I start off thinking this is something I can do – I can treat it like a job, going to work in the morning. After three days and three arrests, Nan grounds me and I don’t want to go out anyway. The local filth has me on their radar, programmed into their searches. As soon as I’m out of the door, they know about it and they’re tracking me. Only takes half an hour on the third day before I hear the whine of the drone over my head.
I’m not doing anything wrong, and they don’t charge me with nothing, but in London just hanging around and being sixteen and black is enough to get you picked up and taken down the station. Searched, left in a cell, questioned and left again. They find my book on the first search.
‘What’s this?’
‘Nothing.’
‘It’s a notebook. What are you writing?’
‘Nothing.’
They start to flick through.
‘There are names in here, dates, descriptions. You some sort of stalker, are you? That your nasty little game?’
I clam up then. Better to say nothing. Let them think what they like. I haven’t hurt anyone or picked on anyone – they’ve got nothing against me. They video me, and write notes directly onto the laptop in the interview room.
On the third day, it’s not the police asking questions, it’s a couple of guys in suits. There’s a young one with ginger hair and a ridiculous bootlace tie and an older one, belly spilling over the top of his trousers. They ask me pretty much the same things as the coppers: why am I hanging around? What am I writing down? I don’t say a thing. Not a word. Then the older one throws me a curveball.
‘I knew your mum,’ he says. ‘Jem. Met her sixteen years ago. I was sorry to hear about her … well, you know.’
He’s got me now. Got my attention. Got me wanting more. I look him in the eye and he’s a survivor. His date gives him another thirty years.
‘I interviewed her in the Abbey, when she was holed up in there. She said she could see numbers, people’s death dates. Caused a bit of a fuss at the time. Then she denied it all, said she’d made it up.’
He picks at his teeth with his fingernail.
‘The thing is,’ he says, ‘it’s always bothered me, because I don’t think she did make it up. I think she saw those people at the London Eye, saw their deaths. Is that what you see, Adam? Are you like her?’
I want to say ‘yes’. I want to tell him. He’ll believe me. He might help me; help me deal with this thing.
‘’Cause if you are,’ he carries on, ‘you’ve got my sympathy. I mean, it’s a terrible thing to live with.’ I’m looking at him, trying to suss him out, trying not to show my excitement. ‘It can’t be easy. Thing is, you could be damn useful to people like me. You could cause a lot of trouble as well.’
And all of a sudden, a chill goes through me. It wasn’t a threat exactly, but I know we’re not on the same side. And I’m wondering who this guy is. MI5? MI6?
‘I’ve seen what you wrote on your palm-net, seen some copies from your notebook. There’s a lot of numbers around the start of January. What’s going to happen, Adam? What’s going on in your head?’
I say nothing. I’d been thinking of telling him about New Year, but he’s seen it anyway, it’s been flagged up with him, noted, that’s why he’s here. In any case, I haven’t got any answers. I don’t know what’s going to happen.
I look away from him and as his voice goes on and on, I try to picture him asking the same questions to Mum.
‘What was she like? My mum. What was she like when you met her?’
He smiles.
‘Stroppy. Manipulative. Rude. I liked her.’
‘I am like her,’ I say. ‘We’re the same.’
He sighs, and it’s like air escaping from a balloon, and it’s then I realise he’s as tense as I am, however laid-back and cool he’s pretending to be. He leans forward.
‘It’s a dangerous thing, what you’ve got. Dangerous. It shouldn’t be shared around, blabbed about. It’s easy to upset people, frighten them. Do you understand what I’m saying?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So you have to keep quiet about it. Only it’s okay to tell people like me. In fact, we want you to tell us. Tell us everything you know. Here …’ He reaches in his jacket pocket and slides a little card across the table: name, mobile number, email address. ‘You can call me,’ he says, ‘any time.’
But when Nan comes to collect me, they take her to one side and talk to her like I’m not in the room.
