amanda’s gaze grew hollow as she drank more of her tea. Licking her lips, she went on. “I had to get rid of it, which means you could have only heard about it from that twit down at the shop. Which means…” Her eyes widened. “You bought it, didn’t you? Please tell me you didn’t.”
Elena sighed. “If it’s any consolation, David didn’t tell me who you are. Refused to tell me, in fact, so I dug around his office a bit while he was out. If Paisley were closer, I’m sure you’d have done the same.”
Amanda shrugged. “Doesn’t matter now. It’s started happening, then?”
Elena nodded.
“It doesn’t happen to everyone. Found that out soon enough. My mum came by plenty of times and nothing ever happened to her, so I did the smart thing and didn’t bring it up. She’s had enough on her mind these last few years, with Dad dying and all. He was Granddad’s son.”
“I’m sorry to hear about your father. Er…where is your granddad now?”
Amanda’s mouth formed a thin line. “You’re not going to have a row with him over that bloody mirror, are you?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“He’s upstairs. And if you’re thinking of threatening us with some kind of legal action, just know that we didn’t know anything about it when we got it, and that for all we knew, the mirror only worked on us.”
“You still made David sign that contract.”
“I’m sure you’d do the same,” Amanda said, rephrasing Elena’s earlier words. Her lips twisted into a wry smile. “Would you like to meet him?”
“If I’m not intruding.”
“You’ve done plenty of intruding already, so what’s a little more? Come on, I’ll show you where he is.”
Dread crept into Elena’s heart and spread through her veins as Amanda led her up a squeaking staircase and pushed open a door that had sat a few inches ajar.
“Oh, Granddad!” Amanda called in a falsely cheery voice. “Someone’s here to see you!”
They stepped into a bedroom that smelled of cinnamon air freshener. An old man with stooped shoulders sat in a chair by the window that looked out on the back garden.
The man didn’t even twitch to acknowledge their presence.
Elena ran a hand through her hair. “Perhaps he’s gone to—”
“He isn’t sleeping. Come here.”
Amanda went to the window, and knowing she would regret it, Elena followed.
George McPherson appeared to be in his early seventies and had bright blue eyes that stared at nothing.
“Granddad, this is Marty,” Amanda said. Elena didn’t bother correcting her. “She’s the lucky one who bought our mirror.”
George’s chest rose and fell with steady breaths—the only sign he wasn’t simply a wax figure dressed in a man’s tartan dressing gown and slippers.
“Amanda, what’s happened to him?”
Amanda gave a noncommittal shrug. “He went mad. He was coherent enough to sign some things for David, but after that? He’ll eat and use the loo and dress himself all on his own, but don’t try to get him to say anything because you’ll go mad with the effort.”
“If the mirror is that bad, why didn’t you try to destroy it?”
“Have you tried to destroy it?”
“No.”
A wicked grin spread across Amanda’s face. “I’d like to see you have a go at it.”
“Never mind that. I just don’t understand how seeing the future could have done this to him.”
“What do you mean, seeing the future?”
“That’s what the mirror shows. My friend Marty—”
“I thought you were Marty.”
“—saw it too.”
Amanda fell into a pondering silence. Then, “You want to know what I saw in the mirror? People dying. People I know and love, again and again and again. Granddad saw it first, of course, and told me to come look to make sure he hadn’t gone barmy. The look he had in his eyes… People dying is what he’s always feared the most. He just about gave up when Gran and my dad died. He stopped eating, stopped talking…took him months to pull himself together. So when this mirror showed him the one thing he fears above all else, he just broke.”
“But the deaths you saw. Couldn’t they be future events?”
“Not when half of them have already happened. Now go and get rid of that mirror before you end up just like him.”
ELENA was pleased to find that the future the mirror chose to reflect when she got home did not feature herself—it simply reflected an empty bedroom, which meant Future Elena was likely downstairs or in the loo, or maybe even at work.
She took the mirror down from its nail and carried it out to the garden shed. She laid it on the dusty floor atop an old bit of tarpaulin, then picked a hammer off its hook.
