‘But he did. He did know — he knew that there was a man in the forest before anyone did. And he’s not been down there; you know that.’
‘You said you heard your Uncle Davey say he saw a plane. Maybe Billy did too and he made up another story that just happened to be true.’
‘And what about those stories?’
‘He’s always told them,’ said James. ‘He’s always been a daydreamer.’
‘Like the one he told in the chicken shed? All that stuff about…you know…men and women…that didn’t sound like a little boy.’
James looked over at the silhouette of his brother against the wet window pane. It was true that he had always told stories. He had had an imaginary friend called Kushi from the age of two who, James was glad to see, had not followed them to Lasswick. He had always told stories about other people’s lives — places and events that were beyond him, mostly in the past, but sometimes in strange and far-off times that seemed to be like their own but somehow inflated or flipped into fantasy, with odd names for things and brighter lights and larger buildings. His mother had put it down to an overactive imagination, and told James that anything that made his brother happy was to be tolerated. He had gone along with this as far as possible. But now things had changed. Billy’s imagination wasn’t just overactive any more — it had taken him over. He had been getting worse since they arrived in Lasswick. And now, the stories weren’t stories anymore. They were terrible things with no happy endings, and they weren’t making Billy happy.
‘I don’t know what’s wrong with him,’ he said.
Rupert sat up.
‘I suppose it doesn’t matter how he knew. He’s still out there.’
‘We should tell your parents,’ said James. ‘He’ll die if we don’t.’
‘He’ll die if we do,’ said Rupert. ‘Mark my words. And worse.’
Lucy sat up. She whimpered.
‘Then what do we do? Rup? What do we do?’
‘Go to sleep, Lucy,’ he replied. ‘Go to sleep.’
They settled in their beds. Billy kept his eyes open, listening, for longer than he knew. When he was sure the others were asleep, he reached under his pillow and pulled out a folded piece of paper, which he opened as quietly as he could. This was his. Nobody else knew about it, least of all James. There were times he felt badly about this, because he knew that it was supposed to be his as well; it was addressed to them both, after all. But he didn’t want James to know about it, not yet. He just wanted to keep the secret a little longer.
He remembered the day, all the tears and the laughter and the excitement. Looking up at the huge tower of his father in his clean uniform, blotting out the sun with a big grin. He’d felt pride and fear stronger than he had ever felt anything in his life. And then his father — this big, handsome man with bright eyes and strong hands that smelled of tobacco and grease and coconut pomade from his barber — had leaned down, ruffled his hair and held him close. And he had slipped an envelope in his shirt with a wink.
‘For you, Bill,’ he had said. ‘You and your brother.’
You and your brother. But you first.
The secret was like a thread that joined him to his father. He didn’t want to think about what would happen if he broke it now, though he knew he must one day. Just not today.
Finding a square of moonlight on the wall, he opened the letter and, as he had done every night since his father had left for war, he read it.
LIFELINE
London, Present Day
YOUR CLOTHES DEFINE YOU. And the definition of Elliot Childs is a well-cut suit with buttons you can’t afford, a pure silk tie, shoes that scream and a blinding white shirt with a collar that could slice your fingers off. I visit my tailor at least once a month. He’s a short, skinny man with ancient spectacles and eyes that flit about me, checking for anything new about my body — an excess or deficiency in weight, a stoop, crick in the neck, anything to adjust his measurements by. I drink tea from a china cup and let him perform his craft, dancing around me like a bee and whipping his tape up and down my limbs. He is nimble and slight — there’s so little to him it’s as if his body is a machine that extracts every ounce of nutrients to serve the single purpose with which he has been served: to make me look splendid. He says little. Numbers, the names of materials and dates. I like him.
I do own T-shirts. There also exists a pair of stiff jeans in my dressing room, and I have clothes in which to exercise in my private gym. But to the question of What to wear today? my answer is always the same: a suit, of course, but which one?
It used to always be like this. Suits were what men wore. There was no compulsion to dress like a cowboy, or a machine worker, or a Kansas petrol pump attendant, or somebody with such a severe mental handicap that they cannot pull their own trousers over their backsides.
I am used to wearing nice clothes. What I am wearing right now is not nice. It is, frankly, a harrowing state of affairs.
I, Elliot Childs, am in disguise.
‘This is awful,’ I hiss, keeping my eyes down.
Zoe Marsh keeps a stock of clothes in each of her squats for whichever waifs and strays pass through. The ones I have been forced to wear still reek of the charity shop — cardboard, vacuum cleaners and the soup of a thousand skins. I wear a drooping pair of greasy black jeans, a blue T-shirt sporting a wistful picture of a sun-drenched bay and a surfboard (an idyll far out of reach of the item’s target market), a grey hooded top and a pair of battered sneakers. All of this is set off with a baseball cap and a pair of dreadful spectacles with a thick, sticky rim.
I am sure I can feel things crawling against my skin, worming their way through my hairs, finding new oils on which to feed.
We’re in a café near the shelter. It’s barely 7:00 a.m. and the sun is still sparring with the fluorescent light from shop fronts and passing trains. The street on which the café sits is long and straight, vanishing to a foggy mess of tall shadows that might be a church in the distance. Dark clouds already promise another day of rain.
