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Brennan.’
    Young legs or not, I almost always used the lift.
    The lift thumped to a halt at the bottom, and the doors creaked open. Mrs Brennan pulled her coat tight about her to face the cold morning air.
    â€˜I’m the one who is supposed to forget things, hen.Yesterday. I saw ye going down the stairs while I was waiting for the lift.’
    An icy finger was running down my spine.
    â€˜I remember thinking, what lovely hair. Bouncing above your collar it was, and I waved at you. Remember now?’ She patted my cheek. ‘And you waved back.’

Chapter Six
    I
was
late for school, and used the broken lift as an excuse. But actually I had dawdled, my mind racing with what Mrs Brennan had told me.
    In the cold light of a November morning I shouldn’t feel so afraid. And what was I afraid of exactly? I didn’t even know. All I knew was that Mrs Brennan was mistaken. I had taken the lift yesterday; in fact, it had been almost a week since I’d clattered down all those flights of stairs, angry and annoyed that the odd lift had yet again broken down.
    But yesterday.
No
.
    â€˜Your bonny hair bouncing above your collar,’ she had said. And yesterday, I had indeed washed my hair. I remembered how much I had admired it myself as I looked in the lift mirror when I was going to school. How shiny it had been. Thinking how I must ask Mumto buy that shampoo again.
    But it wasn’t me or my shiny hair that Mrs Brennan had seen. It wasn’t me who had waved at her.
    There had to be a logical explanation.
    Memory loss.
    That was a terrifying thought. My gran had once been as bright as a button. When she watched
Countdown
on TV every afternoon, she could do the sums quicker than anyone I knew. Yet, now, when we visited her in the nursing home she would ask me, ‘Who are you? Do I know you?’
    The first time it had happened I had thought she was playing a game with me, but when I realised that she really didn’t recognise me I had cried so hard Mum couldn’t comfort me. I hardly visited Gran now. She frightened me.
    â€˜It happens sometimes when you get old,’ Mum had tried to explain.
    But could it happen when you were young, like me? Was it hereditary? Did it run in our family?
    I couldn’t shake the thoughts from my mind all day.
    â€˜What is wrong with you, Fay?’ Kaylie gave me a dunt.
    â€˜You’ve been in a dream all day.’ Dawn looked at me with her eyes full of concern. ‘Everything OK at home?’
    Why did everyone always have to think it was something to do with home? ‘Everything’s fine at home,’ I snapped at her. ‘OK?’
    Dawn sniffed with indignation. ‘Keep your hair on. I’m trying to be nice here.’
    I couldn’t even bring myself to apologise to her. I wanted to explain, to talk about it with them. But what could I say that didn’t sound daft? Anyway, I decided. It was probably just a stupid mistake that would never happen again.
    Over the next few days it seemed that I was right. Nothing much happened at all. Except the nights got darker, and we were all caught up in Daft Donald’s rehearsals for
Macbeth
.
    Even our headmaster thought Donald was being a bit too ambitious.
    â€˜What about something more simple, Donald?’ I heard him suggest one afternoon. ‘
Three Little Pigs
. This lot just might manage that one.’ He guffawed with laughter at his joke.
    What a cheek!
Three Little Pigs
, indeed.
    Donald, however, was adamant. ‘I want to stretchthem, push them to their limits. Help them to understand and appreciate the sheer poetry and drama of Shakespeare.’
    No wonder we called him Daft Donald.
    Stretch us? I felt like yelling at him. He
was
stretching us, because this play was worse than the rack.
    Especially for me. No matter how hard I tried I could never seem to remember the lines. And every time I stumbled over them, there was Monica at my elbow.
    â€˜Don’t