“Bet you didn’t foresee this,” she said.
She hesitated, the hammer still in her hand. I paid two thousand pounds for this. It would be madness to destroy something so valuable, even if it was true David had charged her nineteen hundred more than the McPhersons had paid for it.
Or would it be madness to keep the mirror intact?
She thought of George McPherson sitting vacantly in his dressing gown by his bedroom window and brought the hammer crashing down. The glass shattered with a glorious tinkling sound, and Elena gathered up the sides of the tarpaulin and shoved it all into a black bin bag.
“There.” She brushed her hands together. “That should do it.”
After depositing the bag in the dustbin, Elena mixed herself a glass of apple juice and added some of the vodka that had forced its way into her life, then took it out to the back balcony.
“I think I handled that rather well, all things considered,” she remarked, gazing down over the garden wall to make sure none of the neighbours were out and about.
The vodka in her drink began to make her feel lightheaded. “I wonder why George didn’t see the future.” She frowned as a flock of birds swooped by. “He saw his deepest fears, and Amanda saw them, too. It’s like…it’s like the mirror tailors its reflection to the owner.” Her thoughts swirled. She was onto something here. “When George owned it, it showed his fears, and when I owned it, it showed—”
At once Elena remembered all the New Year celebrations that filled her with anxiety, all the birthdays she’d dreaded, all the nights she lay awake in fear of what the coming day would hold.
Elena blinked and set her glass down on the small balcony table. “It showed mine.”
ELENA raced down the stairs and out the door to the dustbin, wobbling a bit from the effects of the vodka. Not bothering to rationalise her thinking, she flipped open the lid and tugged out the bag in which she had so recently interred the mirror.
The bag felt much too light in her hands. Feeling ill, she tore it open and beheld only tarpaulin.
“Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.” Elena tripped over her back doorstep in her rush to get inside and caught herself by grabbing onto the doorframe. Her gaze roamed wildly over her kitchen and lounge. Seeing nothing amiss, she let out a curse and ascended the stairs to her room.
The mirror hung impossibly in its spot above her dressing table, displaying no sign that it had ever been smashed to bits. It still didn’t show Elena’s reflection; just the bedroom and its associated furniture. Elena balled her hands into fists, and without thinking, slammed one of them into the glass.
Tears sprang into her eyes as her knuckles stung from the blow. The glass remained unharmed. “You can’t do this to me!” she cried, feeling a sudden rage deeper than any she had ever known. She plucked a pewter candlestick off the top of the dressing table and swung it into the mirror with every ounce of force she could muster. A spider web of cracks spread across the surface, and Elena beat it again and again until little glass remained attached to the mirror’s backing.
She hoovered up the smaller shards and put the larger pieces in a used grocery bag. After tending to some minor cuts on her fingertips from handling the shards, Elena loaded the vacuum canister, grocery bag, and mirror frame into her car and headed off.
Tom would have yelled at her for driving with alcohol pumping through her veins with every heartbeat. Marty would do the same, but what her friend didn’t know was of little consequence.
Elena turned into the car park of a local state school and jammed the bulky oval frame into a dustbin by the walkway leading to the school entrance. A group of passing students eyed her with suspicion and started to mutter amongst themselves. Face flushing, Elena hurried off.
Half an hour later, Elena went down to Chelsea Harbour and dumped the contents of the vacuum canister into the Thames. She watched a moment as the dust swirled on the water’s surface and the current took hold, carrying it all away.
Half an hour after that, Elena stopped along a street in Brentford and tossed the largest shard into a surface water drain. She checked the grocery bag and saw six more shards nestled inside.
Six more stops to go, then.
One shard went into a dustbin outside a department store, and another went into a drain on another randomly-selected street.
“I’ve got to get out of the city,” she panted, starting the engine for what felt to be the hundredth time that day. “Maybe then the pieces won’t be able to find each other.”
Elena had no real destination in mind as she drove out to the countryside, only knowing that the further she got from London and the mirror’s other components, the better. She checked her mirrors every few miles along the way to make sure she wasn’t being followed.
