Is Anybody There?

by Jean Ure

  I said, “What condition? I wouldn’t get away with behaving like that!”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” said Mum, “because you have no reason to.” She said that Miss Allardyce was a “sad and troubled woman”, but that things had happened in her life to make her as she was.

  “Like what?” I said.

  Mum wagged a finger. “Now, Jo! You know better than that.”

  I did, unfortunately. I was dying to hear what things had happened in the Handkerchief Lady’s life, but I knew that Mum would never tell me. Everybody thinks of clairvoyants as being charlatans and frauds. They think it’s all just play-acting, but Mum’s gift is absolutely genuine, and Mum herself is one hundred per cent professional. She never gives away her clients’ secrets. Maybe some day she’ll write a book. Everybody in it would be anonymous, but I bet I’d be able to guess who some of them were! All she would say now was that I shouldn’t make “superficial judgements”.

  “Things are not always what they seem. People are not always what they seem. The more you get to know a person, the more you understand – and the more you forgive.”

  I said, “Huh!”

  “And what is that supposed to mean?” said Mum.

  What it meant was, there were some people I didn’t think could ever be forgiven. Some people I didn’t think deserved to be forgiven. But I couldn’t say this to Mum. She would immediately guess that I had someone particular in mind and would want to know who, and why, and what had happened. And even though, of course, I would deny it, Mum has an uncomfortable knack of ferreting out the truth.

  “Do you forgive me?” I said. “For coming in late?”

  “I’ll have to think about that one,” said Mum. “Ask me in the morning!”

  I had the most horrible night. It was full of scary dreams, all about gravel pits. But I wasn’t asleep! I wasn’t awake, either; I just lay, stiff and cold, like a corpse, in some kind of limbo, where Paul’s face kept looming at me, mushroom pale with colourless eyes, out of a swirling yellow mist, and his voice kept urging me to “Ring your mum! Why don’t you?” but every time I reached out for my mobile, it wasn’t there. Paul said, “How careless! You’ve thrown away your chances. You’ll never get home now.” I cried, “But I must! I must get back to Mum!” So then he told me that there might be a phone in the glove compartment, and he reached across me to get at it, and I screamed, and the car veered across the road, and I struggled to open the door, but it wouldn’t open, and Paul just laughed, this gloating laugh, and went on driving towards the gravel pits.

  The dream never went any further; we never actually reached the gravel pits. But I knew all the time that they were there, waiting for me, at the bottom of the hill; and I knew that something evil was waiting there with them. If we ever did reach those gravel pits, I wouldn’t be coming back.

  Over and over, the dream repeated itself, like a loop of film, until I felt like I was going mad. In the end I must have fallen asleep, because at half past eight I woke up with a rude start when Mum came banging at the door wanting to know if I ever intended to get up. I was just so relieved when I heard her voice and realised that I was safe in my bed, and not trapped in Paul’s car! I yelled at Mum that I was coming, and she said, “About time, too! Sleeping your life away.”

  I felt a whole lot stronger once I was up and dressed. I even began to wonder if perhaps I had exaggerated the whole incident. I am not one of those people (like Chloe, for example) who loves to dramatise everything, but maybe I had … overreacted. Maybe. At any rate, when Chloe rang me just after breakfast, saying had I got her text message and how about we go round to Dee’s that afternoon, I didn’t immediately fly into a panic and start burbling about dentist’s appointments or having to go somewhere with Mum. I thought to myself that sooner or later I would have to go round to Dee’s, because whatever her brother might be, Dee herself was still my friend, and the longer I left it the more difficult it would be to patch up our little disagreement. It wasn’t a quarrel! But we had both been tetchy, and I didn’t like being tetchy with Dee. So I told Chloe that after lunch would be fine, and we agreed to meet up at two o’clock, round Dee’s place. Chloe said that she had already rung Dee to check it would be OK. I asked her what Dee had said.

  “She said yes,” said Chloe. “It’d be OK.”

  “Did you tell her we’d both be coming?”

