She had been a lot kinder to him since he lied about communicating with Callum. Bert surmised that such contact may have been possible, but there was no way he was going to try. He had not wanted to hear from his brother when he was alive, much less after he had sent him to his death.
Bert unwrapped the globular-shaped package first. At first he thought it was a world globe, but as he tore off the rest of the paper, he revealed a glass ball on a black plastic plinth. It was hard and heavy, and he looked at his mother quizzically. She nodded at him to open the other packages. The second was a flat wooden board, all letters and numbers, with a small wooden plinth on a roller ball. He had heard about ouija boards at school, but the ones the kids spoke about were homemade, nothing as sophisticated as this. Smiling, he opened the third and last package. It was small, square, and heavy in his palm. Ripping open the paper he stared at the red velvet pouch, and after a cursory glance at his mother, eased the gold strings open to reveal a strange-looking deck of cards.
‘They’re tarot cards,’ she said, smiling. The expression looked alien on her face, and lasted only a second before falling back into her customary anxious frown. ‘They’re all for you, Bert, so you can talk to Callum. But only when your father’s not around. Do you think it will help you speak to him?’
Bert shrugged. He didn’t feel like being kind to her today. But then he caught the edge of a doubtful thought and sprang from the floor to hug her.
‘Don’t be sad, mummy, I’ll speak to him tonight, I promise.’
Grace nodded unconvincingly, as she tried to extricate herself from his hug. ‘In that case I’ll leave you to it. I’m going back to bed.’
The house was eerily quiet in the absence of mother’s singing. In the olden days, she would be doing something productive, baking, painting, or chatting with father. Now the house was as bleak as the light behind her eyes, and Bert could barely stand it. The barbed thoughts, the pity of his school classmates … if it weren’t for his ally the raven, he would have felt very alone.
Bert sat on the floor until his bottom went numb. The crystal ball was cheap rubbish, and he wiped away his fingerprints before returning it to the box. Mother would send the presents back when the whim suited her anyway. He didn’t like the ouija board. The second he placed the plinth on the wood he knew it was a doorway into something too dark for him to handle. What if his brother started talking to him through it? What if Callum said that he was going to hell for making him fall from that tree? His mother told him about hell once, a long time ago, when she used to go to church, but Bert’s harsh life lessons demonstrated that the darkness of hell was not reserved for the afterlife. It was with him every minute of every day.
He turned his attention back to the cards, feeling a tingle shoot up his finger as he touched the deck. It brought with it a hint of the power lying behind the shop-coated smell. A flutter of excitement rose, as he clumsily thumbed the pictures. Death, temperance, and judgment, the meaning of each card whispered softly into his senses. Bert smiled as he brought them to his nose, inhaling their power. The empty feeling he had been carrying evaporated as he basked in their potency.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The itch. The damned itch! Jennifer squirmed as she raked her skin with long yellow nails, leaving ragged blood-seeped tracks in their wake. She looked down at her shaking hands, scaly and withered, gasping as they touched her bristled face.
‘No,’ she said, ‘get away from me, no!’
A light flickered on and Jennifer recoiled from the hand on her shoulder.
‘Hey, hey, it’s me, Will. You’re dreaming.’
She blinked, looking left to right. ‘Mmm? Where am I?’
Will murmured softly. ‘Shhh, it’s OK, it’s just a bad dream.’
Jennifer mumbled something incoherent before lying back down. Slowly her heartbeat returned to a normal rhythm as she surrendered to sleep.
Will pressed his lips against her forehead before turning to face the wall.
Easing herself into the warmth of his back, Jennifer snaked her hand around his waist, and he drew it up into the groove of his chest, drawing her close to banish the nightmares.
[#]
‘You’re late, I didn’t think you were coming,’ Amy said, pulling open the door. Her usual weekly visit had been delayed by a late afternoon lie-in at Will’s, and a shared shower after dinner. Jennifer grinned sheepishly as she followed her sister inside, hopping on one of the barstools next to the compact breakfast bar. The sense of betrayal diminished since her father’s visit, and a night spent with Will had eased the loneliness nesting in her heart. Her sister seemed buoyant, which suggested it had gone well. Nevertheless, Jennifer was not going to mention her father unless Amy brought him up first.
Six sterilised baby bottles were lined up in a row next to an open tin of milk powder, and Amy completed the routine of mixing, shaking and storing the feeds before wiping down the counter and making two cups of tea. Jennifer watched with admiration as Amy worked, cleaning the kitchen, listening to the baby monitor, and telling Joshua to go to bed. She thought of their own childhood; when they were free to do what they wanted until the pubs closed. Then their father came home stinking of beer, and Jennifer would creep down in her nightie to lock the front door behind him. On a good night, he’d be lying comatose on the sofa, and Jennifer would prise the empty beer can from his grasp before covering him with a blanket. On a bad night, he’d bring back company. Narrow-eyed drunks who would raid her food supplies and leer as she darted back upstairs and locked her bedroom door.
Jennifer pulled herself away from the past and drew her attention back to her sister. Her home was full of comforting things, a smaller version of their aunt Laura’s, the woman who saved them from a life in care. Wicker love hearts hanging from cupboard handles, wall art advocating love, life, and laughter, knitted tea cosies shaped like owls, with the smell of freshly baked cookies wafting from the oven. It transported her sister to a better place, a time of love and security. Jennifer thought of her bleached black and white home and wondered what it said about her.
Soon the pair of them were chatting about the kids, family life, and a censored version of life in the police force. Jennifer laughed as Joshua ran up the stairs in his Spider-Man pyjamas, expending his limitless amounts of energy before bed.
‘I got his test results back today,’ Amy said, lightly stirring the tea before pushing it across the marble counter.
Jennifer took the cup, patterned with purple and yellow splodges. She had a similar one, which looked so out of place in her sterile kitchen cupboard – a gift from Joshua after one of his nursery craft sessions. Her eyes flickered over the fridge door, adorned with colourful magnets holding up his various paintings and star-emblazoned awards. There was nothing wrong with her beloved nephew, but in a world obsessed with labels he would be pressured to shed his identity and conform.
‘What did they come up with?’