‘Exhibiting disturbing behaviour … recommend psychiatric assessment … out of the house unsupervised …’
She makes a show of listening to them. I keep my head down and my eyes on the floor until it’s all over and we’re heading back to Carlton Villas on the bus.
‘What are you up to, Adam? What are you trying to do?’
She’s the one person I could talk to, not those spooks in suits, but I can’t. There’s a brick wall between us, and I can’t get through it. It’s partly the sort of person she is, her attitudes, the things she says, and it’s partly the sort of person she isn’t. It’s not her fault she’s not Mum, but I can’t forgive her for it. Not yet.
So I stay in my room, awake twenty-four hours a day, and I search the internet for clues and I listen for post coming through the letterbox. As soon as I hear it rattle, I’m down those stairs. I need to beat Nan to it, because I don’t want her to know. I don’t want her to see the stream of notes that’s coming from Junior. I know what they’ll say, or pretty much. You get the idea from the first few: ‘6122026. Your numbers up. R u redy? ‘Say goodbye to yr nan, loser. Yur finished.’
Nan gets to the door first sometimes. She keeps funny hours too.
‘It’s for you,’ she says. She’s got the envelope in her hands and now she’s examining it.
‘Give it here,’ I say, holding my hand out.
‘Friend?’ she says. ‘Girlfriend? You can have people here, you know. If you want to.’
I don’t say nothing, just keep holding my hand out until she gets the hint.
‘Adam,’ she says as I turn away and head up the stairs. ‘Stay here a minute. We need to …’
Her voice is lost as I shut my door behind me. Talk. We need to talk. If only I could.
I put the envelope with the others and switch on Dad’s computer. It’s ancient but it connects to the web, though it takes forever, and even I know how to use Google. I normally type ‘2027’ or ‘the end of the world’ but tonight’s different. Tonight I’m going to ask about the thing that keeps me awake.
My fingers pick out the letters haltingly, until the search box says, ‘When will I die?’
And I press enter.
Eight hundred and thirty one million hits. I click on the first one. It asks me questions. How old am I? Do I smoke? What do I weigh? How much exercise do I take?
I don’t even bother going to the end. Sites like this don’t know about the unexpected. They don’t know about the bomb or the fire or the flood. They don’t know what’s going to happen to London in a few weeks’ time. They don’t know if a nutter with a knife is going to get me before all that.
And neither do I.
Chapter 20: Sarah
I feel a bit sick all day, a bit uncomfortable. Then sometime, I don’t know when, I realise that this odd feeling is coming in waves, every ten minutes or so, and it’s more than a twinge, it’s pain. Each time, my stomach goes rigid, the muscles clench like a fist.
There’s no one else in the house.
Shit! Shit! This can’t be it. I don’t know exactly how far gone I am, but I’m nowhere near nine months, am I? I’m not ready. I get the book, scrabbling through the pages. ‘Labour and Delivery.’ Oh God, why didn’t I read this properly? There’s stuff about breathing and keeping moving and then positions. The words dance in front of my eyes and another contraction starts.
Keep moving. Keep moving. I try to pace around the top floor of the house, but when a new contraction comes it paralyses me.
I hold on to the wall and try to breathe.
In between I can’t keep a lid on the panic. I’m crying and whimpering, noises coming out of me that I have no control over.
It wasn’t meant to be like this. I didn’t want doctors and hospitals, but I thought there’d be other people around. I thought Vinny would be here. I’m on the landing when my waters go. Not a gush, just a trickle down my leg. I’ve pissed myself, I think. Great. But when I try to stop the flow, nothing happens, the liquid just keeps on coming, and coming. There’s blood mixed up in it. That can’t be good, can it?
I get myself into the bathroom. The noise, my noise, is louder in there, echoing off the tiled walls. I sit on the toilet, letting the rest of the stuff drain out. I could sit there for ever, but I make myself stand up. I can’t let the baby be born in a toilet.
I hold on to the sink, bracing my body against the pain. It’s taking over, there’s no time to rest. I want to get away from it, but there’s nowhere to go. I lean sideways and vomit into the pan, two, three times, then I sink down onto the floor.