  “Course I did! I said I was going to ring you.”

  “What did she say when you said that?”

  “She didn’t say anything,” said Chloe. “Why? What d’you think she should have said?”

  “Oh! I dunno. I just wondered.”

  “Wondered what?”

  “If she’d, like … said anything.”

  There was a pause. I could picture Chloe holding the phone away from her and pulling one of her faces.

  She had this habit, when anyone said something she thought a bit weird, of crinkling her forehead and screwing her nose up, like a corkscrew. I suppose I was being a bit weird, only I had to check that Dee really did want me to go round. She’d been so cross on the phone! So angry with me for running out on her brother. But I couldn’t go into the details with Chloe, so I just said again that I would see her at two and left her to go on pulling faces.

  Usually when we went round to Dee’s we shut ourselves up in her bedroom so we could be private, but Dee’s bedroom is way up the top of the house, in what used to be the attic, and her mum said she wasn’t yet well enough to “do stairs”.

  “But don’t worry! You can have the front room all to yourselves. I won’t come and pry.”

  Dee’s mum is so lovely! It made me feel really bad, thinking all those dreadful thoughts about her son. Not that he was, actually, her son; he belonged to her husband. Dee’s dad is heaps older than her mum. But that time when we’d been introduced to Paul, Dee’s mum had been there, and she’d had her arm round his shoulders like she was really fond of him. It would be a terrible shock, if I were to reveal what he had done. She would be devastated to think that he might be a hideous prowling monster, preying on young girls, and her knowing nothing about it. Not even suspecting. I couldn’t do it to her! Nor to Dee. It just confirmed my belief that it would be far the best thing for everyone, not only for me, but for Dee’s family as well, if I didn’t say anything. Which to be honest was a huge relief, as I thought that I would far rather just put it behind me and try to pretend that it had never happened.

  Something else which was a huge relief: Dee seemed to have forgotten that she was upset with me. She was eager to hear how the celebration had gone, so for the next half hour we sat around cosily discussing it, with me and Chloe telling her what everyone had been wearing, and how utterly ghastly Mel Sanders had been, and what a complete idiot she’d made of herself.

  “Trying to get it off with every guy that came anywhere near us!”

  “She even tried it on with some old bloke behind the bar.”

  “Yes, and he must have been at least fifty!”

  “It was just so degrading.”

  “Pathetic, if you ask me.”

  “And you should have seen what she was wearing! Those boots.” Chloe sprang up and began tottering across the room on the tips of her toes with her knees bowed. “Tart boots!”

  “Actually, they’re glitter boots,” I said.

  “They’re what?”

  “Glitter boots!”

  “Tart boots.”

  “Gl—”

  “Never mind about the boots,” said Dee. “Tell me about Danny!”

  I subsided, glumly, into a nest of cushions on the sofa. “Nothing to tell.”

  “Why not? Didn’t you see him?”

  “She saw him, but he didn’t see her,” said Chloe. “All anyone could look at was Mel in her tart boots!”

  “Really?” Dee gazed at me, sympathetically.

  “It wasn’t his fault,” I said. “She hypnotises them!”

  “So you didn’t get to speak to him?”


  I shook my head.

  “Oh, Jo! And that was the whole point of it!”

  “I know,” I said. “But what can you do?”

  “Buy a pair of tart boots!” said Chloe, and guffawed.

  “Shut up,” said Dee. “This is serious! I’ve got an idea … why don’t we go there by ourselves? Just the three of us? Then he’ll have to take notice.”

  Chloe said, “Brilliant! When shall we do it?”

  “After Christmas?” said Dee.

  “Yes, then we could tell our parents it was a going-back-to-school celebration. They’d like that … the thought we were all so eager to get back and start working again!”

  “All right,” said Dee. “Let’s go for it!”

  “Jo?” Chloe poked at me. “You on?”

  “I am if Mum will let me,” I said. “She doesn’t really like me being out at night.”

  “Especially when you’re late back,” said Dee.

  “Late?” said Chloe. “Were you?”

