Even now, he could remember the cold sick feeling that had engulfed him when Aunt Lyn, tears streaming down her face, told him what had happened. He had not really understood why his parents had been driving through an icy blizzard that day – he had supposed there was some important grown-up thing they had to do. Aunt Lyn, angrily dashing away tears, had said it was irresponsible of them to go haring across London in the middle of a fierce snowstorm with the roads like ice rinks and visibility virtually nil, and it was as well that Benedict, poor little scrap, had some family left who would take care of him. He would, of course, come to live with her and his cousin Nina.
Benedict had been too sick and numb with grief to care where he lived. He had not known his grandfather very well, so that part was not too bad, but the loss of his parents was devastating. He had to pack his clothes and go to Aunt Lyn’s house. Aunt Lyn was kind and comforting, but she was not Benedict’s mother and her house was not his house. He had stayed with her sometimes, because Aunt Lyn and Nina were supposed to be the lively ones of the family and Benedict’s mother said he was apt to be too quiet and something called introverted. It would do him good, said his mother, to stay with Lyn and be with Nina who was always so sparky, and see if he could imbibe some of that spark.
‘He won’t,’ said Benedict’s father, who was quiet himself and liked Benedict the way he was. ‘He’ll retreat from the world into his books.’
‘The way you retreat from the world sometimes,’ said Benedict’s mother. Benedict, who had been only a quarter listening to this exchange but who had been getting slightly worried in case his parents were going to have one of their very rare rows, heard the smile in his mother’s voice and relaxed and went back into the book he was reading, which was Alice Through the Looking Glass and which he could read properly by himself now. It was just about the best book in the whole world.
After the crash he could not believe he would never hear his mother teasing his father like that again, nor could he believe he would never see the familiar faraway look on his father’s face which his mother called retreating, but the rest of the family said was useless daydreaming.
That first night Aunt Lyn gave him the bedroom he always had, and Benedict closed the door and sat on the bed, refusing to go downstairs or join Aunt Lyn and Nina for a meal. He did not want to talk to anyone and he did not want to see anyone. He said this very politely, but he kept the door closed for the next two days, only going out to the bathroom. Aunt Lyn carried up meals on trays and did not seem to mind that he did not speak to her. Benedict had brought Alice Through the Looking Glass with him and he read it all the way through, then turned to the first page and read it all over again.
The funeral was four days later. Aunt Lyn came up to the bedroom to tell him about it, tapping on the door before coming in. It would be at the local church, she said, but Benedict need not go if he did not want to. Nina, who was fourteen, came up later to say if he had any sense he would stay in the house. Funerals were utterly gross. There would be coffins and stuff like that, and everyone would cry. She was going, said Nina importantly, because everyone else was and there was a grown-up party afterwards.
‘It’s not a party,’ said Aunt Lyn in exasperation. ‘I keep telling you it’s not a party.’
‘I don’t care what it is, it’s at a big house I’ve never been to, and there’ll be food and I can wear black and that’s seriously gothic.’ Nina was into being gothic at the time.
Benedict did not want to go to a party that would have his parents in coffins and at which people would be seriously gothic, but the night before the funeral his grandmother, who was his mother’s mother, came to the house in floods of tears and said he must go, because he was the one scrap of her beloved daughter she had left, and only his presence at her side would get her through the terrible ordeal.
‘That’s unanswerable,’ said Aunt Lyn to Benedict afterwards. ‘I think you’ll have to go. I’m really sorry about it. But it’ll only be about an hour.’
‘I’ll sit by you and hold your hand if it’ll help,’ said Nina.
‘I don’t want anyone to hold my hand. I’ll be all right,’ said Benedict. After they went out, he tried on the black tie which Aunt Lyn had given him and which was what people wore to funerals. He put it on and stared at it in the mirror. The tie looked horrible and Benedict hated it. He hated everything and he wished he could do what Alice had done, and step through the mirror into another world. Alice only had to say, ‘Let’s pretend,’ and her mirror had dissolved. The world in the looking glass sounded pretty scary, but Benedict thought any world, no matter how scary it was, would be better than this one.
He was about to turn away when something moved in the mirror’s depths. Benedict looked back and his heart skipped a beat. Looking out of the mirror, straight at him, was a strange man. As he stared, the man smiled and Benedict glanced over his shoulder into the room, thinking someone had come in without him hearing. There had been people coming and going all day, vague relatives Benedict hardly knew, and friends of his parents. Some of them had come upstairs to tell him how sorry they were; this man must be another of them.
But the bedroom was empty and the door was closed. Benedict looked back at the mirror and this time his heart did more than skip a beat, it lurched and thumped hard against his ribs. The man was still there, standing very still, watching him.