by Frances Vick
‘See? I told you!’ Vic crowed. ‘She’s amazing, isn’t she? And it’s all about women, you know, finding peace. Look at this one!’
This clip was longer – a solo live appearance. Angela’s tiny, tidy figure was dwarfed by her own face on the big screens flanking the stage. Every gesture she made was considered, deliberate. She gave the impression of someone determined to eke out their energy, determined to make it to the end, no matter how it tired her. And it did tire her, you could tell. By the middle of the show, her magnified face, creased with the effort of helping, understanding, seemed to have aged ten years, her carefully arranged hair drooped, her shoulders stooped with fatigue, but still she carried on. There was a boy who needed to come through: a boy killed in Vietnam at nineteen, desperate, desperate to tell his mother that in the afterlife he had all his limbs – ‘And he’s showing me a…? In England we’d call it a rugby ball, but, no, he’s shaking his head at me now. It’s a football? Can you understand this? An American football? And he says – and he’s smiling at you, he’s shining all his love on you at this moment – he says he’s with The Team. He made The Team… Can you understand this?’ A long-dead daughter insisted she talk to – ‘A lady with a name beginning with T? T or J? Yes, is that you, my love? And what’s the name? Teri? I wonder why I’m seeing a J… your husband was John? That explains it. Teri, I have your daughter here. Chatterbox, isn’t she? She wants you to heal. She’s telling me… Can you understand this… She’s telling me now that, whatever happened between you two, she’s saying she takes responsibility. She’s saying it wasn’t your fault, you need to live your life now. Is that something you can understand?’ The woman flung her arms around Angela Bright, sobbing, sobbing in gratitude.
There was a lot of that kind of stuff. Angela Bright seemed to specialise in bringing sons and daughters back to tell their families they bore them no ill will. ‘…and she’s nodding towards a… What is that? A camera? A camera film? There are some pictures of her, that you haven’t wanted to frame and put on the wall because it’s too painful, but she’s telling me now, she’s saying, Do it, Mum. She’s saying to me now that she’s always with you, folding you in her arms, and she says that the pictures can be a… link? Between you two now that she’s passed. A bridge. And I can feel such love from her. Can you? Can you feel the love?’
The audience were mostly women, mostly in middle age. When they stood to hear their message, they were all of a type, built from their sensible shoes up in a series of quivering tiers, like large, stacked cakes. They had salt and pepper hair, bifocals, and fleeces. Some gripped their walkers with palsied hands. Some had faces weakened, marred or drooped by illness, but they were all perfectly normal women you could pass on the street and never look twice at. None of them looked credulous, none of them looked insane. The exit interviews were sober, thankful, quite a few said that Angela Bright was the first psychic they’d seen, and she’d single-handedly allayed any doubts.
‘I felt my sister in the room, I knew she was speaking to me, through Angela,’ said one woman. ‘Only my sister could know what she told me. How do I feel? I feel like I can get on with the rest of my life now.’ Everyone was there to feel better, and by the end of the event, they did.
Everyone apparently but Angela Bright herself. In an interview shot backstage she explained that her gift took the form of feeling as well as seeing visions, and as a result, she both witnessed and felt the pain and the suffering of those passed, those speaking through her. ‘Sometimes at the end of a large demonstration, I can barely stand up.’
‘How do you manage it?’ asked the person with the camera.
‘I’m not sure I do,’ Angela answered, after a hesitation. ‘But I have no choice. I can’t turn it on and off, and in a big room there’s so many energies flowing into me… it can be overwhelming.’
‘Do you ever take time off? Recharge?’
Angela lifted tired eyebrows. ‘Sometimes I ask the spirits to… dial it down a little,’ she admitted. ‘And, bless them, they do, or they try to anyway. Sometimes Lily – my guide – will step in and ask them to wait. But in a funny way, I don’t think I have the right to relax. This gift was given to me for a reason, and the people I help are more important than any aches and pains I might suffer. It’s important. They’re important, so if I can help, I will.’
And there the clip ended in a swift dissolve.
‘I so want to get a private session with her.’ Vic was gently massaging her stomach, her eyes still fixed to the screen. ‘Maybe we should get one together?’