  I said, “Only a little bit.”

  “But you left so early! You left loads before I did. I wondered where you’d gone, you just disappeared. I looked for you, and someone said you’d rushed off.”

  “I went to get the bus,” I said.

  “Bus?”

  “Yes, you know,” I said. “One of those red things with lots of seats inside? Maybe you’ve never been on one.”

  “Wouldn’t want to go on one! Not at that time of night. Anyway, I thought you said your mum told you to get a cab? From Albert.”

  Chloe knew all about Albert, and how he mother-henned me. So did Dee; they used to tease me about it.

  “I couldn’t get through,” I said. I crossed my fingers as I said it.

  I certainly wasn’t admitting to Chloe that I’d been trying to save money for a pair of glitter boots. As a matter of fact, I was fast going off the whole idea of glitter boots. I wished I’d never set eyes on the wretched things! If I hadn’t known about them, I wouldn’t have wanted them, and the nightmare of last night would never have happened.

  “You should have waited for me,” said Chloe. “My dad would’ve given you a lift. He wouldn’t have minded!”

  “Paul gave her one,” said Dee. “He saw her standing there and he knew it wasn’t safe, so he very kindly” – she glared at me – “out of the goodness of his heart, offered to take her all the way home.”

  She was still mad at me. Even though she seemed friendly enough on the surface, she was obviously seething underneath. It was so unfair! I felt like shouting at her. “Your precious brother tried to abduct me!” But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t do it to her. And, in any case, there was Mum.

  Chloe was looking from one to the other of us. She has these antennae like a bat’s radar, they pick up the least little thing.

  “So what happened?” She leaned forward, eagerly.

  “Nothing happened.” I got in fast, ahead of Dee. “I just left my phone in the restaurant and had to go back and get it.”

  “He’d have taken you!” shrieked Dee. She was like one of those old gramophones, when the needle gets stuck. He’d have taken you, he’d have taken you, he’d have taken you. Chloe, by now, was all bright-eyed and alert, on the scent of some good gossip. She loves a bit of goss. I think it would be true to say that she thrives on it.

  “Look,” I said, “just don’t keep on.”

  “But you were such an idiot!”

  “Why? Why?” Chloe’s ears were practically flapping in the breeze. “What did she do?”

  “I didn’t do anything! I just—”

  “Just nearly went and gave Paul a heart attack! Jumping out of the car like that.”

  “You jumped out of the car?”

  “We stopped at the lights,” I said, “and there just happened to be a bus coming, so to save him having to go all the way back” – it was my turn to glare at Dee – “I rushed off and got it. OK? Simple!”

  “You got the bus?”

  “Yes.” I did wish she would stop repeating everything. It was beginning to get on my nerves. “What would you have done?”

  “I’d have asked him to take me,” said Chloe.

  “Anyone would, that had any sense,” said Dee. “I mean, honestly! How d’you think Paul would’ve felt, having to tell your mum you’d got run over?”

  That was too much. That was more than I could take. I opened my mouth to yell the truth at her – and then promptly closed it again, just in time, as the door opened. I thought it was going to be Dee’s mum, but it wasn’t; it was him. Paul. He was really thrown when he saw me sitting there. I could tell, from the way he coloured up.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry! I didn’t realise.”

  “It’s OK,” said Dee. “You can come in.”

  Chloe giggled. “We’re decent!”

  “Actually, we were just going,” I said.

  Chloe did the corkscrew thing with her nose. “We were?”

  I certainly was; I couldn’t bear to be in the same room with him. “I’ve got to get home,” I said. Reluctantly, Chloe unwrapped herself from the cushion she’d been hugging and scrambled to her feet.

  “I suppose I’d better come.”

  “You don’t have to go on my account,” said Paul. “I only came to fetch something.”

  “’S OK,” said Chloe. “I told Mum I’d be back by four.”

  He stood, holding the door for us. As I walked past he said, “I take it you got home all right in the end?”

  Stiffly I said, “Yes, thank you.”

  “And you got your phone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good!”

