(1992) Prophecy (27 page)

The door was opened by a woman in her late forties wearing a grubby artist’s smock and plastic flip-flops. Her hair was a bush of brown and grey wire. She wore no make-up and although ravaged by pock-marks from childhood acne she had a doll-like prettiness about her, spoiled by yellow and black nicotine-stained teeth as she smiled. A lump of rock crystal hung from a leather thong around her neck and there was a heavy charm-bracelet on her wrist. She held a cigarette in one hand and knelt, brushing two cats away from the door with the other. ‘Hello, Frannie?’ Frannie recognized the voice immediately from the phone last night, like a little girl’s, with the faintest hint of a smoker’s rasp.

‘Yes! Mrs Verbeeten?’

‘So sweet of you to come. Susie’s thrilled.’ She stepped back and waved the cats away again with paint-covered hands. ‘Tonga, Biba, my little honeys, shoo, out of the way for Frannie, go on, dears!’

Frannie stepped into a shabby hallway that smelled of cats and joss-sticks. A moth-eaten Aztec rug hung on the wall in front of her, and dusty-looking ethnic rugs were scattered on the floor. A huge tapestry filled the wall on her right and it took a moment for her to notice the five-pointed star motif that was its main design. A pentagram, she thought. Pentacle. A floorboard creaked above them and they both turned. Susie was coming down the stairs, confidently, as if she could see perfectly well.

She was wearing a blouse, cotton skirt and leather
slippers, and clutching a small blue book in her hand. She looked exactly the same as when Frannie had last seen her three years ago. The upright, angular figure, the slender, handsome face harshened by her hairstyle, which was also the same: shorn at the sides and sticking up like a topiaried hedge on top. Only the way she stared past Frannie with a rather vacant expression gave her blindness away. And Frannie noticed that she had made a mistake buttoning her blouse; it was one out in the sequence.

‘Spags!’ Her greeting was cheery but carried a hint of uncertainty.

‘Hi, Susie!’ Frannie tried to sound natural, as if nothing was different, but it came out all wrong, sounded as if she was greeting an imbecile. She reached out and took Susie’s right hand, then put her free arm around her and hugged her, clumsily. Susie hugged her back warmly and they kissed on each cheek. Frannie smelled the raw, astringent smell of underarm perspiration. Susie was nervous of this meeting also.

She released her hand, and was surprised when Susie suddenly touched her on the arms, patted her ribs, then lifted her hands up and felt her hair.

‘Slim as ever,’ Susie said. ‘And your hair’s still long.’

Frannie relaxed for an instant from the tension. ‘You’re looking great, you know? Really pretty.’

In the silence that followed she wondered if she had said the wrong thing. She watched Susie’s eyes uncomfortably; for a brief moment they seemed almost to focus on her, then they moved away.

‘Would you like a drink? Some tea, or coffee?’ Susie asked.

‘Love some coffee.’

‘I’m going back to the studio, darling. Call me if you want anything.’ Mrs Verbeeten looked at Frannie,
giving her a stare she could not read. ‘So nice to meet you. Susie’s talked so much about you over the years.’

‘And you too,’ Frannie said, thrown by the stare.

‘You’re very welcome to stay for lunch, if you like. It’ll just be a salad.’

‘Thank you, but I have to get back.’

Susie led the way through into the kitchen which was old-fashioned and grimy. A cat slunk out. ‘God, I don’t know what happens to time, Frannie. I’ve been meaning to call you. I did try a couple of times but you were away on digs.’

‘I would have called you too, but I thought you were out in the Far East.’

‘So tell me about you,’ Susie said. She put the book down on the wooden table in the middle of the room, and Frannie saw that it was an old diary. She watched Susie open cupboards, remove coffee, mugs, and open the fridge. She did everything slowly, methodically, setting things down carefully. She shook the kettle, switched it on, unscrewed the jar of coffee, then felt below the worktop for the drawer with the spoons.

‘Do you have a boyfriend?’ Susie asked.

Frannie hesitated. ‘Yes.’

‘Great!’ Susie said with a warmth that surprised her. ‘What does he do? You’re at the British Museum, you said? Is he an archaeologist?’

‘No – he’s a –’ Frannie wasn’t quite sure how to describe Oliver. ‘Mathematician. A statistician.’

