by Rachel Ward
He just wasn’t listening. There was no way to make him listen.
“…take too much of this shit in this country. We’re all treated like second-class citizens. We —”
Without even thinking about it, I lifted up my hand and slapped him hard in the face. And I do mean hard. Smack! He stopped midflow, frozen in total shock. Then he put his hand up to his cheek.
“What the fuck did you do that for?”
“I need you to listen. We’ve got to get out of here. Please, please, get me out of here, Spider. Come on.” I grabbed his other hand and pulled until, finally, he started to move. I broke into a run, kind of dragging him along, and then, at last, he was running, too. Getting into it, he let go of my hand and sprinted ahead of me, long legs striding out, arms pumping. Half a minute later, he stopped to wait for me, and then we jogged together, along the Embankment and over Hungerford Bridge. We slowed to a walk midway across the bridge, then stopped and looked back where we’d come from. Everything was just as it had been, no problems.
“What’s going on, Jem? What was that all about?”
“Nothing. You were just upsetting people, that’s all. The next thing someone would’ve called the police.” It could have been true, couldn’t it? But even as I said it, I knew it sounded lame, and it didn’t fool Spider.
“Nah, that’s not it. Look at you, there’s something wrong. You look like a ghost, man. Even whiter than normal. What’s wrong with you?”
Standing there, looking over the Thames and the city just getting on with a normal day, I suddenly felt that I’d made a fool of myself. The words running through my head didn’t sound real, even to me — numbers, death dates, disaster. It sounded ridiculous, a stupid fantasy. And perhaps that was all it was, some twisted game my mind was playing on me.
“It’s nothing, Spider. I had a bad feeling there, a panic attack. I’m OK now — well, not OK, but better.” I tried to turn the conversation back to him. “I’m sorry I hit you.” I put my hand up to his face and held it there for a couple of seconds. “Is it sore?”
He smiled ruefully. “Still stinging a bit. I’d never have thought you could batter me like that.” He snorted and shook his head. “Bloody Mike Tyson’d have trouble with you.”
“Sorry,” I said again.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, still smiling. And that’s where we were, leaning on the bridge, looking along the river, when we heard the bang and saw the London Eye blown to bits in front of us.
CHAPTER NINE
You’ll have seen it on TV a hundred times, so you know what we saw that day: a sudden explosion, debris flying everywhere, a plume of smoke going up, one Ferris wheel pod completely destroyed, others damaged and distorted in the blast. All around us people had stopped in their tracks and turned to face the Eye. We could hear screaming carrying across the water.
Spider and I said the same thing, “Oh, my God!” and it was echoed from every mouth along the bridge — maybe a prayer from some people, just the words you say when you’re in shock for most of us. We stood watching for a minute or two, as the dust settled and the sirens started wailing. I felt numb. I’d started to doubt the numbers, hoping they weren’t real, that it was all some silly game in my head. Now I knew it was no game. The numbers were real — I was the girl who knew people’s futures, and I always would be. I shivered.
“Let’s get out of here, Spider,” I said. “Let’s go home.” Whatever was waiting for me at Karen’s, it had to be better than watching London clean up its dead. I turned to continue across the bridge, but Spider didn’t follow. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go.”
Still leaning on the bridge, he looked ’round at me, frowning. There was confusion there, but also accusation. I knew what was coming next. I couldn’t avoid it. Still holding my eyes, he spat out the words.
“You knew. You knew about that.” We were perhaps fifteen feet apart. His words were loud enough to reach me and several other people nearby. A couple of them quickly turned their heads to look at us.
“Shut up, Spider,” I hissed.
He shook his head. “No, I won’t shut up. You knew about this. What the fuck’s going on, Jem?” He stood up straight and started walking toward me.
“Nothing. Shut up!”
He was close now, and went to grab me. I ducked away and started running. There were a lot of people on the bridge, and I had to weave my way between them. Spider was way faster than me, but he was big and awkward, and I could hear people shouting as he blundered through the crowd behind me. I made it to the other side and ran blindly through the streets. It didn’t take Spider long to catch me, and he got hold of my arm and spun me ’round to face him.