  There was a pause. I knew Dee was waiting for me to apologise to him, to say how sorry I was for behaving like an idiot and nearly giving him a heart attack, but not even for the sake of our friendship was I prepared to do that. I just couldn’t bring myself.

  “Paul’s really nice, isn’t he?” said Chloe, as we set off down the road together. Fortunately, I was spared having to reply as she simply rushed straight on. “Wish I’d got a brother like that!”

  It’s true that Chloe’s brother Jude, who is five years older than her, was like something out of the dark ages, when men were men and women were doormats, and that his greatest delight in life was roaring round the estate on his motorbike, frightening old ladies and generally upsetting people; but at least he didn’t abduct young girls.

  “Could you fancy him?” She giggled. “I could.”

  Not me. No thank you! I supposed he wasn’t bad looking if you happened to go for blond men (which I didn’t, and never have). A bit like an older version of Dee, with the same silvery fair hair and blue eyes, except that Dee’s eyes are bright, like the sky on a summer day, while his were pale and somehow wishy washy. I said this to Chloe, who said, “I could go for him!”

  “I wouldn’t, if I were you,” I said.

  “Why not?” Chloe was on it, immediately. What did I know that she didn’t? “Is he married?”

  I said, “No idea, but he’s loads too old.”

  “Mm … kind of mysterious. Do you reckon he’s got a past?”

  I said, “Yes – he’s probably been married six times and has a dozen kids. Listen, when you next see my mum, don’t say anything about last night, will you? ’cos if she knew I’d got the bus she’d never let me go anywhere, ever again!”

  Chloe promised faithfully that she wouldn’t breathe a word, and I knew that she meant it; but I also knew that she really couldn’t be trusted. She makes these promises, thinking that she would die sooner than break them, and then at the first opportunity she goes and blabs. She is just totally incapable of keeping quiet. I decided that I would do my best to keep her and Mum well apart for at least the new few weeks …

  I have always thought of myself as quite a stolid sort of person. By which I mean that I am pretty grounded, not necessarily that I am boring and unimaginative. Though it is true that my imagination is nowhere near as vivid as Chloe’s. Her
s tends to splatter and splurge all over the place. “Running rampant”, as one of our teachers once said, when Chloe terrified the life out of most of us by claiming to have seen a headless ghost lurking in the lower-school changing rooms.

  “It wasn’t just headless, it was knickerless, too!”

  That was when Miss Mitchell accused her of letting her imagination “run rampant”. My imagination does not run rampant. I have never seen any headless ghosts, with or without knickers. In fact, I have never seen a ghost of any kind, unless you count the time I saw my gran dancing with my grandad when they were young; but that was more of a recall. A vision from the past. As opposed to a manifestation. Gran wasn’t actually there, in front of me. And far from finding it frightening, I laughed and felt happy.

  What I’m saying is, I am definitely not a nervous type. I am not, for instance, scared of the dark, which I know a lot of people are; and when I went to the waxworks with my Auntie Sue and my cousin Posy and saw the Chamber of Horrors, it didn’t bother me one little bit. Posy was all shaking, and clutching her mum’s hand, but I was just, like, really interested. Same when Mum took us to a theme park and we went on the Ghost Ride. Posy screamed fit to bust! I screamed, too, but I only did it for fun. I’d have gone on it again, no problem. As for the London Dungeon … me and Chloe shrieked and giggled all the way round it.

  So like I say, I am not a nervous type; but the events of that night continued to haunt me. I think it was the first time in my life that I had ever been truly frightened. It got so that I was reluctant to go to bed, for fear of what would happen when I closed my eyes. I started staying up later and later, watching telly into the small hours, until Mum caught me at it and demanded to know what I thought I was doing.

  “Mum, it’s holiday time!” I said.

  Mum said holiday time or not, I ought to know better.

  “Just taking advantage!” she said. “Your poor old mum crashes out at ten o’clock because she’s totally shattered, and you sit here square-eyed half way through the night watching heaven knows what unsuitable rubbish!”