by Mark Morris
But Helen needn’t have worried. Mrs. Wilson was lapping it up. “Poor Percy.”
“Don’t let it bother you. It’s not causing him any undue distress. He’s having a grand old time.” And maybe he was. No one could prove that Percy the recently deceased poodle wasn’t cheerfully shitting up the afterlife while Jesus followed him around with the celestial version of a biodegradable poop bag.
“You’re sure? And he’ll still be waiting for me?”
“Of course. He’s a loyal dog. Loyal as they come. There is no death, Mrs. Wilson. The bond between you and your beloved transcends physical limitations.” Five minutes left, but fuck it. “I’m afraid that’s all we have time for.”
“Thank you. You’re such a comfort.” Mrs. Wilson pressed an extra tenner into his hand, which made him feel a little guilty, but not enough to refuse it. He saw her out and then made for the drinks trolley. He’d earned one. Or several.
As expected, Helen came wheeling out of her room as soon as the coast was clear, bringing with her the scent of eau de fag smoke. “Happy with that, were you?”
“Mrs. Wilson was happy. Percy, too.”
“Taking the piss out of the poor woman. You’re supposed to be easing the pain of her loss, not winding her up.”
“She didn’t have a clue.” He slugged an extra inch of Tesco own brand whisky into his glass and waggled it at her. “Dead pets tell no tales.”
“You should have more respect.”
“Yeah, well. I had to say something. You weren’t much help. Where were you, anyway? Bidding on a broomstick on eBay?”
She eyed his glass. “It’s not even lunchtime.”
“Everyone has to have a hobby.”
“It’s clouding your head, making you sloppy. We’ve got bills to pay, Brendan.”
“Ah, give it a rest, woman.”
“I’ll be resting forever soon. Then you’ll be sorry.”
“The fuck I will. I could make a fortune renting out your room on Airbnb.”
She let out a cackle, which turned into a lung-bashing coughing fit. Emphysema, the gift that kept on giving – how many years had she had it now? He was buggered if he knew. It felt like decades. And God knows how old she was. At least seventy. Half a century of smoking had leathered her skin – her small head resembled a pickled walnut. “And check the email. Had a couple of inquiries that need following up.”
“Why can’t you do it?”
She flapped a hand at him and then wheeled herself back to her room, slamming the door behind her. She rarely came out of her lair these days. Christ knows what she got up to in there. Which reminded him, he’d forgotten to extract the earpiece, the removal of which always made him feel lighter, somehow. But as usual, he’d mislaid the slender magnet that was the only way of removing the small device. No matter. He knocked back the drink and poured another. A bad idea, as booze always made him maudlin and opened the door to self-pity. And who could blame him? This was his lot: trapped in an unhealthy, co-dependent relationship with his septuagenarian enabler-stroke-flatmate while scraping a living ‘reconnecting’ delusional old women with their dead pets. The glory days of headlining psychic cruises, filling auditoriums and well-paid newspaper gigs – ‘Ask Brendan! Your Hotline to the Psychic Realm!’ – were long gone. And he had no one to blame but himself. He’d got sloppy; fell right into the trap laid for him by a sceptic who’d debunked him all over YouTube. If it weren’t for Helen, he’d have thrown in the towel years ago. She’d stood by him when the shit had hit the fan, convinced him to carry on, became his manager of sorts. They may gripe at each other all day, but she was loyal, he had to give the old cow that. It was she, after all, who’d suggested they purchase the earpiece so that she could help him in his work.
“The secret service use them,” she’d said, when the package arrived. “It connects via Bluetooth. Long as I’m close by and there’s a signal, I can hear what you say, and you can hear me. Let’s test it.”
Helen had trundled into the spare room (the room that eventually, as if by osmosis, became hers), while he stayed in the lounge that doubled as the ‘reading’ room. Feeling faintly ridiculous, he’d slotted the device, which resembled a large maggot, into his ear canal. It was remarkably comfortable; he often forgot it was even there. A hiss of static, then: “Can you hear me?”