“How did you know that was going to happen, Jem?” We were both breathing hard.
“I didn’t. I didn’t know nothing.”
“No, Jem, you knew about that. You knew about that. What’s going on?”
I tried to wrestle away from him, but he was gripping hard. With his height and his strength and his smell he seemed to be all around me, I couldn’t get away. I tried to hit him, but he had both my arms now. I rammed my head forward, but he’d seen me coming and just held me farther away, still gripped in his vise. I couldn’t stand it. I kicked out and my foot slammed into his leg. He winced, but didn’t let go. “Nah, man, you’re gonna tell me what’s going on.”
People were staring at us. I stopped struggling and went limp in his arms. I don’t want to do this on my own anymore, I thought. I can’t do it on my own.
“OK,” I said, “but not here. Can we cut down to the canal?”
We walked up to the Edgware Road and soon found a way through to the back of the shops that led down to the canal. At last we were away from people. All the strength had gone from me, my legs were starting to go.
“I’ve gotta sit down,” I said weakly, and slumped onto a broken bench. One of the wooden slats was missing, felt like you were going to fall through it. Spider sat next to me.
“You’ve gone a funny color, man. Put your head between your knees or something.”
I leaned forward as a whooshing sound filled my ears. The space inside my head turned red, and then black.
“Whoa, steady, mate.” I could hear Spider’s voice from a long way away, the other end of a tunnel. When I opened my eyes everything was the wrong way ’round. Took me a while to realize I was lying down. The bench dug into me where I was nearly falling through the gap, but my head was on a pillow, rank-smelling, but soft: Spider’s hoodie. He was pacing up and down on the towpath, rocking his head, flipping his fingers, muttering under his breath.
“Hey,” I said, with hardly any sound at all. He stopped pacing and crouched down by me.
“You alright, man?” he said.
“Think so.”
He helped me to sit up slowly, then sat next to me. I was shivering. He grabbed his hoodie and held it out. “Here. Put this on.”
“Nah, I’m alright.” Didn’t want that foul-smelling thing on my clothes, my skin. I shivered again and he reached ’round behind me. I didn’t know what he was up to, was about to tell him to where to go, when I realized he’d draped the hoodie over my shoulders. Kind of wrapped me up. Made me think of my mum putting a blanket ’round us both on the sofa when the flat was so cold, cuddling up underneath it, one of her good days. Something was stabbing me in my eyes: pricking, stinging, hot. It spilled out and ran down my right cheek. Shit, I was crying. I don’t cry. I just don’t do that. I sniffed hard, wiped my face with the back of my hand.
“You gonna tell me now?”
I looked hard at the ground in front of me. Spider was the closest thing I’d ever had to a friend. Could I trust him? I took a deep breath.
“Yeah,” I said. And I told him.
CHAPTER TEN
There was silence between us — not an empty thing, a space full of thoughts and feelings, unspoken words and emotions. We sat there while the sounds of London in chaos played out half a mile away, sirens w
ailing, car horns going, helicopters circling. I felt stunned — still reeling from what had happened and shocked that I’d finally told someone. My body and my head were all over the place. I hadn’t looked at Spider all this time — I’d kept my eyes on the ground as the words came out of me. It was so unreal, like someone else was talking.
He’d been sitting, bent forward, leaning his elbows on his knees, listening. It was probably the stillest he’d been since I’d met him. Finally, he breathed out, a long breath through pursed lips.
“No way, man, no way.” He sounded confused, scared almost.
“It’s true, Spider. It’s all true. I knew something was going to happen because their numbers were all the same. And it did.”
“Ah, this is way too weird. You’re freaking me out.”
“I know. I’ve had to live with this for fifteen years.” Those stupid tears weren’t far away again.
He suddenly slapped his forehead.
“That old bloke, the one that was run over, you saw his number, didn’t you? That’s why you wanted to follow him.”
I nodded. There was silence again for a while.