The kettle started to boil. Susie pulled a gadget from behind it that looked like a radio pager, with one short and one long wire. She clipped it to the side of the mug, the wires dangling in, and poured from the kettle. As the water reached the top of the first mug, a sharp electronic beep rang out. She clipped the gadget to the second mug and filled that.

‘That’s clever,’ Frannie said.

‘There’s tons of tricks,’ Susie said with a trace of bitterness. ‘I’ve got a machine I’m learning on that can read printed books – scans the words and converts them into Braille. In six months’ time I’m getting a guide-dog – I have to go on a training course.’

‘Is there any chance of getting your sight back?’

‘Milk?’

‘Just black, thanks.’

‘No chance at all,’ Susie said with finality, as if she did not even want to discuss it. She poured some milk into her mug, then set the bottle dangerously close to the edge of the worktop, turned away, picked a tray off a shelf behind and put the two mugs on it, her arm passing inches from the bottle. Alarmed, Frannie reached across and moved the bottle.

‘Sugar?’

‘No, I don’t take it, thanks.’

To her horror, she saw Susie reaching towards the back of the worktop, her hand sweeping towards the sugar bowl. She had put the milk bottle right in her path.

She lunged forward, but it was too late. Susie’s hand struck the bottle, sending it flying like a skittle. It spun across the surface, spewing out milk, striking one mug, sending it smashing to the floor. Scalding coffee exploded in all directions, lashing Frannie’s jeans and burning her legs, splashing over Susie’s legs and over her cotton skirt, spraying the units.

Frannie grabbed a tea towel, ran it under the cold tap, and pressed it against Susie’s legs, apologizing frantically, explaining that it was her fault.

‘Afraid I’m not much good at clearing things up,’ Susie said.

Frannie steered her away to the other side of the
kitchen, and Susie told her where to find the squeegee and mop and bucket.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Frannie said, feeling very small, making herself another cup of coffee after she’d mopped up.

‘It’s OK. I have to get used to people helping me,’ she said ironically.

They went through into the drawing-room. It was dark, with a battered sofa and two armchairs with their backs draped in antimacassars. There were several pictures on the wall, strange, rather disturbing abstracts, which she wondered if Susie’s mother had painted. An assortment of stones and crystals were arranged on the mantelpiece, along with some small, rather ugly figurines. A creased pack of tarot cards sat on a lace cloth on a round table.

She waited until Susie had set the tray down and had removed her mug before taking the other, wary of any more mishaps.

‘Did you have any thoughts about that Ouija session, Susie?’ she asked.

‘Mummy found my old diary – damn – I left it in the kitchen.’ She jumped up and went out, neatly sidestepping a cat; Frannie watched her agility in amazement. She came back and handed the diary to Frannie. ‘Seven of us,’ she said. ‘You, me, Meredith, Phoebe, Jonathan Mountjoy, Seb Holland and Max Gabriel.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ Frannie said, a band of tension tightening in her. ‘And you were given the message
Dark
?’

Susie gave a hollow laugh. ‘Yes. We were all given stupid messages.’ She hesitated. ‘Except Meredith. I’d forgotten until Phoebe rang me.’

‘Do you hear much from Phoebe?’

‘Not a lot, because I’ve been out of the country most of the time since university. When her contract ended in Bath she was going to come with me out to China, a few months ago, to join a dig in Szechwan, but then she got the job offer in London. She was lucky. Might have got the same thing as me.’

‘It was a
virus
?’ Frannie said.

‘Yes. I got it on the way, in Malaya. It’s from the pollution in the South China Sea. The locals are immune to it, and they like to keep it a secret from tourists. Most people who get it come back with a bad eye infection and are fine after a few days – but if you get it really badly, like I did, it destroys your retinas.’

‘I’m sorry I didn’t know about it sooner,’ Frannie said awkwardly. ‘I’d have come to see you.’

‘I didn’t want to see anybody until recently. I’m not very good company, I’m afraid. I just keep thinking about all the things I’ll never be able to do.’

‘Medicine and technology are improving all the time.’ Frannie said the only thing she could say. ‘There might be some real breakthroughs in a year or two’s time.’

Susie was silent for a moment. ‘Our year from university has done pretty well in the disaster stakes, hasn’t it?’