“Christ, can I.” He could hear the hiss-puff of every mucus-heavy breath. She was inside him, a thought that genuinely made him feel like gagging. But it enabled her to feed him reminders (he was always forgetting clients’ names, or worse, the names of their deceased loved ones), as well as little nuggets of info she gleaned off punters’ social media accounts. Despite her age, she was as adept at mining Facebook as your average teenage stalker.
He’d given up asking why she enabled him. Because here was the rub: Helen still professed herself a believer in what she called ‘Spirit’, making her a paradox of sorts. Her answer was always the same: “People need comforting, Brendan. You’re good at that. Spirit will return to you one day, you’ll see. You’ve just lost your way, is all. And until it does, you’ll have me.”
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, she refused to accept he was a sham. Because if he didn’t have the gift, then the years she’d spent with him were a waste. He’d never had the heart to put her right.
Three drinks in, he did as Helen instructed and checked the bookings. More dead pets, a suicide (no thanks), and then a name caught his eye. Jesus.
“Helen! Helen!”
He was about to go and bang on her door when she came gliding in. The curtains were drawn to create atmosphere, and in the dim light she looked more like a wheelchaired wraith than ever. “What is it, man?”
“We’ve caught a big fish.” He paused for dramatic effect. “Cheryl Ann Palmer’s mother.” Everyone knew that name. Back in the mid-nineties, nineteen-year-old Cheryl had gone missing in broad daylight en route to a job interview. She was never found, and her disappearance became one of the UK’s most notorious cold cases. It was just the kind of high-profile gig he’d have jumped at in his heyday.
“Why did she reach out to you of all people?”
“She read my book.”
“Which one?”
“Spirited.” His ‘biography’. The heart-rending tale of an Irish lad who’d realised that the voice he was hearing in his head was actually his spirit guide, sent from the other realm to help him develop his psychic gift. A gift that would enable him to escape his abusive, poverty-stricken home life. All bollocks, of course, and more than a little inspired by Angela’s Ashes, which was big at the time. There was no one left in Ireland who could be bothered to refute that part of the story, and he’d glossed over the next chapter in his life: the escape to London, a career as a small-time con artist, a couple of minor convictions. He’d got into the game when a girlfriend had dragged him along to an ‘evening with the psychic stars!’ As he’d watched the line-up cold reading audience member after audience member, he knew he’d found his calling – it took a con to know a con. He had the charisma (back then, anyway), and the gift of the gab to pull it off.
“When does she want to come?” Helen asked.
“This afternoon, but that’s not enough time to prepare, is it?” Cheryl had gone missing before everyone splashed their lives all over social media. But hopefully there would be a website and/or a Facebook page where Helen could dig up some useful nuggets.
“We’ll have to wing it,” Helen said. “Now go and brush your teeth, you stink like a brewery.”
“We don’t even know if Cheryl Palmer is dead. How am I going to handle that?”
“Crossed over,” Helen said, piously. “There is no death, remember? We’ll be fine.”
Still the doubt niggled. The face-to-face consultations he did these days were with pre-vetted safe clientele. But it wasn’t just that. Cheryl may have gone missing
decades ago, but she was still someone’s kid. Dead spouses or parents – fine. Dead pets – even better. But losing a child was a whole other level of pain. Even he had some morals.
Helen tapped her ear. “You’ll be fine, Brendan. I’ll be with you.” For once, she sounded almost kind. “Your job is to give people comfort. You gave me comfort when I needed it, remember? Why else would I have stuck with you all these years?”
It was rare, these days, for her to bring that up. Sometimes he even forgot that she’d started off as a client. Her son (also named Brendan – maybe that was the attraction) had died of a drug overdose, and she’d come to him a broken woman, hollowed out by grief. He’d taken her money and dispensed vague platitudes, rightly guessing that she felt guilty for not ‘doing more’ to save her son.
“This is big,” Helen continued. “If you don’t mess it up, who knows where it might take you?”
