‘I’m sorry, darling.’ Sandy blinked, then prodded her haystack of black hair with her fingers, and adjusted a couple of the knitting needles.
‘Like some coffee?’ said Alex, relieved, and grateful now for the company, even, she thought, Sandy’s.
‘I’d love some. What are you doing tonight?’
‘Nothing.’
‘What – you’re going to be here on your own?’
Alex nodded. ‘I want to be alone.’
‘You can’t, darling, not tonight.’
‘I have been every other night; I don’t mind it.’
They walked through to the kitchen. Alex suddenly found herself acutely aware of the objects that were in the house, as if she had entered a museum. She saw the stern portrait of David’s great-grandfather in his cavalry uniform. ‘Fabian has his eyes,’ David used to boast proudly, and she had always demurred, there was no point in disillusioning him, no point in spoiling the pretence. Only she knew that Fabian had inherited nothing of David’s, not one single gene; it was her secret, and she had kept it for twenty-two years.
‘Dreadful,’ said Sandy. ‘The whole thing. There were two other boys also who …?’
Alex nodded. ‘Brothers. Charles and Henry Heathfield.’
‘Shocking. So shocking. What a terrible thing. A lorry on the wrong side of the motorway, wasn’t it?’
‘A car,’ said Alex.
Sandy frowned. ‘I was certain it said lorry in the paper.’
‘It did. They got it wrong.’
‘A drunk Frenchman?’
Alex nodded.
‘How can anyone drive down the wrong side of an Autoroute? However drunk they are?’
The kettle clicked.
‘Do you know anything about him, darling?’
‘No, not really,’ said Alex. ‘Apparently he’d had a row with his wife and stormed out. Been drinking all night; his business was going bust. Soft toys, or something.’ She shrugged. ‘David knows more about it.’
‘Dreadful.’
Alex carried the cups through into the drawing room, and they sat down. Her head was beginning to ache, and she closed her eyes.
‘I think you should see a medium, darling,’ said Sandy, staring down at the swirling coffee, trying to dissolve the last of the grains.
‘A medium?’
‘Yes.’
‘No, Sandy, that’s not for me; I’m afraid I don’t believe in that sort of stuff.’
‘I think you do.’
‘You think I do?’ she said, incredulous.
‘You’re a Christian; so you believe in life everlasting.’
‘I’m not sure that I do.’ Alex stared at the nervy mess of a woman sitting opposite, who was now trying to push a cigarette into the end of a long thin holder and was having a harder time than if she were trying to thread a needle. The girl she had known since schooldays, mad, cranky, but kind; a girl who had been through three divorces, who had been a drug addict, an alcoholic, a Christian Scientist, a vegan, who had meditated under the Maharishi Yogi and tried virtually every other religion under the sun, who had made just about every kind of a mess of her life it was possible to make; this girl was trying to give her some advice.
‘David told me that Fabian came to see him the morning he died, and he came to see you too.’
‘We both had the same dream.’
‘Dream?’ She shook her head. ‘That wasn’t a dream, darling, he came to see you; very common occurrence.’
‘What do you mean?’
Sandy stared at her, her thin tortured face that had once been so pretty, but was now looking so jaded and her huge blue eyes, like forgotten ponds, she thought. ‘We all have spirit guides, darling, keeping a watch on us, but they’re not around all the time. If someone dies suddenly, when the guides aren’t expecting it, they can lose contact and the person’s spirit can wander around, lost. That may have happened to Fabian; that’s why you both saw him; he was trying to get his bearings.’
Alex sipped her coffee and stared at her friend with a mixture of contempt and pity.
‘You think I’m an old crank, darling, don’t you, someone who’s made a mess of their life? Well, maybe I have in your terms, but I’ve had lots of other lives, some extremely happy ones, and I’ve been sent back this time in order to learn to cope better with rough times. I’m an old spirit, darling, I’m toughened to it all; you’re not, I can tell, you’re a young spirit, and you must accept my help, that’s one of the things I’m here for, to help others.’
