Numbers

by Rachel Ward

  “What?”

  “The mark of the cross on your hand.”

  This was too much now.

  “You’re joking!” I said. “I cut it on some barbed wire, that’s all. That’s all.”

  She continued to cradle my hand in hers.

  “Please tell me what you know. I can take it.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t tell you anything. I’m sorry.” I felt trapped, useless. I stood up. “I’m sorry, I’ve got to…I need to…”

  She took the hint and stood up, too, gathering her bag and her scarf. She started to wind it ’round her head again.

  “I’m sorry I can’t help you,” I said, and I meant it. She pressed her lips together into a line and nodded, her emotions too near the surface now for her to speak.

  I left her there, fiddling with her scarf, and blundered out into the main church. Simon was standing with his back to me, talking to an old man, halfway down the main aisle. When he saw me, the man broke off in midsentence, pushed past Simon, and headed straight for me.

  He was so thin his skeleton was showing through his skin, and his eyes were almost glassy. I tried to avoid looking at him, but I saw his number as he came staggering up toward me. He had four weeks.

  I knew from the look on his face, it was obvious what he wanted from me. A date, the truth. And I knew I couldn’t give it to him, so before he could say anything I turned quickly away and walked back into the vestry. As I reached the door I heard a voice.

  “Let us help you, sir. Come and sit over here. Would you like a drink of water?” Simon and one of the ushers had swooped in, gently coaxing the old man to sit in a pew.

  Relieved, I slammed the door behind me.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  I think the ushers, maybe the police, kept everyone else away that day. And people brought me food and tried to talk to me. I allowed them to take off my sneakers, put a blanket over me, but I stayed curled up all afternoon, locked in a silent circle, and eventually, long after it had grown dark, they left me. All except Anne, who volunteered to stay with me for the night.

  Just after the abbey bells had chimed eight, I heard her pottering about. I turned over on my makeshift mattress.

  “I brought some soup in a flask. Do you want some?”

  I felt queasy, disoriented. I sat up slowly.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll pour some out, anyway — see if you fancy it in a bit.”

  She sat at the table, with her bowl in front of her. I got up slowly and joined her. I wasn’t really hungry, but I tried just a little of the soup. It was delicious, homemade. I steadily worked my way through it.

  “Nice to see you eat,” she said when I’d finished. “You’re carrying a great burden, aren’t you? It must be dreadful for you.”

  I nodded. “I wish it didn’t happen. I wish I didn’t see the numbers.”

  “It’s hard, isn’t it? But perhaps you should view it as a gift.”

  I snorted. “You mean someone has given me this. I must have done something bloody awful to deserve it.”

  “God may have given it to you. Maybe it’s not so much a gift to you, but a gift to all of us.” She’d lost me now.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “You’re a witness, Jem. You bear witness to the fact that we’re all mortal. That our days here are numbered, that there’s so little time.”

  “But everyone knows that anyway.”

  “We know, but choose to forget — it’s too difficult to deal with. That’s what you made me realize earlier. We choose to forget.”

  “Yeah, you’re telling me. I can’t go anywhere, look at anyone, do anything, without being reminded. It’s doing a number on me. I can’t deal with it anymore.”

  “God loves you, Jem. He’ll give you the strength.”

  Oh, enough already. I might have mellowed over the past week or so, but the old Jem wasn’t far beneath the surface.

  “What are you talking about? If God loves me so much, why did He let my mum die of an overdose, why did He give me to a string of people who didn’t care about me, why did He make me twist my ankle, or put my hand on some bird shit, or give me a big zit on my chin?”

  “He gave you the gift of life.”

  There was no answer to that one.

  I managed to stop myself from saying that actually that was my mum and one of any number of punters, paying her twenty quid to feed her habit. I was the result of a quick shag in a dingy flat; a business transaction. It wasn’t what Anne wanted to hear, and I didn’t want to upset her. So I just grunted and shut up.

  We had another bowl of soup each and then tucked into bed. My mind kept going back to the two people in the abbey, and to Anne herself. If I had the chance to find out when I was going to die, would I take it? The answer had to be no, didn’t it? Why would you want to carry that around with you? And surely knowing about it would change the whole thing anyway. What if that knowledge, knowing your own death date, drove you to despair, and you killed yourself before then? Could that happen? Could you cheat the numbers by choosing to go early? Perhaps Spider was right, maybe they could change.

  Whichever way I thought about it, it would never be right to tell someone their number. I’d known that instinctively all along, and now, with my secret out, it seemed even more important. Surely, I thought as I drifted off, there weren’t that many people who would want to know anyway.

  The next morning, there was a queue of fifty.

