Forever Phoenix Read online

  Contents

  Prologue

  Magpie Rhyme

  1. Smoke Damage

  2. Banished

  3. Free Spirit

  4. Bonfire

  5. New Girl

  6. Fame at Last

  7. Sing

  8. Different

  9. Famous

  10. Trouble

  11. Too Much

  12. Marley’s Confession

  13. Something Special

  14. Countdown

  15. The Point of No Return

  16. Ked Wilder

  17. Christmas is Coming

  18. Snowfall

  19. Mistletoe

  20. Secrets and Lies

  21. London

  22. Wings

  23. Lola Rockett’s New Year Party

  24. Afterwards

  25. Picking Up the Pieces

  About the Author

  Cathy Cassidy wrote her first picture book for her little brother when she was eight or nine and has been writing fabulous stories ever since.

  Cathy is the bestselling author of Dizzy, Driftwood, Indigo Blue, Scarlett, Sundae Girl, Lucky Star, Ginger Snaps, Looking-Glass Girl, Broken Heart Club, the Chocolate Box Series (including Cherry Crush, Marshmallow Skye, Summer's Dream, Coco Caramel, Sweet Honey, Fortune Cookie and Life is Sweet) and the first three instalments in the Lost and Found Series, Love From Lexie, Sami's Silver Lining and Sasha's Secret.

  Cathy lives in North Wales with her family, and of all the many jobs she's had she loves writing best - it's the perfect excuse to daydream, after all.

  Books by Cathy Cassidy

  Lost & Found

  LOVE FROM LEXIE

  SAMI’S SILVER LINING

  SASHA’S SECRET

  FOREVER PHOENIX

  The Chocolate Box Girls

  CHERRY CRUSH

  MARSHMALLOW SKYE

  SUMMER’S DREAM

  COCO CARAMEL

  SWEET HONEY

  FORTUNE COOKIE

  LIFE IS SWEET

  BITTERSWEET: SHAY’S STORY

  CHOCOLATES AND FLOWERS: ALFIE’S STORY

  HOPES AND DREAMS: JODIE’S STORY

  MOON AND STARS: FINCH’S STORY

  SNOWFLAKES AND WISHES: LAWRIE’S STORY

  THE CHOCOLATE BOX SECRETS

  ANGEL CAKE

  BROKEN HEART CLUB

  DIZZY

  DRIFTWOOD

  INDIGO BLUE

  GINGERSNAPS

  LOOKING-GLASS GIRL

  LUCKY STAR

  SCARLETT

  SUNDAE GIRL

  LETTERS TO CATHY

  For younger readers

  SHINE ON, DAIZY STAR

  DAIZY STAR AND THE PINK GUITAR

  STRIKE A POSE, DAIZY STAR

  DAIZY STAR, OOH LA LA!

  Hello!

  Welcome to Forever Phoenix, the fourth and final book in my Lost & Found series! Phoenix is a fiery, dramatic girl who often feels misunderstood. When she pitches up in Millford for a fresh start after an especially disastrous accident, it’s touch and go whether she’ll be able to make a go of it … but once she meets cool teen band the Lost & Found, everything changes. Discovering a long-lost talent and rebuilding her shattered confidence, Phoenix finds herself centre stage and causing a stir. Behind the scenes, she is making friends and falling in love, but can she work out how to build bridges with her broken family and rise from the ashes of a troubled past?

  I think you’ll love Phoenix … and her cool sidekick, Pie! Forever Phoenix is a perfect escapist read … warm, twisty and dramatic. Curl up and fall into the world of the Lost & Found. What are you waiting for?

  Thanks …

  Once again, to my long-suffering partner, Liam, and my kids, Cal and Cait, for keeping the world turning while I write. Thanks to my fab friends Helen, Sheena, Jessie, Mel, Fiona, Janet, Paul, Kicki, Joan, Doreen, Aud and everyone else who has helped to keep me smiling lately. As always, I’m grateful to Carmen, Amelia, Tania, Ellen, Wendy, Mary-Jane and all at Puffin HQ, and to Erin Keen for the beautiful cover and chapter headings. Gratitude to my agent Darley and my accountant Martyn. Special shout-outs to all the cool indie bookshops and libraries out there, and most of all to YOU, my brilliant readers, for all your loyalty and support. You’re awesome!

