by Rachel Ward
“Yes, just like Daddy.”
That was the other thing I’ve been doing, you see. I’ve brought Adam up, been a mum and a dad to him. I know I’m not unique doing this. There’s thousands, millions of single parents, but when it’s you, and your own childhood wasn’t exactly rosy, it feels like a big deal to look at your five-year-old son and know that he’s healthy and happy. If you’d asked me five years ago if I thought I could be someone’s mum, and be a good one at that, I’d have laughed in your face. But do you know what? It’s something that I can really do. I’m a mum. I’m Adam’s mum, and it’s something I’m proud of.
I suppose everyone thinks that their child is special. But I know that Adam really is. He’s a lot like his dad. Val says he’s the spitting image of him when he was little, and I can believe it. He’s tall, for a start, all arms and legs, even when he was a baby. And he’s always busy. You can’t keep your eyes off him for a minute — he’s into everything. That’s why I take him out so much. He’d drive me mad, cooped up inside all day. He’s the kind of boy that needs to burn off some energy on the swings or running ’round the park. That’s one of the reasons we moved out here to Weston after Karen died. Spider was right: There’s so much space here. We can spend an afternoon on the beach, and by the end of it we’ve walked for miles and miles, and Adam’s tired and ready for bed like a good boy.
He finds it difficult to sit still, not got much concentration. The teachers at school have said that, too. He’d rather be climbing something or kicking a ball than sitting looking at a book. He’s a bit behind with all that stuff, not that that bothers me — I know he’ll get there in the end. He’s not stupid.
They’ve been learning the alphabet and counting, one to ten, over and over at school. I don’t think anyone thought he was taking it all in. But just last week, we had a bit of a breakthrough. He came out of school and said his teacher wanted to see me. I thought, Oh, no, what’s he done now? but it wasn’t bad, at least not the way I was expecting: getting in a fight or being cheeky or whatever.
We went into the classroom and his teacher showed me a drawing he’d done. Beautiful, it was, in bright crayons — the colors of summer. There were two people holding hands, a big one and a little one. They were on a strip of yellow sand, with the sun in the sky above them, and big smiles on their faces.
“We’ve talked about this, haven’t we, Adam, this lovely picture?” she said.
He nodded solemnly.
“It’s you and Mummy, isn’t it?” she asked him.
“Yes,” he said. “Me and Mummy at the beach.”
“I think he’s got his numbers and letters a bit confused,” she said, “but I’m very pleased with his pencil control.” For there, above the head of the taller figure, arching over like a rainbow, was some writing. “I think you meant to write Mummy, didn’t you, Adam?”
He shook his head and frowned.
“No, Miss,” he said. “I told you. It’s not her name. It’s her number. It’s Mummy’s special number.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank all friends, family, and colleagues who have taken a kindly interest in my writing: Jonathan for his encouragement and comments on the first draft; Dylan and Sparky for getting me up in the morning to write; Charles for showing me ’round Bath Abbey; all the lovely literary people at the Frome Festival; and, of course, Barry, Imogen, and all staff at the Chicken House.
About the Author
RACHEL WARD first won a writer’s award at a regional arts festival, and her prizewinning short story turned into the opening chapter of Numbers, which is her debut novel. She lives in Bath, England, with her husband and their two sons. Visit her at www.rachelwardbooks.com.
Special Sneak Preview of
Coming Soon!
When he was just a little boy, Adam learned about the numbers. The first ones he saw were Jem’s. That was how he knew she was going to die.
Now Adam is fifteen. Orphaned, he’s living with his great–grandmother, Val, in London. The city is an alien, anarchic place. Most disturbing of all, Adam can’t help but clock how many people’s numbers are in January 2027; how many are on New Year’s Day.
What CHA0S awaits the world? Can Adam and his damaged friend Sarah stop a catastrophe? Or are they, too, counted among the “twenty-sevens”?
ADAM
“Get on alright?”
Nan’s on her stool in the kitchen when I get home, where I expect her to be. Wherever she is — here, Weston — she finds somewhere to perch, somewhere that’s hers, and sticks to it, drinking tea and chain-smoking her way through the day.
I shrug. “S’pose.”
Even though she never seems to move, she don’t miss a bloody thing, Nan, but I’m not ready to tell her everything about school. Not yet. She don’t need to know I’ve made an enemy and met a girl.
