by Andy Conway
Deirdre came up with two mugs of tea for them and told her to turn it down a notch. Before she left, she stood at the door and smiled at the sight of them, and Rachel noticed there was also a slight frown of puzzlement knitted into her brow, as if she was trying to work out where she’d seen Rachel before. Perhaps Rachel had fought that whole battle in Deirdre’s unconscious mind and nothing more.
Lorna put on Bowie’s Station to Station album and they talked about what she should wear for tomorrow.
“Oh, you’ve got to tell me what you think of this!” Lorna squealed, and ran to her wardrobe.
She pulled out a bright orange check jacket and Rachel’s heart froze over. The smell of ice and fog. The hiss of steam. The roar of a train.
“I’m not sure how to wear it. I’m looking for the right way, but it was my mum’s. It’s from the sixties.”
It’s from 1959, thought Rachel. She was wearing it when I stopped her committing suicide. Again and again and again.
“I was thinking it’s sort of a bit garish and punky, but also it’s got that stylish fifties cut to it that’s a bit glamorous. Maybe with a pencil skirt and a pillbox hat with a veil or something?”
Rachel nodded. “That would be really stylish.”
If it had all been in her mind, how could she have known this jacket of Deirdre’s — down to the last thread?
Lorna came and kneeled on the bed with her and they painted each other’s faces, trying out various garish make-up looks, while Magazine’s The Correct Use of Soap, Joy Division’s Closer, and John Foxx’s Metamatic all played.
“The thing is,” said Lorna, with sudden, furious earnestness, “is that I actually think John Foxx is a poet. More than Keats or Wordsworth. He’s a twentieth century poet.”
Then Deirdre came up the stairs again and knocked the door and announced it was bed time so turn it down.
“I’m out early in the morning, so I won’t see you, Rachel,” she said. “I hope to see you again soon, though.”
She smiled and left them, her footsteps tramping up the floorboards of the landing to the front bedroom.
Lorna turned Kraftwerk’s Man Machine down and dug out two nighties, throwing one to Rachel.
A sudden wail from somewhere in the house.
Rachel jumped up. This must be Danny. It had begun.
The wail peaked and paused and then another cry of pain. It was a baby.
“Don’t worry,” said Lorna. “That’s the neighbours. They’ve got a new baby. Christopher. He doesn’t cry that much. Must be the storm waking him.”
Rachel nodded and smiled and breathed again. She went downstairs with her handbag and brushed her teeth in the bathroom behind the kitchen, changing into her mother’s spare nightdress. The rain lashed against the back window, angry and venomous, trying to find a way in, and it made her shiver. She felt a terrible sense of foreboding, and it reminded her of watching a late Saturday night horror film on her own — an old black and white Dracula film with Bela Lugosi — in this same house. She was on her own for some reason, all alone in this house on a remote canal bank where no one would hear you scream.
When she had run back upstairs on tiptoe, Lorna was in her nightie and crouched over the record player.
“I’ve got to play this. Such a great one to end with.”
She had Systems of Romance on the turntable again and was trying to find the groove for the last track.
John Foxx’s voice crackled, like he was crooning down the telephone, and there was just a heartbeat for music, then a gentle wash of strings and synth rising under his voice. Rachel had played Just for a Moment too, in her flat, Charlie’s flat, and it had made her feel sad and alone and she’d wondered about her mother, and here she was, listening to it with her mother and it didn’t make her feel any less sad and alone. But when he sang about never leaving here, ever, and let’s stay in here forever, she wanted it to be true. She could just stay here. Let Esther get together with Martyn. Rachel could stay here and be Lorna Foster’s best friend and never go back.
Lorna stayed crouched over the turntable but rested her cheek on her knee and was far away. She didn’t move when the music faded out and the stylus crackled in the run-off groove. The arm lifted and cranked back to its resting place.
“That was lovely,” said Rachel.