‘What does Ollie think?’ Kirsty asked. She didn’t know what else to say.
‘Oh, he won’t think at all. After all, I’m the one having the baby, aren’t I? I’m the one who’ll be doing all the work, won’t I?’
‘I’ll help, you know that.’
‘But you’re going to leave,’ Vic said in a small voice.
‘I’ll stay after the baby comes, for a bit. I promise.’
‘How long is “a bit”? We’re the only family we’ve got, aren’t we? It’s not like Dad’s any use.’
‘You’ve told him about the baby though?’
‘I emailed him, but he never got back to me. That’s what I mean, Kirsty! This is it, we’re family and I don’t want us to be apart. I want the baby to have her Auntie Kirsty nearby!’
It was a sentiment calculated to go straight to Kirsty’s heart and lodge there like a tick. The two of them were a meagre family at best, but maybe with the baby, and with Ollie and Lee buttressing them? Maybe they could fashion a real unit.
Vic pressed her advantage. Her eyes misty, she clutched Kirsty’s hand and said, ‘You know those big Mediterranean-type extended families? I always wanted that, didn’t you? Aunts and uncles and cousins and… we could have that, Kirsty, couldn’t we? If you stayed here? Lived close? And think how happy that would have made Mum! And it’s not like you’re going to ever afford a place in London, is it? Ollie says the prices here are insane compared to London – you and Lee could get a detached place here for the price of a two-bedroom flat there, and…’
Before Kirsty knew it, she’d agreed to think about it, and, inevitably, Vic took this tentative assent and turned it into future fact. She announced the good news as soon as Ollie and Lee walked through the door.
‘What?’ Lee asked when they were alone. ‘You told her we’d do what?’
‘Stay,’ Kirsty mumbled.
‘What are you, out of your mind?’ He took the dish towel out of her hand. ‘Stop that, will you, sit down!’ He steered her into the island, made her sit down on one of the fearsomely expensive, insultingly uncomfortable stools. ‘Talk to me!’
‘She’s lonely, Lee. She’s my sister and I’m the only family she’s got. What am I meant to do, just bugger off as soon as she’s had the baby?’
Lee gave an exaggerated nod. ‘Yes!’
‘Look, I’m not even working, and you could work from anywhere really – within reason, I mean. And it’s not like we like the London flat, is it? If we moved further up north we could afford to buy somewhere maybe.’
‘What, here? I hate villages. You hate villages!’
‘Well maybe not here. Maybe in the city, or closer—’
‘No,’ he said simply.
‘What d’you mean, no? Why no?’
‘Why yes?’
‘Because it’s… home—’
‘It’s not! You left when you were a kid and you never went back! It’s a bad place where bad things happen, and I’m not going to let you go back there.’
‘You’re not going to let me?’
‘That came out wrong. What I meant was – you’re being manipulated. Vic’ll play the good sister for a while and then get bored and then where will you be? Stuck living in that shithole? Come on!’
‘She won’t! I want to be near my family, I want to be useful.’
‘But that’s another thing, the being useful thing.’ Lee took her hand. ‘Vic did perfectl
y well without you before and she will do after the baby. You’re an adult, yes, but so’s she, and she also is a very rich adult with a husband she can twist around her finger whenever she wants. You want us to move up here, but what happens when Vic decides she doesn’t want you any more? She’s like that, you know she is. She’s… careless about you.’
‘But these last few months she’s really changed, Lee. Look, I’m under no illusions about her. I know she’s spoiled and silly sometimes. I know she’s a bit of a drama queen, but being pregnant has changed her, it really has. And I want to be closer to her, that’s all. I could make the move to Adult Services better here than there, too.’
‘What, you’ve already looked into that?’ Lee asked.
‘A bit.’ This was a lie. She hadn’t at all. But there were three large hospitals in the city, so there was bound to be some jobs going in one of them. ‘I want to get out of London. You do jobs all over the place anyway, and the only thing keeping us there was my job, and I don’t have that any more.’
‘I’m not moving there,’ Lee said sullenly.
