by Julie Howlin
I wondered if I would ever fit in completely there, but knew I would have to give it my best try. I had made a promise.
4 the unplugged telephone
It was Gran who had taught me that regular meditation was important for those with a gift like ours. ‘You should aim for ten minutes every day, at a time when you won't be interrupted,’ she had advised. ‘Take the phone off the hook, switch off the pop music, and empty your mind.’
It wasn't always easy, but I did my best to keep it up, even after I'd told Gran that I thought everything she'd told me was bollocks.
On the day Gran died, I had found it particularly hard.
**
Take the phone off the hook, Gran had said. She, of course, lived in a different age. Phones these days simply don’t allow you to do that. If you press the call button on a modern phone, which is the nearest thing to taking it off the hook, after a couple of minutes it starts broadcasting a siren which gets louder and louder and louder. Eventually it stops, but then the phone automatically re-connects itself, and as soon as it does, someone will phone.
If I just let it ring, the answerphone kicks in and if I hear someone leaving a message, my concentration is compromised because I’m trying to recognise the voice and thinking about calling them back. If they don’t leave a message, I still can't concentrate until I’ve rung 1471 to find out who it was.
It seems the worst sin anyone can commit in this modern age of communication is to be out of contact, and technology has been designed to keep us on the straight and narrow by making it virtually impossible to be out of touch, even for ten minutes.
Two minutes into my meditation that evening, the phone rang. With a sigh, I picked it up. It was my mother. ‘Oh, thank God,’ she breathed. ‘You're all right. It was on TV just now, some girl was strangled in that park just up the road from you. I really do worry about you living on that rough estate. I don’t know why you don’t come and live at home - your room is still here and you could get a job near home and not have to be in London at all.’ I know exactly why I don’t move back home, I thought, but didn’t say so. ‘That girl was on her way to work, they think. Going to the tube station. I hope you don’t walk to the tube. I hope you get a taxi.’
‘A taxi? Every morning? Of course not. I can’t afford that.’
‘Well, that boss of yours should pay for it. Doesn’t he care about the safety of his staff?’
‘Mum, no company pays for taxis to work every day for their staff unless they work nights. Everybody takes the tube. It’s absolutely fine.’
‘But this girl -’
‘I don’t walk through the park, Mum. It would be out of my way.’
‘Thank God.’
We chatted a bit more - a lot more, actually. My mum has an amazing gift for prattling on about nothing for hours on end; about neighbours of hers that I barely know. Mum thinks their daily movements are gripping, and I pretend that I do, too, to keep her happy. As the call dragged on, I glanced at the clock. The chances of getting any meditation done before my boyfriend Daniel arrived were fading fast.
Finally she said she had to go – Coronation Street was about to start. I replaced the receiver with a sigh of relief – duty done for another few days. But before I could relax again, the damned phone rang again.
A strange voice asked to speak to Miss Tabitha Drake. With resignation, I said I was Tabitha Drake and he proceeded to try and persuade me to purchase new windows.
I remembered what Sarah at work told me she used to say to these people. ‘I live in a listed building and I'm not allowed to change the windows. Sorry.’
Luckily for me, the salesman was probably in a call centre in India. While he might have been taught about soap operas so he could make small talk with people in this country, I guess they hadn’t told him that my address is not listed. At least not in a good way. He said he was sorry to have bothered me, and hung up.
How am I supposed to get in touch with my higher self when I can’t prevent the world and his dog from getting in touch with me? I thought, exasperated. I bent down and unplugged the phone from its socket.
I felt a little guilty as I looked at the little plastic plug in my hand. How wrong could that possibly be? I only wanted to finish my meditation in peace. In hindsight, I wonder if the guilt I felt was my psychic sense warning me that I really should be available that night.
As soon as my ten minutes was up, the doorbell rang. It was Daniel, holding a bag of fish and chips. My mouth watered. I wasn't sure whether it was at the sight of him or the smell of the food. I let him in and forgot all about the telephone.