  If you’ve ever been to boarding school, you’ll know that you’re never alone. I have a room to myself, a narrow bed right next to an old sash window that rattles in the breeze, but ten girls share this corridor. There is always, always someone around … except when there isn’t.

  School is shut for October break and I’m the only one here.

  We’re not allowed to light candles, but there’s nobody to tell on me so I light a short stubby candle that smells of vanilla and unwrap a slice of chocolate brownie bought from the village earlier.

  A high wind outside makes the autumn trees dance, but there’s no mistaking the sharp rap on the glass. I’m on the first floor, but I’m pretty sure it’s Pie, the tame magpie I rescued back in the spring, calling to see if I’m bored and in need of some company. I pull up the window and Pie flies in on a gust of wind that makes the candle flame gutter. He hops on to my shoulder.

  The girls I share a dorm with think I’m trouble. Amusing trouble sometimes, but not best-friend material. Still, they’re not here now so I can have my candle and my chocolate brownie, and leave the window open with the curtains fluttering. I break off some brownie for Pie and leave him scoffing it on the windowsill while I head to the communal kitchen to plunder the hot-chocolate stash.

  I’m singing my heart out as I come back into my dorm room with a mug of steaming hot chocolate, but the song dies on my lips. Bright, leaping flames are racing up the curtains and black smoke is billowing from cushions stacked up on my bed beneath. There’s no sign of Pie, just a few brownie crumbs on the windowsill.

  I run to the shared bathroom, shove a bath towel in the sink and turn on the tap with shaking hands. Smoke fills my throat as I swat at the curtains, but all that does is fan the flames and knock something off the windowsill and down into the flowerbeds below. The towel catches fire and I run back to the bathroom to get another, but when I turn the blaze has reached the corridor. Smoke blurs my eyes and fills my lungs, and I scream and scream and scream.

  One for sorrow, two for joy

  Three for a girl, four for a boy

  Five for silver, six for gold,

  Seven for a secret never to be told.

  1

  Smoke Damage

  Let me get one thing straight: I did not burn down the school.

  For one thing, it was clearly an accident and, for another, it wasn’t actually the school, just one of the dorms. And it wasn’t exactly razed to the ground – more smoke damage, really. Although the roof has gone, I admit, and quite a bit of the top floor.

  Almost every single thing I owned has gone, apart from the clothes I’m standing in, but at least nobody was hurt, because of it being October half-term and everything. Pretty much everyone was at home with their families or off on flashy trips to Europe. And I raised the alarm – I wouldn’t have done that if I had been trying to burn the place down, would I? Seriously, think about it.

  I am not an arsonist. I am all about saving the world, not setting it on fire, but even now the smoke has died down and the blaze is out, nobody wants to hear that. Nobody is listening.

  It took two fire engines to get the fire under control in the end. I’d been trying to douse the flames myself with the hosepipe attached to the old greenhouse, but I couldn’t get the water to reach high enough, and the firefighters pulled me out of the way, so after that I just watched. OK, I might have taken a couple of pictures on my iPhone, but be honest … wouldn’t you have too?

/>   Turns out the police thought that was highly suspicious.

  I don’t suppose they know many fourteen-year-old girls, because everybody I know catalogues their life in pictures. It’s what we do these days.

  A paramedic checks me over and tells me I’m a very lucky girl, and instead of arguing I take a deep breath and nod. No burns, no significant smoke inhalation, just a pall of toxic fumes following me wherever I go, clinging to my hair, my skin, my clothes.

  ‘Try to get some rest,’ the paramedic says. ‘You’re going to be fine.’

  I don’t bother asking where I should sleep now that my dorm room is a heap of charred and stinking rubbish. I don’t tell her that I’m a million miles from fine.

  The building is cordoned off and a firefighter tells me that little if anything will be worth salvaging. I feel like it’s my life they’re talking about.

  The police swoop on me again once I’ve been given a clean bill of health.