  Simon came to tell me while Anne and I were having breakfast. Well, Anne was — I only managed to sip some tea.

  “There are a lot of people here today, Jem.”

  It was just what I didn’t want to hear. I was tired, I felt really rotten, and besides, I only wanted to know about one visitor — today they had to bring Spider back to me.

  “What do they expect me to do? I’m a kid.”

  He shrugged. “We can keep them away from you. Our team here can counsel them.”

  Anne agreed. “That’s right. We’re used to dealing with people in crisis. When I’ve cleaned up in here, I’ll come out and help.”

  She looked so ordinary, standing there: crewneck sweater, corduroy skirt, boots, and short, horrible permed hair. But she wasn’t ordinary. She was prepared to sit all day and hear other people’s terror as she struggled with her own. Even I couldn’t scoff at that. Respect. It was more than I would be able to manage.

  “Whatever. I can’t see them. I don’t want to. I’ve got nothing to say to them.”

  “That’s fine. We’ll deal with it.” Simon disappeared to make the arrangements. Anne pottered about, washing up the cups and her breakfast dishes.

  “Jem,” she said, “you need to think about what happens next. Where you want to go. This isn’t the ideal place to stay.”

  “I know what I want to happen — I want some time with my friend. And then…and then, I dunno…” The truth was I’d stopped even thinking about life after the fifteenth. After today.

  “Karen will be here soon — I think the consensus is that you should go back home with her. She can help you through all the legal stuff, if they decide to bring charges. She knows you, Jem. She really cares.”

  “I’m not going back to Karen’s.”

  “You’re fifteen, Jem. You’re not old enough to be out there on your own. Not yet.”

  “Please, can we not get into this? I don’t know what I’m doing until Spider gets here.”

  I suddenly realized I hadn’t had a proper wash since my shower at Britney’s. I wanted to look nice for him. I took myself off into the little cloakroom, stripped down, and washed as best I could with soap and water from the sink. At least I could be clean, even if I was still stuck in Britney’s slightly-too-large clothes. It woke me up, too, that wash — I got rid of that sickly, worn-out feeling. I couldn’t wait to see him now — I’d never looked forward to anything so much in my life.

  Back in the vestry, Karen had reappeared. As I emerged from the cloakroom wi
th bare feet and a towel ’round my head, she came over to hug me. “Jem, how are you? You’re looking a bit better than last time.”

  She held me away from her, but kept both hands on my shoulders. “People out there are desperate to see you. It’s all gone crazy, but I think you should think carefully before doing anything, because —”

  She didn’t get a chance to finish because at that moment the door from the abbey burst open and a blingy middle-aged bloke breezed in, making a beeline straight for me.

  “Hi, Jem, good to meet you. Vic Lovell.” He strode across the room with his hand thrust out, practically shouldered Karen out of the way, grabbed my hand, and shook it vigorously. Instantly, the room was full of him — his presence, his energy. He wasn’t after my help. He was after something else.

  He started talking even before he took off his coat. “Now, Jem, I’m here to talk to you about your future, which is looking very bright indeed. I’ve had some amazing offers coming in for you, and if we play this carefully, you can be set up for life. Literally. We’ve got print, radio, and TV interviews lined up. I’m certain we can get a major magazine deal. This will cover the next couple of months, and then we need to get a book out, and there are already publishers desperate to talk to you. Don’t worry, I wouldn’t expect you to sit and write it, there’s people who can help — you just need to talk to them and they do the rest. But the important thing is that I need you to sign up with me, so that I can manage all this for you. If it’s not carefully managed, you could get overexposed or miss a key offer — but done the right way, as I said, you’re made for life.” Finally, he stopped. He gave me a broad smile and nodded encouragingly at me.

  “What?” I said.

  “What do you think? Are we going to be partners?”

  Still reeling from his verbal attack, I just shrugged and said, “I dunno.”

  And he was off again.

  “I know, it’s a lot to take in, isn’t it? Perhaps you don’t really understand what I mean. I can make you rich, Jem. We’re talking hundreds of thousands here. You’re young, you’ve got an amazing story to tell, the whole world is talking about you. This is it, Jem. This is your moment. You can have everything you want — clothes, parties, cars, trips. You name it, you’ve got it. The world wants to hear from you now. It’s all about you.”

  “And what do you want?” I looked at his camel-colored overcoat, the fat gold signet ring on his finger, and the Rolex half-hidden by his crisp white shirt cuff.

  “I want to help you.”

  “And you get…?”

  “A percentage, of course.” He fixed his hard gray eyes on me. I couldn’t avoid seeing that, middle-aged as he was, he still had another thirty years of hustling, wheeling and dealing ahead. “I’m not a charity. We’ll be in this together, Jem.”