Junior don’t bother me, not his threats, anyway. I’ve had knuckleheads like him saying things like that to me my whole life. If he wants me to give him another pasting I will. I’m not scared of him. His number, though, that’s something else. I wrote it down at break time, but I still can’t get it out of my head. It’s a nasty death, and soon. And the feelings are so strong; they make me think things I don’t want to. Like maybe I’m there when it happens. Maybe I’m the one holding the knife.…
Even now, standing in the kitchen, leaning up against the bench, the sweat’s breaking out on my skin, and I think I’m going to pass out. What if my number’s the same as his? What if it wasn’t his death I was feeling, it was mine? Not knowing my own number bothers me, more than anything. I’ve tried to see it. Done all the obvious things — looking in mirrors, reflections in windows, even in water. But nothing works. It has to be eye to eye and the only person in the world I can’t look at…is me.
S’pose that’s what really worries me about the twenty-sevens. There are so many of them, the chances are pretty high I’m one of them, too. There are hundreds at school. There are thirteen in my tutor group.
“Wake up, Adam, I asked you a question.”
Nan’s voice breaks through my thoughts and my mouth goes into action before my brain has time to stop it.
“Thirteen.”
Shit! Have I really said it out loud?
“Thirteen what, love?” Nan asks.
“Nothing. I was just thinking about something…from math.”
She narrows her eyes, and blows a plume of smoke up toward the ceiling. I’ve got to distract her, so I ferret in my bag and whip out the palm-net they gave me when I finally registered. I’ve been trying to use it in lessons, but I’ve never had my own computer before, Mum wouldn’t let them in the house, so I’m way slower than everyone else. I could see people watching me, snickering — a hick from the sticks.
Nan glances at it, but she don’t seem interested. She’s locked in on me and it’ll take more than somefreebie IT to knock her off target.
“You like math, do you?” she says. “Like numbers?”
Do I like numbers? Like them? She’s watching me now, and all of a sudden, I’m not sure what she’s asking me. I’ve never told anyone about the numbers except Mum, and one teacher at school when I was little, before I knew what they were. Mum always said they were our secret, something special between me and her. And I kept it like that. I didn’t tell. When she died, I thought that left just me knowing. I was on my own. Now I’m not so sure.
“I don’t think I like numbers,” I say carefully. “I think they’re important.”
“Yeah,” Nan says. “Yeah, they are important.”
We look at each other for a minute and neither of us speaks. The radio’s on — some news report about the government coming clean over the Kyoto targets being missed by miles — and next-door’s dog is yapping away as usual, but the silence between us is electric.
“I know you’re special, Adam,” she says finally, and a shiver runs down my spine. “I seen it in you, the day you were born.”
“What?”
<
br /> “I saw, I see, a beautiful boy. They’re there in you, your mum and your dad. Oh God, there’s so much of my Terry in you. Sometimes, I swear I think he’s here again…it’s like he never…” She trails off. There’s an extra shine to her eyes, and the rims are pink.
“What else, Nan?” I know there’s something. She swallows hard, and looks deep into my eyes.
“Your aura, I’ve never seen nothing like it. Red and gold. My God, you’re special. You’re a leader. A survivor. There’s courage, right through you. You’re strong, you have spiritual strength. You’ve been put here for a reason, I swear it.”
I take a risk. I have to know.
“What about my number?”
She frowns.
“I don’t see numbers, son. I’m not like you and your mum.”
So she does know.
“How do you know about them?”
“Your mum told me. I knew about her years ago, and then when she found out about you, she rang me up.”
Suddenly, I’ve got to tell her, tell her the thing I’ve been bottling up all summer.
“Nan — half the people in London are going to die next year. I’m not making it up. I’ve seen their numbers.”
She nods.
“I know.”
“You know?”
“Yeah, Jem told me about 2027. Warned me.”
My hands go up to the sides of my head. Nan knew! Mum knew! I’m shaking, but I’m not scared, I’m angry. How dare they keep this from me? Why leave me on my own with it?
“Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t she?”
The anger’s fizzing through me now, in my arms and legs. I kick at the board under the kitchen cupboards.
“Don’t do that!”
I want to smash something. I kick out again, and this time the board thunks down onto the floor.
“Adam! Stop it!”
Nan’s on her feet now, coming toward me. She makes a grab for my arms. I try to shrug her off, but she’s strong, much stronger than you’d think to look at her. We stand wrestling with each other for a few seconds. Then, quick as a flash, she lets go of one of my arms and slaps me across the face.
“Not here!” she shouts. “Not in my house! I won’t have it!”
I come back to myself then, I see things like they’re happening to someone else, a teenage boy grappling with an old woman in her kitchen, and I feel the shame spreading through me like a blush.
“I’m sorry, Nan,” I say. I rub my cheek where she got me. I don’t know where to look, what to do with myself.
“Should think so,” she says, and she turns to put the kettle on. “If you’ve calmed down, if you’ll listen, then we can talk about it.”
“OK,” I say.
“In fact, you make the tea. I need a smoke.”
She sits down and reaches for her packet, and her hand is shaking, just a little, as she draws a cigarette out and lights it.
When the tea’s ready, I sit down opposite her.