The noises are like an animal now – low, grunts and groans.
I could die here.
If the pain doesn’t stop soon, I will die and I don’t even care. I just want it to stop. Make it all go away. The pain’s in my stomach and my back, pressing down into my arse. I’m going to split in half and bleed to death.
I’ll die on the bathroom floor, like a junkie, but it’s okay. It’ll be better than this, this torture, this hell. I’m ready to go.
Vinny finds us. We’re still on the bathroom floor. I managed to reach some towels, put them over us like blankets. I was worried she’d get cold, see, my daughter. I held her close to me, skin to skin, so she’d get my warmth. She cried a little bit, but she soon stopped, and then she looked at me, with her beautiful cornflower-blue eyes, and I kissed her, kissed her little face, her little hands.
My daughter.
My little girl.
Mia.
Chapter 21: Adam
‘It’s truth or dare, simple as that.’
‘I don’t want to play games.’
‘What are you here for, then?’
‘I want you off my back. I want you to leave me and my nan alone.’
‘Your nan, she spends a lot of time at home, doesn’t she? Sitting on that chair in the kitchen. She don’t move much, does she? Sitting target, you could say.’
There’s a window at the back of the house. The estate starts the other side of the wall. Hundreds of windows all facing our direction. And there’s been a note through our door every day.
‘That’s what I want to stop. These stupid threats. She’s got nothing to do with it. It’s between you and me. So let’s do it, fight fair and square.’
My words sound braver than I feel, but that’s what you’ve got to do with people like Junior. You’ve got to talk the talk.
‘I’ll fight you, if you like, but I want some answers first. I want to know why you stare at people. I want to know what you write in your book. I want to know why you wrote that stuff about me.’
‘Truth?’
‘Truth.’
‘So what will I get in return?’
‘I’ll call the boys off. Stop watching the house.’
‘Why would I believe you? You obviously get off on it.’
‘Get off on it? Watching your nan smoke herself to death? I’d rather watch paint dry, man.’
‘So I’d have your word?’
‘Yeah, man. You’d have my word.’ The others are watching us. There’s a buzz in the air, they’re wondering how this is going to play out, ready to jump on me if I make the first move.
‘Let’s sit down,’ I say, ‘talk like men, you and me.’
We’re in an old warehouse. They’ve got a fire going in one corner, with crates pulled up around it. We sit down, a metre apart. The flames are reflected in his eyes, as he leans forward.
‘So, tell me. What are these lies that you’re writing?’
You mustn’t tell. Not anyone. Not ever. But maybe I can tell Junior. He won’t believe it anyway, and it won’t make any difference to him now, he won’t have months of agony, not like Mum, because today’s his last day.
I take a deep breath.
‘When I look at people, I see a number. It’s the date of their death. Sounds freaky, I know, but it’s true. I’ve always seen them. There’s nothing I can do about it.’
‘So you can see my number?’ He’s playing me along, trying to make me think he believes me.
‘Yeah.’
‘And you wrote it down, in your book. That’s the number I saw?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Today.’
I fall silent. It’s half-past nine, dark and cold. The rain’s battering down on the corrugated roof. He’s got three and a half hours left, tops. It don’t seem likely. All his mates are here. There’s four of them, and one of me.
He looks around him and spreads his arms out wide.
‘So, where is it, man? How’s it going to happen?’
This is creepy. It’s sick.
‘How’s it going to happen, Adam? I read it, read what you said. There’s a knife, blood. Who’s it going to be? There’s no one else here except us. There’s no one here who wants to fight me, except you. Is it you? Are you going to kill me?’
He’s mocking me to start with, but then his voice turns serious. His tongue flicks over his lips, and there’s something in his eyes apart from his number. He’s scared. Maybe he’s as scared as I am.
I don’t want it to be me. I don’t like the guy. He’s a maggot and I want him off my case, but I don’t want to kill him. I don’t want to kill anyone.
I want the clocks to stop ticking. I want time to stand still. I want the numbers to go away.