We ate out of the paper, with our fingers, curled up together on the sofa. I hadn't realised how hungry I was, and the floury chips and flaking white fish tasted delicious. Once our hunger for food was sated, hunger for each other took over. We exchanged salty, greasy kisses and made love. This was showing all the signs of being a perfect weekend.
I could not have been more wrong.
I was still basking in a wonderful glow when Daniel stood up, and put his coat on. I frowned at him. ‘I'm off to my brother's now,’ he said.
‘What? You're not staying?’
‘Sorry, I can't, not tonight. Darren's got tickets for the West Ham game in Bristol,’ Daniel said. ‘He lives up near Paddington so I'm staying with him tonight so we can get an early train. That was lovely, by the way, Tabs.’ He gave me a peck on the cheek and opened the front door. ‘I'm not sure what my rota is next week, but if I'm free I'll call you,’ he said.
He closed the door behind him. I picked up a cushion and hurled it at the door. Him and his football. How could he prefer watching twenty-two men chasing a ball around a field to being with me?
I went to bed but tossed and turned for some time. Anger and sleep don't really mix. When I finally drifted off, I had a puzzling dream.
My grandmother was sitting at my kitchen table, wearing an old-fashioned deerstalker hat and doing a jigsaw. It was about half finished; it was a picture of a duck and a swan swimming on a lake.
It struck me as odd, for, although Gran loved puzzles, she hadn’t tackled a jigsaw for several years. Her eyes weren’t what they used to be, and the arthritis in her hands prevented her from handling the small pieces. I’d never seen her wear a hat like that, either, but anything can happen in a dream.
‘Oh, there you are, Tabitha,’ she said, looking up from her task. ‘I don’t have time to finish this. I have to go. You’ll have to finish it for me.’ With that, she got to her feet and walked across the kitchen. I noticed she wasn’t using her stick, which she had needed increasingly of late, and that she carried an overnight bag.
I went to the front door to see her out. She kissed me, and then did something strange. She took off the hat and placed it on my head. ‘I don’t need this where I’m going,’ she said. ‘It’s yours, now. Goodbye, dear.’ She kissed me on the cheek and went outside.
My grandfather's spirit stood on my landing, waiting for her. He nodded to me. Gran went up to him. ‘I’m ready to go now, Bill,’ she said. The two of them linked arms and walked away, without looking back.
I went back inside and looked at the puzzle on my table. There were pieces everywhere, thousands of them, waiting to be placed. It looked terribly complicated. I wasn’t sure I had the time or the patience to finish it, but I didn’t want to break it up and put it back in the box, either.
As I looked, one piece stood out and I could see exactly where it should go - the swan’s eye. I pressed it into place and went back to bed.
Then the phone I’d unplugged sprouted little legs and ran to the socket, plugged itself back in, and promptly started ringing. Only when it did, it made a noise like the doorbell.
I woke up abruptly and realised the doorbell was ringing. I glanced at the clock; it said 7:45. And it was Saturday. I groaned and put the pillow over my head. It must be the postman trying to deliver a packet. I knew by the time I’d located my dressing gown and stumbled to the
door, he’d be gone, leaving a card, meaning I’d have to trek all the way to the sorting office to pick it up, but doing that on another day seemed infinitely preferable to getting out of bed right now and chasing after him.
There was a rat-tat-tat on the letterbox. Not the postman, then. He never tried that hard. Who else could it be at this time on a Saturday?
The bell rang again, long and sustained. Whoever it was wasn’t going to go away. I resigned myself to having to get up, a little frightened now in case it was the police or something. As I hauled myself out of bed and pulled my robe on, I could see someone peering through the letterbox and I was glad my bed wasn’t in plain sight of it.
‘Tabitha? Tabitha, love? Are you there? It’s Dad. Answer the door, please.’