  ‘What’s your name?’ a weary police officer asks, and when I say it’s Phoenix he frowns and asks if I’m joking. I’ve probably gone straight to the top of his list of possible suspects … There I am, right in front of them, rising from the ashes. That’s what a phoenix does, right?

  I didn’t ask to be called Phoenix, but I try my best to live up to the name, doomed forever to spring back from the ruins of whatever my last disaster happened to be. I didn’t ask to be hanging around the charred remains of my former dorm at half past four in the morning either, with my slipper socks soaked by the hosepipe and great big flakes of ash in my hair.

  I didn’t ask to be a boarder at Bellvale Ladies College in the first place, for that matter. When you are fourteen years old and your mum is a career-obsessed control freak and your dad lives in Dubai with his new wife and kids … well, you don’t actually have much choice about where you live.

  ‘Was there anybody else in the building?’ the police officer wants to know now. ‘Were you alone when the fire started?’

  ‘Just me,’ I tell him. ‘Well … me and Pie!’

  ‘Pie?’ the policeman barks. ‘Just you and – what?’

  I roll my eyes. ‘Pie’s a tame magpie,’ I say. ‘He was in the dorm earlier, but he scarpered long before the flames took hold. I hope he’s OK!’

  The policeman loses interest after that. I swear, nobody cares a bit about magpie welfare in today’s society, except possibly me. He interviews me about the fire and writes lots of stuff down in a notebook, like in one of those TV detective series, but there seems to be no evidence of arson. The policeman says it is a school matter as far as he’s concerned.

  That’s not as hopeful as it sounds – the head teacher is not my number-one fan.

  As I turn away from the ruins, I spot something glinting in an overgrown flowerbed in the moonlight. I take a look, and there it is, the battered old Quality Street tin I keep my old diaries and secret treasures in. It was on the windowsill last night, beside the open window – that’s what I must have accidentally knocked out into the darkness when I’d panicked, trying to put out the flames with a wet bath towel.

  I’ve lost my laptop, my books, my clothes, my shoes, my future … but I have my past at least, squished into that old tin. I hold it close, not sure if I want to laugh or cry.

  Eventually I am hauled into Miss Winter’s office, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep and still smelling of smoke, like a kipper or a pot of badly stewed lapsang souchong tea. I’m still clutching the Quality Street tin, as if it might save me from drowning.

  She frowns at me, pressing her mouth into a thin line. ‘Phoenix,’ she says. ‘I know you and I don’t always see eye to eye. I know you are going through a difficult phase right now. I know you’re feeling angry –’

  A difficult phase? All my attempts at holding things together dissolve into sudden fury.

  ‘I hate it here,’ I snap. ‘You know that. But I did not burn down the dorm, OK? It was an accident!’

  Miss Winter’s face darkens. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was angry, but somehow her ice-queen persona wins out. She is not called Miss Winter for nothing. ‘Well,’ she says. ‘I certainly hope that it was. Your time here at Bellvale Ladies College has not been as happy as we might have wished –’

  ‘No kidding.’

  ‘This latest incident is most unfortunate,’ she continues. ‘You’ve made it clear that you do not want to be here. I’ve tried my best to be patient –’

  ‘Have you? Can’t say I noticed.’

  ‘What’s in the tin?’ she asks, frowning. ‘The dorm burns down and you save a tin of … sweets?’

  That hits me right in the heart. Does she know nothing about me?

  ‘Not sweets, memories,’ I say through gritted teeth. ‘You wouldn’t understand!’

  ‘I don’t suppose I would,’ she admits. ‘I’ve tried my best for you, but no, I don’t understand. I think, Phoenix, we have come to the end of the line.’

  Miss Winter’s long fingers fiddle with the silver necklace she always wears. It’s something she does when she’s particularly stressed or angry – I’ve seen it a lot these last few years. I can tell that she hates this as much as I do. She is not the kind of woman who likes to admit defeat. She has failed with me, though, and I can’t help smiling a little at that.