Zoe and I are at the corner table with cups of tea while Morag orders food at the counter. The ragged man they call Heathcliff is engrossed in eating sugar, repeatedly wetting his fingers and dabbing them in the cracked bowl.
I am in deep panic.
‘I look like a tramp.’
‘You’ll blend in well,’ says Zoe.
The café is empty, but the street is filling with people, the downturned mole-like trudge of early-risers from their burrows, braving the squalls to begin another day of poorly paid work. I can already feel the pull of them, as if I am teetering on a thin blade, ready to fall. If only I catch an eye.
I hear my name and look up. There’s a television hanging in the corner which, to my dismay, is currently showing a photograph of me. It’s clearly been taken on a phone, and I’m in mid-stumble, somewhere in Soho, cramming a burger into my mouth. The news reporter babbles about my disappearance with barely throttled delight. On the word ‘Hunt’ the picture sweeps away, replaced by the man himself talking into a microphone.
‘Of course I’m concerned, just like everyone else. But I have no doubt that there’s a rational explanation for his disappearance. From what I know of Elliot Childs, he’s a man of character and substance and not somebody who’s prone to breakdowns, or’ — he glances at the camera — ‘anything flaky like that.’
His eyes flash cobalt; that word was for me.
‘I have complete faith in the Metropolitan Police’s efforts to find him, but I also know how much pressure they’re under, so I’ve sent some of my best investigators to help out.’
I’m wondering at how unsurprising I find the idea of Hunt having his own investigators when he turns to the camera — turns to me — and speaks.
‘Elliot, if you’re watching this, please take care. We’re looking for you.’
Hunt’s face flips to the newsroom, and a story about a dead admiral.
‘One of your friends?’ says Zoe.<
br />
I pull down the brim of the foul cap, keeping my eyes away from the faces passing the window. Heathcliff is still eating sugar with his fingers.
‘So,’ I say, ignoring her quip. ‘What, you work for some charity or other, do you?’
She stares at me, jaw hanging, and makes a sound that is the exact opposite of a laugh.
‘Funny. No. I don’t work for some charity or other.’
‘What then?’ I’m not trying to be facetious here; I genuinely don’t understand this stuff. ‘A kind of…weird…estate agents? Is there money in that now?’
She narrows her eyes, no longer even offering sarcasm.
‘You really are like you act on the telly, aren’t you?’
‘What do you mean?’
She sighs.
‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand. I’ve seen your show, I know what you think about people: That you deserve what you get, every man for himself and all that, the poor and the dispossessed — they’re only there because they’ve let themselves get there.’
‘That’s not what I think.’
‘No? What do you think, then?’
I shrug.
‘I think that deep down, we’re —’
Just then the door opens with a jingle of its bell. Instinctively I look up and catch the wide, bearded face of a man in his sixties. He is overweight and badly dressed. I drop my eyes.
‘Christ, get me out of here, this was a mistake.’
‘Calm down.’
The door slams shut and the man stands there, wheezing.
‘Good morning, Antoine,’ he says across the café in a way that suggests he has to think about each word. The owner of the café greets him in return and then the man makes some other noises — grunts and mutters I can’t make out — before hobbling up to the counter. Before I know it he’s next to our table, just standing there, wheezing, fumbling with his paper, being. I don’t want to see this man, but I can feel him pulling just like the others. I don’t want to be him, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t…
‘Breathe.’
It’s Morag’s voice. I look up. She’s back at the table, sitting in front of me with her palms outstretched.
‘What?’
‘You have to breathe.’
I shake my head.
‘This was a bad idea. I can’t be in public.’
‘You can. You are.’
Heathcliff has stopped eating sugar and is now peering at me with childlike expectation. The left side of my vision is taken up with the amorphous shape of the bearded, wheezing man as he reads the menu above the counter.
‘I think,’ he says, each word drawn out. ‘I’ll…I think I’ll have some sausage…no, wait…’
Morag leans over to me. Her breath smells of tobacco and blackberry.
‘Look at him.’
‘No. It’s too much. I can’t control it.’
‘You can,’ says Morag. ‘I can teach you. You won’t control it completely, but there’s something you can do to stop it being so intense.’
‘What?’
‘You have to think of a lifeline,’ says Zoe.
‘A what?’
‘A lifeline. Something to hold onto. Something that will stop you falling in too deeply.’
‘Mushrooms, bacon…’ere, is it smoked?’
‘I don’t know what you mean, please…’
‘Think of something personal to you. Something that’s yours. Something that will always be you no matter where you are or who you’re with. Anything — a place or an object or an idea, maybe something from when you were a child, like a favourite toy. Think of that and keep thinking of it. Then when you look at someone, you won’t fall in so deeply.’
‘That’s it?’
‘It works. Trust me.’
She motions at the man.
‘Try it.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘Just try it, Elliot.’
I keep my head down, furiously staring at a scratch on the table.
‘I’m just as scared as you,’ says Zoe.
‘Really? I didn’t see you sweating, out there…out there with those…those…’
I struggle to describe the horror of sliding through a dozen oily lives in five minutes.