My heart sank. I was in big trouble now. Mum must have thought of another reason to ring me after her first frantic call. Having got no answer or worse, an unattainable, this-phone-has-been-plugged-out tone, she would have started pacing the floor imagining murderers getting into my flat and yanking the phone from the wall before strangling me with the wires.
Dad would have tried to calm her down, suggesting there was a fault on the line. Mum would have phoned the operator and been told there was no fault, but the number she was trying to reach had been disconnected.
They would both have paced the floor worrying and the minute it got light (Dad would never drive in the dark, not even to escape a disaster or to rescue me from murderers) he was in the car on his way to check up on me. I knew what I was going to get now. How dare I unplug my phone? They’d been worried sick, what if there was an emergency and they needed to contact me? I’d have to phone Mum to apologise and get the same lecture, word for word, from her, then I’d feel obliged to spend Sunday with them to make up for being so inconsiderate. If my sister Caroline happened to show up, I’d get the lecture a third time.
There was no escaping it. I opened the door and Dad, looking tired and haggard, almost fell through it. ‘Oh, Tabitha, thank God you’re here. We’ve been trying you all night.’
‘I’m fine, Dad,’ I said, feeling more and more annoyed. ‘I unplugged my phone because I was being plagued by junk callers.’
‘Well, you stopped us getting through, too. You should have thought about that. We’ve been ringing and ringing and I’ve had to leave your mother at the hospital and come and find you.’
My irritation vanished and I went cold instead. ‘Mum’s in hospital? What happened?’
‘Your mum’s fine. It’s your gran. She had a massive stroke in the night. Good job she had that emergency call button put in - she managed to get to it before she passed out. The hospital called us. They didn’t think she’d last the night. It’s not looking good, anyhow. Caroline and Mum are with her. We thought you’d want to be there, too.’
I felt numb. Now I knew why I’d felt such misgivings about unplugging the phone. I should have heeded them. Gran needed me, and I wasn’t there. I dressed quickly and went with Dad.
As we drove to the hospital, Dad didn’t speak. I had a dozen questions about what had happened, but his silence was too thick and oppressive to allow me to voice them. Instead, I sat nervously in the passenger seat, smelling the familiar aroma of tobacco smoke and leather masked with a sweet, sickly air freshener. Dad gripped the steering wheel tightly, whether from anxiety at having to cope with Central London traffic, or fury at me for making this journey necessary, I wasn’t quite sure.
**
‘If you’re as psychic as you say you are, Tabitha,’ my sister Caroline said scornfully when we arrived at the hospital, ‘you would have been here much sooner. You’re too late, now, anyway. Gran died an hour ago.’
I struggled to comprehend my sister’s words. Gran was dead? Gran, who had nurtured my psychic abilities when everyone else in the family saw it as a sign of madness. Gran, who had given me tea and cookies and assured me I was not only perfectly sane but very special. Okay, so Gran had arthritis, could barely see to read and had to use a stick and a stair lift to get upstairs - but none of the chronic conditions she’d suffered from had been life threatening. This couldn’t be happening. It had to be some sort of joke - but this was my family. They don’t do jokes. It was real.
‘Where have you been?’ asked my mother. ‘We were trying to call you all night.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I unplugged my phone.’
‘What on earth did you do that for?’ Caroline asked. Caroline, who had a phone extension in every room of her flat, including the toilet, at least three mobiles and a Blackberry, could not understand that not everyone wants to be contactable all of the time, like she does.
‘I was trying to meditate,’ I explained, even though I knew Caroline would never understand. ‘I couldn’t because I kept getting people calling me trying to sell me double glazing. So I plugged it out, and I forgot to plug it back in.’
‘You forgot. Well, we were frantic with worry when we couldn’t get through to you,’ my mother said. ‘Meditating, indeed. Head in the clouds, as usual.’
