Beswitched Read Free Page A

“that’s all. I’m not surprised that you’re tired—you’ve had a long journey today.”
    “Long?” Flora echoed. She had only come from Wimbledon, and the journey had hardly started. She did not understand. This woman obviously thought she was someone else—but who?
    “Why don’t you run along the corridor,” the woman suggested, “and splash your face with some water?”
    She went back to reading her magazine, as if nothing unusual had happened.
    Flora stood up, suddenly eager to get out of the compartment, still wildly hoping things would somehow get back to normal. Once she had pulled open the sliding door, however, and stepped out into the corridor, she saw that the entire train belonged to the new and baffling world.
    All the compartments were filled with oddly dressed people. Every single woman wore a hat. The men wore heavy suits and stiff collars. Many people were smoking. Flora saw one man puffing on a pipe. The air was dim and reeking with smoke. It swirled in blue columns around the lights. Nobody seemed to think this might be unhealthy.
    The toilet door was made of heavy wood, and said “WC.” Flora darted inside and shot the bolt. Her head felt muddled and woolly, and she needed to think. If this was not a dream, there had to be some rational explanation.
    Hallucination? Reality television? An elaborate joke?
    There was a gleaming white basin, with brass taps. The lavatory was solid and thronelike. A cool wind knifed in through the frosted window, and Flora’s mind felt a little sharper. She turned, and jumped to see her own face gazing back at her in the small mirror above the basin.
    It’s me
, she thought—
but it’s not me
.
    The Flora in the mirror had light brown hair cut into a short, neat bob with a side parting—a hairstyle worn by nobody over the age of three. And where were her fabulous blond streaks? Where were the holes for her earrings? Somehow, as part of the general horror, her ears had become unpierced. She had been turned into a freak. She looked like a little girl!
    Feverishly—longing for a full-length mirror—Flora examined her clothes. Under the green jacket, she was wearing a hideous black pinafore dress with boxy pleats all the way down. It was tied at the waist with a belt of bright orange. Underneath the pinafore was a scratchy white shirt, with the stiff collar and striped tie.
    And underneath that—
    “Bum
!
”
whispered Flora.
    Her underwear was unbelievable. Under the shirt, she was wearing a mad vest. It was very long and it had straps fixed to the hem. These straps held up thick brown stockings. Worst of all, over the vest-and-stockings thing, she was wearing huge, baggy, dark green knickers, with elasticated legs that came halfway down to her knees. One of the legs had a cotton handkerchief tucked into the elastic.
    Though she was alone, Flora blushed hotly with embarrassment.
    Thank goodness none of my friends can see me
, she thought—
I’d never hear the last of these comedy bloomers
.
    It felt odd to be wearing so many layers of clothes, like a pass-the-parcel at a party. She wondered what to do next.Phoning for help was impossible—she didn’t have a phone anymore, and she had a strong feeling that mobile phones were unheard of in this weird new world. So were laptops and iPods, she suspected. She didn’t even have her own watch anymore—the new one was very plain, on a brown leather strap, and obviously didn’t do anything except tell the time.
    She used the royal lavatory. It was so high that her feet did not touch the ground when she sat down. There was a little notice beside it, which said, “Passengers Will Please Refrain from Pulling the Chain While the Train is at a Station.”
    Flora pulled the chain, and for a moment was distracted by the sight of a flap opening at the bottom of the toilet bowl and suddenly showing the ground rushing past beneath them.
    Her parents would be worried sick when she didn’t call. But how could she get