Numbers

  “How much have you got, Spider?”

  “Sixty quid — all mine.” He grinned. “Got to be back this evening, though. Bit more business to do. But the whole of the day’s ours,” he said, spreading his arms and twirling about. “Where do you wanna go?”

  “I dunno. Oxford Street?”

  “OK.” He drew himself up to his full height, then spread one arm in front of me, as if showing me the way, and in the loudest, most stupid toff’s voice said, “A little light shopping, madam. Is that to your liking?”

  People were starting to look.

  “Shut up, Spider!” He looked a bit crestfallen. “Come on, you soft git, that sounds cool. Let’s get on with it.” And I started running toward the Tube, and then he was there next to me, long legs easily beating me in our race to the ticket booth.

  “It’s a fucking rip-off, man, that’s what it is. Sixteen quid to go up in that thing.” He flipped his arm toward the London Eye Ferris wheel, anger fizzing through his body right down to his fingertips. We’d spent most of our money on Oxford Street on stupid sunglasses and hats and Big Macs. Sixty quid doesn’t go very far in London.

  People were starting to stare at him. I suppose when you weren’t used to him, he was something to stare at: a six-foot-four black guy, ranting in the street. The queue was gawping at him, like he was a hired clown — just there for their entertainment. I thought, They’ll start chucking coins at him in a minute. Some of them were elbowing each other, saying things out of the corners of their mouths, laughing. Disrespectful, like Jordan had been to me.

  “Forget it, then,” I said, trying to defuse the situation. “I don’t want to go on the poxy thing, anyway. Let’s go somewhere else.”

  But he was off on a rant now. “Everything’s for sodding tourists in this town. What about us? What about normal people, ain’t got sixteen quid for a poncey carnival ride?” Some of his audience were starting to look uneasy, shifting slowly a bit farther away from him, exchanging worried glances. I was enjoying their reaction now. He was shaking them up a bit.

  My eyes ran along the line — yeah, they were getting pretty uncomfortable. A couple of Japanese tourists, wearing matching blue parkas, woolly hats, and gloves, glanced in our direction. In that split second it took for them to look across and look away, I clocked their numbers and got a jolt like an electric shock. They were the same. Weird, I thought, matching death dates — what were the odds? Then the actual numbers registered, like a punch to my head. 12082010. That was today. What the hell…?

  I looked back across at them, but Spider’s antics had become too much: They’d turned their backs on us, probably hoping that we’d go away. I must have made a mistake, I thought. I needed to check this out. I started walking toward the queue, thinking I’d go ’round to the other side, have a look at them again. Spider didn’t even notice I’d gone — I could hear him cursing away to himself, cocooned in his outrage.

  The line was pretty dense. I made for a slight gap between a young guy in a tracksuit with a rucksack on his back and an old lady with a thick tweed coat on, carrying a straw bag.

  “’Scuse me,” I said as I walked toward the lady. I needn’t have said anything, she was backing away, anyway. “Ta,” I said as I squeezed through. She smiled thinly, clutching her bag to her body, and I caught the worry in her face as our eyes briefly met. I caught her number, too, and stopped in my tracks. I stared at her, I couldn’t help it. 12082010.

  This was unreal. What did it mean? Sweat came pricking out through my skin, all over me. I stood there, rooted to the spot, staring at her.

  The old lady took a deep breath. Her pupils were wide with fear.

  “I haven’t got much money,” she said quietly, voice wavering ever so slightly. Her hands were holding her bag so tightly the knuckles were white.

  “What?” I said.

  “I haven’t got much money. This is a treat for me — I’ve been saving my pension….”

  The light went on: The old dear thought I was going to rob her. “No,” I said, taking a step backward. “No, I don’t want your money. No, that’s not it. Sorry.”

  I’d bumped into the guy in front of us, and he swung ’round, the corner of his damn bag catching my back. God, I’m going to get a beat-down, I thought. I started backing away in Spider’s direction.

  “Hey, sorry,” I said, head down, hands in pockets. “I didn’t mean nothing.”

  “It’s OK. This is not a problem.” His stilted English caught my attention. I peered out from under my hood. Weirdly, he looked as spooked as I was, sweat beading on his forehead, hair dark and damp around his scalp. “Everything is OK,” he said, and nodded, willing me to agree with him.

  “Sure, everything’s OK,” I echoed, amazed that I could still speak like a normal human being. Inside me, my real voice was screaming now — a piercing shriek of terror tearing through me. He had it, too, you see. 12082010. His number.

  Something was going to happen to these people.

  Today.

  Here.

  I turned ’round and stumbled back to Spider, who was still cussing like a sailor.

  “Spider, we’ve got to go, now.” He ignored me, wrapped up in his own little world. I grabbed his sleeve. “Please, mate, listen to me. We’ve got to get out of here.” Couldn’t he hear the fear in my voice? Couldn’t he feel my hand shaking on his arm?

  “I ain’t going nowhere, man. I ain’t finished with this place.”