Lorna dug around in the albums and pulled out another. “I like to go to sleep with this one playing some nights,” she said. “It’s the Skids’ ambient album. Side two is my sleepy music.”
Acoustic guitars metronomed a gentle, hypnotic rhythm, ambient synth sounds snaking over them in dreamy, slithering sound washes.
Rachel didn’t recognize it.
Lorna got up and came to the bed. “Get in,” she said. “I’ll have this side.”
Rachel crawled in up against the wall and Lorna climbed in beside her. They lay silent, breathing for a while, listening to the delicate ambience of the music.
“Today’s been amazing,” said Lorna. “I’m so glad I met you.”
“It’s been pretty amazing for me too,” Rachel said.
She listened to the rain on the windows, vowing to stay awake all night, just in case Danny came. She would protect her mother. But the music lulled her to slumber, and before the album was over she had spiralled into a deep and euphoric sleep, so heavy that she failed to notice when Kath Bright poured through the keyhole.
— 25 —
IN HER DREAM THERE were voices calling, chanting, echoing out over a vast, dark plain, and village girls were dancing under moonlight. She was somewhere in Eastern Europe. The Great Plain, yes. A giant fire showered sparks into the black night and a lone guitarist was picking off a repeated six-note melody as if learning it for the first time.
The guitarist was by the fire, but she couldn’t see; the village girls dancing in a ring around it.
And another guitar played the same melody at twice the speed. And another at four times the speed.
There were three guitarists by the fire and she felt an overwhelming desire to push through the dancing girls so she could see them play.
The slow melody was a simple refrain, the kind a child might pick out as they learned how to play, but something about hearing it played at three different speeds made it hypnotic, and a part of her knew that this was the power that was inside her, the power she was only just learning, so difficult and yet so simple, only just beyond the grasp of her still clumsy fingers.
She sensed the danger, and knew that it wasn’t on the plain, wasn’t in her dream. It was in the room.
The bedroom.
Her old bedroom in Winson Green.
Lorna’s bedroom in 1980.
Before her eyes opened, she knew it was Kath Bright.
She jumped bolt upright, her head swimming, and realized she was alone in the bed.
Where was Lorna?
She was surprised that it wasn’t Kath there. It was Danny, smiling down at her.
The record crackled and the arm of the record player shunted back to its resting place, the turntable slowing to a stop.
“Hello again, Rachel. Fancy meeting you here.”
She leapt from the bed. Too slow. He threw something at her that knocked her sideways. It felt like a kick that snatched her breath right from her guts. She fell against the wall.
“Surprised to find you here,” he said. “You should pop in on Charlie. He’s not looking his best, I have to say.”
Oh God. What had he done? She struggled to her feet but something pushed her back. She was paralysed.
Twisting her head around, she was surprised to see he wasn’t pushing her down with his entire weight, like he had in his bedroom. He wasn’t even touching her. He was standing across the room, just pointing, and from his fingers hosed a swirling thread of hurricane that pinned her down.
He’s learned to control it, she thought with dread.
“Isn’t it funny,” he grinned. “It was always you and Charlie getting in the way of me and Amy.
Now it’s me getting in the way of you and Charlie.”
What had he done to Charlie? She should have gone there. She could have protected him. Why hadn’t she gone to him? Because she hadn’t wanted to see him looking old, she realized.
Anger coursed through her. She used it to push herself free, but the force of the wind pinned her back against the wall. No matter how hard she pushed against it, she couldn’t budge. And she knew that if he wanted to, he could push her right through the brick wall.
A voice inside herself told her to stop fighting it. To give in to it. Was it Kath — her insidious evil snaking inside her mind again?
Where was Kath? She was here. Rachel could sense her. But she wasn’t in the room.
And neither was Lorna.
Give in to it. Relax. Do not fight it.
No. It wasn’t Kath inside her head. It didn’t feel the same. Didn’t smell the same. It was strange. Kath’s persuasion had a different odour, something she couldn’t quite pin down. No, it came to her. Odour of chrysanthemums. The rank smell of jilted love and death.
