Boydy has backed away and is just staring, blinking, his mouth opening and shutting like a fish, and he’s making little moaning noises in his throat.
Poor lad, he really is terrified. The seagull squawks and swoops away.
‘It’s OK,’ I try to reassure him. ‘It’s just me. I’m all right.’
‘But … but … you … the … your head … Ethel?’
Where to start?
After ten minutes, I think I have convinced him that I am neither a ghost nor an alien from outer space. I have answered his questions, including:
I say this as if it all happened like a sensible conversation anyone would have out on a lighthouse balcony. You know:
‘Oh, so you’re invisible? Cool. So tell me, are you experiencing any pain or discomfort due to this unusual condition, Ethel?’
No, it wasn’t like that at all. Boydy was nervous, puzzled, stumbling over his words and reaching out again and again to touch my invisible head and hand. At one point I removed my mask and he shut up for, like, a whole minute, just gawping and shaking his head, then looking away and turning back and starting the whole gawping, touching thing again.
I have to say, though: now I’ve told him, the relief is immense. I’ve been lugging this secret around for hours, and it was exhausting. Even if there’s nothing that Boydy can actually do, just sharing my problem with him makes me feel happier.
Slightly.
Why is it, then, that I start crying? Sorry, make that crying again. I am not much of a blubber, to be honest. I think I leave that to the more sensitive souls, but the hugeness of what I face would, I’m certain, bring tears from anyone and that now makes it twice in a day that I have cried.
He hears me crying and he doesn’t know what to do, poor Boydy.
‘Hey, Eff. It’ll be OK,’ he says, and he sort of awkwardly puts his arm round me, but I can tell he’s not totally comfortable. He probably hasn’t done it much. Then he looks at me.
‘I can see your tears.’ He points at my cheeks. ‘That’s one bit of you that’s visible.’
I wipe my cheek with my fingers and look down. Sure enough, my fingertips are glistening. I force a smile (why? No one can see me) and replace the mask, pulling up my hoodie as far as it’ll go. I sniff and smile weakly.
‘How do I look?’
Boydy checks the angles. ‘So long as you don’t look too closely, it’s OK. There’s a sort of invisible gap at the top there, but it’s in shadow so you don’t really notice it that much. Just keep your head down.’
I nod and turn to go back through the glass opening, when he says, ‘So, Effel, the clown outfit wasn’t really to, you know …’
‘What? Raise money? Ah, sorry, Boydy. No.’ I see his face and chest fall with a sigh so I add, ‘But I do like lighthouses. Well, this one anyway. And I’m sure the others are cool as well. I’ll help you with Light The Light. Promise.’
He smiles at that, but then his attention is caught by something on the ground. He’s looking beyond me, towards the beach. I turn to follow his gaze. There, at the end of the causeway, on the beach, is a black Labrador and I can tell from the way it walks that it is Lady.
She is not alone either. Walking with her are two identical figures.
We have trouble, and it’s twins-shaped.
I haven’t told you much about the twins, but now seems like a good time – if there is ever a good time to talk about the twins, that is.
Jesmond and Jarrow Knight are notorious at school, and they seem to revel in their sinister fame while managing – just – to avoid being suspended.
One or other of them is almost permanently on a written warning. It’s Jesmond, the boy, at the moment. He swore at Miss Swan the music teacher when she smelt tobacco smoke on him. (I won’t say exactly what he said, but imagine the worst thing you can say to a teacher, and then shout it at the top of your lungs. Actually, don’t. But that’s what he did in the foyer.)
I guarantee, after his written warning expires at the end of term, it’ll be his sister Jarrow’s turn to do something bad. Last year she was sent home for setting fire to Tara Lockhart’s hair with a Bunsen burner, and then their dad had to come in to see Mrs Khan and the head of the school governors.
Most people steer well clear of the Twins, which is easy enough if you spot them coming. They both have this shock of shoulder-length white-blond hair. From the back they’re pretty much identical and even from the front they’re pretty alike, only Jarrow wears glasses and Jesmond doesn’t.
Tommy Knight, their dad, looks exactly like them, except he’s going bald. I’ve only met him once, when he bought something off a stall I was running at the school Christmas bazaar. He seemed shy and hardly ever looked up. It was a box of scented soaps he bought, with pictures of dogs on them, and when he took his change and said ‘thank you’ his voice was gentle and well spoken, which was the opposite of what I had expected.
I’ve never seen their mum. I don’t even know if they have one.
Their house is round the corner at the end of our street, overlooking the wide sweep of grass called the Links that leads down to the promenade and the beach. It’s large: a detached two-storey villa, painted white with pillars supporting the front porch and an overgrown front garden. It’s as if a footballer has died inside it and no one’s noticed. I pass the house most days on the way to and from school.
So that’s the Knights – my neighbours, more or less – and here they are: Jarrow and Jesmond at the end of the beach where the sand gives way to rocks and pools.
With Lady, my dog.
Which means I’m going to have to go down there and confront them, while wearing a clown mask and a sparkly wig.
I tell myself, It’ll be fine, Ethel.
Sometimes, I think the lies we tell ourselves are the biggest lies of all.