Well, their childish dreams were just that. Raoul and Christine did Skype every day once Christine moved, but pretty soon Christine became too busy between ballet school and real school, and Raoul couldn't keep up Skyping when his dad kept getting moved to different countries to work. At one point, Raoul was in America, and he couldn't Skype Christine because every time she was free, he was in the middle of school. So they lost touch.
Christine's father died when she was fourteen. He promised her, lying on a hospital bed with IVs hooked into every orfice of his body, that he would not leave her fully. "I'll come and guard you as your Angel of Music," he told her. "I won't ever be gone, child. I promise."
And Christine, young and vulnerable and too afraid to face the world alone, believed him.
Madame Giry was strict as Mama Valerius was lenient and kind. But both of them did care about Christine. They looked after her. However, Christine's stint as a ballerina went about as well as Christine had expected. She had absolutely no flexibility, her rhythm was atrocious, and she had to drop out of ballet school to make way for people who actually knew how to dance. Madame Giry and Mama Valerius still looked after Christine, though, and when Christine was sixteen, Madame Giry sent Christine to a boarding school in England with her daughter Meg.
Christine never really stopped thinking about Raoul, and wondering what he was up to. The last time she had checked his Facebook, she had seen him with his arm around some blonde bombshell. The mere thought of Raoul with another girl made Christine feel slightly queasy. She looked at her own bushy, dark hair and brown skin and wondered if Raoul still loved her. Then she looked at his blonde girlfriend and decided that he must not.
For her own sake, Christine deleted her Facebook. She made the decision to stop pining after someone who had, in all likelihood, completely forgotten about her. She moved on and joined a few clubs at her school. She joined a robotics team, but at the insistence of her friend Meg, she also started participating in the musical theatre programs at her school. She never got cast as anything but a chorus member, but she didn't mind.
It was on the robotics team that Christine first met Frederick. He was from the boys' boarding school, and the robotics team was shared between her school and his. He looked a bit like Christine imagined Raoul would look now: dirty blonde hair, deep brown eyes, and a narrow frame. They took to each other immediately and worked on the mechanical and design of the robot. Within a month, Frederick asked Christine to a school dance, and she happily said yes.
They started going on dates outside of school grounds, into the local villages. Their favourite haunt was the little Costa Coffee that was only half a mile from the girls' school.
It seemed, however, that the little Costa Coffee was not just Frederick and Christine's favourite haunt.
At first, Christine paid no attention to the man in the shadows who always wore a mask. She and Frederick thought that he was part of the town's quirks. And once they had noticed him, they started pointing him out in other places in town. "Oh, look, there's that masked man again!" And then the two of them would giggle and that would be the end of it.
Frederick and Christine were celebrating their six-month anniversary when it happened.
Frederick had arranged for a picnic by the Thames – a very romantic spot, especially considering that the sun was shining for the first time in two weeks. There wasn't a drop of rain in the sky (although with England, that was never a guarantee). Frederick had even packed their favourite sandwiches and a little chocolate cake that said "Happy 6 Months".
"That man," Frederick whispered as he lay down the blanket. "That man with the mask is right there."
Christine frowned, and she felt her heart skip a beat. "I thought you said no one knew this area," she whispered back.
"No one does," he insisted. "Christine… I… call me paranoid, but I think he's following us."
Frederick shakily opened the picnic basket, but inside there was no cake or sandwiches. In their stead was one human skull and, lodged in the corner, a bulging envelope. Christine screamed at the sight of the human skull while Frederick took the envelope and opened it.
The envelope was filled with pictures of Frederick and Christine. There was a red X drawn on every single photo that showed Frederick's face.
"Holy shit," Frederick shouted. "What the fuck!" He spun around to face the man in the mask, but the man was no longer there. Where the man had sat was a note scrawled in red ink: "Leave Christine alone. She belongs to me."
Frederick turned around, the note in his shaking hand. "Christine?" he asked.
Christine shook her head. "I don't know," she said. "Fred, I swear, I don't know! No one is left to care about me – Father is dead and Mama Valerius is still in Paris."
"Clearly someone doesn't want me around you," Frederick replied, looking at the note.
Frederick kept getting threats from the man in the mask for the next three months. The threats became too much, and Frederick succumbed to the pressure. "I can't deal with this, Christine," he said. "I still love you but I can't live with these threats."
"It's not my fault," Christine protested.
But Frederick shook his head. "It is, in a way," he said mysteriously.
Heartbroken, Christine cried in her room with only Meg to comfort her. "He's stupid," Meg said, giving Christine a large bowl of chocolate ice cream. "It isn't your fault that someone is stalking you."
"But what does that man want?" Christine wailed. "I'm nothing special."
"Christine."
Christine turned to Meg, but Meg looked frightened. "I didn't say anything," she said.
"Oh, God, he's following me!" Christine shrieked. "I'm not safe anywhere!"
Meg grabbed her friend's arm and held her back with all her might. "Then we'll report it, Christine!" she exclaimed. "We'll report it to the Headmistress and they can get policemen to guard this room. And I'm living here, too, Chris. That person will have to get through me first!"
Christine glanced at her thin, fragile friend and resisted the urge to laugh at the ludicrous offer. But the thought that she had a friend there, constantly, did reassure her slightly.
"Christine."
She jumped. "Who is it?" she called out hysterically. "Who's there?"
"Leave her alone!" Meg shouted bravely. "I'm telling you, we're going to the Headmistress!"
The voice chuckled. "They'll never find me."
From that moment on, Christine and Meg were never quite sure if they were alone in their room. They asked the Headmistress if they could move rooms, which they were denied because every single room was already filled. Policemen looked all around the dorms but found nothing. Christine and Meg refused to change in their own room but instead went to other friends' rooms to change, study, and occasionally sleep.
This continued until the school's opening night of the musical production Wicked.