by Sam Hayes
‘Anyone home?’
An old woman was suddenly there, materialising from nowhere and holding a laundry basket. They stared at each other, perfectly still, each sizing up the other. Robert saw someone’s wife, perhaps married for decades, her weary body resigned to pegging out the washing and dishing up pie and chips for the rest of her life before she died unnoticed in an old people’s home. Her skin carried a light sheen of grease as if she was sweating and her eyes, probably once blue, looked as if they had cried too many times and the colour had been washed out.
The old woman would have seen a stranger on her doorstep, a threat. Robert slid his sunglasses up onto his head.
‘Mrs Wystrach?’ Robert said finally, not sure if he had pronounced the name correctly. The woman barely nodded. ‘Would you have a few minutes? I’d like to speak to you about something important.’ The woman frowned, glanced at Louisa who stood behind Robert, and became agitated, the expression on her lined face showing fear. ‘Something interesting, actually,’ Robert added, like a stranger would offer sweets to a child.
‘Wait,’ she snapped and pushed the back door to, slipping into the darkness of the house. A moment later she returned with a big man, also old and also frowning. He filled the entire space in the doorway, looming over Robert in height because of the six-inch doorstep.
‘Good morning.’ Robert held out his hand and heard Louisa clear her throat. ‘I’m Robert Knight. I’d like to ask you some questions if you have time.’ The big man finally took his hand. It was a suspicious handshake, too frail for a man of that size, Robert thought, and his skin didn’t seem to have a temperature. ‘May I come in?’ The two faces continued to stare at them, their eyes flicking between Robert and the silent Louisa, the woman still pressing the basket of laundry against her hip.
Finally, the man moved aside, nodded and beckoned Robert into the gloom of their kitchen, which had the decor and furniture of the 1960s. The four of them stood around a pale blue Formica table. Mrs Wystrach placed the basket on the floor and adjusted her floral skirt. Robert focused his attention as if he were in court and preparing to cross-examine a witness. He saw the pilling on her grey short-sleeved sweater, the slight stain on her apron, her yellow-grey hair tucked back at her nape and an array of age spots on her cheeks as if someone had spilled tea on her face. He desperately searched for something that would link her to Erin, to Ruby, to the missing past of his wife that he longed to know.
The woman reminded him of nothing, of no one.
‘Are you the police?’ The man’s voice was weighed down with accent.
‘No, not at all. I wanted to show you this.’ Robert unfurled his left hand to expose the locket. It shone in his palm, casting an aura of wonder and shock over the old couple. The woman gasped and steadied herself on the back of a chair. The big man said nothing but Robert noticed his succession of swallows, didn’t miss it when his neck stiffened and his hands balled. Sweat beads erupted on his floury scalp.
‘Do you recognise it?’ Despite his recent assessment of the old woman, Robert already knew the answer. A pulse of hope quickened his heart and then slowed again as he checked himself. Even if the pair recognised the locket, it still didn’t prove it was anything to do with Erin.
‘Edyta,’ the woman whispered. The name seemed to summon spirits from another time, such was the atmosphere in the kitchen.
Robert prised the locket open and the woman slapped one hand over her mouth and crossed herself with the other when she saw the faded photograph. The man turned away and grunted but Robert knew he had seen. He could tell by the sudden prominence of the veins on the old man’s neck.
‘Mr Wystrach?’ He was guessing that was his name. ‘Do you know the woman in this picture?’
He didn’t reply but turned off the radio instead.
‘Of course he does.’ The old woman approached Robert for a closer look. She wiped a finger under her eye. ‘It’s his mother. Edyta Wystrach. She’s dead now.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘She was old and—’
‘Where did you get this?’ The old man’s accent thickened with anger and volume powering it. He banged his already tight fists onto the table.
‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’ Robert took a step back. ‘I didn’t realise your mother was dead.’