Alex shook her head. She felt tired, suddenly, hemmed in, as if the room was full of people; she wanted to get away, go out of the front door, walk about outside. ‘Maybe the dream was telepathy,’ she said. ‘That’s possible, isn’t it?’
‘It’s possible, darling – plenty of that in the spirit world, but why should it be? We don’t know much more about telepathy than we do about spirits. I think he came to you because he needed help.’
‘What sort of help?’
‘He may be all right now, darling; he may have been reunited with his guides, they may have taken him off. But if they haven’t, then he could just be wandering around, lost.’
‘How long would he do that?’
‘Time has a different perspective on the other side, darling; it could be forever. You owe it to him to make sure he is all right, and try to help him if he isn’t.’
‘How?’
‘By seeing a medium; a medium will know. If you do that, darling, then at least you will know you have done everything you can. I can put you in touch with an excellent one.’ She paused and dragged hard on her cigarette holder; she blew the smoke out then flapped it away with her hand. ‘You don’t believe what I’m saying, do you, darling?’
‘No,’ said Alex, shaking her head. ‘No, I’m sorry, I don’t.’
CHAPTER SIX
Alex woke suddenly, afraid. There was a light pulsating in the room; she felt her hair prickling, did not dare open her eyes, but instead, squeezed them even tighter shut, so she could not open them accidentally; she waited. Something was in the room, she could feel it.
She saw the stark wood coffin, the red rose; her face suddenly began to feel hot; she smelt petrol fumes, then heat; her face was burning. Her breathing began to get out of control, she was panting, her knees were crashing together under the bedclothes. Her eyes sprang wide open. She sensed a green pulsating light. The light turned from a blur into sharp focus. Four noughts. On, off, on, off. The burning subsided and she felt only cold, and the fear began to subside too.
She watched the dial on the alarm clock, the four noughts blinking on, off. Midnight, she thought. She looked around the room, saw the shapes, the familiar shapes. She’d been afraid of the dark when she was a child, always slept with the light on; but that fear had gone a long time ago, long before she’d married. The noughts blinked.
She snapped on the bedside light; the room seemed normal, everything seemed normal, sounded normal. She heard a lorry in the distance, sloshing down the King’s Road; it sounded as though it had been raining. She picked up her watch. Five o’clock, but the four noughts continued to blink. Then she remembered that had happened once before to her previous clock in a power cut; it had automatically reset itself to zero. She fumbled with it, trying to remember how to reset it, staring with tired, strained eyes at the blinking lights, and shivering in the cold. It was almost unbearably cold.
She got out of bed and walked to the window, parted the heavy curtains and put a hand outside. The air there was warm and mild; she held her hand out, puzzled. She saw steam from her breath and let out a small shriek of surprise, felt the hair prickling again down her neck. She stared out through the curtains once more, at the parked cars, at the glow of the street lamp; it was calm out there, normal. She pulled the curtains apart slightly and let the orange light into the room. A floorboard creaked under her foot and she jumped. Then she climbed back into bed, pulled the clothes up and closed her eyes, but still she fel
t cold, bitterly cold, and the cold made her feel afraid. She picked up the telephone, listened to the hum as it pierced the silence, then she punched out the numbers that she knew by heart, and waited.
It rang, once, twice, please be there, three times, four times. ‘Oh please be there,’ she whispered.
‘Yurlo?’ She listened to the grunt, filled with relief and felt warm again.
‘David?’ She was whispering still.
There was another bewildered grunt.
‘I’m sorry to wake you, David.’
‘Alex?’
‘Are you awake?’
‘Yrr.’
‘You didn’t call me.’
‘Didn’t call you?’ He still sounded half asleep.
‘You were going to call me when you got home. I was worried.’
‘Wassertime?’
‘Half five.’
There was a pause, and she heard the rustling of sheets.
‘I didn’t think you really wanted me to.’
She felt his voice, warm, smiling, comforting; it was like talking to a teddy bear. ‘I was worried about you,’ she said.