  “No. Fuck off.”

  “You what?”

  “Fuck off. I don’t want any of it — I don’t want your help.” I spat it out like a swearword. “I don’t want your money. I don’t want fame. I don’t want to be a poxy celebrity.”

  He looked at me like I’d lost my marbles.

  “You have no idea what you’re saying. You can’t walk away from this. You’d be mad to.”

  “I know what I’m doing. I know what I want. And I want you to leave.”

  He held up his hands. “Let’s not be hasty. You’re under a lot of stress here, I know that. I’m going to leave you to talk it over with your mum here. Give you a bit of space. I’ll be right outside.”

  Sitting in the corner, Karen had been watching all this. I thought of her little house back in London, with the wallpaper peeling off the damp patch in the kitchen. She’d struggled all her life without money. What would it mean to her if I went along with all this? I knew she only had a few years to go. Perhaps this guy could make sure that those last ones were the best years of her life.

  “What do you think, Karen?”

  She shook her head. “You know what I feel about all this. It’s gone too far already. If you start giving interviews and writing books, it’ll just get worse.”

  “But I could get you things — a bigger house, with more of a garden for the boys.”

  Her face softened. “They’d like that, wouldn’t they?” she said. “But you don’t have to get me anything, Jem. We’re alright where we are. His kind of world — it’s a fantasy, it’s not real. I know you, Jem — that’s not what you really want, is it?”

  Maybe she did know me after all. I grinned at her.

  “No — it’s all bullshit.”

  Karen opened her mouth to object to the language, then shut it again and came over to give me a hug.

  “I don’t want any of it,” I said. “I want it all to go away. I should never have told anyone.”

  “It’s alright. It’ll be alright.” She was still holding me, but I eased away.

  “But it won’t, will it? This sort of thing feeds on itself. Now that it’s out there, there’s no stopping it.”

  “I think you could stop it yourself.”

  “How?”

  She looked straight at me, clear-eyed. “Just tell them…tell them you made it all up. That it’s not true.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  The last time I’d had to stand up and talk to a group of people had been back at school: “My Best Day Ever.” When was that? A month ago? I couldn’t remember. I’d stood up at the front of the classroom that day, and I’d told the truth, at least the truth as I saw it. That hadn’t exactly turned out well. Now I was getting ready to stand up in front of a crowd of strangers — the sick and dying, journalists, people like that agent, God knows who else — and call myself a liar. I was going to deny the truth that had dogged me my whole life.

  “OK, let’s do it.”

  Karen gave my arm a squeeze. “Good girl,” she said. I think she honestly felt I was coming clean. She’d never believed me, and she was pleased now that I was owning up.

  We walked out of the vestry and into the abbey. Well, there were way more than fifty people there now. It looked like there were hundreds milling around, all keeping near to the vestry door. As soon as I appeared, the noise level rose, and people started moving toward me. Karen steered me through them toward the front of the abbey, where Anne was standing with Stephen, the rector.

  “Jem wants to make a statement,” Karen told them. “Where’s the best place?”

  “Well—” Stephen started to say, when the pushy agent guy elbowed his way to the front and butted in.

  “I’d totally advise against a general statement. We need careful media handling with a story like this. You’re much better with some specifically negotiated one-to-ones. Come on, let’s get you back to the vestry.”

  He put his hand on my arm. I tried to shrug him off, but his grip was pretty viselike.

  “Get off me!” I yelled. “I don’t belong to you, and I’m not going to do a deal with you.”

  He looked genuinely shocked, and puzzled, like he didn’t understand what I was saying.

  “Weren’t you listening to me in there?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I was listening. But you weren’t. You never let me get a word in edgewise. I’m not interested. Now get your hand off me, or I’ll bite it.”

  He removed his hand, but he didn’t back off. Instead, he leaned in close to me.

  “I can’t believe someone would waste such an opportunity. You’re either very naïve or very stupid.” His voice was pitched low now, but Karen and the others had heard him.

  “She’s neither,” said Karen firmly. “She’s her own person, and she’s made her own decision. Now I’d like you to leave her alone.”

  Vic did move away then, but he didn’t leave the abbey, he stayed at the back of the crowd, watching.

  “You’ve got something to say, have you?” Stephen was asking.

  “Yes. I think it’s time…time I stopped wasting everyone else’s time.”

  Anne glanced worriedly at Karen, but Stephen nodded and loo
ked relieved.

  “Good. I’m glad. This farrago has gone on long enough. You can speak from here.” There was a slight step up into the part where the choir sat, but it only brought me to the head height of most of the crowd.

  I looked up at the pulpit. “What about up there? There’s a microphone, too.”

  He went redder in the face.