“Don’t, okay? Just don’t. No wonder you wouldn’t tell me the bloke’s name. Christ, I must be stupid.” She walks down the road towards the town centre, head down, arms folded. I run after her. When I try to grab her arm, she shakes me off so violently I think for a moment she might hit me.
“Please, Jackie, just stop a minute and listen to me.”
“Why would I want to do that?” Her voice pierces the clean quiet air. A slender elegant woman with a sleek bob of grey hair glances at us. Jackie gives her a challenging, wide-eyed stare. “Yeah? Can I help you, love? Want to come a bit closer so you can hear better? Nosey cow.”
“Let me explain.” I want to tell Jackie to keep her voice down but I know it won’t do any good. She doesn’t mind making a scene. “I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t have lied to you, that was a really shitty way to behave.”
“D’you know, I think that’s the first time I’ve heard you swear. You should do it more often.”
“But I really need you to come with me. I can’t do this without you. And this was the only way I could think of to get you to come with me. I have to see him, Jackie. I absolutely have to. I just feel like he might be able to help.”
“Oh, it’s all about what you want, isn’t it?” To my astonishment, there are tears in Jackie’s eyes. “I’m just some add-on accessory to you, aren’t I? Well, you’re my fucking hero, all right? Heroine. Whatever. You and your blog, all that advice, all those coping strategies. You’ve been the only thing that’s got me through this long. If it wasn’t for you, I’d have been a raving headcase by now and Georgie’d be in fucking care. But I just kept thinking, It’s all right, Susannah can do it and so can you. She’s stayed strong and she’s got even less reason than you to keep going.” She takes a deep breath. “And now you want me to come with you and watch you make a bloody show of yourself with some robbing lying bastard who’s just going to make up a pack of lies so you’ll spunk over all your money? Not a chance. I can’t watch that. You go and see him if you want, but don’t come crying to me when it all goes pear-shaped. I’m walking into town and getting the bus back. See you later.”
“No, you can’t! Please. I can’t do it by myself. You’re right, it might all be rubbish. And that’s why I need you, you see? Because you’ll be able to tell if it’s all nonsense.” She shakes her head. “I’ll pay, of course I’ll pay, it won’t cost you anything.”
“I don’t give a toss about the money, you stupid cow. You can’t get everything you want just by throwing money around. Oh my God, please don’t cry, Suze, I’m not trying to make you cry, I’m trying to look after you. You do know that, right? Come on, please don’t, I’m sorry. You have got to be the softest person I know.” From the shiny carapace of her handbag, she conjures a packet of tissues. “Here. Mop yourself up. For God’s sake, come here and let me do it, you’re wiping mascara everywhere.”
As if I’m a child, I stand still and let her dab at me. For months and years, I’ve found my comfort in playing the part of the strong determined woman who has walked every inch of the hard road before her with bare, bleeding feet. Now Jackie is seeing the woman I really am. A hopeless contradictory mess, with nothing to offer anyone around her.
“Bet you haven’t brought anything with you to touch up with, have you?” Jackie shakes her head. “Good job you’re so gorgeous naturally. Right. So where does he live?”
“You’re coming with me?”
“Can’t let you go in on your own, can I. He’ll have you for lunch.”
“Oh, thank you. Thank you. You don’t know what this means to me.”
The complicated sadness in Jackie’s face ought to break my heart, but I’m too high with triumphant relief to feel it.
“Yeah, well, you don’t know what it means to me either, all right? And don’t expect me to be nice to him either, I’m not going to play along with his stupid game just to keep things sweet. So let’s just get this over with. Have we got far to walk?”
“It’s that house there.”
“That big one with the massive wreath of mistletoe on the door?” Jackie’s high shrill laugh sounds almost natural enough to pass for cheerful scorn. “Done well for himself, hasn’t he?”
“Mrs Harper.” James O’Brien looks startled, as if we weren’t meant to be here. My heart thumps. What if I’ve done all of this just to bring us here on the wrong day? “Um. Hello.”