“My nan knows about you, doesn’t she? You and her, you’re the same, aren’t you?” He shook his head. “All this time, I just thought she talked a load of bollocks, like, it was funny, really. But she knew there was something different about you. You’re a pair of witches! Shit!”
I sat up a bit, tried to breathe more evenly. There were a couple of ducks paddling along the canal, little brown things, oblivious. I watched them making steady progress upstream. How easy to be a bird or an animal, living from day to day, unaware that you’re alive, unaware that one day you’ll die.
Spider had got up, was pacing around again, up and down on the flat stones edging the canal. He was muttering under his breath — I couldn’t catch the words — just trying to get his head ’round what I’d said, I suppose. He scooped up a handful of gravel, started chucking it at the ducks. Must have hit one, because they suddenly took off, little brown wings going like the clappers.
He swiveled ’round. “Do you see everyone’s numbers?”
I looked back down at the ground. I knew what was coming next. “Yeah, if I see their eyes.”
“You know mine, then,” he said quietly. I didn’t say anything. “You know mine,” he said, more insistently.
“Yeah.”
“Shit, man, I dunno if I want to know or not.” He sank down to the ground, crouching, holding his head.
Don’t ask me, I thought. Never ask me that, Spider. “I won’t tell you,” I said quickly. “I couldn’t. It’s not right. I’ll never tell no one.”
“What d’you mean?” He was looking at me now. As our eyes met, that bloody number was there again. 12152010. I wanted to rip it out of my head, blank it out like I’d never seen it.
“It would do your head in if I told you, freak you out. It’s just not right.”
“What if someone hadn’t got long to go? If they knew, they’d have a chance to do stuff they’ve always wanted.”
I swallowed hard. “Yeah, but it’d be like living on Death Row, wouldn’t it? Each day, one step closer. No way, man. No one should have to live with that.” Except, of course, that we all do. We all know we’re one day closer to the end when we wake up in the morning. Just kid ourselves that it’s not happening.
Spider stood up, scratched his head, and kicked some more gravel into the water. “I need to think about this. You’ve done my head in today.” A siren started up from a street nearby. “Let’s get out of here.”
I handed his hoodie back to him, and we set off down the canal path. The gravel crunched under our feet as we walked past the graffiti-daubed walls lining the path. A lot of the buildings were derelict, but here and there some had been tarted up, turned into posh offices or restaurants or wine bars, shiny islands in a sea of grime. The sirens faded as we got farther away, and there was an odd quietness about the place, like everything had ground to a halt.
When we got near the projects, we cut up to the main road. A couple of people had stopped outside the electronics shop’s window, and we joined them. A dozen TV screens, all the same. The London Eye wasn’t turning anymore. There was a bit missing, like someone had taken a big bite out of it: one pod gone, the ones near it twisted and wrecked, trash all over the ground. Only it wasn’t trash, it was bits of people and people’s things. The camera lingered over some tattered blue material, what was left of someone’s coat, and something flapping in the breeze: the frilly edge of a straw bag, shredded in the blast. Words slid along the bottom of each screen: TERRORIST ATTACK AT THE LONDON EYE…NUMBER OF DEAD AND INJURED UNKNOWN…POLICE WARN PUBLIC TO BE VIGILANT FOR MORE ATTACKS…
We watched for ages. Beside me, Spider kept saying, “Shit, man. Jesus Christ.” The news was on a loop, the same pictures over and over again. As I stood there, I could feel stuff rising up inside me. I fought to keep it down, but in the end I had to find an alleyway and get rid of it: the sour contents of my stomach spilling out of me onto the ground.
Spider came to find me. “You alright, mate?”
I coughed and spat, trying to get my mouth clean. “Yeah,” I said. I got a tissue out of my pocket, wiped my mouth. “Spider?”
“Yeah.”
“I could’ve done something. I knew something was gonna happen. I could’ve warned them, got them to shut the place down or something, I dunno.”