The heat from the fire is toasting my face. Someone throws a plank into the middle. Red-hot ash flies up around it, making a million sparks in the darkness.
‘I’m going,’ I say, getting to my feet. ‘Junior, I came here to fight you, but I don’t want to fight. I told you the truth, my truth, so now you can leave me alone. It was our deal. Yeah?’
He signals to the others, and they home in on me, grabbing me from behind, pinning my arms behind my back.
‘I’m a man of my word. I’ll lay off your nan. But don’t think you can just walk away. You said you came here for a fight, so I’ll fight you fair and square. Search him.’
I kick out with my feet, but it don’t keep them away. They’re on me with their hands, slapping me all over, delving into my pockets. They find my blade, of course. I didn’t hide it – I had it handy, tucked into my belt, so it would be there if I needed it.
‘You brought a blade.’
‘Self defence, man.’
‘I’m not armed.’ He holds his empty hands up.
‘I don’t believe you.’
I can’t be the only one who’s brought a knife. He turns out his pockets, opens his jacket to show me there’s nothing there. Shit, the only knife here is mine. And now I’m defenceless, wide open.
‘You came here to use it on me. You came here to kill me.’ He comes up close, jabbing his finger into my chest. ‘Well, I’m not going down. You’re not having me. Tomorrow you’ll have to find your book and cross my number out, ’cause I’m not going anywhere today. You got it wrong.’
He punches me hard in the stomach.
‘The only one in trouble tonight is you, loser.’
He gives me another punch, in the bottom of my ribs. And another. And another. I try and stand up to him, but with my arms pinned back, I’ve got nothing. He’s hitting my head now. My lip’s split and there’s blood pouring down. The smell of it sends me further into my nightmare.
‘That’s enough, Junior, you said it was going to be fair.’ Someone’s talking, the guy who searched me.
‘Shut up.’
‘He’s had it, look at him.’
‘I said shut the fuck up!’
‘
Who’s gonna make me?’
I only half-hear what they’re saying. My head has flopped forward, and my legs have gone. If the guys weren’t holding me up, I’d be on the floor now.
Junior’s not stopping. He’s got into his stride now. More punches to the stomach, and I vomit up blood. He’s killing me. He don’t need a knife – his fists’ll do the job.
‘Leave him.’
Another punch.
‘I said leave him.’
I can’t see anything any more. The space behind my eyes has gone red. I’m hanging forward, and then suddenly I’m falling. There’s a cry, a great wail of rage, and someone buts my shoulder and I’m falling to one side. Then grunting, feet scuffling, shouts, voices but not words, and the space behind my eyes turning from red to black.
The fire sighs as I fall into it. My arms and legs aren’t working. I can’t push myself away. I force my eyes open and see the pinpricks of ash showering upwards, points of light travelling up, up, up around me. Through the flames I see the flash of a blade, the look of surprise in Junior’s eyes, and his number flickering like a fluorescent light on the blink.
On, off. On, off, on. Off.
Someone’s screaming.
The flames lick my face, fill my nostrils with the smell of cooking flesh.
Someone’s screaming.
It’s me.
Chapter 22: Sarah
The first few days pass in a calm, milky haze. If she cries, I feed her. I have to steel myself to do it, because it hurts like hell when she starts sucking, but after a few seconds the pain eases and the milk works its magic – on her and on me. She gets drunk on it; warm and woozy and happy. Her whole body relaxes, her arms flop down by her sides, and the only movement is her ear wiggling as her jaw moves rhythmically – suck, suck, suck, pause … suck, suck, suck, pause. And I’m drawn down into a place where it’s only me and her, nothing else, a soft, warm, milky world.
I didn’t know it would be like this. How could I possibly know? That you can love someone so completely from the very first moment you see them.
Because I do. I love her. She was part of me and now she’s separate – her own person, and I love her. I hated my life, every bit of it. I hated being me. But that’s gone now, my past is gone, how I got here, who I was. I wanted to be a new ‘me’ and I am. I’m Mia’s Mum.