Mortal Ghost (24 page)

‘Want some?’ Finn asked.

Jesse nodded.

Finn poured them each a glass. He drank his at a gulp, the cold making his teeth ache and his throat burn as it slid down his gullet. Jesse sipped his slowly, as if it hurt for him to swallow. By the time Finn had finished his second glass, his temper had cooled. He went to the window and stared out, chewing his lip. For all her gifts, Meg hadn’t been able to help trace Peter, had she?

‘You’d better go lie down. I’ll bring you your tablets,’ Finn said.

After putting his glass into the dishwasher, Finn moved to the table and saved the changes he’d made while Jesse had been asleep. In no mood to work on the bloody translation, Finn wished he hadn’t agreed to do it, even as a favour to his brother.

‘You blame Meg, don’t you? For Peter’s death?’ Jesse asked.

His face savage for an instant, Finn rounded on Jesse. Then, expression softening like wax held too close to a flame, Finn turned away. After a hesitation, Jesse went over and touched Finn tentatively on the arm.

‘You told me yourself it doesn’t work like that,’ Jesse said. ‘Meg’s not a fortune-teller.’

‘It’s got nothing to do with palm-reading and tarot cards and all that sort of crap,’ Finn said.

‘Then tell me why you’re so angry at her.’

‘I can’t talk about it.’

‘Can’t? Or won’t?’ Jesse paused, then added, ‘I’m just a kid, aren’t I? A fucked-up street kid who’s got no business asking. And who couldn’t possibly understand anyway.’

‘Bollocks. You heard me. I don’t want to talk about it. So zip it.’

Jesse made a noise halfway between a sob and a snarl. ‘And if something happens to Sarah, who will you blame then?’

Finn struck him across the face.

~~~

Huddled on the bed, Jesse found himself close to shaking. His cheek didn’t really sting any more, only the memory of the slap. He picked up the top and rubbed it between his fingers until heat began to rise from the wood. The rest of him felt cold. He’d failed Sarah. And alienated Finn with stupid taunts. Jesse laid the top against his cheek. For the first time in years, he’d found decent people, people he could respect. And what did he do? He deserved to be struck.

It’s no good, Jesse thought. Liam was right. Mal was right. Even I was right. I can’t live with them . . . with anyone. It was stupid to try. Better to be alone than end up like Mal and Angie.

He who is alone now, will remain alone . . . will wander the streets restlessly . . .

A soft knock, and the door opened. Finn stood on the threshold, his face sombre.

‘May I come in?’ he asked.

‘Suit yourself,’ said Jesse, shrugging. After one quick look, he refused to meet Finn’s eyes.

Finn crossed the room and sat down on Jesse’s bed, careful to leave a space between them. Leaning forward, he propped his forearms on his knees so that his spare tyre rolled comfortably over his waistband. There was a long silence, broken only by the faint snuffle of Nubi’s breathing.

‘I’m sorry,’ Finn finally said. ‘I don’t know what came over me. I haven’t hit anyone in years.’ He gave a little snort of laughter. ‘Well no, that’s not quite true. There was this nasty bloke in Santiago last year . . . You don’t ever want to punch a policeman in Chile.’

‘You’re kidding me.’

‘Nope. Spent a couple of nights in gaol fending off the cockroaches—the two-legged variety. I’ve even got the release papers tucked away somewhere to prove it.’

‘Is Sarah back?’ Jesse asked, although he knew the question was futile.

‘Not yet.’

‘Have you tried her mobile again?’

‘Three times. Also sent her a text.’ Finn eyed Jesse. ‘I got an answer:
be back soon
.’

‘Anyone could have sent it.’

‘So you still think something’s the matter?’

‘Yeah.’

Finn looked down at his hands. His wedding ring was a simple gold band which had grown a bit tight in recent years. He slid it back and forth a few times. He wasn’t being entirely honest with Jesse. Of course he knew why he’d lashed out, just as he understood Jesse’s feelings of impotence and frustration. No one remembered better than Finn himself how he’d raged at anyone and everyone in the months after Peter had left. It had been touch and go for a while with Meg. Sometimes he wished there would be public floggings for the mistakes you made in life—for the people you hurt, the kids you damaged.

‘Fear deranges faster than the worst addiction,’ Finn said softly.

Jesse felt even more ashamed of his outburst. ‘I shouldn’t have said that to you.’

‘But you were right. It’s more comfortable to blame someone else than yourself.’ Finn straightened his shoulders and scowled at Jesse with mock severity. ‘And don’t you dare tell me that we all do it.’

‘It would never cross my mind to say anything so banal.’

Finn grinned. ‘Touché.’

Jesse ran his hands through his hair. ‘Meg told me that she’d been smelling burnt almonds all day long. Does that make any sense to you?’

‘Meg usually doesn’t talk much about what she sees. But there are certain motifs that seem to recur. Smells or colours or sounds, anything really. In a poem, you’d call them symbols, I suppose. But Meg says that they’re the mind’s way of processing, of conceptualising the unfathomable. Apparently we don’t learn symbol-making. It’s an innate capacity—a biological function, evolved since god knows when.’ His eyes gleamed. ‘Maybe something like the
god cells
in the brain neuroscientists are starting to talk about.’

‘You still haven’t told me about the burnt almonds.’

Finn began to play with his ring again. It took him a long time to answer. ‘Meg smelled burnt almonds a lot after Peter disappeared.’

‘I’m frightened,’ Jesse whispered. Had he ever admitted that to anyone before? He couldn’t remember.

It was an ephemeral gift, fragile and translucent as a soap bubble, and Finn held it between his hands with surprising delicacy.

‘
So am I, Jesse.’