This voice was different. It came from inside her. It was an intuition. Something she knew but had never known she knew.
“Are you looking for your mum, Rachel? I’m afraid she’s been called away.”
Anger rose in her again. She fought it. She gave in to the voice telling her to relax. She felt the cool blast of fury against her skin.
She thought of Lorna’s smile.
She had a vague sensation of rain on her skin, mud on her toes, the sound of rain on water.
She knew she was inside Lorna’s mind for a moment. She had felt what Lorna was feeling.
She saw it, just for a moment: an intimation of a time and a place, a moment in time. She could target that moment in time and go to it.
She launched herself at the vision.
There was a flash of bright daylight and she was sucked through a white vortex to blink her eyes open and find herself standing in black water.
She sighed, relaxed, the hurricane no longer pinning her down. Rain on her face.
There was just a sliver of moon in the black sky. The trains in the rail yard sat silent. The rain lashed down from the sky and hissed on the seething surface of the canal. She was ankle deep in muddy water. She wasn’t standing in the canal at all. The canal had burst its banks, the towpaths were swimming.
She looked up at the arched footbridge outside the canal cottage just as Lorna climbed up onto the white-painted rail. Her nightdress clung to her skin, sodden through, as she eased herself up and balanced, a diver ready to fall.
Kath was standing on the bridge a few paces behind her. She was inside Lorna’s head, just as she’d been with Rachel when she’d tried to make her jump into the street.
Lorna was going to dive into the canal.
“Don’t!” Rachel shouted.
Lorna tottered, as if she’d woken from her trance and realized where she was. She moaned out loud.
Kath turned and Rachel felt the bright flash of malice from her eyes.
She ran. Out of the overflow, up the slope of the bridge.
Kath turned, hissing hate, ready to meet her.
Lorna’s arms waved madly, already swimming through the air.
Rachel ran for Kath, steeling herself for the collision.
Lorna fell forward.
Rachel found herself thinking of that fire on the Great Plain, that melody playing at three speeds, and the face of a girl called Délibáb.
Firelight surged through her.
Kath shrank back, cringing from the blinding light.
And Rachel was diving, launching herself over the white-painted arch of the rail, launching herself at Lorna who was falling, a billion drops of rain in the air. And she caught her. They arced through the black night sky, her mother safe in her arms, and as they plunged down towards the black water she thought of a hundred places in a hundred different times, and just before they hit, and she braced herself for the icy cold, she thought of Charlie.
— 26 —
SHE WAS SURPRISED WHEN they hit a hard floor, not icy water. Her elbows burned and Lorna rolled away from her across a rug.
The flat. They were at the flat. Her flat. Charlie’s flat.
The rug in the middle of the lounge was covered in mud and slimy water, as if they’d carried it through with them.
She scrambled to Lorna and checked the pulse on her neck. She was fine. Breathing hard. Moaning slightly. Her eyelids pulsing with fluttering dreams.
Rachel sat up and glanced around the room, trying to work out when they were. It wasn’t the apartment in 2014. Earlier. Earlier than when she’d first moved in.
A man coughed out in the corridor.
She climbed to her knees, her whole body aching.
He staggered through the door, silhouetted against the light. “Rachel!”
It was Charlie.
He stumbled across the room to her, slow and awkward.
She gripped his arms, and just for a moment noticed how thin he was, how old he was, before she pulled him to her and kissed his face.
“Charlie. Thank God you’re safe.”
“It was touch and go there,” he said. “Danny’s turned into someone who’s not very nice.”
She held him close and stroked his thinning hair. Charlie was old. It was 1980. He was 65. The oldest she’d seen him. Only months ago she’d seen him as a young man with his whole life before him and thought that was the last she’d ever see him.
“Oh, Charlie, it’s you. I thought I’d never see you again.”