‘You could have turned your mobile on at least,’ Caroline said, huffily. ‘I spent an absolute fortune on that birthday present and you never have the damn thing switched on.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘But I turn it off when I go the cinema and then forget about it until I want to use it.’
‘You always were a scatterbrain,’ said my mother. ‘How could you forget to plug your phone back in?’
The last thing I wanted to do was explain why I had forgotten. I was thankful, for once, for Daniel’s football obsession. If not for that, Dad would have discovered him naked in my bed. I said nothing.
‘We need to be able to contact you, darling,’ my mother went on in a softer, but still admonishing voice. ‘Not only now, but I need to be able to call you to check you’re all right when I hear there’s been another one of these murders in London. They’re saying it’s a serial killer. I worry about you every day.’
‘Of course, if you listened to the news you’d know about the murders and know to ring home so we know you’re okay,’ said Caroline.
‘I’m sorry, but I’ve got better things to do than get terminally depressed by the state of the world every day,’ I countered. ‘And I'm twenty-three, for goodness' sake! I'm not a little kid.’
‘Stop it, all of you!’ My dad rarely raises his voice, so when he does, we all stop and listen. ‘Maggie died less than two hours ago and you’re standing here bickering about telephones!’
We fell silent, except for my little sister Amber, who started to cry.
I hadn't noticed her there until now. I forgot sometimes that I wasn't the youngest anymore. When I left home, Amber had been a chubby toddler, my mother’s inconvenient change of life baby who’d cried all night when I needed to get plenty of sleep before my exams.
Amber had grown into a beautiful child, a little red haired angel. Mum had joked as soon as the ginger down began to appear on Amber’s head that she finally had the set. Caroline’s hair was blonde, mine was jet black and Amber’s was red.
Mum gathered Amber into her arms and cuddled her. I so wanted to tell Amber that our grandmother wasn't just dead, as Mum was sure to tell her, but had gone to a different and better world. I knew Mum and Caroline would only shout me down, and it would have to wait until I had Amber alone - except that never, ever happened.
Caroline smoothed her still pristine grey suit skirt and picked a piece of red fluff off her starched white blouse with perfectly manicured, square tipped nails. She would have received the call while still at her office, working late, as I knew she did most evenings, and would have rushed straight to the hospital to be with Mum. Although they had been here for most of the night, Caroline still managed to look as if she was on her way to an interview.
‘Do you want to see her, love?’ Dad asked me, gently. ‘Say your goodbyes?’
I hesitated. Although I could communicate with dead people in spirit form - when it suited them, I
might add, rather than when it suited me, I had never actually seen a dead body before, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Especially not someone I had known and loved.
‘Yes, you can go in and see her, the doctor said,’ Mum said, stroking Amber’s red curls.
‘You should,’ Caroline said, firmly. ‘Seeing as you weren’t here when - you know.’
I looked at the closed door behind which my beloved grandmother lay dead. It had a frosted opaque glass panel - I was thankful that I couldn’t see what was in there. The door was pale blue with a metal handle. All I had to do was reach out, turn the handle and go in. I could hear my blood pounding inside my head and was acutely conscious of the antiseptic hospital smell, the bleach and polish masking an underlying stench which could only be the smell of death.
I could feel the heat of the fluorescent light above me. My palms were damp with nervous sweat. I didn’t want to enter that room. I dreaded what I would see. Yet I felt my family’s eyes boring into the back of my head, silently telling me that this was the only way to atone for my failure.
With a deep breath, I took a step forward and reached for the handle.
I wondered briefly why the floor seemed to be rushing up to meet me.
The next thing I knew I was sitting on a chair in a small, darkened room with my head between my legs. A woman with fat ankles and sensible shoes was sitting beside me, holding my head in one hand and a metal bowl in the other. She smelled of rose water. I struggled to sit up.
‘Take it easy, now,’ the woman said. ‘Not too fast.’
‘What?’ I mumbled. The room was swaying drunkenly; I had to close my eyes to stave off the nausea.