AN IMPORTANT MATTER
 Rebecca
wasn’t the prettiest of girls. The National Health spectacles, and the
brace she was forced to wear on her slightly protruding teeth, did
little to change that. But given time, one day she would have outgrown
all that and probably scrubbed up quite well. However she was an
impatient child.
All the girls in her class at the Danemark Secondary Girls’ School in
Winchester had boyfriends, but not her. It seemed no boy would give her
a second look, least of all Robert, and she had the hots for him
big-style!
Robert lived at the end of her short close in Twyford, a charming
village only a few miles outside Winchester. Having passed the
eleven-plus examination he attended Peter Symonds, the Public Grammar
School for boys in Winchester, as a day boy, and this being so meant
that he needed to travel to school around the same time as Rebecca.
There was a choice of two busses suitable for them to arrive at their
respective schools on time, and they were either the Hants & Dorset at
eight-fifteen, or the far more comfortable King Alfred bus at
eight-thirty in the mornings.
To ensure she always caught the same bus as Robert, Rebecca would be
ready early every school day and wait by her window watching for him to
pass by. As soon as he appeared, she would run out of the house to
follow him up to the bus stop. She had a similar routine after school.
If he wasn’t at the stop for the four-ten bus, then she would wait for
the four-twenty-five. He always caught one of the two. Both times she
would invariably stand next to him in the queue, and once they were on
the bus she would try to get the seat that was diagonally across behind
his one — but still he never noticed her.
Not being noticed wasn’t that bad for Rebecca as long as she could be
close to her idol, and see him — she had her imagination. She knew she
didn’t compare well with most of the other girls, so not being noticed
sometimes had its benefits. Their private, unknown, secret romance in
her mind had done everything that the other girls frequently boasted
about, and a whole lot more. It had been doing that for several years
now, right from the day he had moved into the close. Oh, the times she
had bit her pillow . . .
But those times were about to change, Rebecca knew that soon she may be
losing him. It was 1959, and her last term at school. Before long she
would be leaving those halcyon days behind her. There would be no more
seeing him at the bus stop, or on the bus. Chances were he would be
staying on at school as a sixth-former, and she would be working as an
apprentice at the hairdressing salon in Eastleigh where her mother
worked part time and had already made provisional arrangements. The two
places were in opposite directions. How could she cope with that? How?
It all started coming to a head one dreadful Friday after school. It was
the Friday when Robert didn’t turn up at the bus stop in Northwall for
either of the busses home. Stunned, she stood there and watched as the
four-twenty-five left without them. Tears started to roll down her face,
and soon she was heavily sobbing into her hands. Where could he be? What
had happened to him? Was he all right?
Finally realising her stupidity at missing the bus, and knowing her
mother would be worrying when she didn’t get home on time, she wiped her
eyes and decided to walk along Middle Brook Street to make her way down
to the bus station by King Alfred’s statue in order to catch the next
one. The walking to the bus would be better than just waiting there with
her thoughts for it to arrive.
Hurrying along the street, the unnecessary speed coming from her racing
mind, she was just passing by the Two Bare Feet, a popular youthful
coffee bar, when the door flew open and a group of boys rowdily tumbled
out, closely followed by Robert — and he had his arm around Carol
Hodgkins, a girl from her class! Rebecca froze and watched, her stomach
churning as, stopping a little way outside of the doorway, they hugged
each other fondly before parting in different directions.
#
It was Sunday before Rebecca left her bedroom. Her eyes were still red
from all the crying as she sat in the fireside chair and stared out of
the window at her piece of the sky. The Sunday paper was neatly folded
open to the classified advertisements page on the arm of the chair.
Casually glancing down at it sometime later, amidst the ads for Lucky
Cornish Pixies, toe-nail clippers and blackhead removers, her eyes fell
on the words: UNLUCKY IN LOVE? WANT TO GET YOUR OWN BACK ON SOMEONE?
GUARANTEED RESULTS: THE ARAMA BOOK OF SPELLS. YOURS FOR ONLY TEN
SHILLINGS!
The ten days the book took to arrive were painful days. She would see
Robert in the mornings, but rarely after school, and then there was the
terrible Wednesday morning when he had a large plaster on his neck. No
doubt that was there to hide an enormous love-bite, she surmised — and
in the very place she had put one herself many times in her dreams! Oh,
how she hated that girl! But finally the day came and the book did
arrive . . .
Following the instructions carefully it took three days for Rebecca to
make and name the doll. The hardest part had been getting an actual hair
from the girl's head, but that she had cleverly managed to do through
picking a fight with her over seating at the school dinner table. With
all the rolling around on the floor and the pulling of hair that ensued
she had accrued quite a handful of the stuff.
Satisfied everything was perfect, Rebecca chalked ‘a road’ on the top of
her dressing table and placed the doll in the centre of it. Then
borrowing one of her little brother’s Dinky toy cars she sped it along
the chalked road, violently crashing it into the doll. The doll flew up
into the air, Rebecca caught it, and then ripped it in to many small
pieces before allowing it to fall to the floor. Gathering it up,
ensuring she had every piece, she then took it out into the back garden
and buried it. That night she was a very happy girl when she went to
bed.
#
The following morning, at the bus stop, as usual Rebecca stood in the
queue next to Robert, and on the bus she managed to get the seat one
across from directly behind him so she could see the side of his face.
For a long time he was looking down and scribbling away on a piece of
paper, but she couldn’t exactly see what it was he was writing. Probably
a love letter to Carol, she guessed hatefully.
The boy finally put his pen away and, after carefully reading through
the note several times, amazingly he slipped out of his seat, around the
back of it, to sit next to Rebecca.
“Could you do me a favour, please?” he nervously asked her. “Do you
think you could give this note to Carol Hodgkins? I know she’s in your
class. She’s my sister. Split family and all that. A bad split, so we
have different surnames and aren’t supposed to see each other. Thanks,
sweetheart.” And with that he kissed her tenderly on her cheek before
even more nervously asking her, “Do you think you could come with me to
the Rock & Roll Party at the Village Hall next Saturday night? I’ve been
trying to pluck up the courage to ask if you'd go with me for weeks.
Please say yes. I really like you.”
  Just
then the bus pulled up outside of the Public Library in Jewry Street
and, as they stood up to get off, the stunned Rebecca noticed Carol on
the other side of the road. She was looking extremely dishevelled, had a
prominent black eye, and was openly crying. Looking up at the bus she
caught sight of Robert and immediately rushed into the road to cross it;
to catch him. The car that hit her was travelling at speed, and it threw
her high into the air before skidding to a stop. The girl’s face smacked
hard up against the bus window right in front of Rebecca, flattened
against it momentarily, and then slid downwards falling out of sight,
but not before leaving a long and bloody mucous trail all down the
glass.
Screaming, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Rebecca raced down the
stairs, off of the bus, and around the back of it into the road where
Carol had fallen.
The sickened girl gasped when she discovered there was nobody there
lying in the road, there was no blood down the side of the bus, and
there was no car that had been involved in the accident stopped on the
other side of the road. People were going about their daily business,
walking along the street, going to work and to school, and everything
was quite normal. That is, it was normal until the car hit Rebecca and
threw her high into the air.
The book she had been grasping fell into the road, landing alongside the
girl, and in the breeze its pages slowly fluttered open to the one she
had been studying. The last thing Rebecca was ever aware of were the
words she could see through a growing red mist on the page in front of
her: “Do be extremely careful that none of your own hair or skin becomes
mixed up with that of the victim. This is most important!”
Copyright ©Michael Knell 2006.
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