My Second Life

by Faye Bird

  Yesterday, 3 p.m.

  And an icon indicating there was a new voice mail.

  “Ana? Did you hear me?”

  “Yup. That’s fine,” I said.

  “I’ll meet you at the school gates. We’ll walk to the crêperie together. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, and she hung up.

  I deleted the voice mail and turned her phone off, dropping it in my bag as I closed the front door behind me.

  * * *

  The local library was not like the school library. It smelled damp. It was muffled in every way—muffled noise, muffled people in muffled coats. It personified hush. The school library was bright and light, and full of computers.

  I had no idea where to start. I went up to the desk and asked the librarian if she could help me. She sighed, set down her pen and said, “Come with me.”

  I followed her as she padded across the spongy carpet into a back room with three computers. They looked like ancient relics.

  “All our archived periodicals are stored here. You’ve got your library number?”

  I gave her Rachel’s card. I’d taken it out of the kitchen drawer before I left. She plugged in the number across the card with her right hand and pushed her glasses up over her nose with her left simultaneously.

  “It’s pretty simple. You put in some key words … here … Use this scroll button here … to search through what comes up … Click into the record or report you wish to view. You can’t take copies but you can make a note of the document number that comes up … here … And then you can always come back and go straight to it if you need to refer to it again.” Every time she said the word “here” she pointed with a slightly arthritic finger, paused heavily, and looked at me seriously through her smeary glasses.

  When she left, I was relieved. I took my coat off and started.

  42 The Avenue.

  Nothing. Of course. I wasn’t sure why I’d plugged that in first.

  I started again.

  Drowning.

  Hundreds of references came up in twenty-eight separate publications. I started to look through the first few. Nothing relevant. Anywhere the word “drowning” or “drown” occurred in any local newspaper or publication from the time records began seemed to be logged here.

  The council offices are drowning in applications for …

  Dog drowns after swimming in high river tides …

  “Drowned Rats” was the caption under a photograph from 1967 of a group of pensioners who were all soaked by a new sprinkler system set up in a care home in Richmond.

  I realized I could literally spend the next five days of my life in this room if I was going to get anywhere. I needed to narrow the search.

  Catherine Wells, Drowning.

  Typing it out, seeing her name like that in black and white, made it feel so real again. I could see her face opposite mine, the crowns of our heads gently touching as I bent down to help her put on her shoes in the hall. Frances was laughing in the other room, and then she came out and she told us to hurry up so we could go out to play before it got dark. And we went. But I didn’t want to go at all.

  The computer churned through the records, and five publications came up from my search. The third report from the local newspaper—the Teddington Times dated Monday, September 28, 1981—told me all I needed to know:

  Catherine Wells, aged six years, daughter of Frances and Alfred Wells (deceased), was found dead in the River Thames close to Teddington on Saturday, September 26. A citizen reportedly discovered the child’s body in the water around 8:15 Saturday evening and immediately called the emergency services. Catherine Wells was pronounced dead at the riverside at 8:52 p.m.

  Catherine was playing on the common land known locally as the Green in front of her home on The Avenue earlier that evening with another child, who is believed to be a family friend. The child, who cannot be named for legal reasons, will continue to be questioned by police today. Her family, who was attending a party in the street at the time, was not available for comment.

  Police are asking anyone who may have seen the two girls playing out on the Green or by the Thames on Saturday evening between the hours of 5:30 and 8:15 to come forward with information.

  Detective Inspector Dyer of the Metropolitan Police, who is leading the investigation, said, “Catherine Wells was not reported missing on the day of her death, and it is therefore crucial to our investigation to ascertain exactly what happened to her between the hours of 5:30 and 8:15 p.m. when her body was discovered.”

  I must have read it five times, maybe ten. It was front-page news, staring back at me in black and white. It wasn’t some image or memory from inside my head. It was confirmation—in print. It was what had happened in my first life. And yet still, it gave me nothing of what I needed to know. It didn’t tell me what I had done. I’d been playing on the Green. I remembered Frances telling us to go out and play. But a party? Being questioned by police? You’d have thought I would have remembered some or all of that. But I didn’t.

  I closed my eyes to try to think.

  All I could feel was guilt. I was covered in it, immersed; like I was standing in a pool of wet and sloppy algae, it clung on to me, and I could do nothing but cling on to it. And I saw the bows, the tartan bows, as they kept slipping in Catherine’s hair, sliding down from the top of her head until they were swinging around, nipping the back of her ears as she ran.

  “We’re going to the river, Catherine. We’ll play hide-and-seek by the river.”

  That’s what I’d said to her. Because I wanted her to go and hide so I didn’t have to play with her anymore. I wanted my dad. I wanted to play with my dad. I wanted him to come and play like he’d said he would. I didn’t want Catherine. I wanted Catherine gone.

  I went back into the main part of the library and found a free computer with Internet access and started typing.

  The Avenue, Teddington.

  There it was. I could see it on the map. A stripe of black for the road, blue for the river, and a strip of green for the Green in between. It was so close. I reckoned I could walk to it easily from the library in under an hour.

  I memorized the route.