“Tell me, Nan,” I say. “Tell me everything you know. About me and Mum and Dad. I’ve got a right”
She’s studying the tabletop, or pretending to. She brushes a little bit of ash onto the floor, and then she looks up at me, blows a long trail of smoke out of the corner of her mouth, and says, “Yeah, you do have a right, and I s’pose now’s the time.”
And she tells me.
SARAH
He’s trying the door.
I hold my breath.
In the darkness, I can hear the handle turn, the scraping of metal on wood as the door pushes against the chair I left tipped up against it. There’s a scuffling sound as He moves the door backward and forward, gently at first, then with more force. I can picture His face — confusion turning to anger — and I hunch up farther on the bed, sitting upright, knees up to my chin, and I cross both sets of fingers.
The room falls quiet for a few seconds, and then He’s there again. He can t believe it. He needs to check.
Then footsteps, and silence.
It worked! It fucking worked!
I hug my knees in closer and rock from side to side. I want to shout out, scream, dance, but I can’t break the silence. I can t wake the others: Marty and Luke in the room next door, my mum farther down the landing.
I should sleep now. It’s safe to sleep. I uncurl my legs and slide them down under the duvet. I’m tired, but not sleepy, and I lie there for ages, triumphant and scared at the same time. I’ve won a battle, but the war’s not over yet. Rain starts battering against the window.
I ache for sleep, eight hours of dreamless blankness, but when I do drift off, there’s no rest. I’m back in the nightmare that waits for me every night.
The flames are orange.
I’m being burned alive. I’m trapped, penned in by rubble.
The flames are yellow.
The baby’s screaming. We’ll die here, me and her. The boy with the scarred face is here, too. He’s fire and flame himself, scarred, burned, a dark shape in the thundering, crackling, spitting heat.
The flames are white.
And he grabs the baby, my baby, and he walks away and is consumed.
The room’s still dark when I force myself awake. The back of my T-shirt and my sheets are drenched. There’s a date in my head, neon-bright, dazzling my eyes from the inside. The first of January 2027. I’ve never dreamt that before. It’s new. He’s brought it to me. The boy.
The boy at school is the boy in my nightmare. It’s him. I know it is. He’s found his way out of my head and into my life. How? How has he done that? It’s bullshit. It’s not real. Stuff like that doesn’t happen.
I reach out next to me and switch on the light. I squint until my eyes adjust and then I see the chair wedged up against the door handle.
Of course stuff happens, I think dully. Stuff happens all the time.
ADAM
They were famous! My mum and dad. I never knew they were famous. For a couple of weeks in 2010, everyone in the country knew about them, was looking for them. “Most Wanted.” For something they didn’t do — just wrong place, wrong time. And all because Mum could see the numbers, like me.
Nan’s kept some of the clippings from the papers — gives me chills looking at them. My mum and dad, so young, as young as I am now, staring out from the front page. They were only kids when they had me. Well, Dad never even knew about me. He died before Mum knew she was pregnant.
If only I’d known about all this. I could’ve asked Mum, we could’ve talked about it…. All she ever said to me about the numbers was that they were secret. I could never tell anyone their number. And the only person I ever did tell was her. I wrote her number down on a picture of her when I was five, before I knew what it meant.
What the hell did that do to her? What must her last few years have been like, knowing? I’ve got part of the answer now. Next to my notebook, there’s an envelope folded in half. When she’s finished telling me Mum and Dad’s story, Nan gives it me.
“She wanted you to have this. When the time was right. I reckon that’s now.”
My name’s written on the front in Mum’s writing — I’d know it anywhere. I swear my heart stops for a second when I see it. I can’t believe it’s real. Something from Mum. Something for me.
And Nan’s been holding on to it. What right did she have…? It’s not hers, it’s mine. The anger sparks up again.
“How long have you had this?” I say.
“She gave it to me a few weeks before she…went.”
“Why didn’t you give it to me? It’s mine. It’s got my name on it.”
“I told you,” she says slowly, like she’s explaining something to an idiot, “she asked me to keep it for you. For when you was ready.”
“And you’d know, would you? You’d know what was best?” She looks me straight in the eye. She can feel the tension as much as I can and she’s not backing down.
“Yeah, at least your mum thought so. She trusted me.”
I sn
ort.
“I’m fifteen. I don’t need you making decisions for me. You don’t know nothing about me.”
“I know more than you think, son. Now, why don’t you calm down for a minute and open that envelope?”
The envelope. I’ve almost forgotten that’s what we’re arguing about.
“I’m gonna read it on my own,” I say, and I hold it up to my chest. Mine, not hers. She’s disappointed, I can see that — she wants to know what’s in it, nosy old cow. Then she sniffs loudly and reaches for another cigarette.