‘No, and I wouldn’t expect you to. I don’t want to either, but maybe we could base ourselves outside somewhere. A town? Come on, Lee…’
In the end, over the next few weeks, a compromise was arrived at. Kirsty would stay with Vic after the baby came, but for no longer than a few months, and they would only move when and if she got a job and Lee could be certain of steady work away from London. If both those criteria were met, then they’d look to buy somewhere, but not in Marsden, and not in ‘that shithole’. It was a fair deal, and one that Kirsty broke almost immediately when she got a job the following month.
‘Adult Social Services, hospital-based, designing care plans for the elderly once they leave hospital. It’s perfect, Lee! I mean, I couldn’t turn it down, could I? What if nothing else showed up?’
Lee didn’t say anything.
‘Of course, I’d have to move further into the city. Commuting from here is crippling, Ollie says…’
‘How much further?’ Lee asked.
‘Just off the motorway?’ Kirsty hedged.
‘What does that mean? Just off the motorway? Which hospital is it?’
‘Queens?’
‘The one in the centre?’
‘Centre-ish.’ Kirsty felt a tiny swell of panic just then, like an internal warning – why had she done this? Jumped on the first job she saw, broken the pact with Lee, headed straight back to the city that had done its best to destroy her, the place that still haunted her; why? The feeling was so strong that she only just managed to rationalise it away – she was Supporting Her Sister. She was Thinking About Her Career. She Wanted to Get on the Housing Ladder. ‘I found a nice flat, by the cathedral?’
‘Well, that’s nice, isn’t it?’ Lee mumbled. His face was as scrupulously blank as an egg.
‘Not that I’ll be there long, just until Vic has the baby and you sort out work, and then we can buy somewhere.’ It sounded bright, positive, well thought out, and if she’d been talking to anyone else, she’d have believed the words coming out of her mouth. But faced with Lee’s grim scepticism, she faltered. ‘Lee? It’s a stop-gap, that’s all, until we get a place of our own.’
Lee lit a cigarette ruminatively. He wasn’t allowed to smoke in Vic and Ollie’s house, but Kirsty wasn’t about to remind him of that. Instead she waited, half hoping he’d capitulate, half hoping something else… that he’d do what he’d threatened to do at the start and forbid her to move; that he’d threaten to leave her; that he’d do anything except do what she asked. Then she could go to Vic and say, quite truthfully, that Lee had put his foot down and they were moving back to London. Suddenly, autonomy seemed like the last thing she needed.
But none of that happened. All Lee said was, ‘I hope you know what you’re doing.’
‘I do,’ Kirsty told him eagerly. She didn’t.
Lee finished his cigarette then, and wordlessly went to bed. Kirsty stayed in the kitchen, cleaning the already clean surfaces, and again she felt that little psychic tug. It had happened more and more lately, the dizzying sense of being pulled into an unfolding past, helplessly catapulted back, back… Rain, mixed with hail, clattered against the window.
‘Lisa?’ Had she said that out loud? Why? She shivered, closed her eyes, told herself to stop being silly. Then she ran, like a scared child, up to the room she and Lee were sleeping in – the room that would become the nursery. Lee was asleep, and his broad, warm back was comforting, familiar, adult. I’m a grown-up now, she thought. I’m a grown-up and I have nothing to fear.
But that night she had a dream; the first of many telling her that the opposite was true.
Twelve
She and Lisa were playing in the middle of the street – a wide expanse of empty road, seemingly floating in space. There were no trees, no houses, and the road went on and on forever, bubbling out into a heat haze north and south. Kirsty couldn’t see who was holding the ropes, but they moved quickly with an even, robotic speed. She’d been jumping for a long time and she was tired, but she couldn’t stop because Lisa wouldn’t let her.
‘Down in the valley where the green grass grows, sat pretty Lisa, pretty as a rose, she sang and she sang and she sang so sweet, and along came Tokki and kissed her on the cheek.’
Kirsty looked up. The sky had darkened. ‘It’s going to rain.’
‘Keep skipping!’ Lisa told her. ‘Keep skipping or I’ll die!’
But Kirsty hesitated, misjudged her jump. The ropes twisted around her ankles. She fell on the ground but the ropes carried on moving, hissing through the darkening air, hitting her, whipping her back, her face, and Lisa, still chanting, was far away now, until soon, Kirsty couldn’t hear her over the sound of the ropes and the rain.
