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.