Perfectly Reflected by S. C. Ransom Page B

spare, and grabbed a seat at the back of the train. It was so frustrating to have to sit and do nothing. I scanned through a discarded newspaper, but that didn’t take long. In the end I pulled out my phone and scrolled down to the little-used notes function. I might as well spend the time trying to work out who disliked me so much and who also knew all my personal details. But after twenty minutes I shut it down with a sigh. I had a shortlist of girls from school who didn’t like me for various reasons, but no one with a particularly vicious grudge. I had no idea who it could be.
    When the train finally arrived at my station I practically jogged home. I wished yet again that I was fitter and that I had Callum’s speed. Back at the house everyone was out, so I quickly ran up to my bedroom and switched on the computer. The silence in the house was interrupted only by the noise of the odd passing car and the impatient drumming of my fingers on the desk. I was conscious of Callum next to me, but he didn’t speak, letting me concentrate on getting logged on. Finally I got to enter the bank details and the screen I wanted opened.
    “Are you looking at this, Callum?” I asked as I scanned down the list of transactions to get to the most recent.
    “Uh-huh. I’m right here. So what do you—” He stopped abruptly. I got there a fraction after him. The transaction was very clear: at 15.37pm on Thursday, when I was sitting in the police station, the entire balance of my account had been withdrawn as cash.
    “So someone walked in there, bold as brass, and took every last penny. How dare they?” I was incensed. Did they know where I was at the time, that there was no chance of them being caught in the act, or was it all a coincidence? How much more about my life were they going to try and ruin? I could feel my eyes prick with tears again, tears of frustration because it felt that there was nothing I could do.
    “Alex, I’m so sorry. What can I do to help?”
    I pinched the bridge of my nose in an effort to stop the tears, and breathed in sharply. It was pointless getting upset; that would be what they wanted. I had to focus, to think. I looked up at Callum’s concerned face. “Talk to me. We need to see if we can thrash this out, find a common thread, something ! You don’t get this level of abuse from your average stalker. There has to be something tying this all together.”
    As I spoke I could feel his gentle embrace around me, as if he were trying to keep me safe. For a second I longed to be up at the dome, to be feeling the full strength of his arms as he protected me. I wanted to let someone else take charge for a moment, to let someone else make the decisions and face the consequences, and I wanted that person to be Callum. This was just getting too hard for me to bear.
    But there was no one else who could help; I was going to have to keep going alone, relying only on Callum’s support to see me through. “Help me, Callum,” I whispered. “Help me to figure this out.”
    I could see him frown as he stared unseeingly at the mess strewn across my desk. “Well,” he said eventually, “this seems to be a straightforward theft, and they will have left clues. You need to report it, and quickly. They are bound to have some record, someproof of who took the money out, and we can then see who it is who is doing all this. You might also get the money back given that you do have a cast-iron alibi.”
    For the first time in hours I felt myself smile; he was absolutely right. I quickly scanned the website for a phone number to call out of hours, then had a lengthy and really frustrating conversation with the bank. They initially refused to believe that it had been nothing to do with me. Apparently the person taking out the money had all the right passwords and security numbers for the account, so there had been no problems in handing all the money over. I wasn’t getting anywhere so I told the woman on the phone that I