“Yeah, but what if they’d shut it, and they’d all made for the Tube, and it had happened there?” He was right, I supposed. One way or another, today was their day: the Japanese couple, the old lady, the guy with the rucksack. But there was this feeling crushing me, the feeling that I could have made a difference.
“You wanna come to mine?” Spider asked.
“I dunno, I guess I do.” I wanted to go somewhere safe. I wished I could say, “I’m going to head home,” but nowhere felt like home.
I suddenly remembered Sue and the police — God knows who would be waiting for me back at Karen’s. Yeah, Spider’s was definitely the better option.
We shambled back to Carlton Villas and let ourselves in. Val wasn’t on her normal perch; she was in the front room with the big TV on. She half got up when she saw us coming through the door.
“Terry, that you? Ah!” She collapsed back into the chair. “I’ve been fretting all afternoon since the news came on. You alright?”
Spider bent over to give her the normal peck on the cheek, then wrapped his arms around her and folded his legs so he was crouching on the ground in front of her chair, hugging her. He held on tight.
“You were there, weren’t you?” she said. “I knew it. I knew it.” One hand rested on his back, the other clutched his head into her, nicotine-stained fingers buried in his springy hair. “It’s alright. You’re safe now, son.”
I hovered in the doorway, feeling that I shouldn’t be seeing this; it was just between them. After a minute or so, Val looked ’round at me. “Come here. Sit down, love. You look done in.” I sat next to her and she took my hand. “I’m so glad to see you both.”
Spider disentangled himself and sat back on his heels. He rubbed his arm across his face, but not before I’d seen the tears glistening there. “We were there just before, Nan. I was going off on a rant because we didn’t have enough money left to go on the ride, but Jem, she”—he hesitated, looked at me quickly — “she said we should come away, it didn’t matter. We were on Hungerford Bridge when it went off. We saw it, Nan, we saw it.”
“So you saved him. You kept my boy safe.” She held both my hands in hers now, looked deep into my eyes. “Thank you. Thank you for bringing him back to me. He’s a naughty boy, but he means the world to me. Thank you.”
I didn’t know what to say. “We were just lucky,” I mumbled, but Spider wasn’t having it.
“No, it wasn’t luck. She saved me, Nan, just like you said.” I flashed him a warning look, but the shock of the day and the relief of getting back hom
e was loosening his tongue. “She’s like you, Nan. She knew something was going on.”
I went to get up, but Val tightened her grip on my hands. “You felt something? What was it?”
I shook my head. “I just had a feeling, that’s all. I knew something bad was going to happen.” Her eyes were boring into me as she sat there, just waiting. My heart was beating like mad, the blood pumping through me, deafening me. “I knew people were going to die.”
Val made a little sighing noise, like she’d been holding her breath. “I knew there was something,” she said quietly. “I knew you had a gift.” She was still holding my hands, shaking them gently up and down, a gesture of comfort. “You’re here for a reason, Jem. You saved Terry for me. Thank you.”
Her eyes were glistening, and I thought, You’ve got it wrong about me. Spider could have stayed where he was, and he wouldn’t have died today. I only protected him from getting hurt. He wouldn’t have died today. I can’t save him. I want to, but I can’t, and soon he’ll go, and you’ll think I’ve let you both down.
But I couldn’t say any of this, I could never tell them what was coming up for Spider. So I just sat there; and Spider, Val, and I were all quiet, as the reporter on the TV broke the news that police were putting out an urgent call to trace two youths seen running away just moments before the explosion, both in hoodies and jeans: one black, very tall; one shorter and white.
I felt my stomach lurch. Whatever trouble I’d been in yesterday fell away. Spider and I were up to our necks in it now. We all looked at each other, and Val held on to my hand with one of her hands and reached out to hold Spider’s with the other.
“You’ve done nothing. They’ve got nothing on you,” she said firmly. But we’d both had run-ins with the police before, and they weren’t going to swallow any stories about second sight, were they? Spider looked at me over the top of his nan’s head, and I knew what he was thinking. We couldn’t stick around waiting to be picked up. It was time to run.