‘It’s not the photo of his mother that’s bothering him.’ Mrs Wystrach shrugged and reached for the kettle. She filled it and lit the stove. She seemed resigned, as if something they had been waiting for all their lives had arrived as casually as a letter on the doormat. ‘It’s the locket that my husband’s curious about.’
‘Go on.’ Robert held it out to the rigid man. ‘Take it. Have a look.’
‘Or should I say, he’s bothered by where it’s come from. Who it’s come from.’ Mrs Wystrach wiped her hands down her apron. ‘It was Ruth’s, you see.’
TWENTY-TWO
When Andy left, I knew I’d got what I deserved. Loneliness, misery, desolation and a vat of thick, stinking guilt in which to bathe – when I could be bothered. The sun never shone in my new world and days would pass when I wouldn’t speak to a single soul. Except Natasha’s soul, that is. I found myself offering her occasional words, like sorry or I love you, but she never replied. She just left me a tingle in the core of my spine and a whisper of cold air on my neck. For a time, that was enough.
After a while, I began writing letters to her. They’re all in the Natasha box up in the loft. But it still didn’t feel as if I was connecting with my baby and so strong was the desire to make contact that I went to see a psychic woman. She’d been advertising in our area for a few weeks. Make contact with lost loved ones. It seemed appropriate.
When I telephoned Madame Luna, she invited me for an appointment at her little semi-detached house across the other side of town. I took a bus and twenty-five pounds and a notebook and pencil to write down what she said. She led me upstairs and into a bedroom that was decorated like the inside of a gypsy’s tent. It was all red and purple and gold silk and candles burned everywhere. There was a small table with a crystal ball on it and a chair positioned each side. She told me to sit down. Madame Luna was fat and looked like a man but she changed my life.
‘Someone precious is trying to contact you,’ she said with a husky voice and I fell into her black eyes, desperate to be reunited with Natasha. Her hands hovered around the glass ball and I swear I saw shards of light crackling between her palms and the afterlife. I began to cry. ‘She says don’t be sad or she’ll cry too.’
‘She?’ I asked.
‘There’s a little girl wanting to make contact. A little girl who loves you very much.’
As soon as my body stiffened, the instant my pupils dilated, the very second that sweat erupted on my top lip, Madame Luna sank her tendrils into my fragile body like the quick-growing roots of a pernicious weed. Later I would learn she was just doing her job.
‘How old is she?’ I asked.
‘Two, perhaps three.’
My body relaxed with disappointment.
‘Although, wait . . .’ Madame Luna stared at me, agonised over the crystal ball, studied the minute muscle tremors that danced beneath my clothing like a biography. She understood the whiff of hope on each of my exhaled breaths. ‘I think maybe younger, older . . .’ I must have signalled unconsciously because she suddenly exclaimed, ‘This is a very young child. A baby, I think.’
I didn’t care that she was asking me, not telling me. I nodded frantically, releasing Madame Luna into revealing a frenzy of facts, some close to the truth, some so far removed I ignored them. I learned that Natasha was in heaven and that she loved me and forgave me and would talk to me every time I came to see Madame Luna and paid her for the privilege.
Before I left, my eyes hot from crying, Madame Luna made the mistake of telling me that I was a very intuitive person, possibly even psychic myself. Perhaps it was her way of ensuring I came back for another appointment, to make me feel special, to flatt
er her way into my trust.
Instead, she set me on the path to clairvoyance and, before long, I had placed an advertisement in the local shop window promoting my services. Within a week I had three clients of my own and I finally felt I was doing something useful while at the same time remaining close to Natasha.
I’m not really psychic. I simply have an ability to see the thread of sadness stitched into so many lives. With a gentle tug, everyone will unravel.
Sarah is visiting me today. She’s two hours late. I’m fretting now and don’t like the vein on my temple bulging and pulsing in time with every second she’s not with me.
Perhaps she’s had her baby and not bothered to tell me. I couldn’t bear it if I didn’t get to see the little thing, couldn’t stand to miss out on pressing my nose against its neck and nibbling its fingernails short when they get too long. ‘Don’t let me down, Sarah,’ I call out, one minute checking on the cakes I have baking for our tea and the next sticking my head out of the front door and peering up and down the street.