  “Yes, Spider, you are. It doesn’t matter. We just need to get away.”

  Every second we stood there talking was a second closer to whatever was going to wipe these people out. My heart was hammering away in my chest, like it was going to burst through my rib cage.

  “I’m going to talk to the main man, whoever’s in charge here. Someone needs to tell them, set them straight. It’s disgusting, ripping off people like this. We shouldn’t put up with it no more. We…”

  He just wasn’t listening. There was no way to make him listen.

  “…take too much of this shit in this country. We’re all treated like second-class citizens. We —”

  Without even thinking about it, I lifted up my hand and slapped him hard in the face. And I do mean hard. Smack! He stopped midflow, frozen in total shock. Then he put his hand up to his cheek.

  “What the fuck did you do that for?”

  “I need you to listen. We’ve got to get out of here. Please, please, get me out of here, Spider. Come on.” I grabbed his other hand and pulled until, finally, he started to move. I broke into a run, kind of dragging him along, and then, at last, he was running, too. Getting into it, he let go of my hand and sprinted ahead of me, long legs striding out, arms pumping. Half a minute later, he stopped to wait for me, and then we jogged together, along the Embankment and over Hungerford Bridge. We slowed to a walk midway across the bridge, then stopped and looked back where we’d come from. Everything was just as it had been, no problems.

  “What’s going on, Jem? What was that all about?”

  “Nothing. You were just upsetting people, that’s all. The next thing someone would’ve called the police.” It could have been true, couldn’t it? But even as I said it, I knew it sounded lame, and it didn’t fool Spider.

  “Nah, that’s not it. Look at you, there’s something wrong. You look like a ghost, man. Even whiter than normal. What’s wrong with you?”

  Standing there, looking over the Thames and the city just getting on with a normal day, I suddenly felt that I’d made a fool of myself. The words running through my head didn’t sound real, even to me — numbers, death dates, disaster. It sounded ridiculous, a stupid fantasy. And perhaps that was all it was, some twisted game my mind was playing on me.

  “It’s nothing, Spider. I had a bad feeling there, a panic attack. I’m OK now — well, not OK, but better.” I tried to turn the conversation back to him. “I’m sorry I hit you.” I put my hand up to his face and held it there for a couple of seconds. “Is it sore?”

/>   He smiled ruefully. “Still stinging a bit. I’d never have thought you could batter me like that.” He snorted and shook his head. “Bloody Mike Tyson’d have trouble with you.”

  “Sorry,” I said again.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said, still smiling. And that’s where we were, leaning on the bridge, looking along the river, when we heard the bang and saw the London Eye blown to bits in front of us.

  CHAPTER NINE

  You’ll have seen it on TV a hundred times, so you know what we saw that day: a sudden explosion, debris flying everywhere, a plume of smoke going up, one Ferris wheel pod completely destroyed, others damaged and distorted in the blast. All around us people had stopped in their tracks and turned to face the Eye. We could hear screaming carrying across the water.

  Spider and I said the same thing, “Oh, my God!” and it was echoed from every mouth along the bridge — maybe a prayer from some people, just the words you say when you’re in shock for most of us. We stood watching for a minute or two, as the dust settled and the sirens started wailing. I felt numb. I’d started to doubt the numbers, hoping they weren’t real, that it was all some silly game in my head. Now I knew it was no game. The numbers were real — I was the girl who knew people’s futures, and I always would be. I shivered.

  “Let’s get out of here, Spider,” I said. “Let’s go home.” Whatever was waiting for me at Karen’s, it had to be better than watching London clean up its dead. I turned to continue across the bridge, but Spider didn’t follow. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  Still leaning on the bridge, he looked ’round at me, frowning. There was confusion there, but also accusation. I knew what was coming next. I couldn’t avoid it. Still holding my eyes, he spat out the words.

  “You knew. You knew about that.” We were perhaps fifteen feet apart. His words were loud enough to reach me and several other people nearby. A couple of them quickly turned their heads to look at us.

  “Shut up, Spider,” I hissed.

  He shook his head. “No, I won’t shut up. You knew about this. What the fuck’s going on, Jem?” He stood up straight and started walking toward me.

  “Nothing. Shut up!”

  He was close now, and went to grab me. I ducked away and started running. There were a lot of people on the bridge, and I had to weave my way between them. Spider was way faster than me, but he was big and awkward, and I could hear people shouting as he blundered through the crowd behind me. I made it to the other side and ran blindly through the streets. It didn’t take Spider long to catch me, and he got hold of my arm and spun me ’round to face him.

  “How did you know that was going to happen, Jem?” We were both breathing hard.

  “I didn’t. I didn’t know nothing.”

  “No, Jem, you knew about that. You knew about that. What’s going on?”

  I tried to wrestle away from him, but he was gripping hard. With his height and his strength and his smell he seemed to be all around me, I couldn’t get away. I tried to hit him, but he had both my arms now. I rammed my head forward, but he’d seen me coming and just held me farther away, still gripped in his vise. I couldn’t stand it. I kicked out and my foot slammed into his leg. He winced, but didn’t let go. “Nah, man, you’re gonna tell me what’s going on.”