‘I know, but they’re people. Just people. And you can control it.’
‘With a lifeline,’ says Morag. ‘Can you think of one?’
I nod. I had one before she had even finished describing it.
‘Good. Then try it out. Think of your lifeline and watch him.’
I keep the image in my head, my lifeline, and turn towards the man. Details I didn’t see before become clear — the mottled skin, the rucksack, the scar down his neck…I barely feel the transition.
I smell weak coffee. The right side of my body is in pain and my ribs ache. All my fingers are stiff. My overweight body features breasts, one of which feels swollen. Sound is muffled — a hearing difficulty perhaps — then I see the menu, the counter, the light, and there is a sense of…
Morag’s face in mine.
‘Elliot, are you all right?’
I’m breathing hard. My face is hot.
‘Yes.’
‘Try again. The lifeline. Remember.’
I nod and turn once again. This time I bypass the physical and all I can feel is what is inside his mind. His thoughts are like ripples on a deep ocean, slow and peaceful as the tide. Sausage or bacon, sausage or bacon…or mushroom…who’s making that noise…is that bloke all right?
‘Elliot!’
Morag’s face again.
‘It’s not working,’ I say.
‘It will. Just think of your lifeline. Keep hold of it.’
I close my eyes and try to brighten the image.
‘One more time,’ she says.
I open my eyes, turn and fall. I feel the man’s ripples and the terrifying depth beneath them, but this time, before I go under, I push the image as far as I can into the front of my mind. I grip onto it, and as I feel those other waters tugging at me, something else pulls me out. I am floating. I am at once Elliot and this other person. The distinction is as sharp as a knife.
With wondrous relief, I find myself drifting back to the safe shore of my own consciousness. I see the man looking at the menu and I know what he is thinking. I am me, but I am still somehow him. And that bright image glows between us. It feels like…like…
‘Sausage,’ I say.
‘Sausage,’ says the man. ‘I’ll definitely have sausage.’
PROOF
‘YOU WANTED PROOF,’ SAYS Zoe. ‘So I’ll show you. That man there.’
She nods to an old man eating breakfast a few tables away.
‘Look at him and I’ll do the same. Then we’ll compare notes.’
‘This is ridiculous.’
‘Just do it.’
‘Both together,’ says Morag with a wink. ‘Ready, steady, go!’
I turn in the direction of the old man and watch him plugging egg into his toothless mouth. There’s the familiar pull. I think of my lifeline. For a second I feel as if I won’t manage it, that whatever happened before was a fluke, but I surprise myself, and before I know it I am paddling in his shallows.
‘Well?’ I say.
‘What do you want to know?’ says Zoe.
‘The colour of his armchair at home.’
‘Green.’
‘Not unusual. What newspaper does he read?’
‘He doesn’t. He can’t read very well because of his eyesight.’
‘Again, not unusual.’
‘He’s blind in one eye.’
‘You could see that from here.’
‘It was shrapnel.’
‘He’s the right age…’
‘It was just training. In Yorkshire. He’d seen it all before. The sergeant’s name was Cole. He died in the blast. The mine wasn’t supposed to be armed.’
Zoe leans back with her knees against the table edge, cradling her cup and gazing a
t the old man, wading the same shallows as me.
‘The eggs are better across the street,’ says Morag. ‘And cheaper. He only comes here because this is where he came with Elsie.’
Zoe and Morag turn their heads to me expectantly.
‘Her,’ I say, nodding to the girl thumbing her phone by the window. She has dyed black hair, purple lipstick and black army boots. I’m already in her shallows. This feels good now, this control. I almost don’t have to think about it. So long as I keep that image nice and bright, the depths below don’t frighten me.
‘What’s she listening to on her earphones?’
Morag turns in her direction.
‘Guitars, drums, a woman singing about a gun…It’s PJ Harvey, ‘Big Exit’. It makes her think of whipping horses in the desert.’
The same image is in my head.
‘And of gnashing her teeth,’ I say.
I can pluck anything I like from her mind — any memory, any opinion, any thought. But still, beneath the surface are the dangerous currents that threaten to pull me down. I am not safe.
I sit up straight and pick out a middle-aged woman in a wool hat and gloves.
‘Her,’ I say. ‘Anything.’
‘I can’t…’ says Zoe.
‘Me neither,’ says Morag.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I just can’t, not with everyone.’
‘But I thought — ‘
Zoe points at two men facing each other.
‘Them. One has a hangover. Rum. They were in a bar in Finchley. The other has two goldfish called Jaws and…’
‘Liverpool,’ I complete her appraisal. My mind is racing now. I’m scanning the tables. A few people notice me but I don’t care. This depth…’
My eyes dance over the faces, splashing in their shallows. I hear myself talking.
‘Sixteen…mother’s lap…dangerous streets…blue Renault no sunroof…wet socks…cancer…’
Morag’s voice speaks from some distant place.
‘Elliot, what are you doing?’
But I can’t stop.
‘…Tried to warn her…pigeon chested…blue spools…can’t see past the crime…’
The Other Lives Page 13