Mirror Man by Jacques Kat (ereader for textbooks txt) 📗

showed me the insides of a watch. I couldn’t believe how many components and mechanisms made up such a small object. It looked so complex; I had to know how it all fit together.

And now something was going on in Claude’s Antiques.

It was about time I became more involved in the adult world. Especially if it were to affect the shop. I worked here, too, and I’d be lost without my job here. It gave me purpose, a routine. And most of all, it kept me out of Mum’s way.

I started on the first watch while I thought of the secret antique and the mystery man who loitered outside. I wondered if they were connected.

Chapter Four

I finished work at five and went to find Mr Phillips. I spotted him in his office bent in front of his large safe. Inside was a large red case I’d never seen before, and I’d seen most of the inventory that had come through the shop in the last eight years. I’d had a Saturday job here until I finished my exams. Then he’d upped my hours.

‘Goodnight, Mr Phillips.’

He jumped and slammed the safe shut, grunting something at me.

‘See you Thursday. Don’t forget to lock up,’ I said with a frown before leaving. What was in that safe he didn’t want me to see?

I decided to take a shortcut home through the medieval orchard between the shops. The orchard belonged to the town’s castle centuries ago. It was gone now; only the odd bit of stone and timber remained, but the orchard and moat endured.

The trees had started to blossom, and I enjoyed the sweet smell as I walked through them. It wouldn’t be long before people would come to pick the fruit for their pies and jams. Nana B used to bake using the apples here. She died, too, just before Dad died. People didn’t stay around long enough for my liking. Did people really not want to look at me like Mum said? Is that why they died? To get away from me? I shook the thought away. It didn’t feel nice in my stomach to think that way, so I focused on my surroundings instead.

I liked walking through here; when there was no one else around, I could keep my head up and see the sun beaming through the old branches. The trees were ancient—probably as old as the castle would have been if it were still standing. The branches were old and gnarly, twisting around like vines. When I was younger, I would imagine the branches sweeping me up and lifting me high above the town to see what no one else had the pleasure of witnessing.

As I exited the orchard, I dropped into the moat, which had been cleared of muck and water the year before. It was a common hangout for kids from the nearby grammar school to hide and smoke in at lunchtime. I’d seen them loitering a couple of times. I’d never tried a cigarette or even kicked a football around.

I was expelled when I was ten, not long after my father’s death. It wasn’t because of that, nor was it because I’d been naughty or disruptive, in my opinion. The reason the school had given was due to an unfortunate incident with a boy in my class named Joe; the incident resulted in him having a broken nose. Though I hadn’t laid one finger on him.

I’d bent down to pick up a book, and as I rose back up, I saw Joe’s reflection in the glass of the door, poised like a tiger ready to pounce. As Joe moved, I ducked and rolled out of the way, resulting in Joe colliding face-first with the door.

It wasn’t my fault. When I look back on it now, I think the school just wanted to be rid of me. They said they didn’t know how to teach someone like me. I had no idea what that had meant at the time. In fact, I still don’t. I could be taught, I just didn’t want to look at people. What was unteachable about that?

As I walked, I didn’t bother looking for someone to follow as I normally would have done. All I could think about was Claude’s Antiques and what I should do next to get to the bottom of the mystery. Maybe if I could unravel it, I’d be accepted into the adult world and people would treat me as such, instead of a child. Would solving it take me one step closer to who I should be?

I arrived at the house to the sound of my mum listening to the Eurythmics in the front room. That room was hers; it didn’t have as many mirrors as other rooms. She said she wanted a bit of normalcy in at least one part of the house besides her bedroom. The front room had a peach, three-piece suite, a wall unit with a drink’s cabinet inside (though it never had any bottles in it), and a couple of framed pictures of Mum and Dad on their wedding day.

I watched her thin frame from the reflection in a mirror. She slowly swayed and mumbled along to the music, a glass of wine clutched in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I missed seeing her dance with dad. He would pick her up and twirl her around as they listened to the record player, and she’d be laughing and yelling at the same time, asking him to put her down. Then he would spin her before dipping her backwards to give her a kiss.

That’s when everything was good, when mum used to smile, though not at me. She was young and beautiful back then. She didn’t smile now; she wore a permanent frown, and she’d stopped wearing makeup. I left her to it and headed up to my room to write in my journal.

I’d bought the journal to keep a record of all the people I’d followed over