Kirsty Angove, aged 15 from Willaston, Cheshire

Been Here, Done This

Deja vu, they call it. Something seen before. But the weirdness of it doesn't come from seeing. What gives you that sort of cold and breathless feeling is being certain that you've lived this moment before. That maybe there's another dimension to your life. One that you don't know, but sometimes glimpse.

I knew every scratch in that door's paintwork, knew the pattern in the grain of the wood, recognised the feel of the latch in my hand. I knew what was on the other side of it, and that I didn't want to open it. And I knew, of course, that I had to.

“Go on, keep following the path, don’t stop.” A voice, muffled as if very faraway, coaxed me on. I allowed my hand to slide the latch back. The door swung open on its hinges and the jingle of a small bell pinned to the door frame and triggered by the opening of the door caused me to jump a little.

“Relax,” the voice said comfortingly, “just relax.” I was in my shop, I’d been there hundreds of times before. Except this time it was no longer my shop. True the layout was similar, the charcoal chandelier hanging from the ceiling that I had loved so much and refused to throw away was still there, but where I had laminate floors there were cold flag stones and where I had planned to stock shoes and clothes of all varieties there were books, acres of shelf filled with row upon row of flimsy novellas, hard-backed encyclopaedias and the kind of dusty volumes you see in the possession of philosophers and mathematicians.

I stalked slowly round the shelves not exactly sure what I was looking for but looking all the same. On the other side of the room was that door again. The scratch in the paintwork, the rough texture of the wood, the cool metal latch beneath my hand.

Once again I opened it.

Once again the bell jangled.

Only this time I didn’t jump. I just stepped out of the doorway and into the bookshop once more. I went round and round like this for what seemed like a lifetime. The repetitiveness of it bored me to tears but there was something in that room that I had to find, a reason I came here over and over again, and that’s why I was here: to find reasons for what the police had found in my shop just over a week ago.

It was an accident, all of it. The workman putting in the shelves had accidentally fallen and chipped up some of the old flags on the floor, the man repairing this had accidentally uplifted some of the clay beneath it and then accidentally discovered a yellowing bone hidden there, hidden there for, it seemed, many long years. The funny thing was that when the repair man green in the face and unsteady on his feet had called me on my mobile to tell me this I had known even before he had said it.

“I’m sorry to bother you, but, but, we found something here in the floor...”

And I had thought to myself right at that moment, he found her body. The sudden thought had knocked me for six and I started to reason with myself until I realised there was no reasoning. In some strange way I knew the body beneath the floor was female and somewhere in my mind I had realised it was there all along.

Once again I walked into that room. The bell rang and I stepped on to the dusty floor, each time I scoured the room carefully walking between the shelves, staying so silent that the only sound was my footsteps on the grey stone and each time there was nothing out of the ordinary. Was I looking for a body here, the body so newly discovered beneath the floor of my shop?

“Don’t worry if its taking a while, keep looking” the soothing voice came again but I was agitated now. “Try to stay silent,” it murmured, “just listen.”

Taking some much needed advice I stopped in my tracks, putting an end to hulking footsteps and I held my breath painfully in my chest, the silence surrounded me thick as smog and I was suddenly frightened. There is something so unnerving about total silence. Total silence, except for a tiny, petrified gasp. Did that come from me? No, I had my teeth over my lip there was not a sound emitted from me the gasp had come from a truly terrified someone hiding, it seemed, from me.

And then I knew what I was doing here. Why that room had felt so familiar to me the first time I had walked into it. I had been here before, been here many years ago, when the interior of this bookshop had not been so dated when the bookshop had been my pride and joy, my income, my survival. I had decorated this room I remembered now, I had bought that chandelier and hung it, which is why I had liked it when I stepped once again into that shop over a century later, why I had stood there hands on my hips and had known, for some reason, that the shop was where I belonged. And now I knew why. I had belonged here once before, over a hundred years earlier, it was only natural for me to come back to a place I had been previously so familiar with. That’s where that sense of déjà vu had come from, that cold chill that told me I had lived this moment once before.

That whimper. I knew why that was so familiar, I knew as soon as I started to remember that I had followed that whimper, a look of sheer madness on my face a heavy brass candlestick in my hands. What had I been looking for that day?

Almost but not quite unconsciously I followed that sound once more. My footsteps were slow and heavy with fear, my face uneasy as I approached the origin of the noise. There was a girl behind the shelf, I wasn’t surprised, I knew someone had to be there. It was the utter terror etched across her china doll face that startled me, and I made to start backwards when I felt the heavy weight of something in my hand. I looked down and saw a rustic brass candlestick clutched in my fists. In the girls eyes I saw the look of absolute madness on my face heard my slow footsteps grind to a halt. And then I knew what I was remembering, without thinking I raised the ornamental chunk of metal high above my head and brought it down heavily on her head. There was a sound like eggs breaking, a squeak that could have come from the girl or me, I wasn’t sure, and then the candle stick fell to the floor with a dull thud and rolled noisily over and over until its journey was impeded quite suddenly by a shelf. “Murderer,” I whispered, either out loud or in my own head, I wasn’t quite sure, all I could see was the girl her face frozen forever in a small ‘o’ of surprise.

Until then my head had been bowed staring into the pretty face of the young girl. From somewhere there was a click as loud as if someone had snapped their fingers right next to me and there was a jolt as my head was thrown back and I found myself staring wide-eyed into the scared face of the man in front of me. I had stopped remembering, I was back. The man, stepped slowly away from me and the locket wound tightly around his fingers dropped slowly to the floor with the dull thump a discarded candlestick makes.

“What did you see?” His voice was high and squeaky his face an unnatural shade of white, almost transparent.

“I didn’t see anything.” I whispered, not looking into his face.

“But you said, I heard, I’m sure I heard you say . . .” I heard the doubt in his voice.

“I didn’t see anything, Im sorry it didn’t work.” I said, bowing my head so as not to see the suspicion and utter bemusement on the face of the police hypnotist.

Kirsty Angove

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