  ‘I have spoken to your grandmother,’ Miss Winter says. ‘She agrees with me that things at Bellvale haven’t worked out. You can’t go to your father in Dubai – he’s said something about the timing being difficult – but your grandmother has agreed to take you. I’d ask you to pack your bags, but there won’t be much to pack – and the building’s cordoned off until the health and safety people have been, so don’t even think about it, Phoenix.’

  My shoulders slump. It’s not that I had a lot to lose, but what I did have is gone, almost every last bit of it.

  Miss Winter peers at her computer, clicks and prints out a couple of sheets of A4.

  ‘I’ve booked you a train,’ she says briskly. ‘I’d drive you to the station, but I’m expecting the insurers to call, and of course there will be parents to talk to once the news of what’s happened gets out. We can only hope the press don’t get hold of it, but either way I’ll need to stay here to handle things. A taxi will be here to collect you at eleven. You can pick up your tickets with this code, and there’s cash in this envelope for the cab and for snacks and a taxi at the other end. It’s not ideal, obviously –’

  ‘You want me to leave right now?’ I interrupt. ‘Immediately? Smelling of smoke, with ash in my hair?’

  ‘I’ll find you a change of clothes,’ she says grudgingly. ‘You can pop into the gym to have a wash and brush-up …’

  I blink, unable to take it all in.

  ‘What is this?’ I whisper, numb with shock. ‘Have I been expelled?’

  Miss Winter has the grace to look shifty. ‘No need to call it that,’ she says. ‘That wouldn’t look good for the school, and it wouldn’t look good for you. Things haven’t worked out – let’s leave it at that. We’re all agreed that this is the best solution …’

  ‘Are we?’ I challenge.

  ‘Phoenix, you have left me no choice.’

  The phone starts ringing on her desk, and I can see her hand reach out to take it, then pull back again. She is not going to risk speaking to insurance assessors or concerned parents until I am safely off the premises.

  Well, fine.

  I square my shoulders and tilt my chin and walk to the door. I pretend I am brave and tough and confident, that I am wearing platform biker boots instead of soggy slipper socks. I pretend that I am calm and cool about it all, that the sting of tears in my eyes is just a reaction to the acrid smoky stink that clings to my clothes. I pretend I don’t care, and when I reach the doorway I turn and glare at Miss Winter.

  ‘Thanks, Mum,’ I say to her. ‘Thanks a bunch.’

  I slam the door.

  2

  Banished

  Look, don’t judge me. Yes, t
he career-mad mother I mentioned is indeed none other than Miss Winter, the steely-eyed head teacher of the boarding school that has been my prison for the last three years. Sucks, right?

  You don’t get to choose your parents. If you did, I clearly would not have picked a control-freak head teacher with a heart of ice and a burning ambition to rule the world.

  The day I started at Bellvale Ladies College, the two of us made ground rules. We hadn’t had the easiest of relationships up to that point, and we wanted to find a way to make things work. We decided the best way to do that was to ignore each other. I would tell nobody that I was related to the school’s head teacher; I’d share a dorm with my classmates like everyone else.

  Holidays were the only tricky bit. Dad was out of the picture – he married again a few years back and moved to Dubai. He has two marauding toddlers and a wife called Wanda who thinks I am a deranged psychopath, which is kind of awkward. Sometimes I’d holiday with a classmate, but lately I tend to hole up alone at school while Mum fusses away in the background writing school reports and polishing lacrosse trophies or whatever it is that head teachers do for fun.

  Nobody ever discovered our secret. The fact that Mum changed her surname back to Winter the minute she and Dad split up helped with that, along with the fact that she has always been very good at maintaining a frosty distance. Whenever the other girls asked about my family, I acted huffy and explained that my parents cared more about work than about me. It was the truth, after all, and after a while they stopped asking.

  The deal was that Mum would stay out of my life as much as possible, but if I put a foot wrong she would come down on me like a ton of bricks. No special treatment. I am surprised it took so long for the ton of bricks to fall, but fall they did, and I’m still reeling from the impact. I’m dazed and confused, but glad to be getting out of this dump, trust me.

  I take a long hot shower in the gym changing rooms, washing my hair over and over with someone else’s abandoned shampoo until I smell of lemons instead of bonfires.