“It’s the right time, isn’t it? I’ve got the right time?”
“Yes. It’s the right time. I just wasn’t expecting—” he looks at Jackie. “Mrs Nelson, isn’t it? I’m so sorry about your son.”
“You told him about me? About my Ryan? You told him about my son?”
James shakes his head impatiently. “No, she didn’t say anything, I promise, and I promise I’m not trying to show off. I just remember your face from the news.”
Still he doesn’t move aside, doesn’t welcome us over the threshold. He holds out a hand to Jackie to shake, but she folds her arms stubbornly across her chest, her bright sharp gaze challenging him to call her out on her rudeness.
“You going to invite us in, then?” Jackie says at last. “Because it’s brass monkeys out here, my hands are frozen. Or do we do it out here where the neighbours can get a good look?”
“I’m sorry. Come on in.” Another moment’s hesitation and we’re over the doorstep, the teetering garden receding behind us as we reach the safe harbour of the hallway.
“Like a museum, this place, isn’t it,” Jackie says to my face and James’s back as he leads us into the room I can’t call anything other than the drawing room. I have to resist the urge to shush her. “Must be good money in making up shite to upset vulnerable people.” She sits gingerly down on the velvet sofa. “Is this where it all happens, then? All the magic?”
“So.” He sits forward, puts his hands together and rests his chin there for a moment, then straightens up, puts his hands on his knees. Moves again, this time to fold one leg across. Lets it drop again. It’s like a pantomime of nervousness.
“You got fleas or something?” Jackie enquires sweetly.
“I’m actually wondering whether I ought to go ahead with this session after all.” His fingers trill a little rhythm on the edge of his knees.
“Or worms. Me mam always used to say worms make you restless. You can get some stuff from the chemist, they won’t judge you or nowt. You want to start washing your hands after you’ve been to the toilet though, or you’ll just get them back again.” When she sees me wince, she has the grace to look briefly ashamed of herself.
“It’s all right,” James says to Jackie. “I know you’re not comfortable being here. You’re a good friend, Mrs Nelson. I hope she appreciates how much it’s costing you.”
“It’s not costing her anything, I said I’d pay—!”
“He’s not talking about the money,” says Jackie wearily. “All right, then, you got me, I think this is a load of bollocks and there’s nothing you can say that’s going to change my mind. I’m only here because you talked my soft mate here into believing you’ve got something worthwhile to tell her. But I’ll tell you straight, I’m not falling for any of this crap and you’ll be getting no business out of me, whatever rubbish you come out with. All right?”
“I understand.”
“And if you’re going to try and blame it not working on me, then you can forget that one and all.”
“No, that won’t be the problem.” He looks at me carefully. “So…”
Jackie tuts and tosses her head impatiently. I want to take her hand for comfort but I’m afraid she’ll push me away.
Someone gave you a prediction,” James says at last. “Someone said something to you and now you think there’s a chance your son is still alive. And ever since then…”
“I see things. People who aren’t there. Places I’m not in. Or else people do things to me, only they’re not really happening, because they can’t be.”
“Visions of water?
Watery places?”
“Yes. Why? What does that mean?”
“It might not mean anything. It might just be the echo of what I saw for you the last time. Sometimes I plant things in people’s minds that can reverberate for years. Or maybe—” he checks himself.
“Yes?”
“Maybe it means she needs to see the head doctor,” says Jackie. “Susannah, please, I’m begging you. Come with me. Right now. This is messed up.”
“Perhaps that might be best.” No hint this time of the smooth financial advisor act he produced so flawlessly for John. This time he’s all shadows and drama, torture and angst. He looks down at his hands for a minute, then up at me, a sad little-boy look from beneath his eyebrows, a perfect stage school facsimile of sorrow that is nonetheless convincing, because his skin looks tired and dry, as if he’s slept badly, and there are dark circles beneath his eyes. “I can sit for you both if you want, but I need to warn you now that the results are likely to be confusing. If you’d prefer not to go ahead, you can leave right now and I’ll refund the money to you straight away.”