I am briefly halted by the line of sunlight that dares to enter my house through the open door. It’s like a bridge from my gloom to the place where Natasha and all babies live. I stare up at the sky and wonder what would happen if I crossed the bridge. I know I will get my baby back.
As the months turned into years, my contact with PC Miranda Hobbs and Detective Inspector George Lumley transformed into an annual update. An update of nothing. Natasha minus three years and they officially put the file into the hopeless pile.
In a way, it was a relief; a signal to move on and forget my baby. They didn’t bother me again with accusing questions about wool and cakes, realising that they’d taken a wrong turn. I tried hard to get on with my life. I dragged my memories around like a dead weight attached to my ankle, hindering me wherever I went, whatever I did.
Each time I passed the local playgroup on the way to the shops, I pretended that I was going to fetch Natasha, that she would come running up to me with a wet painting or a monster made out of loo roll tubes and empty cereal packets. I saw all the other mothers standing there, waiting for their darlings, and wondered what would happen if I just stepped inside the gates to see if there was a spare child. But I never did. I always walked on by.
My divorce from Andy was swift and cracked my life like scored glass. Finally, everything had gone. I immersed myself in my new career, building up a regular bank of desperate clients all wanting to fondle their sadness, unable to let go. That was why I was so good at what I claimed to be: I couldn’t let go either. Easily I wrapped my finger round their threads of misery, each time tugging a little harder, each time taking their twenty-five pounds, paying my mortgage, feeding on their grief.
I made quite a name for myself. I even got asked to have a stall at the school fête, now an annual booking, and I did an interview on the local radio station and regularly wrote columns for magazines. I began to work the pub circuit, and still do, hosting psychic evenings with other local mystics and healers. The punters queue up for their drinks and then queue up to see me. I tell them what they want to hear, pressing on the truth by clever deduction rather than super powers. I know I’m a fake, I know I’m a fraud but sometimes I get that feeling that something big is about to happen, something so life-changing that all I can do is gawp. Like I am now.
When Sarah doesn’t come, when the bridge of sunlight has shrivelled behind the row of houses opposite, when the cakes have sunk and dried, I get changed ready for my evening at the Stag’s Head.
The first Saturday of every month they buy a ticket and line up to have their fortunes told. I try not to let my anger influence what I say but I might not be able to resist predicting a little tragedy or disappointment for one or two of them. I snap the curtains closed against the street, even though it stays light until nearly ten o’clock, even though I like passers-by to get a glimpse of my solitude. I don’t want Sarah peeking in if she decides to come knocking later. I wouldn’t want her to see the baby basket I bought for her all tied up with ribbon and filled with tiny velvet sleep suits laid out as a surprise. I’d feel silly if she knew that I’d redecorated the back bedroom, Natasha’s old nursery, in modern pastel colours and bought a lamp with rabbits on the shade and shifted the box of toys down from the loft that Sheila so speedily packed away when my baby was lost. Before I go out, I drop to the floor and hold all the new baby things to my face, crying and laughing at the same time.
The Stag’s Head is already full. It hums with loud conversation, punctuated by an occasional peel of laughter, and reeks of smoke and beer and hope. I greet the landlord through the layers of punters at the bar and he rushes me through to the usual room out the back where three other clairvoyants are already doing their trade. It’s as if he can’t hold back the hordes any longer, all desperate to touch the other side of life.
But apart from the usual mêlée of clients, who get to see me for only ten pounds if they buy two adult meals at the bar, I sense that there’s something else waiting for my attention. A rather more pressing matter than making contact with long-dead aunts or delving into the minutiae of someone’s hopeless future. I’m getting that feeling, and I don’t like it one bit, that something is about to happen. I think of Sarah and her baby. I look at my watch and then at the face of my first client as she sits down at my stall. I wonder what to tell her as I am heaped with a fear that has absolutely nothing to do with this woman.