She was right. A big-ticket client could help mend his reputation. For the first time in years he felt a flicker of excitement. A flicker of hope. This could be a route back to the big time. And, God, how he missed those days. The cash, the attention, and the rush of addressing an audience of acolytes.
* * *
Mrs. Palmer, who looked exactly as he expected – a fragile soul battered by decades of grief – arrived bang on time, but she wasn’t alone. With her was a middle-aged, bullet-headed man who she introduced as her son, Patrick.
“Great to meet you, Patrick.”
Patrick ignored Brendan’s outstretched hand. He had the flat, black eyes of a psychopath (or a shark). “You don’t look like a psychic.”
“Well, I only wear the hoop earrings on Thursdays.”
No one laughed. “Cut the crap, Brendan,” Helen hissed. “This is serious.”
He invited them to make themselves comfortable, then dredged up the last vestiges of the charm that used to be his stock in trade. He softened his voice, upped the Irish lilt factor. “And what is it you’re hoping to achieve here today?”
“What do you think we bloody hope to achieve?” Patrick sneered. “Answers. Is Cheryl dead? Is she alive? Where is she?”
“Have you been to other practitioners before?”
“Yeah. Frauds, all of them. I told Mum not to come to you either, but she wouldn’t listen.”
“Most of them said she was dead,” Mrs. Palmer said in a soft voice Brendan had to strain to hear. “They said she’d be found near water, or a wood.”
Course they did. The majority of the UK was reasonably close to either water or trees, so percentage wise, it was a safe bet. He would have said the same thing.
“Give them the spiel,” Helen whispered.
“Before I begin, you should know there are no guarantees with this. I can’t know for sure when Spirit will appear and guide me. Nor do I have any control over what I’ll be shown, or told.”
“Very fucking convenient,” Patrick muttered under his breath.
“Tell them you know how difficult this is for them,” Helen huffed.
“I know how difficult this is for you.”
“No you bloody don’t. How many of your kids have gone missing?”
“Patrick,” Mrs. Palmer whispered. “Shush now. Let the man work.”
“Have you brought along something of Cheryl’s, Mrs. Palmer?”
She dug in her cavernous bag and removed an electric blue scarf. Brendan didn’t want to touch it. Not just because it was a symbol of decades of pain and uncertainty, but also because it was grubby and leaking threads.
He gathered it up, took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “I’m getting… I’m getting… something’s coming through. Something…” For fuck’s sake, Helen. This was her cue to feed him info. The hiss-puff in his ear seemed to recede, there was a second of pure silence, and then a voice, oddly absent of Helen’s phlegmy signature, whispered, “Chips and rice.”
He parroted it out without thinking. Mrs. Palmer and Patrick froze as if they’d literally been put on pause.
“What?” Mrs. Palmer gasped. “What did you just say?”
“Chips and rice. Does that mean something to you?” Of course it did. Mrs. Palmer was tearing up, and even Patrick was looking shell-shocked. Good old Helen.
“That was her favourite meal,” Mrs. Palmer said, voice trembling. “When she was a kiddie, like. Chips and rice. Nothing else. No sauce, nothing. We used to joke about it, didn’t we, Patrick?”
“We did.” Patrick had recovered from the shock, and was back to eyeing Brendan with distrust. “Did you put that up anywhere online, Mum?”
“No. Not that I remember.”
Brendan touched his ear. Now would be the perfect moment for Helen to follow up with another whammy. But there was no wet wheeze. Had the signal died? That happened sometimes. He was on his own. “I’m getting… I’m getting that she’s at peace. A happy spirit.” Lame, but it would have to do.
“But where is she?” Mrs. Palmer asked.
He needed to hedge his bets. Not do a Sylvia Browne, who was notorious for telling grieving parents their missing kids were dead only for them to show up alive – and vice versa. “That I can’t say for sure. This feeling I get about her… it comes via my guide. Via Spirit. I get a sense of the person, but there is no death. In a metaphysical sense, I mean.”
Mrs. Palmer seemed to accept this unfiltered bullshit. “Tell her that her mum’s here. Tell her that her Nan’s still holding on.”
“She can hear you.”
