Ethereal

Chapter 31

"Hey." Charlie greeted, approaching me where I stood beside his car. He unlocked it, and I carefully opened the door, careful not to dent the metal.

"Thanks for the lift." I told him, sitting inside. I had never actually been in Charlie's car – it had nice leather seats, though there was a slightly overwhelming scent of aftershave that seemed to linger.

"It's no problem." He said, getting in besides me. "Jackson's been pretty worries about you, you know."

"Really?" I was surprised, he had never seemed to particularly care about me before – given how he had only been too fast at taking away most of my shifts.

He shrugged, starting up the car. "You've never missed a shift before – it was pretty obvious something was up." He paused, and I got the feeling that there was something on his mind.

I could guess what it was – he wanted to ask me about the van. Even so, he didn't actually mention it, and I didn't bring it up either.

"So, um, has anything changed in the shop while I was gone?" It was just small talk really – the shop hadn't changed in three years, it wasn't going to have changed in the last week.

"Uh, not really. Oh, some guy came around the other day asking for some great table tennis player he had seen in the store? We think he was confused... no one in this town is that good."

I had to fight to keep my expression from appearing sad. I knew who the man was looking for. It was Jasmine... he'd seen her play. He even gave her his contact details. Naturally she had never called him back – I guess he came by to try and convince her to join his team.

"Huh." Was all that I said.

"So... this aunt of yours." Charlie began. I felt myself tense up a little, but the store was only a few minutes away...

"Great aunt." I corrected, stiffly.

"Right. Great aunt. You say you went to help her out?" He questioned.

"Yeah, that's right. I was just helping her sort the farm." I spoke nervously. "Anything new at school?"

"Nope." He answered quickly. "She's your mothers aunt?"

"Yep." Nothing was a secret in this town, so Charlie knew that I didn't know any family on my father's side – not that there was any.

"That's interesting." He commented. "Because neither your grandparents have a sister, right?"

"How would you know?" I turned to face him, shocked. "Besides... she was just, um, a family friend. We aren't actually related."

He shook his head slowly. "My mum went to school with yours, they even used to be friends. It's a small town, everyone here knows everyone else. She said that Lori never had an aunt, and no one close enough to her parents to be considered an aunt."

"She moved away when my mother was young." I turned away, looking out of the window. I didn't want to give anything away on my face.

"Right, so neither of you knew her, yet you were the ones who went to help her out?" He scoffed. "Emilia, look. You can trust me."

As he spoke we pulled into the car park, I stayed silent as he parked.

"Thanks for the lift." I spoke quietly, leaning forward slightly to reach for the door handle. Before I got to it, I heard a click. My hand closed around the handle, but the door wasn't budging – at least, not with a regular amount of force.

I turned to look at Charlie, raising a brow in question. His hand was hovering over the door lock. He'd locked us in.

I knew that it would only be too easy for me to break the door, but I also knew that it would confirm Charlie's suspicions about me.