By what, she didn’t know.
The sun hung low in the sky by the time she felt it was safe to stop. She pulled into a petrol station, and while she filled up, she discreetly slipped a shard into the dustbin beside the pumps.
Only three more to go.
Her mobile let out a shrill ring as Elena drove down a narrow country lane, startling her so badly she nearly drove into the hedgerow lining it. She fumbled for her phone one-handed and pressed it to her ear. “Hello?”
“Elena, where are you?” Marty asked, sounding frantic. “I just heard about Tom on the news and came by to your place to see how you were. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Elena didn’t answer. Didn’t know if she could.
“Elena, are you there?”
“I’m driving.”
“Where?”
“Oh, out and about.” Elena turned left onto another road, this one running past a freshly-ploughed field.
She parked, picked up a shard, and tossed it out of the window into the exposed soil. It glinted like a jagged eye in the late afternoon sunlight, and thinking better of herself, she got out and shoved dirt over it with her shoe. She stood there a moment longer, the wind tousling her hair as the distant whine of farm equipment carried across the open field. What was she, city born and bred, doing out this far, anyway? At least no one she knew would give her the misfortune of running into her.
Marty was still talking. “—you need anything, let me know.”
“Maybe a few prayers.” Elena climbed into the car and slammed the door shut. “I could use a few of those about now.”
The sky had darkened entirely by the time Elena completed her mission. She stopped for takeaway Chinese in an unfamiliar village, then proceeded onward towards home.
The windows of her house were black and foreboding when she arrived. She sat in the car, seconds ticking by, unsure if it would be wise to get out.
“Don’t be silly,” she whispered. “Nothing’s going to hurt me.” The mirror was gone. It was physically impossible for it to have returned—the last shard she’d disposed of had gone into a bin more than a hundred miles to the west.
Elena steeled herself against the unknown as she went to the door with her key in hand. She put it in the lock, turned it, and went inside.
Nothing awaited her in the hall. She stepped through to the lounge, where dim outlines of furniture were visible in the faint light cast from streetlamps. The floor creaked as Elena took another tentative step forward.
Her heart raced so fast she felt dizzy. “I have nothing to fear,” she said in an effort to convince herself of that fact. To prove it, she patted the wall for the switch.
The room flooded with light. All appeared as it had prior to her departure earlier that day. She set her handbag down on the table beside the couch, poured herself a glass of water, and stood at the counter sipping it as if nothing anywhere in the world were amiss.
The ceiling creaked as Elena set her empty glass down. Glancing upward, she said, “The ceiling always creaks at night. Probably creaks during the day, too; I’m just not around to hear it.”
She moved towards the stairs but stopped. “If I stay down here, I won’t see if the mirror came back.”
Then, “It can’t have come back.”
She looked up at the ceiling. “Can it have? Of course not. You broke it into a million pieces.”
Elena shook her head and continued up the stairs. Even though nothing in the house was amiss, her surroundings had taken on the surreal quality of a dream. Perhaps the angles of everything were off, or maybe the colours.
Or maybe everything was normal and it was Elena herself who had changed.
She entered her room, refusing to look at the wall above her dressing table. She changed into a dressing gown, opened her cupboard, and pulled a box off the shelf she’d not opened for many years.
She opened it sitting on her bed and withdrew a music box in the shape of a carousel horse. She cranked the key three times and listened to it play a tinny rendition of “Memory” from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cats.
“She gave me this. Right before she died.” Elena ran a finger over the horse’s white body. “I remember, after the funeral… I thought back to what it had been like before. How I thought she’d live forever. And I knew, then, that the future is a terrible thing. It hides things from us. Monstrous things we’d never see coming. But the past? It’s my friend. It shows me everything eventually, and doesn’t lie.”
The snippet of song ended. Elena set the music box on her bedside table and turned out the light.
THE alarm woke Elena at six the next morning. She slapped the button to silence it, and with a groan, sat up and stretched.
Without thinking, she looked at the wall above her dressing table…
…right into the mirror.