‘Is it
us
? Or is it something else?’

‘The Ouija?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is that what you think?’

‘It was Phoebe who – I guess – made the connection.’

‘Actually, I’m surprised Phoebe hasn’t rung me back – she said she might come down this weekend.’

Frannie looked at her. ‘You haven’t heard?’

Susie stiffened and her voice turned to alarm. ‘No?
What?’ When Frannie told her about the accident, she seemed dazed by the news. ‘I – I ought to go and see her. I’ll get Mummy to drive me up. How’s she taking it?’

‘She was pretty doped up when I saw her last night.’

‘She’ll go through a lot of emotions. Same as I did. God!’ She put her mug down and gripped the edge of the sofa, as if for reassurance.

‘Four of the seven who were there have had something happen,’ Frannie said. ‘That’s quite a coincidence.’

Susie thought for some moments before speaking. ‘Four?’ she echoed, dubiously. ‘Have a look in the diary, Frannie. It’s around about 24th March.’

Frannie picked up the diary and opened it. The cover was battered and the pages were creased, filled with large, untidy handwriting. There was a page to a day and almost every inch of space was crammed with lists, telephone numbers, reminders heavily underlined. Several pages were missing or partially torn out. She turned to the page with 24th March on it and noticed that the bottom two inches of that, also, were missing. Through the morass of writing she could see, heavily underlined, the word: ‘Seance!!!’ Packed in beneath it were the names of everyone who had been there. Beneath them, in list form, was written:

Frannie looked up with a start. ‘
Dead by twenty-five. Car crash
. Meredith?’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘You wrote this down at the time?’

‘Yes. Well – probably a few days later. How old was Meredith when she died?’

‘She’d have been twenty-five in October.’

‘Shit,’ uttered Susie and then repeated it. ‘Shit.’

‘That’s really freaky,’ Frannie said.

She shivered, turned the page, compelled to look for her own message.

Susie was silent. ‘Fruit machine,’ she said suddenly. ‘That was Phoebe’s message.’

Frannie could find nothing relevant on the reverse page. It looked as if her own and Seb Holland’s messages had been on the strip that was torn off the bottom. She looked back at the list. ‘Yes,
fruit machine
.’

‘One-armed bandit,’ Susie said.

Frannie didn’t react at first; she was hunting again in case her own entry was written somewhere else. Then she stopped and stared at Susie, understanding the gruesome connection. ‘You were told
dark
, and this has happened to you. Jonathan
cash and carry
and he’s shot by a mugger. Phoebe
fruit machine
and she’s lost an arm. It’s easy to make them fit. But that doesn’t make them predictions or prophecies, does it?’ She could hear the anxiety in her own voice.

‘What does it say for you?’ Susie asked.

‘Mine and Seb Holland’s are missing. Someone’s torn off the bottom of the page. Can you remember what they were?’

Susie thought for a moment then shook her head. ‘No. Too long ago. It was just a lark, I didn’t take it seriously.’

‘Some lark,’ Frannie said.

Susie grimaced.

‘You don’t remember if I had a number in mine, Susie? The number twenty-six?’

‘No, I really can’t remember. Is that what you think it was?’

‘Phoebe told me to be careful of that number the day before she had her accident.’ She shrugged and looked back down at the diary. ‘Max Gabriel –
lose weight
,’ she read out.

Susie seemed not to react for a few moments, then she said, ‘Well, he’s doing that all right.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I was going out with him – before – what happened. He was working with some loony environmentalists; tried to sabotage a French nuclear power station and ended up getting heavily irradiated. He’s in a hospice dying of leukaemia. It’s not four out of the seven who were there, Frannie. It’s five.’

Frannie looked down at the knuckles of charred wood and the grey ash in the cold grate, and wondered distractedly if they had been there since last winter. The ceiling was low, a grubby cream that was unevenly stained with nicotine. The room felt so gloomy and dark she had to look through the window at the blue sky to convince herself that it was not raining outside.

Her hands opened and shut. Her body felt leaden, as if she had buoyancy tanks inside her that had been ruptured and she was going to sink. The sofa sagged beneath her weight; there was a stone floor beneath the sofa, and earth beneath that. She felt the vastness of the planet and the smallness of the room, and the strength of the pull of gravity drawing her downwards.