“How can she hear us if she isn’t here and she isn’t dead?” Patrick sniped.
Oh fuck off. He needed to wrap it up before he said something he couldn’t cover. Fortunately Mrs. Palmer had had enough. “I think… I think I want to go home now.”
Mrs. Palmer whispered a heartfelt ‘thank you’ as he walked them to the door. Patrick didn’t say a word.
“Helen?” he called. “Helen! They’ve gone.”
She emerged and joined him in the lounge. “They were only here a few minutes. What did you say to them, Brendan?”
“What did I say? What did you say, more like. Chips and rice? Where did you dredge that up from?”
“What are you talking about? I lost contact. The signal died. Did you forget to top up the Wi-Fi again?”
“Don’t give me that. Chips and rice. I heard it in the earpiece, clear as day. And it made a real impression on them. What was it, one of your little nuggets you dug up from an old MySpace page or something?”
“Brendan… I’m not messing with you. I genuinely didn’t say that.”
Helen could be sneaky; she’d managed to con her way into living in his flat, after all (‘best I’m close if we get any walk-ins, Brendan’). But. But. She looked genuinely flummoxed. And why would she deny she’d said the deadly phrase? She’d love to take the credit for that. Maybe the old bag was going senile, forgot she said it. “So who was it then?”
“Interference? A radio signal?”
“A radio signal? It’s not the nineteen-forties. And anyway, say it was something like that, what are the chances it would say that exact, very pertinent phrase?”
Helen wheeled closer. “It wasn’t me, Brendan. But I know what it is.”
“Just… don’t.”
“It’s Spirit, Brendan. The spirit that came to you when you were a boy. It’s back.”
He bit his tongue. Now wasn’t the time.
* * *
Mrs. Palmer returned the next day, alone, thank God. Hungover, hoarse from arguing with Helen, he could barely dredge up the energy for the pleasantries.
“Mrs. Palmer, before I start, I want you to know that sometimes, we get things coming through that… that may be confusing.”
“What you said last time wasn’t confusing. That was her way of saying to me that she was all right, wherever she is. And whatever Patrick says.” She
gave him a watery smile. “He doesn’t know I’m here.”
“I don’t want you to get your hopes up. What I do… it’s...” It’s bollocks.
“Tell her again that Cheryl’s at peace,” Helen whispered.
“I’ll do my best for you, but—” A thump came from within the apartment. Helen dropping something again, no doubt. She could be a clumsy old cow. “It’ll be the cat,” he said, before Mrs. Palmer could question him. To be fair, she barely seemed to register it. “You have the scarf?”
She laid it on the table, and he closed his eyes and buried his fingers in the scratchy wool.
Helen was AWOL again; probably picking up whatever old lady ornament she’d dropped. Get a move on, woman. “I’m getting…” Irritation and anxiety building, he waited, and waited. Nothing but empty air, then, clear as a bell: “Chim chim cheroot.” He jumped. Once again, the voice was absent of Helen’s Cork accent. Another nonsensical phrase, a play on a line from that old musical, what was it called? Mary Poppins, that was it.
“Is she there, Brendan?” Mrs. Palmer was waiting.
He should ignore it. Not play Helen’s game. But fuck it. He had to say something.
Mrs. Palmer’s hands jumped to her mouth the second he parroted it out. “Patrick… when he was little, he always got the words to that song wrong. Cheroot instead of cheree. It used to make Cheryl laugh. We never put him right.”
Brendan had to give it to Helen. The details she was digging up were far more on the nose than the vague crap she usually came up with. And once again, she was doing her disappearing act, leaving him to wrap things up.
When Mrs. Palmer was safely on her way, he gave the drink a swerve and headed straight for Helen’s room. “Helen? Helen.”
A low moan came from within. The door was locked – always was in case a punter accidentally wandered in there. “Helen?” Another moan. Christ. Had the old bag had a stroke in there? Fingers trembling, he fumbled in the drawer for the spare key, and pushed his way in. Helen was lying on the carpet, trying to haul herself up into her chair.
“What happened?”