“Or,” says Jackie, “you can do your little shitty act for us, and if Susannah’s not happy with what she hears, you can refund her after. How about that?”
“I always refund if my client isn’t happy.” James stands up. “This way, please.”
“Would either of you like some water?” Everything in the room is the same as it was the last time: the bare wooden floorboards, the school furniture, the lightbulb in its paper shade like a moon. Beside me, Jackie is breathing fast and shallow. I can feel the electric heat of her fear, threatening to scorch me if I get too close. “Would you like to use the bathroom first?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“I will,” says Jackie.
“It’s the second door off the hallway.”
James and I wait, suspended in time, mesmerised by the sound of Jackie’s boots clicking against the tiles in the hallway, the opening and closing of the door.
“It’s not too late.” His words are startling in the stillness.
“What?”
“You don’t have to do this. It’s going to change everything. Not just for you, for your friend too. You should listen to her. That’s why you brought her. Did you wonder why you felt so strongly you had to bring her with you? She was your way out. She was supposed to say no.”
“She did say no,” I admit. “But I—”
“—tricked her and bullied her and played on her loyalty to you. I know what you did, I can see it in your face. That wasn’t supposed to happen. This is all your choice, you made all the decisions, but you can unmake them. There’s still time.”
“What do you know? What are you going to tell us?”
“I don’t know, I never know until I start, but sometimes I get a feeling… this isn’t going to make you happy, not either of you. Please. I’m begging you. Tell her you’ve come to your senses and you want to go home. It’s what she wants to hear anyway.”
A few weeks ago I would have done as he said. I used to be a good girl. I used to do what people told me. In the distance, I can hear the sound of water rushing against porcelain.
“You’ve still got time,” he repeats. The door opens, then closes. Jackie’s footsteps are getting closer.
“Is this part of the sales pitch? Increasing my commitment by telling me I can get out if I want to?”
“If you think I’m a charlatan then why are you here at all?”
“Because you said you’d refund me if I wasn’t happy with the outcome,” I say, and take my place at the table.
“If you could connect your hands to form a circle,” says James. Jackie’s hand in mine feels dry and feverish. She grips my fingers as if they’re all that stands between her and drowning. “Now, Mrs Harper, if you could concentrate on a time with Joel when you were happy.”
“What about me? What am I supposed to do? I never met him.”
“If you could just try and lend Susannah your support… there’s probably going to be some overspill, I’m afraid…”
Jackie’s misery transmits itself into the skin of my hand like an electric pulse. I can tell from the way her breath hitches that she’s already crying. It’s hard to concentrate on my picture of Joel nestled small and tight in his cot, Scrap-dog tucked beneath his chin as outside the window, the creeping frost paints over the tiny pond with a thin film of ice like transparent paper. In the morning, I will take him down into the garden and show him a world transformed from dreary damp into crisp white beauty, and later we will make a cake and light a single candle. It is the night before Midwinter Day, and it is a whole year since Joel burst into our lives like a rocket.
“Midwinter,” James says, with difficulty. “You’re sledging, a very steep hill with a big house on the hill opposite. He falls off the side of the sledge and hits his head and cries, but when you say it’s time to go home he begs to stay. And a cake, a cake with a single candle, and frost on the leaves outside… I’m sorry, this is jumbled because there are two of you, I can’t tell if this is Ryan or Joel.”
“I’m not leaving my mate alone with you. You’ll do both of us or neither, you hear me?” I can hear the fear in Jackie’s voice, and I realise something I should have known all along: she’s not angry because she doesn’t believe, she’s frightened because she does. My unbelief was her shield, and without it, she’s naked against the dark.
“He was a handful, wasn’t he? But he loved you so much. You were the centre of his world.”
