And then, suddenly, he knew what it was like to be a father. That thought came crashing down on him, as if it was released out of the sky. Because there was no longer a will in this reality to block it.
And he fell to his knees under the weight of it. And he stared into Jessica’s face. And he knew exactly who she was.
Terry and Julie Franks, at home in Brockley, suddenly looked over to where Charlie aged five, Hayley, six, and Joel, seven sat watching television, because Terry and Julie had kind of felt the children would take themselves off to bed when they were ready. The kids had adapted a little already to how their parents were now. They were starting to deal with the shock, starting to accept the awkward, desperate trying-to-care they’d been offered as simply how things were now, part of the hugeness that had happened to them. Terry and Julie had been doing their best, buying them loads of stuff, because they felt they had to do the right thing. They had neighbours to fend off, too, people who they’d never realized were their neighbours until the TV crews started showing up.
It had been like one of those dreams where you’re called on to be an expert, only you’re really not.
But now there was suddenly this great lump of pain and history within their bodies.
They now knocked over furniture to get to those three children, because suddenly they needed to hold them so much.
When she was born, James Quill had put his enormous rough fingertips on the side of his little daughter Jessica’s red face, and felt how incredibly soft she was. She’d smelt like a butcher’s shop. A good butcher’s shop. He had put his nose in her hair so many times in the last year and a bit. She would hand him things when he was sitting beside her, as if he was just a convenient keeping-things-handy thing. Or she would just leave things falling in the air, expecting him to catch them.
She could drive him to fury because she was stubborn, exactly as her mother was, and would raise her voice higher and higher until she was screaming at him. And he could never be fully angry back, because he was her world, and that world should never be completely angry at the little one inside it. And that wasn’t something he had to try to be or not to be; it was just what he was.
And Jessica and Sarah. . that smaller, shaking her head violently, putting her hands over her eyes, putting her arms over her head, impossible to get into her pyjamas, louder, small-explosion version of the woman he loved. A little clone of her. Them looking at each other, the little one not knowing a thing about love, as if Mummy and Daddy were her friends, and everyone in the world was like this, not understanding the way Sarah looked at her.
Quill grabbed for his phone just as it rang. ‘I want to talk to her!’ Sarah sounded as if she was crying, and he thought he was probably crying, too, but whatever he was doing had now suddenly rushed into the background and become so hugely unimportant-
‘Daddy,’ said Jessica, looking up at him as she said it to both of them.
‘Hello, girl,’ he said.
He was sure that, at this age, the witch would eventually be forgotten.
THIRTY
That night in the hospital, with two broken legs, three broken ribs and numerous vertebrae waiting for a specialist verdict, Lisa Ross had a dream.
She, Quill, Costain and Sefton were standing together in the tunnel that led from the home dressing room to the pitch at Upton Park. They’d been there for real, of course, so there was loads of authentic detail. Ross looked around, amazed at the clarity of it. There was a framed picture on the wall of the tunnel. She went to it, and smiled when she saw that it was a picture of the four of them, with their names neatly inscribed, standing like four proud hunters, their feet on top of. . the corpse of. .
No, she was proud. She expected to meet her dad somewhere in this dream. She really was proud. Under the picture were written two words in longhand:
The Present.
She didn’t know what that meant, as she couldn’t find any information to analyse there. She looked to the others, and then walked up the tunnel.
Kev Sefton had a dream that night too, while he was lying in bed with Joe. He was standing, with Ross, Costain and Quill, in the tunnel that led from the home dressing room to the pitch at Upton Park. There were pictures of famous players on the wall. Up ahead there were full-length ones, shining. He started forward. . No, not pictures. Mirrors. They were going to walk through a tunnel of mirrors. He went ahead. He did it first. He carefully didn’t look to his left or right. He was being offered the opportunity to see himself as others saw him. To be judged. Did he think he was up to that? Those mirrors would reflect each other. Those visions of himself would go on forever. Wouldn’t that be grand? To see himself so thoroughly, so brilliantly — to shine gloriously like that?
Sefton was tempted. And then he realized he was being tempted. And, in stories, being tempted was never good, was it?
He shifted his feet a little. He kept his gaze straight ahead. Don’t know what you’re talking about, mate. Got the wrong bloke. I’m here by accident. I’m not in charge of anything. I don’t even know what I’m about.
Not yet.
He got to the other side, then he looked back to his friends, and he instructed them how to proceed.
Tony Costain, asleep in an uncomfortable chair a few feet away from Ross, also had a dream that night. He was standing with Ross, Sefton and Quill at the end of the tunnel that led from the home dressing room to the pitch at Upton Park. They didn’t want to take the last few steps out onto the pitch, because of a figure that stood in the shadows of the floodlights. It was breathing heavily, as if it couldn’t do it any other way. It was shaped roughly like a man. It felt like the smiling man. Because this was a dream, he knew that was who it was. But it was bigger than him now. And for Costain to see any more than he was seeing would be bad. He understood he was being deliberately spared that. More fool you, then, son. He led the others of his team to the door and then, as they went carefully past, he turned to look straight at the thing. It was hanging on here, he realized, to watch something, to check on the show it was staging. He made himself keep looking at it as the others headed past him. He was on guard. He was offering the big boss a challenge. The fear was still huge, but it stayed steady. He couldn’t discern any more detail, no matter how hard he looked. Sure, it was keeping itself concealed from him. . but maybe that wasn’t entirely for his benefit. He nodded to it. Respect. We’ll see. Then he followed his mates onto the pitch.
At home, in bed with Sarah and Jessica, James Quill was having a dream. He was on the pitch at Upton Park, with Ross, Sefton and Costain. A handful of uniforms were hanging around. From the streets outside, there was the distant sound of continuing violence, shouting and sirens. Multiple arrests, he knew, because of a riot that had spread out from here. At the centre of the pitch stood a cluster of police spotlights. He led his team over.