“No.”
Elena stood.
“No.”
She still had no reflection. The bedroom in the mirror seemed eerily empty without her in it.
“How can you be here?” Her legs drew her up to the mirror of their own accord. “I destroyed you. Scattered you all over southern England. I just…I don’t…”
Something in her mind felt as though it were breaking, and she let out a sob. She wanted to smash the mirror, to obliterate it into a thousand separate pieces and then melt them down into glassy globules, but what good would that do when the mirror would simply reassemble itself?
“Okay,” she said, doing her best to hold it all together. “You’re clearly trying to prove something to me. What is it? Am I supposed to face my fears by staring into you all bloody day? How does that even work? And where am I in there, anyway?” She peered into the mirror at different angles to see if she could catch a glimpse of herself over by the cupboard or near the bedroom door. Her reflection was nowhere to be found.
“Fine, then. I’ll wait.” Elena went down to the kitchen and made some toast, which she then brought back up to the bedroom. She sat cross-legged at the end of the bed, picked up a slice, and began to eat.
Time seemed to pass in the mirror at the same rate it did in reality. The shadows changed with the position of the sun, yet still no Elena emerged into view. Her mobile rang several times throughout the day, but she made no move to go downstairs and answer it.
“I have to keep watching.” Her toast was long gone by now, and half the afternoon passed away. “I have to know where I am.”
Eventually, after long, nerve-racking hours, someone appeared in the reflection. Just as Elena’s mind started to register what it meant, there came a knock from down below.
Elena wasn’t about to go answer the door. If she walked away from the mirror, even for a moment, she might miss something vital. “Come in,” she rasped, just now realizing how parched she was. Had she drank anything today? No, of course she hadn’t. It was no wonder her head felt so funny.
Keeping one eye on the mirror and its occupant, she retrieved the bottle of vodka from her bedside table, unscrewed the lid, and took a swig.
The knocking continued, harder now. “Elena?” Marty’s voice was unmistakable. “If you can hear me, open up.”
But Elena couldn’t open up because she needed to see what the person in her mirror would do.
At last she heard a key turning in the lock (Marty had her own set) and a small gust of wind as the door opened. It occurred to her it was storming—she’d been so focused on the mirror she hadn’t noticed the thunder or lightning.
Light footsteps crossed the hall into the lounge. “Elena?”
Elena couldn’t bring herself to speak.
“Elena, I know you’re here.” Marty paused. “Don’t do this to me.” More footfalls ascended the stairs, and then Marty was standing in the bedroom doorway, somewhat pale. Rain had plastered her short, dark hair to her head. “What are you doing?”
“Look in the mirror,” Elena croaked.
Her cheeks flushing, Marty’s gaze slid to the mirror, where Elena’s elderly father stood beside the bed in the manner of one who didn’t know exactly where he was. “What’s he doing in there? You haven’t talked to each other in years.”
“He’s there,” Elena said, “because I’ve died.”
Marty regarded her with a frown. “You look alive to me. Why are you still in your dressing gown?”
Elena was only half-listening. “I’m dead. I know I’m dead. That’s the only reason he’d come here and mope about in my room, probably regretting every word he ever said to me.” A tear rolled down Elena’s cheek, and she took another gulp of vodka. “I don’t know when it’s going to happen. I don’t know how. I just know it will. I haven’t seen my reflection in here in days.”
“Maybe you’ll be caught up at the office. And with Tom gone—”
“Tom has nothing to do with this.” Elena’s heart ached. “What am I going to do?”
Marty planted her hands on her hips, looking all business. “For one, you can start acting like a rational human being. There’s no sense in getting worked up when nothing’s even happened yet.”
In the mirror, Elena’s father sank onto the edge of the bed and picked the carousel horse music box off the bedside table. He twisted the key on the bottom, and though Elena couldn’t hear it, she knew the song played for him.
Her father withdrew a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at his eyes.
Elena refused to look Marty in the eye. “Right,” Elena said. “Shall I go and get dinner started?”