~~~

The screen-saver was up—one of those impossible Escher staircases, ascending and descending in a perpetual enigma, which usually amused Jesse but now irritated him. He hit a key, expecting to see his desktop appear. Instead, the image remained in place. Jesse cursed, thinking that the computer had frozen again. Then a flicker under the bell tower caught his attention. A monk was pulling on the bellrope so that a large blue top swung slowly from side to side, the only spot of colour in the entire frame.

Jesse slammed down the lid of the laptop. Cursing himself even more colourfully, he nevertheless groped among the books and odds-and-ends on the bedside table for the top. It wasn’t there.

Jesse sat down with his head in his hands. I’m not mad, he told himself. He knew he ought to forget the top, but instead he searched the bed with care, lifting pillow and shaking out duvet, then dropped to his knees and peered underneath the frame. The effort intensified his headache. When he closed his eyes, a pattern of red and orange sparks fired behind his lids.

‘Sod this,’ he muttered. ‘Who needs a top anyway?’

A strong odour of lavender assailed him. His stomach clenched, accompanied by a renewed feeling of urgency. As he rose to his feet his eyes fell on his pillow. The blue top lay in plain sight, a small length of string dangling from its handle.

The floor of Mick’s bedroom. Mick and Gavin smoking in the next room. The music still audible but no longer booming. Mick had told her she was welcome to bath. He’d opened the large wardrobe with a smile, ‘Borrow what you like.’ As if nothing were the matter.

Drowsily Sarah drifted into a snowy landscape where she huddled under the boughs of a tall pine sheltering her from the heavy flakes, which blinded her whenever she ventured to escape. Better to remain—the cold had ceased to be painful. Slowly, in fact, a delicious lethargy began to invade her mind. Here she could sleep. Here she could dream.

But her body had its own urgency—eventually it roused her. In slow motion she levered herself upright. She licked her lips, which were caked with dried blood. It hurt to breathe, and it hurt to move, but Sarah knew that she needed to get herself out of here before she could begin to think about what had happened. She hugged her ribs for a long time, shivering and unable to budge. There seemed to a roadblock between her brain and her muscles. Every time she told herself to get up, her numb legs wouldn’t obey. Only after she massaged them roughly did the pins-and-needles diminish and she trust herself to stand. She leaned on the laughter from the next room like a crutch. Just get home, she told herself over and over again.

Much as the prospect of wearing Mick’s things sickened her, she could hardly leave in what was left of her own clothes. She knew that you were supposed to go straight to the police without washing. An examination, tests. They should be stopped, a voice in her head told her. But it was small and weak and came from a great distance. As if the law ever meant anything to people like Mick. His parents had plenty of money.

How could she tell anyone what they’d done?

Don’t think about it. Think about going to the toilet, cleaning yourself up, getting dressed somehow, walking downstairs, then out the front door. Step by step. But there was no way she could make it home in a bus, or even as far as the bus stop. She had her mobile, if they hadn’t wrecked it. She shook her head, trying to clear her mind of the sighing of the wind, a thick drifting of snow, and a single blackbird. She was so cold again.

For a moment she considered ringing Finn, then discarded the idea. His rage would be colossal, and incalculable. She sometimes wondered if her father were capable of murder—those fights with Peter, the months afterwards. If Finn ever learned what she’d done . . . Was this her punishment at last? She’d hoped that by helping Jesse—

Jesse. Oh god, Jesse . . .

Sarah closed her eyes and pressed a fist to her mouth, hard against her teeth, but she couldn’t hold in the ragged cry as they drove and drove again, cleaving her life, her self-respect, her
soul
. Now the blood ran red and hot and thick in her veins. It beat back the snow. Her mind shrieked: kill them kill them kill them kill them
kill them

There was no bolt of lightning. No avenging angel. No earthquake which sundered the ground beneath their feet.

Sarah could hear more laughter from the next room.

No matter how open her parents were—how understanding—there was no way she could tell her father this. Not even if she sent him a letter from another continent.

And most of all, she couldn’t bear for Jesse to know.

Once, after hours and hours of effort, she hadn’t been able to manage a very difficult ballet sequence and had been reduced to tears. Her teacher had reminded her of Agnes de Mille’s famous words: it never becomes easy to dance; it becomes possible.

Sarah had finally mastered the steps; and she would somehow find a way to conceal what they’d done from Jesse.

Slowly she dragged herself to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. There were fewer bruises than she expected, and none above her breasts. The face which looked back at her was strangely unchanged, which shocked her. She had expected to see a profound difference. Wasn’t the face a reflection of her essence? her self? Or was that as much an illusion as everything else she’d always believed? She thought of Jesse’s quirky mouth, his mysterious and expressive eyes. If she couldn’t read his face . . . Had they taken
that
away from her as well?

She stared at her image until the need to wee became overwhelming. Seat raised, the toilet gaped at her like a cold and voracious mouth, and she slammed it shut. There was a stall shower as well as a tub; the shower would do. She ran the hot water and, meanwhile, rinsed her mouth at the washbasin, then drank and drank from the cold tap until she could hold no more. Carefully she stepped under the stinging spray, peed, let the scalding water beat against her skin until it came up red. She leaned her head against the antiseptic white tiles while she showered. The shower gel smelled masculine, and she wouldn’t touch it. Jesse, she thought, but didn’t cry.

She’d finished dressing when Mick came into the bedroom. She looked at him without speaking.

‘Shall I ring for a taxi?’ he asked, as if they’d just been out to dinner and the theatre.

She would have liked to refuse, but there were no other viable options.

‘That was rather exciting, wasn’t it?’ he asked.