“That one,” she continues, nodding at the second photograph, “is my mother.”
Oh. Now I feel silly for suspecting that Clemency hadn’t aged in the past thirty years – or rather, for suspecting that she was even around thirty years ago.
“My mother,” Clemency repeats, sounding faraway. “She was the same as me. She taught me anything I didn’t work out for myself. But she always encouraged me to be an independent learner – sometimes she’d purposefully keep things from me so she could see how long it took me to work it out for myself.” She smiles sadly to herself. I catch the was – her mother must have passed away.
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly.
“Don’t be. She brought it on herself.”
Ouch. That isn’t what I was expecting to hear. I don’t dare ask how her mother died.
“What about the other one?” I ask, pointing at the hidden photo. In a way, this is the one I’m most curious about.
Clemency bites her lip. “I’d forgotten that was there,” she says. For a moment, I don’t think she’s going to elaborate.
“It was taken a couple of years ago,” she finally says. “The boy in the picture is Aiden. He…he was a friend.”
I scrutinise her face. I could just leave it – I don’t think she really wants to talk about it – but somehow, I can’t keep my mouth shut.
“A friend?” I say. “Or something more?”
I’ve never seen a deeper sadness than she wears right now.
“Perhaps something more,” she admits. “Perhaps.”
How can it be a perhaps? Either it was or it wasn’t. But that isn’t what I say.
Things must have ended badly between them; that’s probably why the picture is hidden. And Clemency regrets the way they ended, or regrets that they ended at all.
It’s strange, though. I can’t really imagine her committing to a relationship with anyone.
“I didn’t mean to pry,” I say. “But thank you for telling me about them.”
“You’re very welcome,” she says, smiling. It’s very genuine. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything so honest on her face.
After that, she disappears off to her room for a while. I can’t help but think how strange she is. The problem, I realise, is that I’m trying to put her in a box. I have this misconception that there are certain types of people who behave in certain ways, but I’m beginning to realise that it’s not always the case.
Clemency. Her name suggests peace, harmony, happiness. Sometimes she does have that air about her, but at other times, she’s the exact opposite. She is not an ordinary person, living her life in a box. She is a hospital bed, an empty playground, a precipice jutting out against the night sky. She is everything and nothing.
There are footsteps behind me.
“Here,” Clemency says, placing a pile of bedding on the floor next to the sofa-bed. “I’ll set it up for you, it’s a bit awkward.”
Once it’s assembled, she says goodnight, even though it’s only half past nine. Oh well. I could probably do with the extra sleep.
I make the bed and sit on the edge, looking up at the dreamcatchers dangling above my head. The feathers on the largest one almost brush the tip of my nose.
Do those things actually work?
Only if you believe they will.
As I look at the light filtering through the feathers, I make a decision. I decide to believe.
I smile, and switch out the light.
Chapter Thirteen
I wake up the next morning feeling at first confused, and then content. Last night, I fell asleep almost instantly, and slept all the way through till morning.
When I look at my phone, it’s nine o’clock. I’ve been sleeping for almost twelve hours. No wonder I feel so rested.
“Morning,” Clemency says, appearing in the doorway. So she’s already awake. How foolish of me to believe I’d beaten her to something.
“Morning,” I say sleepily. “How long have you been up?”
“Since six,” she answers.
“But it’s Saturday!”
“And?”
I give up. I can’t expect Clemency to conform to what society expects of a nineteen-year-old.
“Do you want breakfast?”
“That would be nice.”
I’d forgotten that Clemency doesn’t really do breakfast.
“You should eat something too,” I insist.
“I’m not hungry,” she says, disappearing before I can argue.
Once I’ve eaten, we decide to go out for a walk, since neither of us has to be anywhere else for a while. Clemency tends to get fidgety if she’s indoors for too long – I suppose she needs to be closer to the earth, or something.
We head to the park. It’s still only ten o’clock, and there aren’t many people out, aside from the occasional jogger. The ground is frosty, reminding me that it’s getting later in the year. For some reason, I keep forgetting that it’s October.
We sit on a cold bench, watching a robin peck at an abandoned sandwich on the ground. I feel a bit sorry for it – it looks all scraggly.
Clemency picks up a fallen leaf from the bench, twirling the stem between her thumb and forefinger. It’s a perfect autumn brown, and perfectly shaped, too. I watch the edges catch the light.
“It’s the same colour as your hair,” Clemency says, surprising me.
“What, brown?” I laugh. “A lot of things are brown, Clemency. Tree trunks, this bench, mud.”
“I mean it’s the exact same shade,” she says, sounding a little put out. “Since when was there only one kind of brown?”
“But it’s not the same,” I disagree. “The leaf is a pretty shade of brown. My hair is just boring.”
Clemency reaches out to catch a lock of my hair. She’s full of surprises today. She doesn’t usually go in for physical contact.
“Look,” she says, holding it next to the leaf. “Now tell me they’re not the same colour.”