  “Find what you needed?” asked the librarian as I walked past the desk, like she was interested all of a sudden.

  “Yes,” I said as I walked through the heavy wooden doors out into the street. “Yes, I did.”

  I was going to The Avenue. I was going back to the place where it happened. I was going to see it. The Avenue. And I hoped that when I saw it, I might remember what I had done.

  8

  I FOUND THE AVENUE within forty minutes of leaving the library. It was about an hour’s walk from where I lived now with Rachel. It was absolutely mind-breaking to think that I lived so close to it. To think that out of the infinite number of places in this vast world, I had been born a second time, here again—so close to where I’d lived before.

  I stood in the road looking at a row of twenty or so large redbrick houses that stood opposite a piece of common land. This was the place I had remembered. The Avenue. I turned to look at the Green. There were trees and long grasses, and as I looked around me I swear I couldn’t be completely sure whose life I was living.

  I didn’t move.

  I could sense the water. The river. I looked over toward the willow trees on the other side of the Green. They all seemed to respond to my arrival, moving roughly in a sudden gust of cool wind. I pulled my arms into myself.

  I was frightened. Why was I here? Why was this happening to me?

  I stepped onto the grass, walked over to an old oak tree, and leaned against it. I recognized the raised and battered roots at my feet. I’d jumped over them time and time again; I’d run around them—they were as familiar to me as an old pair of shoes.

  I looked at the houses again.

  I couldn’t see the numbers on the houses.

  I started to walk across the Green toward the road so I could see the houses and their numbe
rs. I was looking for Frances’s house. For number 42.

  And then I saw it. The patterned tile, the red numbers. The swirls and curls. 42. It was just as I’d remembered it. Had nothing changed? Was it all as it had been before, when I had done something so wrong—here, in this exact place? There had to be a reason why I was here again. There had to be a reason.

  My phone rang.

  It made me jump.

  It wasn’t a number I knew.

  I answered anyway.

  “Where are you?” Rachel’s voice was short and urgent. “I’m at the crêperie. They’ve let me use their phone. I couldn’t find you outside school.”

  I looked at my watch. It was 12:40 p.m.

  “On my way…,” I said.

  “Don’t be long.”

  “Ten minutes,” I said, and I started to run.

  * * *

  When I got to the crêperie I was completely out of breath. Rachel sat at a table looking at the menu, which was pretty pointless because she always had the same thing—ham and cheese. I stood outside for a moment with my hand on the door to try to still my breath a little before I stepped inside.

  “Hi!” I sat down.

  “Have a look, see what you want to have,” Rachel said, pushing the menu toward me. She didn’t smile. I could tell she was cross. I was so late.

  “So, what are you going to have?” Rachel asked.

  “Not sure. I’m just looking.”

  “Have you got the phone?”

  “Oh, yes,” I said, leaning down to grab my bag off the floor.

  I passed it to her. “Battery was low so I turned it off.” It struck me I should have checked the phone again before handing it over. Too late.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll order. What will you have?”

  “Chocolate and caramel.”

  “For lunch?” she said, raising her eyebrows. “Well, okay. Just this once.”

  She looked down, turned her phone on, and took it with her to the counter.

  I looked around. Loads of the kids from school came here. Jamie too. I scanned the room to see if he was here. He wasn’t. But when I thought about the fact that he might walk in at any minute I felt nervous. Good nervous. When I looked over at Rachel and saw she was on her phone I felt nervous too, in a totally different way.

  “So how was your morning?” Rachel said, coming back to the table with the crepes and two big mugs of tea on a tray. Her voice was flat, her eyes were wide open, searching me.

  “Fine.”

  “School okay?”

  “I…”

  “You haven’t been in!” she said, holding her phone up. “I’ve just picked up a message from the school. Apparently they left me a message yesterday too? You walked out of math yesterday morning and you haven’t been in school since. You lied to me, Ana,” she said. “I can’t believe you did that!”

  “I was sick. I’m fine now,” I said. I didn’t feel fine now, but I couldn’t tell her that. I had to pretend.

  “Sick because you ditched school and you thought I’d find out, or actually sick?”

  “I was sick, yesterday … you know that—” I could hardly get a word in among hers.

  “The school said you left before lunch. That you went to the bathroom and never came back to class.”

  “I forgot to sign out. I just needed to—”

  “And today? Why wouldn’t you just tell me if you were sick? Where have you been today? What’s going on?”

  “Look … it’s nothing. I’m okay—”

  “What if something had happened to you? No one knew where you were!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, fixing my eyes on the table. “I’m sorry, okay?” I didn’t say it like I meant it, but I did say it. And when she didn’t come straight back at me, I looked up. Her eyes were red and wet and she was squeezing a paper napkin from the table into the palm of her hand. It was screwed up into a tight ball. She was trying not to cry. She was mad with me. She was right to be mad with me. And there was something in her anger and distress that was familiar—too familiar—and I knew that I didn’t want to make her feel like this.

  I reached over and grabbed her hand. “I’ve been stupid. I’m sorry.”

  She took her hand back and straightened out the napkin, smoothing it flat on the table between us. She sighed before she spoke again.

  “Grillie called last night,” she said.