‘I’m O.K. How are you feeling?’
‘Not great. How about you?’
‘I feel bloody awful. It’s so lousy. I keep thinking about that other driver, that bastard.’
‘Don’t.’
‘If he’d survived, I would have killed him.’
‘Don’t.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I feel so bad about Otto and those Heathfield boys.’
‘At least Otto’s alive,’ he said.
‘It must be pretty difficult for him, you know, to accept that he’s survived.’
‘I should never have bought Fabian that car.’
‘That’s not your fault, darling; you were always so kind to him.’
‘I should have got him something slower.’
‘I don’t think it would have made any difference. Listen, go back to sleep, I’m sorry I woke you.’
‘It’s O.K.; I’m wide awake now.’
‘Go back to sleep. I’ll call you later.’
‘I love you,’ he said.
She stared at the receiver and smiled sadly, then hung up, slowly, gently, and lay back on the pillows. She loved him too, she knew, missed his big warm body, missed his tenderness; why the hell had they parted? She felt tired, suddenly, tired and warm, and cheered up, and fell into a heavy sleep, and dreamed dreams of Fabian, light and airy, then suddenly menacing and confused; he held her hand and laughed and then taunted her like a child, except he wasn’t a child any more, but a grown man, older suddenly, so old she could see wrinkles in his face. She awoke shivering, afraid to open her eyes in the dark room. Then she slept again and did not dream.
When the alarm went at seven, she ignored it, and when she looked at the clock again, it was ten to eight. Back to normality today, she knew; it was over. There was the scattering of the ashes, but she needed time to think about that, to think where Fabian would have liked them. The last ten days had been a haze, a blur, waiting for the French bureaucracy, trying to get the body released, brought back to England. David had been over to France, taken care of all the arrangements, and had made no demands on her. He had been marvellous. Now she had to get on with her life again, try to concentrate on her work. At least she had that; staff, partners, clients. She couldn’t fall apart on them, had to prove to them that she could do it, had to prove it to David; most of all had to prove it to herself.
She toyed around with her wardrobe, trying to decide what to wear. Fabian had always been particular about what she wore, far more so than David. The right colours, the right shape, the right names – God, he had been an unbearable clothes snob at times. She smiled, half-cheered, a damp, tearful smile, and rummaged through a drawer full of silk scarves, all of them Cornelia James, and most of them bought by Fabian. Which ones? She tried to remember, pulling various scarves out and letting them gently drop back in, like cascading waterfalls, she thought. She draped a turquoise and grey one carefully around her neck, and tied it so the Cornelia James signature was clearly showing. Are you pleased, darling, she thought? Do I look O.K.?
She gulped down half the cup of coffee, left the rest which was too hot, grabbed her coat and hurried to the front door. The bell rang just as she reached it, and she opened it almost before the bell had stopped ringing. The woman looked up at her in surprise and stepped back, a buxom, peroxided blonde, neatly but dramatically dressed in black and white, who looked like she had come from a casting agency for film extras and spoke through tiny rosebud lips that were too small for the expanse of her face. ‘Mrs Hightower?’ She spoke in a definite, precise voice as if she had been having elocution lessons to shed her East London accent.
‘Yes?’ Alex hesitated, on the defensive, wondering what she was trying to sell. She looked too dolled up to be a Jehovah’s Witness, and anyway they normally came in pairs.
‘I’m Iris Tremayne. Sandy suggested I pop round – she said you went out early and this was the best time to catch you.’
The woman stared straight into Alex’s eyes, and she found it unsettling, found it hard to disconnect from her gaze. She wondered for a moment whether she was selling Tupperware, or Avon cosmetics; yes, cosmetics looked likely, except that she didn’t have a sample case. ‘Actually, I’m rather late for the office.’ Alex spoke pleasantly, trying to be polite.
‘No, of course, if this isn’t convenient I fully understand, but I thought I’d better come round right away. In case you wanted news about your son.’