My hair looks different to the usual. There are strands of gold running through it, matching the golden flecks on the leaf. I can hardly tell where one ends and the other begins.
“They’re the same colour, aren’t they?” she says. Warily, I nod.
“So that means either your hair is pretty or the leaf is boring,” says Clemency, releasing my hair and the leaf in one movement. “Which do you think? Or is it subjective?”
I don’t know how to reply.
It all starts fairly modestly. Just as the leaf hits the ground, a few of the perfect fallen leaves float up from the ground and come towards us, tumbling into our laps.
“That’s odd,” I frown. “There isn’t even a breeze.”
Clemency narrows her eyes. “Hm,” is all she says.
Then more leaves are wafted up from the ground, a whole cluster of them this time. They float right into our faces, until I’m almost spitting them out.
“What the hell?” I say, batting them away.
Clemency sits perfectly still – she looks like she’s listening out for something. I really need to ask her why she does that.
“What is it?” I ask.
A dustbin tips over, its contents joining the tirade of leaves that’s assaulting us. The bin rolls towards us, clunking into the base of the bench.
“This doesn’t make sense!” I say, despairing.
“These things rarely do,” Clemency says wryly.
My end of the bench tips up, making me slide towards Clemency. We jump to our feet, just as it wrenches itself into the air and launches towards us like a clumsy predator. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a startled look on one of the joggers’ faces. Her dog barks in our direction.
“Run!” Clemency yells, grabbing my hand and dragging me along behind her.
We career through the gate, just as the runaway bench slams into the iron railings. The next thing I know, we’re five streets away. Our feet barely seem to skim to pavement, and the buildings along the way are little more than blurry r
ibbons. It’s possibly the strangest experience I’ve ever had – it’s as if we get from one place to another almost without passing through the spaces in between.
When we stop, I notice that Clemency is barely out of breath. I scan the surrounding area, but there are no flying benches or pieces of airborne debris in sight.
“How did you do that?” I demand.
“Do what?” Clemency asks innocently.
“Run so fast!”
“I don’t know what you mean. We were both running at the same pace, weren’t we?”
I recognise the expression on her face; it means I won’t be getting anything more out of her.
“Well, if you’re not going to tell me about that,” I say, “tell me why the street furniture started flying around.”
“We were in the park, not on the street,” she says. “And how should I know?”
Clemency is only pedantic when she’s being evasive. I’m pretty sure she knows far more than she’s letting on, but she obviously has her reasons for withholding information from me. I’m assuming it has something to do with all the weird stuff that’s been going on lately, but whatever the connection is, it’s beyond me. All I know is that we had to run away from something bad. I still have no idea what the bad thing actually was, and that’s not a state of affairs I’m entirely comfortable with.
*
Around midday, I go back to Clemency’s to fetch my things. She asks me if I want to stay for lunch, but I decide I’ve imposed on her hospitality for long enough.
“Promise me you’ll eat something,” I say worriedly. “You’re not getting enough calories.”
“I’m fine,” she says dismissively. “But I’ll eat something anyway, for your sake. Okay?”
“Okay,” I say, and for some reason, I believe her. “Thanks for letting my stay over.”
“Anytime,” she smiles. “See you.”
She doesn’t say when she’ll see me, but then she never does – I suppose that would impair her ability to scare the hell out of me.
I sling my rucksack over my shoulder and leave the building, starting towards home.
I don’t know why I stop outside the park gate; it’s as if I’m suddenly paralysed. Hesitantly, I push open the gate. After the experience we had this morning, I should be reluctant to return alone, but I don’t feel the slightest bit of apprehension.
It’s a fairly mild day, and there are several people in the park. I survey the area where Clemency and I were sitting, kind of expecting it to look like a bomb site.
Much to my confusion, it’s exactly as it was when we arrived.
The bench is back in its rightful place, as is the bin. There’s no rubbish scattered on the ground, and I could swear even the leaves are back where they were this morning.
Weird.
I go back to the bench and sit down, retracing our steps. Then I freeze.
There, lying on the seat, is a single, perfect autumn leaf.
I pick it up, holding it up to the light. It’s the exact same one, I’m sure of it. The one Clemency picked up. The one that’s the exact same shade as my hair.
I’m almost afraid what will happen if I drop it. I don’t want to trigger a repeat of the morning’s events, especially not without Clemency here to get us out of it. Instead, I tuck the leaf safely into my pocket.
The light is falling differently, and it takes me a moment to figure out why.
The end of the year is edging closer, and the sun is sinking in the sky. I’ve always liked this time of year – the change in the light is beautiful, intimate, especially when it shines through a window in the evening and illuminates the walls in a dark room.
This year feels a little different, though. It’s still beautiful, but it’s frightening, too. For some reason, all I can think about is winter and darkness.
Last year, we learnt about the use of the seasons in literature. The idea is that springtime is associated with morning and childhood, summer with afternoon and adulthood, autumn with evening and old age, and winter with nighttime and death. I always thought it was a very pessimistic way of looking at things. After all, the seasons are a cycle, and the good parts will always come around again. Besides, I never saw autumn and winter as particularly negative things; the seasons all have their positives and negatives.