  People were staring at us. I stopped struggling and went limp in his arms. I don’t want to do this on my own anymore, I thought. I can’t do it on my own.

  “OK,” I said, “but not here. Can we cut down to the canal?”

  We walked up to the Edgware Road and soon found a way through to the back of the shops that led down to the canal. At last we were away from people. All the strength had gone from me, my legs were starting to go.

  “I’ve gotta sit down,” I said weakly, and slumped onto a broken bench. One of the wooden slats was missing, felt like you were going to fall through it. Spider sat next to me.

  “You’ve gone a funny color, man. Put your head between your knees or something.”

  I leaned forward as a whooshing sound filled my ears. The space inside my head turned red, and then black.

  “Whoa, steady, mate.” I could hear Spider’s voice from a long way away, the other end of a tunnel. When I opened my eyes everything was the wrong way ’round. Took me a while to realize I was lying down. The bench dug into me where I was nearly falling through the gap, but my head was on a pillow, rank-smelling, but soft: Spider’s hoodie. He was pacing up and down on the towpath, rocking his head, flipping his fingers, muttering under his breath.

  “Hey,” I said, with hardly any sound at all. He stopped pacing and crouched down by me.

  “You alright, man?” he said.

  “Think so.”

  He helped me to sit up slowly, then sat next to me. I was shivering. He grabbed his hoodie and held it out. “Here. Put this on.”

  “Nah, I’m alright.” Didn’t want that foul-smelling thing on my clothes, my skin. I shivered again and he reached ’round behind me. I didn’t know what he was up to, was about to tell him to where to go, when I realized he’d draped the hoodie over my shoulders. Kind of wrapped me up. Made me think of my mum putting a blanket ’round us both on the sofa when the flat was so cold, cuddling up underneath it, one of her good days. Something was stabbing me in my eyes: pricking, stinging, hot. It spilled out and ran down my right cheek. Shit, I was crying. I don’t cry. I just don’t do that. I sniffed hard, wiped my face with the back of my hand.

  “You gonna tell me now?”

  I looked hard at the ground in front of me. Spider was the closest thing I’d ever had to a friend. Could I trust him? I took a deep breath.

  “Yeah,” I said. And I told him.

  CHAPTER TEN

  There was silence between us — not an empty thing, a space full of thoughts and feelings, unspoken words and emotions. We sat there while the sounds of London in chaos played out half a mile away, sirens wailing, car horns going, helicopters circling. I felt stunned — still reeling from what had happened and shocked that I’d finally told someone. My body and my head were all over the place. I hadn’t looked at Spider all this time — I’d kept my eyes on the ground as the words came out of me. It was so unreal, like someone else was talking.

  He’d been sitting, bent forward, leaning his elbows on his knees, listening. It was probably the stillest he’d been since I’d met him. Finally, he breathed out, a long breath through pursed lips.

  “No way, man, no way.” He sounded confused, scared almost.

  “It’s true, Spider. It’s all true. I knew something was going to happen because their numbers were all the same. And it did.”

  “Ah, this is way too weird. You’re freaking me out.”

  “I know. I’ve had to live with this for fifteen years.” Those stupid tears weren’t far away again.

  He suddenly slapped his forehead.

  “That old bloke, the one that was run over, you saw his number, didn’t you? That’s why you wanted to follow him.”

  I nodded. There was silence again for a while.

  “My nan knows about you, doesn’t she? You and her, you’re the same, aren’t you?” He shook his head. “All this time, I just thought she talked a load of bollocks, like, it was funny, really. But she knew there was something different about you. You’re a pair of witches! Shit!”

  I sat up a bit, tried to breathe more evenly. There were a couple of ducks paddling along the canal, little brown things, oblivious. I watched them making steady progress upstream. How easy to be a bird or an animal, living from day to day, unaware that you’re alive, unaware that one day you’ll die.

  Spider had got up, was pacing around again, up and down on the flat stones edging the canal. He was muttering under his breath — I couldn’t catch the words — just trying to get his head ’round what I’d said, I suppose. He scooped up a handful of gravel, started chucking it at the ducks. Must have hit one, because they suddenly took off, little brown wings going like the clappers.

>   He swiveled ’round. “Do you see everyone’s numbers?”

  I looked back down at the ground. I knew what was coming next. “Yeah, if I see their eyes.”

  “You know mine, then,” he said quietly. I didn’t say anything. “You know mine,” he said, more insistently.

  “Yeah.”

  “Shit, man, I dunno if I want to know or not.” He sank down to the ground, crouching, holding his head.

  Don’t ask me, I thought. Never ask me that, Spider. “I won’t tell you,” I said quickly. “I couldn’t. It’s not right. I’ll never tell no one.”

  “What d’you mean?” He was looking at me now. As our eyes met, that bloody number was there again. 12152010. I wanted to rip it out of my head, blank it out like I’d never seen it.