‘Hi,’ she says but I don’t answer. I stare at my upturned palms stretched out on the purple cloth covering the table. The lines are strawberry-coloured against the paleness of my skin, each one a map of truth or lies. I remember Sarah laughing, studying them and pretending to tell my fortune, predicting I was going to have a baby. And it is then, just as I look up, that I catch the eye of a stranger staring at me from beside the bar, slowly sipping his pint.
TWENTY-THREE
Robert and Louisa watched the old woman clattering about making tea. The Wystrach kitchen smelled of disinfectant and a faint tang of gas. When the tea was made and she had completed what seemed to be a sacred tray-laying ritual, Mrs Wystrach guided the pair through to the living room, while her husband carried the tray. Robert and Louisa sat beside each other on the edge of a floral sofa. They were offered a bitter orange brew in a rattling cup and saucer.
‘Have you lived here long?’ Robert didn’t really care. He simply wanted to know about the photograph in the locket, weigh up the possibility of a link to his wife and then get the hell out of the depressing house. Neither of the old couple answered his question.
‘Tell me where you got this.’ The old man creaked to his full height, which was impressive, and dangled the locket in front of Robert as if trying to hypnotise the unwelcome visitors into telling the truth.
‘It belongs to my stepdaughter,’ Robert said honestly and with a tone that he would use for particularly mistrusting clients. He offered a reassuring smile and reached up for the item but the old man jerked it out of the way. The locket spun on its chain, glinting in the morning sun filtering through the grubby net curtains. Robert took a sip of his tea, winced and noticed a tear beading in the corner Mrs Wystrach’s eye. A car cruised along the street. ‘Who is Ruth?’ he asked. ‘You said the locket belonged to Ruth.’ A faint trail of exhaust filtered through the open window.
Again, silence, but Mr Wystrach lowered himself back into the chair next to his wife. It creaked under his weight. The couple bowed towards each other, their shoulders touching, their united frailty showing.
‘Ruth was our daughter,’ Mrs Wystrach said, looking at her husband, perhaps for permission, when she spoke.
‘Is our daughter,’ the old man growled. A tiny muscle twitched beneath his eye.
‘I’m not sure I understand.’ Louisa’s crystal voice cut a line through the heavy air. ‘Is, was?’
Mrs Wystrach touched her husband’s knee with her bony hand and when she replied, her accent made her sound as if she needed to clear her
throat. There was great sadness in her voice, the pain transcending language. ‘After all these years, I believe Ruth must be dead.’
‘No!’ Her husband exploded into full height again. ‘Ruth is alive.’ It seemed as if there was more the man wanted to say but the words choked his throat, clogging it up with fear, sadness and desperation.
‘If she’s alive, perhaps Ruth would like the locket back.’ Robert spoke gently, familiar with the art of eking out information, although he wasn’t convinced it would lead them anywhere useful or that it had anything to do with Erin. ‘I’m sure my wife and daughter would like to see it returned to its rightful owner.’
Another long period of silence. Robert heard kids playing in the street and wondered why they weren’t at school. The steady thud-thud of a ball repeatedly bounced on hot tarmac and the piercing wail of a toddler followed by a raised adult voice alarmed him so that he strained to see into the street. The warm summer air transformed mundane noises into tantalising sound bites. There was a whiff of burnt toast and then fumes as another car with a throaty exhaust chugged past the open window. Mrs Wystrach’s greying nets billowed in the summer breeze and Robert thought that the old couple had died in their seats, such was their inertness.
‘Is it possible to locate Ruth, to return the locket to her?’ As if a switch had been flicked, Mrs Wystrach leaned forward, her gaze dancing cautiously around the room. Her eyes narrowed to slits and her thin lips disappeared as they stretched over her teeth.
‘You won’t find Ruth. Everyone’s tried.’ A glance at her husband brought him back to life also and he nodded in agreement. ‘Ruth’s gone, you see. Vanished.’ The old woman gestured a mini-explosion with her hands and puffed air out of her cheeks.