Right now, though, I can almost see where my lecturer was coming from. I feel as if the sky might darken and close in on me if I stay here any longer. It’s not a pleasant thought, so I pick up my rucksack and hurry back to Hamilton House.
Chapter Fourteen
When I get home, Jamal and Annemarie are both out. That’s disappointing. After my odd experience in the park, I’d have liked a bit of company. Never mind.
I go into the kitchen in search of lunch – or at least, I try to. I’m stopped in my tracks by something my eyes can’t quite comprehend.
There’s a bright point of light hovering above the kitchen table.
Since I just spent several minutes musing over the way the sun is getting lower in the sky, this seems like a logical enough explanation for the phenomenon. I’m satisfied for a moment, until I realise the light is coming from the wrong direction. Oh.
Mesmerised, I step a little closer. The light seems to be spreading out more, though maybe that’s just because I’m nearer to it now. It pulses like an ethereal heart.
I get closer still. The pulsing light swells some more.
I know where this is going, I think. This is exactly like the thing with the music – the closer I get to its source, the more intense it will become. Then, just when it’s at its peak, just when I think I’m about to find its cause, it’ll disappear without a trace. And the whole thing will be completely pointless, and I’ll be left even more frightened and disturbed than I was before.
Maybe my deceased friend is trying to assault all my senses, one at a time, until I can’t trust anything I perceive.
You’d think these sorts of thoughts would be enough to make me back away from the light, but I keep getting closer and closer, as the light swells more and more.
Surely it can’t get any brighter? But now it’s so dazzling I’m almost blinded, and yet I still can’t tear my gaze away, I can’t even close my eyes against the glare…
Out in the hallway, the front door opens. Someone comes in.
“Eddie?” Jamal calls, but I can’t open my mouth to answer. I can’t move. I can’t do anything at all.
“Eddie?” he calls again, sounding nearer this time. “Where…what the hell?”
The light expands one last time, before vanishing completely.
“What was that?” Jamal demands.
I turn to look at him, bright spots marring my vision. “You’re asking me? I don’t have a clue what just happened.”
“Am I going mad,” he says, “or did I see a giant ball of light hovering above the table?”
“You’re not going mad,” I assure him. “Either that, or we both are.”
Admittedly, the loss of my sanity is perfectly feasible.
“Wait, I’ve thought of a logical explanation,” Jamal announces. I raise my eyebrows – this should be good.
“It must have been a reflection,” he says. “If there was a car parked outside, the light would’ve hit it at an angle and been reflected back towards the window. The glass could’ve distorted it so it looked like it was in the middle of the room.”
I stare at him.
“What?” he says. “I did A Level Physics, you know.”
However clever he may sound, and however much I’d like to believe him, I’m not convinced.
“What kind of car window produces a reflection like that?”
“A really big one?”
I look out of the window.
“And that,” I say, “is where your theory falls down.”
The nearest car is several yards away. There’s no way a reflection from its window could have travelled that far, or at that angle.
“What about the buil
ding opposite? That has windows.”
“Yes, Einstein, it does. But can you explain the way the light just disappeared? There isn’t a cloud in sight, and the sun’s still up. Anyway, if the light was reflected off one of those windows, then why didn’t it reflect off ours, too?”
He opens and closes his mouth a few times, but even he can’t explain away that one.
“You’ve got me there,” he admits.
“I thought I might have.”
“What’s that on the table?”
I follow his gaze. There’s a slip of yellowing paper in the centre of the table.
“I don’t know,” I say. “It’s nothing to do with me.”
Jamal picks it up. “It’s a newspaper article,” he says. “About a soldier called Private Sidney Smith. It says he died fighting for his country. It’s kind of smudgy - I can’t make out what regiment he belonged to. The bit with the date on is missing, too. There’s a photograph of him, but it’s kind of blurry. And it’s in black and white, obviously.”
I’m cold all over.
“Is it something to do with your History work?” I ask.
“Nope. Never seen it before in my life.”
“Is it Annemarie’s?”
“Well, you can ask her if you like, but we’re doing an American history module at the moment, so probably not.”
Neither of us really believes it’s part of Annemarie’s History research, any more than we believe the glowing ball of light was a reflection. Since we’re on the subject, I tell Jamal what happened in the park, with the flying bench and everything. I don’t really mean to – the last thing I want to do is worry him – but it kind of slips out somehow, and then it’s too late to take it back.
He doesn’t react too badly, but I know him well enough to recognise that he’s angry on my behalf. He’s afraid, but for me rather than for himself, even though this is affecting him too. But that’s just how he is. I don’t think he’s capable of being any other way.
Annemarie gets home about an hour later. Jamal instantly confronts her with the newspaper clip, destroying my resolution to play it casual.
“Did you leave this on the table?” he demands. “Is it something to do with your research?”
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