Faye's Diary

Chapter 17: She Loves You

I stepped away from her a little bit. “How do you know my name?” I said warily.

A man came up behind her. He looked nearly sixty with broad-shoulders and the same white hair as the woman. His eyes were also blue. “Charlotte?” He said looking confused.

“No,” the woman said to him, “It’s Faye, her sister. They look so alike, don’t they dear?” The man nodded.

“Come in, come in!” The woman said. The first thing I noticed when I walked into the house was the phone with their house number written on a notepad beside it. Why did they need to write down their own number? I made a mental note of the number just in case I should ever need it. “Why are you here? Well, I think I can probably guess that. I’m Lilly, and this is Dan my husband.”

I smiled, “I know, I read about you.” I ignored their confused look and said, “Is Charlotte here?”

Lilly looked at me and said, “I think you’d better sit down.”

My heart began to thump in my chest, “Oh my gosh, she is dead isn’t she? Just like Mum said!”

“Your Mum told you that our Charlotte was dead?” Dan said.

“I think you better tell us the whole story. I can see that you are clearly running away from home, probably to find your sister if you’ve come here but what did you mean when you said you read about us?” Lilly said, eyeing my bag.

So I told them the whole story, about how Mum had lied to me all my life, and about the diary and about how I was now running away to find Charlotte.

I couldn’t believe I’d just walked into a stranger’s house and they knew my name and what I was doing there, I had memorised their phone number and now I was pouring out my whole life story to them. But it was true.

When I had finished, there was a stunned silence. For the longest ten seconds of my life, no-one spoke. Then, the stillness was broken by Dan suddenly bursting out, “That evil cow! How dare she lie to you all of your life about our Charlie, and say such evil things. I can’t believe how cruel she is. And to think that Charlie went all the way to your house only to be told she was a ghost!”

At this point I was crying bitterly. They called her Charlie, I didn’t. And now they thought that it was my fault that I called her a ghost. “I’m sorry.”

“Look Dan, now see what you’ve done, she’s crying now. I’ve always told you that your tempers never do any good to anyone. Shush now, he’s being silly,” Lilly reached over to give me a hug.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that it was your fault that you thought she was dead, I’m just angry. She never told us about that night, but she must have been so confused. And to think that she climbed up the side of a building! She could have fallen and died, but no-one would have known until the morning!”

I had stopped crying, but I was still hugging Lilly. It felt weird to be hugging someone that I didn’t even know but I didn’t pull away. “I understand why you’re angry. I’m sorry that I came here and troubled you with all of this, I just thought that you might be able to help me find her.”

“Don’t apologise, its ok. I’m glad that I’ve met you. Charlotte would beg us every single day to foster you too. She used to say that ‘everything was right with the world except Faye’. That was her little saying that was.”

I smiled weakly and stopped hugging Lilly. “We had to explain to her that you could only foster a child if she was in care.” Lilly said. “It wouldn’t stop her asking about you though."

“So she’s eighteen now right?” I asked and they nodded. “A grown-up. So why didn’t she come to find me? Why didn’t she come and see me then if she loved me so much?”