‘Some people don’t know they’re dead, you see? So you have to tell them …’
Everyone nodded and there were murmurs of true and that’s right, and Anna shied away from a new mental image of the soul lost between life and death, alone and afraid and never seeing a friendly face – in this world or the next. She couldn’t think about it; it was worse than mere death. It made her hope that Richard Latham was a liar and a fake, and she comforted herself with the thought that if he really was psychic, he’d be in Hollywood by now, making millions off celebrities – dead or alive – not inventing outlandish stories about them in a grubby hall on Bickley Bridge.
She turned to Sandra. ‘What was he on TV for?’
Sandra dabbed tea from the corner of her mouth with the same tissue with which she’d blown her nose. It couldn’t be hygienic; Anna moved the buggy away from her.
‘He helped the police on a missing-persons case.’
Anna’s heart lurched.
‘A girl called Edie Evans,’ Sandra went on. ‘They found her bike all mangled somewhere over in Bromley. It was a year or so ago. Do you remember?’
Anna shook her head slowly and her ears thrummed with blood. She felt drunk, yet more alert than she’d ever been in her life. So alert that she felt the tiny soft hairs on the edges of her ears tingle in anticipation.
‘Did they … did they ever find her?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘But they didn’t find her … body?’
‘Oh no, I’d have remembered that.’
Anna put her hand over her heart and felt it pulsing crazily under the skin.
‘Sandra, is your dog dead?’ The words spilled out of her so urgently that she wasn’t even sure they were in the right order.
Is Sandra dog your dead?
‘Oh no!’ said Sandra. ‘Just lost! And Richard says she’ll be home very, very soon!’
Something expanded so fast in Anna’s chest that it took her breath away. It was a magical bubble that left her dizzy and tearful with forgotten joy.
This was why she was here!
This was the reason she’d left the safety of the flat and brought the baby out into the filth of a London night. This was why she’d ventured past the footprints on the edge of the cement. Not to speak to the dead, but for this!
For something Anna thought had been lost to her for ever.
For hope.
8
THE BODY WAS small but it wasn’t light.
He dragged it and lifted it and dragged it some more.
The dragging felt wrong. Not only because his hands were sweaty and kept slipping from around the narrow wrists, but because there was no dignity in it. Not for him, and not for the corpse.
He picked it up and carried it.
He tried to be kind to it.
That’s all he’d ever tried to be. And if he had failed in life then it didn’t mean he couldn’t try to make amends in death. They were not separate things; he had lived with the dead for most of his life and understood that. Just because a body no longer contained a spirit, it didn’t mean it should be treated with anything less than kindness and respect.
Even while he was trying to push it up and over the high railings.
He should have wrapped it in something. It was too late now. One loose fist swung gently as he struggled. He clenched his teeth. Sweat and summer rain ran into his eyes as he heaved.
His back cried out; his arms ached. He could feel the muscles stretching, trembling and starting to wobble.
The chiding fist bumped his cheek, reminding him, reminding him, reminding him.
He dropped the body.
It landed awkwardly in the damp grit, face down, and with the head twisted to the side under one hunched shoulder. The bare soles of the small feet glowing pale orange under the single streetlamp.
It was too hard. It was too horrible.
He started to cry.
He had failed the living and now he was failing the dead.
The rain on his face was swollen by sweat and then by tears and finally by snot as it ran down his cheeks, over his lips and into his mouth in a salty flash-flood of shame.
Eventually, he sighed and wiped his eyes on the damp sleeve of his shirt.
Then he bent and embraced the body one more time.
9
‘CHURCH?’ JAMES FROWNED up at the ceiling.
Neither of them had ever been to church. After Daniel had disappeared— because you left the door open
—a priest had come round anyway, and asked if he could help.
Yes, Anna had said. You can post these flyers through every letter box on Northborough Road.
She’d held them out angrily, and the priest had taken them and smiled and said of course – as if he was asked to deliver flyers all the time.
And he’d done it, too.
As far as James knew it was the only time either of them had ever spoken to a man of the cloth.
‘What church?’ he said.
‘The one on the bridge.’
‘There’s a church there?’
‘It’s like a hall. But it’s a church.’
‘Oh.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Are you going again?’
‘Yes.’
He lay in silence for a moment, then got out of bed and started to dress.
‘What’s wrong?’ she said.
He sat on the edge of the bed to put on his socks. ‘You don’t go out for months and the first place you decide to go is a church?’
‘I went for Daniel,’ said Anna.
James got up and took his T-shirt off the floor and pulled it over his head.
‘I went for us.’
He snorted. ‘Leave me out of it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Leave me out of it,’ he repeated. ‘I don’t need you to go to church for me.’
‘But it’s not—’
‘I don’t care what it’s not,’ he said, suddenly angry, ‘I care what it is. And it’s the last thing we need right now. Or any time.’
Anna propped herself up on one elbow and watched him. James yanked open the wardrobe and started throwing random things at the bin bag in the corner that they used as a laundry hamper.
‘What happened to your hands?’ she said.
‘Nothing.’
‘They’re all swollen.’