She woke, with a start, sweaty. Lee wasn’t there, and for a moment she didn’t know where she was – this room, this little pink box, felt like Lisa’s room. Kirsty looked around, expecting to see those Pierrot prints, the lipstick stains around George Michael, as well as Lisa herself, sleeping soundly in her pink, ruffled bed, clasping a Care Bear. This strange merging of time didn’t leave her quickly either. In the bathroom she was surprised to see the pale moon of her own haggard adult face, and not the plump, pink-cheeked, nervous face of the child she once was. On the stairs there was a smell, ersatz orange and grease, like the chapstick Lisa used to smear on her lips in wintertime. It wasn’t until Kirsty padded into the kitchen, saw all those gadgets that didn’t exist in 1985, and made a pot of coffee, that things began to feel normal again.
From upstairs came Vic’s thin, excited wail. Kirsty bounded back up the stairs, burst into her sister’s room. Vic was sitting up in bed, the iPad on her lap. She was smiling like a child at Christmas.
‘She’s coming!’
‘The baby?’
‘No! Angela Bright! The psychic? She’s coming from America and she’s agreed to carry on cleansing the house and—’
‘Cleansing the house?’
‘Well, she’s been doing it remotely, from LA,’ Vic told her as if it made sense. ‘But she says if her schedule allows, she’ll finish it in person! Oh my god, Kirsty!’ She looked as if she was about to cry. She hadn’t looked this happy at her own wedding. ‘She’s coming here! Maybe! Maybe she’ll give me a personal reading?’
‘I thought her mother had already done that, though – given you a personal reading?’
‘Oh yes, but she’s not a professional, like Angela is.’ The lovely old lady had served her purpose, it seemed, and Vic had a brand new hero. And one with a TV show, to boot.
And Kirsty felt a premonition of darkness, vague, far, but tumbling towards them like a cyclone. That feeling stayed with her all day. In fact, it never left her again.
Lee had been right all along. Once the baby arrived (not the envisioned girl, but a large, red, squalling boy they named – inevitably – Milo) and Vic had recovered enough of her figure to feel happy leaving the house,
Kirsty found herself surplus to requirements. Vic threw herself into baby signing, baby yoga, exercise classes, and something hellishly winsome called TumbleTots. The sisterly closeness they’d enjoyed didn’t entirely dissipate, but Kirsty had to work harder for it, and this she did by Being Useful. It was Kirsty who persuaded Vic that vaccinations wouldn’t give Milo autism. It was Kirsty who reassured Vic that Milo was absolutely normal, even if all the other babies at music appreciation class smiled when they heard Mozart and Milo cried instead. She would come away from these encounters feeling tired, but vindicated: she was Needed; she was Family. She’d made the Right Decision to come back.
But, increasingly, there were days when she wasn’t needed, evenings when Vic relied on her NCT family for calming instruction rather than childless Kirsty, and on those days Kirsty had no option but to throw herself into work, arriving early, leaving late so she didn’t have to face long evenings alone in the lonely flat above the florist’s that she’d kept bare-walled, deliberately un-lived-in. Every night she’d call Lee, and if it went to voicemail, she’d leave a rambling, humorous message, all about work, about the single strange man who lived in the flat above, alone but for his dog and his frequent gentleman callers (Lee had privately dubbed him Dennis Nilsen). If he picked up, they’d probably talk about the weekend, about how she was owed some TOIL and maybe they could do something special on Monday if he could take the day off… but phone calls have to end and what could she do after that? Sleep? Sleep was increasingly elusive now, and her dreams didn’t feel like dreams somehow, but urgent, cryptic messages she couldn’t fully fathom. Lisa, the park, the rain, and guilt. That was what she dreamed of, and that was why she dreaded sleeping.
Peg Leaves had been admitted to hospital three weeks before, after suffering a stroke that she defiantly smoked her way through, only relinquishing her Rothman Royals when she couldn’t jam them into her drooping mouth any more. She’d refused to let her family call an ambulance, and instead lay, grim and stoical, in the back of her great nephew’s Transit van, surrounded by a pack of panicked, suspicious relatives who stormed into the hospital demanding that Someone Help Peg Now!