ELENA and Marty picked awkwardly over plates of fettucine alfredo Elena had thrown together in haste.
“What I’d do is continue on as normal,” Marty said matter-of-factly.
“Easy for you to say. You’re not the one about to die.” Elena threw a glance into the mirror, which she’d carried downstairs against Marty’s objections so she wouldn’t miss any of the action. Her father had departed the room some minutes before, leaving the music box behind.
“You’re not going to die, Elena. You’re in perfect health.”
Elena slammed a fist on the table. “So was Tom! Anything could happen to me. I—I could get flattened by a bus if I go out.”
“And you could die in a fire if you shut yourself away in here.”
Elena’s stomach ached. Marty was right: no single course of action would guarantee her safety. “I don’t want this to happen.”
“I don’t want it to, either, but there’s nothing in there—” Marty gestured at the mirror—“that says it’s going to.”
“Everything else it’s shown me has come true.”
“Hmph. I don’t know why you haven’t smashed the thing to bits yet.”
In spite of herself, Elena let out a giggle, and suddenly she was laughing so hard that tears coursed down her cheeks. Marty gaped at her with her fork halfway between her plate and her mouth.
“Why don’t you take the mirror home with you?” Elena managed to say. She dabbed her eyes on her sleeve. “Then you can smash it for me.”
Marty’s eyes narrowed. “Are you sure you want that?”
“I’m positive.”
AS Elena applied her makeup in front of her ordinary, non-cursed bathroom mirror the next morning, it occurred to her she didn’t know what day it was. Tom’s funeral—was it today, or tomorrow? Had it happened already?
A car door slammed in front of the house. Elena capped her lipstick and went down to the lounge, straightening a vase here, a lamp there; just to prove to herself she could at least pretend everything in her life was as it should have been.
The knock she’d expected came then, and Elena threw the door open with a flourish. Marty stood before her with the mirror hugged to her chest, the shocking pink headband in her hair again.
“I—I brought it back.” Marty’s tone was overly cheerful.
“I see that.”
“Should I bring it in?”
“Might as well put it back where it belongs.”
Marty didn’t say another word until the mirror hung in its proper spot on Elena’s bedroom wall. They watched in silence as policemen in the reflection dusted the room for prints.
“It’s just too pretty to break,” Marty said without looking at Elena. She’d crossed her arms. “Like smashing the Mona Lisa.”
Elena put on a humorless smile. “So. What did you use on it?”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about. But you know, it’s funny. I thought I’d do you a favour and took it to an antiques dealer near my flat right after they opened this morning, and when I tried to sell it to him, he went white as a sheet and told me to leave; and the lady at the next shop I took it to said they don’t accept mirrors!”
“Can you really blame them? This thing has got to be a legend.”
“Maybe so. You know,” Marty said, “you could always just leave it in a bin somewhere.”
“I could.”
Marty checked her wristwatch. “Goodness, look at the time! I’d best be on my way to work.” She started towards the bedroom door. Elena latched onto her arm to stop her.
Marty’s eyes were bloodshot. “Why did you have to buy that bloody thing? Why couldn’t you have bought something normal, like…”
The policemen in the mirror seemed to be finishing up. Elena swallowed a knot in her throat. “Any other suggestions?”
“Just one. Don’t let yourself die.”
ELENA paced from one end of her office to the other, the jitters making it impossible for her to work. She’d come up with some half-true excuse for not showing up the day before, and now she needed an excuse to leave.
But what would she do if she left? Walk out into traffic? Have a piano drop on her head? Get blown up in a terrorist attack?
Don’t let yourself die, Marty had said, but the mirror had made it clear that Elena didn’t belong in the future.
Getting rid of the mirror seemed the logical option. However, its absence would not change the fact that Elena’s father and policemen would soon be in her bedroom wondering what had happened to her.
“If only I could run away from it all,” she murmured, pausing to look out her office window.
Traffic rumbled past the office car park: cabs, lorries, buses full of tourists.
Elena’s skin prickled. “I can run away.” The light changed, and traffic ground to a halt. An advertisement for the Isle of Skye splayed across the side of a bus. “I can run away.”