Is he talking to me, or to Jackie? I have no way of knowing.
“Now, if you could please shift your concentration to the last time you saw your sons.”
James’s face is pale and sweaty and his hand is clammy. It’s like holding hands with a frog, like touching an internal organ lifted out onto the cold autopsy table. I want to let go but I don’t dare. To my right, Jackie’s fingers clutch at me. The lights flicker. Jackie whimpers. I wait for James to reassure her, as he once reassured John and me.
“I’m so sorry,” James whispers at last.
“What? What? What can you see?” Jackie’s voice has the high rising intonation of hysteria. Another minute of this and she’ll be screaming.
“Both your sons are dead. I’m so sorry. They both died on the day they disappeared.”
All this time I’ve imagined that I have found a way to let go of the treacherous yearning that whispers in my ear: Maybe today, maybe today you’ll see him. On the bus, in the park, walking between the trees and coming up the garden path. I’ve watched as others have walked the same road, companions and comrades, even though we’ve never met. Each time I’ve watched one of these other stories resolve – nine times with the simple bleak announcement the police have found a body, only once with a wild unbearable joy so huge it was almost like pain, the words tumbling out as she gabbled out her story to the baby-bird reporters – He’s in Los Angeles he ran away because he was afraid to come out to us because of our church but his boyfriend finally convinced him to call, oh my God, I can’t stop shaking – I have felt a stab of envy. Death is the final dreadful solution to the riddle, but nonetheless it is a solution, and surely it’s better to know than to live forever with the endless betrayal of what if today—?
But I know now I’ve been deluding myself. I have never, ever let go of what if today. This moment here, in this cold room with my friend clinging to my right hand and a cold-skinned stranger holding my left, is the true death of hope.
“How did it happen?” I whisper. Beside me, Jackie has bent forward until her forehead is almost touching the table. She’s making a slow wordless keening noise that cuts like glass. James looks at me bleakly.
“Mrs Harper, you already know. That’s why you’ve come here today. To tell yourself the things you already know.”
“No,” Jackie moans, from within the walls of her own private hell. “No, no, no, this isn’t true, it’s not true, this isn’t happening…”
“
So who was it? Who was it that killed them? Was it the same person? Is that why we came into each other’s lives? Is there a… a serial killer or something?”
“No. Two separate killers. They’re hidden in darkness. One on land, hidden beneath trees. One in the water, near a boat that never moves. One was killed. Oh, God forgive me—” He glances at Jackie, lost now and openly sobbing, her face pressed against the old varnish of the table, and frees his hand from hers as if he can’t bear the touch of her flesh against his any longer. “One was killed by his father… and one by his… by his mother.”
Then Jackie scrabbles onto the table, clenches her fist into a ball and punches James brutally in the face.
“You,” she hisses, “are a fucking liar, do you hear me? A fucking liar, and a shit-stirrer, and a nasty little freak. You don’t know fucking nothing, you hear me? And if you ever say that again to anyone, especially the police, I will come round here and I will fucking kill you.”
And in a quick series of movements she pulls me to my feet, shoves me ahead of her out of the room, runs to the front door and drags me through it, both of us stumbling and clinging to each other for balance as we flee through the garden filled with dead flowers, clattering clumsily up the street towards the safety of my car.
“Is he following us? Is he?” Jackie’s breath comes in great gasps. “Is he coming after us?”
Why is she still here? I don’t want her near me, not any more, not now that I know what she is. “No, he’s not coming after us.”
“Oh, fuck. Fuck me. That was… Oh fuck. Don’t ever ask me to do that again. Not ever again. I swear to God. Not ever. Are you all right?” She pats my arm. I try not to shudder. “Hey, you know I don’t believe it, right? He was just talking bollocks. Trying to make himself look important. Maybe he even believes it himself, I don’t know. But it’s not true, not a fucking word of it, and I know that. All right? I know that and so do you.”
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