Alex realized suddenly who she was. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Thank you, but I don’t want any news about my son.’
‘I’m very sorry to hear about what happened.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Sandy’s very worried about him.’
‘Is she?’ said Alex, conscious that her tone was becoming belligerent.
‘If you’d like to have a sitting, I’d be very pleased. There’d be no charge; Sandy is a good friend.’
‘Mrs Tremayne,’ said Alex, coldly, ‘my son is dead. Nothing you or anyone else can do can change that; I’m afraid I’m just not a believer in –’ she paused ‘– in whatever you call it – the spirit world.’
‘I think he wants to talk to you.’
There was a sincerity in the woman’s expression, a sincerity ingrained deep beneath the make-up, beneath the dramatic hair, a sincerity and a naïvety, Alex thought. You poor deluded fool, she wanted to say, but did not. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘But I have to go now.’
Alex nodded to her receptionist, avoided catching her eye, and went upstairs to her office.
Julie looked up from her typewriter as she walked past her office, and smiled gently. ‘Good morning. I’ll let you catch up with your post,’ she said. ‘Do you want me to cancel any of your appointments this week?’
‘No, Julie, we cancelled enough last week. The show goes on.’ Alex closed her door and stared at the bewildering stack of mail on her desk. She looked at the wooden calendar which Julie adjusted every day. April 21st. The last ten days had disappeared as if she had been in a hole in time.
She slit open a Jiffy bag and pulled out a neatly typed and bound manuscript. ‘Lives Foreseen – My Powers and Others’.’ She flipped open the cover and turned to the first chapter; the first page always determined whether she would read it herself, or pass it to Julie.
‘I always used to see a hand in the dark, beckoning. When I saw that hand, I knew someone would die. The first time was when I was seven, and the next day, my sister was run over by a tractor. That was the first time I became aware of my powers of clairvoyance.’
She turned back to the cover, then buzzed Julie. ‘Does an author called Stanley Hill ring a bell?’
‘No.’
‘I think we may have had something from him before.’
‘Do you want me to look it up for you?’
‘No, I’ll do it.’ Alex switched on her VDU
screen and saw three words, clearly, in the centre, in bright green letters: HELP ME MOTHER.
She felt as if cold water was being flushed through her tubes. The words faded and the screen became blank. The cold turned to hot, her forehead was burning and she felt sweat running down her face. She switched the unit off, then on again, but this time there was nothing but the words MENU and the list of functions.
Fearfully, she tapped a couple of keys, the menu disappeared and was replaced by the words CLIENT FILE. She moved her shaking hands across the keyboard, tried to tap the search key, but pressed the wrong key, and the machine bleeped angrily at her.
‘Are you O.K., Alex?’
She watched Julie put down the cup of coffee almost as if in slow motion, and she was conscious of the sound of her own words when she spoke.
‘Yes, I’m fine.’
‘You look as white as a sheet.’
‘I’m very tired. I haven’t been sleeping too well.’
‘Maybe you should take some pills – you know, just until you get over the worst –’
Alex smiled. ‘I am over the worst.’
‘I think you’ve been very brave.’
Alex felt her eyes watering, and squeezed them tightly shut; but the emotion welled up inside her until she could not contain it, and she felt the tears flooding out through her eyelids. She felt a hand squeeze hers and squeezed back hard, opened her eyes and saw Julie’s pretty face staring kindly; she noticed that Julie had changed her hairstyle; it had been cropped short and she realized she had not commented. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I like your hair.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You needn’t worry, I’m not going to crack up on you all.’
‘We know that.’ Julie handed Alex a handkerchief.
‘It’s O.K., I’ve got one.’ She blew her nose. ‘When people call, tell them not to ask me how I am, all right?’
Julie nodded.
‘Tell them also not to mention Fabian; it would be much easier for me.’
‘Yes, of course.’
Alex looked fearfully at the word-processor. She saw the imprint of the words in her mind. Clear. Unmistakable. ‘I can’t remember how this thing works – I want to find the name of an author – this chap.’