Num8ers

by Rachel Ward

  They’d have to bring Spider here.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  I gave them exactly what they were waiting to hear. I held some of it back, of course. None of their sodding business what had happened between Spider and me. That was between us. But everything else, plus some “information” of my own about people in the photos they showed me.

  They talked to me, with a tape recorder going, and then they wrote it all down and got me to sign it. I had no problem putting my name to it. This was all part of the plan, taking me one step nearer to where I wanted to be.

  “So when do I see Spider?” I said when I’d signed the statement.

  “It’ll take a bit of arranging — they’re still interviewing him. He was taken back to London, Paddington Green.”

  “Now just wait a minute…”

  “No, it’s all right, love. I’m going to take your statement back to London, see how they’re getting on, and then I’ll be back. I’ll bring Dawson back here.”

  So it was going to be a few hours, then. Nothing I could do about that.

  They gathered their stuff together, clipped their briefcases shut, and were gone. On the way out, they shook hands with me, like we were business partners or something. That’s a good sign, I thought. They’re showing that they’ve made a deal with me. I had to trust them now — what else could I do?

  By now it was lunchtime and Anne, the rector’s wife, had brought me some scrambled eggs on toast, kept warm under a wrapping of silver foil. She didn’t eat with me, but kind of hung around, like she was waiting for something. Eventually, she squeezed some words out awkwardly.

  “Jem, can I talk to you?”

  I shrugged. Didn’t bother me one way or the other.

  She went up to the door and closed it, so that we were alone together in the vestry, just me and her. She wants to persuade me to leave, I’m causing her husband too much trouble, I thought. But I was wrong.

  “They’re saying…they’re saying that you can tell when people are going to die.” Her face was creased into a frown as she searched my face.

  I tried not to look, but I couldn’t avoid her eyes, her need for contact was too strong. 06082011.

  “Oh?” I said, willing her not to ask me.

  “I’m ill, Jem. I’ve got an illness. I haven’t told Stephen, so please…don’t…”

  Hearing her speak the rector’s — her husband’s — name made him more human; made me think I might have been wrong about him earlier. Yes, he was going to live for another thirty years or so, but maybe he wasn’t going to be spoiled for the rest of his life. Maybe it was going to be lonely nights, takeout and boiled eggs on his own in an empty house.

  “The thing is…I need to know. How long I’ve got. So I can plan things, make sure the children are OK, make sure that Stephen will be all right.”

  “Children?” Another shock.

  “Well, they’re pretty grown-up now. Nineteen and twenty-two. But I want to make sure they’re well set, try and pay up the college debts, you know.” She must have realized that I didn’t, because she laughed nervously. “Well, perhaps you don’t, but I’ll feel happier if there aren’t any loose ends. Happier…not happy…” She trailed off.

  “I can’t tell you. It wouldn’t be right.”

  “You do know, though.”

  I chewed my lip.

  “You do know,” she repeated. “I shouldn’t feel so scared, should I? ‘In the true and certain knowledge of eternal life’…” There were tears in the corners of her eyes now, threatening to burst out and trickle down her face. “Why isn’t that a comfort?”

  I was the last person to ask about that. She sat, lost in her own thoughts for a bit. Suddenly, I thought of Britney, how her family had come to terms with her brother’s illness.

  “I think you should tell him,” I said.

  “Stephen?”

  I nodded.

  “I know. I’ve put it off. For a start, while it’s still a secret, it doesn’t seem so real. Sometimes I can pretend it’s not happening, for an hour or so — well, for a few minutes. And then, the other thing is — it will break his heart.” Her voice quavered. “I know he’s a bit pompous — severe, even — but we’ve been so strong together; a good team. How on earth will he cope without me?” The tears were coming for real now, and she leaned forward and held her hankie tight against her eyes, like she was trying to force the tears to stay inside.

  I waited until she stopped and was sitting up again.

  “I’m sorry I can’t help,” I said. And I was, I really was. I felt completely useless.

  “Oh, but you have, Jem, you have. Just telling you has made it easier to face. It’s given me the courage.” She grabbed my hands, and I fought the urge to snatch them away. I couldn’t say anything. I just wanted her to let go, to take her pain away from me. After a while, she did. She stood up, smoothed down her skirt, and shook her head, like she was shaking away the despair. She went to open the door. “Thank you, Jem. God bless you.”

  As far as I could see, I hadn’t done anything. When she’d started crying, it had been dead embarrassing, but it had also been difficult not to join in. Her tears at the thought of dying mirrored my creeping horror of being left alone. Two sides of the same coin.

  Suddenly, the walls of the vestry started to close in on me. I needed a bit of breathing space. I wandered out into the abbey. There were quite a few people around, and I had a feeling that several of them had clocked me as I walked over the memorial stones, trying not to tread on the names of the dead.

  After a few minutes, a woman wearing a head scarf came up to me. I was in the chapel, the place where I’d sat to get warm the morning Simon had let me in.

  “Excuse me,” she said uncertainly. “Are you Jem, the girl they’re all talking about?”

  “I dunno,” I said. “I am Jem, but I don’t know about anything else.”

  “You’ve been on the news, the hunt for you, and there are all sorts of stories on the Internet.” She was standing in front of me, but her legs were starting to sag. “Do you mind if I sit down? I’m a bit…tired.”

  To be honest, I did mind. I had a pretty good idea where this conversation was heading, and I didn’t want to get into all that. I just wanted to be left alone. I said nothing, but she sat down anyway, right up close to me on the cushioned stone bench.

  “The thing is,” she carried on, “they’re saying that you can see the future. People’s futures. That’s why you ran away from the Eye.”

  She stopped and looked at me, and I met her gaze and I did see her future, or at least her end. Two and a half years away. And I thought, You stupid, stupid girl, Jem. I should never, never have told anyone — it should have been my secret right to the end.

  “It’s just rumors,” I muttered. “You know what people are like.”

  “But there’s something, isn’t there? There’s something different about you.” She was searching my face, like she’d find some sort of answer there. “Can you?” she said. “Can you see into the future?”

  I was squirming in my seat now. I tried not to look at her, kept my eyes down at my hands and my feet, kept my mouth shut. It didn’t put her off. In fact, she reached up and picked at the end of her scarf, and then unwound it, revealing her scalp, nearly bald, with a few tufts of hair here and there. It made her look shockingly naked.

  She reached out to touch my hand. I wanted to push her away, tell her to back off. I can’t explain to you how odd it was to have a stranger sitting up close to me, wanting to touch me. I’d spent a lifetime making sure there was space between me and everyone else, putting up walls. Physical contact with anyone made me make a face, show my revulsion, move away. Except with Spider, of course.

  Everything had been different with him.

  The strength of this woman’s longing stopped me, though — perhaps somewhere deep inside me I was a decent person after all. I put my hand on top of hers and gently moved it away. Her fingers closed on mine, she felt
the scar on my hand and turned it over, gasping when she saw the red, angry tear from the barbed wire.

  “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 m
y life.

  Back in the vestry, Karen had reappeared. As I emerged from the cloakroom with 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.”