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.
