Chapter 23 Just Desserts #3
“Mummy was never a proper mother to me. Daddy was the only one who loved me. Oh, I nearly forgot,” Cynthia said, suddenly animated, pulling something else out of her pocket.
“Thought you might like this back—a souvenir, you know.” She thrust something into his unwilling hand.
A silk scarf, printed with little red and blue Eiffel Towers, the blood faded now to rust. “Took it from round your girlfriend’s neck,” she said with a grin.
“Got it back from Daddy after he died. A souvenir. You can have it.”
He recoiled. “No thanks, Cynthia.”
“Oh, there you are,” Veronica said, elbowing her way into the queue.
“I don’t think we’ve met,” Cynthia said coldly to her. “I’m Cynthia Blinkhorn. I expect Flynn’s told you all about me. You’re his daughter, aren’t you?” She invested the word “daughter” with disgust.
Veronica was looking bug-eyed at Flynn, and he knew she had spotted the knife and the scarf and put two and two together.
It was imperative to get her away from this madwoman, and to that end he gave Cynthia a sudden, almighty shove, catching her off-guard, as well as the rest of the queue, which started to fall like dominoes.
Amongst the confusion, he grabbed Veronica by the wrist and yanked her through the kiosk.
The only place to go then was on to the Dipper.
At least it would give them some time to work out what to do, he thought.
There were a lot of complaints about queue-jumping, but no one stopped them.
He could see Cynthia barging her way past people to reach them.
After what seemed like an agonizing eternity and after a good deal of clanking and lurching, the roller coaster began to move—but Cynthia had managed to scramble on board at the tail end, despite the attempts of the fairground attendants to pull her off.
Flynn could see her throwing herself into a seat at the back.
“I think we’re safe until it stops,” he said to Veronica as the Dipper hauled its way up the first gradient. “She can hardly climb over people. It gives us time to—
“Aaach,” or something similar came out of his mouth as they hit the descent. The hamburger had been a mistake, Flynn realized. The Dipper rattled down and slowed at the bottom long enough for Veronica to say, “I saw your friend in the Ladies’. Miss Ogilvie.”
Miss Ogilvie who didn’t like heights and things that went too fast? What was she doing here? They were moving up a steep incline now, and Flynn was already bracing himself for the inevitable descent. The long drop, he thought.
He might have screamed as they plummeted down again.
It was hard to be sure as everyone was screaming—all apart from Veronica, who was so overcome with the enjoyment of it all that she could barely breathe.
At the bottom of the next incline, he managed to twist round and look behind them for Cynthia.
She was still there, sitting bolt upright and drilling those eyes into him, only she seemed closer now than before.
He had thought that being on the Dipper would give them a breathing space, but it was a mistake—they were trapped on it.
“I wish I’d brought that gun,” Veronica shouted. “I could have shot her.”
“I think the best plan is just to make a dash for it when we get off,” Flynn said before they swooped down into the next dip. His stomach was making its own way somewhere else. He looked back again. He had been wrong—if you were as determined as Cynthia you could climb over the seats.
And so it went on for an eternity. Diving and plummeting, soaring and plunging, and each time Flynn looked back Cynthia seemed to have moved closer, as if she was playing a hellish game of musical statues.
She was only two rows behind them now. They were at the crest of the longest drop and Cynthia seemed to be trying to stand up. People were yelling at her to be careful, not so much fearing for her safety as terrified for their own. Flynn closed his eyes as they hurtled down.
Finally, he began to feel the deceleration in his bones. When he looked for Cynthia, there was no sign of her.
“She’s disappeared,” he said to Veronica.
“What?”
“She’s gone. Cynthia. I can’t see her anywhere. She’s not on the Dipper.”
They climbed off quickly as the ride ground to a halt. Flynn was half expecting Cynthia to jump out of nowhere and stab him in the back, but she really had vanished.
Not into thin air though. People were running towards someone splayed on the ground. Cynthia. “Splat,” Veronica said. “Defenestrated?”
“You need a window to be defenestrated out of. I don’t think there’s a word for engineering a fall off a roller coaster.
Although I suppose someone very clever, not to mention very devious, might manage it.
” A spy, perhaps, he thought. Or a maiden aunt.
“Accidents happen. I think she just fell. Occam’s razor. ”
“Whose?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Flynn said, tugging Veronica away.
“Good twist, I suppose,” Veronica said. “Let’s go home. Mrs. Betty will be wondering where we are.”
“Hungry?”
“Always.”