She looked at the time—only half past eleven. Far too early to leave.
Just go, urged a voice in her head that sounded remarkably like Marty. Go and don’t look back.
Elena’s hands shook as she gathered up her things. This was a daft idea—an insane idea.
She thought it might even be brilliant.
“Where are you going?” Gemma asked her as she walked past her desk. Elena neither looked at her nor answered. To do so might make her rethink her actions.
She went outside, where ordinary souls went about their lives as if things like cursed mirrors didn’t exist.
Elena was an ordinary soul, too, with one difference: she would choose her own fate.
In a few months she would call Marty and let her know she was doing well. She could call her father, too. She might even sneak back into her house eventually to pick up a few things, but she could never, ever go back into her bedroom and look into that dreadful mirror again.
Just to be safe, maybe I should avoid my house altogether. The thought of leaving every possession behind made her heart ache. Maybe it had been wrong to collect so much in the first place.
Elena bypassed her car and walked to the nearest bus station. One arrived minutes later and belched a mob of passengers out its doors.
Elena straightened her shoulders and got on board.
GREG and Tabby Moss, formerly of Swansea, Wales, met Erica Wong, an estate agent, in front of a house on the western side of London one rainy spring morning. Greg’s work had transferred him to London the month before, and Tabby had been praying ever since that they could move out of the tiny flat they’d been living in for four weeks. Erica had showed them three houses already this week, none of which had looked promising. This house here had more potential: it was in a good neighbourhood, and it came fully furnished.
“So glad you could come out today!” Erica said, gripping an umbrella with one hand and a key with the other. “I really think you’ll like this one.”
“I hope so,” Greg muttered, looking like a drowned rat without his umbrella, which they’d accidentally left at home. He was growing nearly as disheartened in their house search as Tabby. The last place Erica showed them had a leaking roof, and the one before that was full of mouse droppings no one had bothered to clean up.
Erica let them inside. The air smelled stale and unlived-in. Apparently it had been vacant for a year.
Tabby entered the lounge first, admiring the white rug and tidy furniture. A fancy old vase sat on a table. It looked expensive.
Erica chattered on about the house’s features, most of which Tabby knew already from the listing online. “Why’d the owner leave all the furniture here?” Tabby asked when Erica paused for breath. It seemed an awful waste to leave so much behind when one could simply take it all with them when they moved.
“I’m sure they had their reasons,” Erica said with a smile.
“Who does own it, anyway?” Greg asked, squinting at an abstract painting on the wall.
“Now that, I can’t tell you. Their agent was very hush-hush about the whole thing. Personally, I think an actor may have lived here.” Erica’s eyes twinkled. “Though you could always ask the neighbours to know for sure.”
Erica finished showing them the ground floor and then took them upstairs. The home boasted two bedrooms, which was perfect considering Tabby’s bulging stomach. The baby would be here in two months, and Tabby hoped to be settled into a new place by then.
They went into the master bedroom, where the bed was neatly made and all the furniture properly dusted. An antique oval mirror hung on the wall to their left above a cherry wood dressing table. For one brief moment Tabby saw herself in the mirror trying to soothe a screaming infant, but the moment she blinked, the reflection returned to normal.
This pregnancy is making me go barmy, it is, she mused to herself. Between that and bizarre cravings, the pains of labour would be a welcome reprieve.
“How do you like it all?” Erica asked.
Greg glanced Tabby’s way, a smile on his face. “I think it’s perfect.”
Tabby nodded in agreement. The home would be just the right size for the three of them. They could even sell some of their old furniture if they wanted and save the money for the baby. “If he likes it, we’ll take it.”
As they walked out of the room, Tabby glanced into the mirror again, but this time it didn’t reflect the room at all: instead she saw herself kneeling beside a child’s grave, weeping bitterly as bouquets of flowers wilted at the base of the headstone.
She quickened her pace as she followed Greg and Erica onto the landing. This pregnancy would be the death of her sanity, it would. This baby had better come quickly.