He smiled in the darkness. “You’re still young,” he said. “You never age for me. What happened to your hair?”
“I bleached it,” she said.
She kissed him. Charlie. Her saviour. And with a terrible pang of guilt, she realized the last time he’d seen her was 1966, the afternoon he sort of proposed to her and she said she’d stay and then she was gone.
“You’re wet,” he said. “Who’s this?”
“We need towels. And a warm bed.”
He was up on his feet and down the corridor, quicker now. He picked something from the floor and clutched it to his chest, hiding it from her.
She cradled Lorna’s head in her lap and murmured, “It’s okay. Just sleep. You’re safe.”
Charlie returned and tossed a towel to her. “Dry yourself. You’re soaking.”
She threw it over her shoulders and wrapped another towel around her mother. They pulled Lorna to her feet, put an arm over each shoulder and walked her down the corridor to the second bedroom. Rachel pulled Lorna’s sodden night dress off and threw it across the room, rubbing her down with the towels. Charlie turned his back, picking it up and draping it over the radiator. Then he had an idea, walking to a chest of drawers and pulling out a pair of woollen pyjamas.
“Here, try these.”
He held them out, behind him, still facing the opposite way. Rachel struggled to pull Lorna into them, then wrapped a towel around her hair and pulled the sheets over her.
“She’s fine now,” she said.
Charlie turned and draped a towel over Rachel’s shoulders. It had fallen to the floor.
“Who is she?”
“This is Lorna,” she said. “My mother. Or she will be, in ten years. I hope.”
“And what happened?”
“Danny.”
Charlie nodded grimly. “He was here.”
“What did he—?”
Charlie put a finger to her lips and nodded to Lorna, sleeping in the bed. He went to the chest of drawers again and pulled out more clothes.
“Get dressed. We’ll talk in there.”
She nodded. Before leaving, he picked up the thing he’d hidden from her. She heard it scrape against mahogany and knew it was his service revolver.
She dried herself off and changed into the slacks and sweater he’d given her. From the sixties. He’d kept them, just in case she ever came back.
She left Lor
na there and crept to the lounge. Charlie was sitting in the armchair with a glass of whisky in one hand. He shoved the revolver down the side of the cushion and nodded towards the coffee table and the dram he’d poured for her. She put her legs up and crouched on the sofa, sipping at the whisky and feeling its peaty wave bloom right through her.
“Did we do that to him?” he said.
“I’m sorry?”
“Danny. Did we do that to him?”
“No,” she said. “He did that to him.”
“There was a girl with him.”
“Kath.”
“She sort of saved my life.”
“Really?” She wondered if it were a different Kath. Past Kath. The one who hadn’t turned evil yet. The one who’d helped her.
“Only in that he was going to kill me till she appeared. She suggested they go and kill your mother instead. I wish I could have warned you somehow, done something.”
“Charlie, don’t. There’s nothing you could have done. I’m just glad you’re alive. I’ve brought so much trouble to your door.”
It’s all right,” he smiled. “I rather enjoy it. It’s been rather dull the last fourteen years.”
She laughed, despite herself, and wanted to rush over and hug him. But she stayed curled up on the sofa, hugging her shins and nuzzling at the whisky.
“Charlie. Do you remember meeting me outside the Kingsway cinema?”
“We went there in 1934. With Henry. The night he...”
“Not then. In 1959.”
She needed to know. Had it been real? Had it happened?
“In 1959?” he said. He half laughed. “That’s peculiar.”
“What?”
“I always thought that was a dream.”
Her heart was beating like mad. “A dream?”
“Yes. It wasn’t on your list. The dates you said you would come to me. It didn’t actually happen. After the war I knew I had to wait twenty years for you to come again. It seemed like an age away. And I thought about you all the time, of course, but there was this one morning, yes, I’m sure it was 1959 because I’d been to see Vertigo the night before. This one morning I woke up from such a vivid dream about you.”