  “How is she?” I asked, relieved at the change of subject.

  “She’s fine, but she wanted me to talk to you because she’s had a call from someone called Frances Wells.”

  I picked up my tea and nodded. I tried to hide behind the mug. I could feel myself getting hotter, my face turning red.

  “Apparently you went to see this Frances Wells? At the hospital?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I did.”

  “Can I ask why you did that?”

  I went to open my mouth, but I didn’t know what to say.

  “This woman said to Grillie that your visit rather upset her.”

  “So, Frances—she talked to Grillie?” I said.

  “Yes. They’d swapped numbers at the hospital, so they could play bridge.”

  “I didn’t realize—”

  “What?”

  “That they were in touch.”

  “Does it matter, Ana?”

  I didn’t want Grillie talking to Frances. I didn’t want Grillie to know about me. I didn’t want Rachel to know anything. They couldn’t know. Panic started to course through me, fast, like rapids over rocks.

  “Why did you visit her in hospital, Ana? What’s going on?”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “What did you say to her, Ana?”

  “I saw her—when I went to visit Grillie,” I said. “And she seemed lonely and—I don’t know—Grillie said she didn’t have any visitors—”

  “You went and asked her about her dead daughter?” Rachel said.

  My ears started to make a rushing sound, like I was going to faint. I looked at the table and held on to it, to steady myself. I was hot, all over. I thought I might break into a sweat, and the rushing was still rising in my ears.

  “I didn’t mean to upset her,” I whispered. “I’m sorry I did that. Really. I am.”

  “What’s going on with you at the moment, Ana? Walking out of school, visiting people you don’t know, old women who’ve had enough upset in their lives without you quizzing them about it all. I just don’t get it. It worries me, Ana. What’s going on?”

  Rachel’s face was so close to me now, her whole body leaned forward toward me across the table like she was begging me for an answer, and her words kept coming, questioning me, asking me for answers. But I had none. Her eyes were so small with the worry and the tears, but I couldn’t answer her—I had no answers.

  “You wouldn’t understand!” I said. I didn’t mean to say it quite like I did, or so loud, and I pushed back my chair so that I could leave. It fell back and hit the floor with an almighty smack. The room went quiet.

  I stood there for a moment, just looking at Rachel.

  And then I walked out, and as I walked up the street the air began to cool my face, and all I could think about was how Rachel didn’t know anything about me. She thought she did, but she didn’t. She didn’t know anything at all. Not one single little thing.

  9

  I WENT INTO SCHOOL after I left the crêperie, but only because I had to. I didn’t know whether Rachel would back me up with a sick note or whether she’d let me face the school sanctions, but either way I knew I just had to go in.

  As I crossed the courtyard to go to registration I felt a hand on my book bag, pulling me back. I turned around to see who it was.

  “Hey, Ana!” It was Jamie.

  I couldn’t stop myself smiling when I saw him. How did just seeing him make me do that? I felt instantly better.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  “Good,” he said. “Beca
use I was going to ask if you’re around this weekend. Zak’s parents are away. He’s having a gathering…”

  “A gathering?”

  “Yeah—he doesn’t want to call it a party, otherwise word will get around.”

  “Okay.”

  “So I’ll call you and maybe we can go—you and me—to Zak’s. Or do something.”

  The thought of Jamie kissing me flittered through my mind quickly, like a bird caught in flight on the wind. I was lifted warmly with the idea of it.

  “Ana?” he said.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but I didn’t get the words out quick enough.

  “Well, just think about it, yeah?” Jamie said to fill the pause, and suddenly he looked embarrassed, awkward. I knew it was a big thing that he’d asked, and I’d messed up. I’d totally messed up.

  He walked away, taking out his phone and his tangled mass of headphones, leaving me standing in the courtyard alone as everyone else walked by to head in for registration. I watched him go among the crowd until he disappeared completely out of sight, and I wondered then whether the feeling I had in that moment of his going—the push and pull of it: the joy of his asking and the despair that I’d messed up—was something like the beginning of love.

  * * *

  I made it through the afternoon, but only just. All I wanted to do was sleep. To get back into my bed and curl up like I’d done the night before. To shut out the world. I didn’t take my eyes off the clock the whole way through history, and when the bell went for the end of the day all I felt was relief.

  I stood up, stuffed my books in my bag, and headed out. I didn’t want to go home yet. I couldn’t. I’d have to face Rachel, and apologize for the way I’d spoken to her in the crêperie. I knew I owed her an explanation, but I didn’t know what I would say. So I just kept walking. I wasn’t sure exactly where I was going, I just had to get away from school, from home, from Jamie. I didn’t want to see him now either. I’d messed everything up. I’d have to text him and find a way to make it okay again. The thing was I really wanted to go to Zak’s gathering on Saturday, but I wasn’t sure that Rachel would let me after today. I couldn’t ask her until I’d made things better with her. I had to make things better. And then I’d tell Jamie I could go with him to the party. I kept walking. I’d walked in the direction of The Avenue. I hadn’t made any big decision to come. I just knew I wanted to see it again, to see if something else came to me. And of course no one would be looking for me here. No one.