For Emily Crye
Table of Contents
Last Christmas when I was in Year 8, I did this really dumb thing. The dumbest thing I have ever done in all my life. I got into a car with someone I didn’t know.
OK, so I was only just turned thirteen, which in my experience is an age when you tend to act a bit stupid, thinking to yourself that you are now practically grown up and don’t need to obey your mum’s silly little niggly rules any more. Also, I have to say, it wasn’t like I’d never met the guy. I mean, I knew his name, I knew who he was. I even knew where he lived. But I’d only met him just the one time, just to say hello to, and even that was enough to tell me that he was a bit – well, different. Definitely not the same as other people. In any case, thirteen is way old enough to know better. We’re all taught back in Reception that you don’t go off with strangers.
“And that,” as Mum was always drumming into me, “means the man next door, the man over the road, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker … you don’t go with anyone. Got it?” And out loud I would say, “Yes, Mum!” while inside I would be thinking, “This is just so too much.”
Mind you, Dad is every bit as bad, in fact I’m not sure he’s not even worse. Whenever I go up to Birmingham, to stay with him and his new wife Irene, it’s, “Where do you want to go? We’ll take you! You can’t go on your own. Not in Birmingham.” Like Birmingham is one big bad place full of child molesters. Dad says it’s not that, it’s just that Birmingham is a city, and I am not used to being in a city.
“I’m sure at home your mother lets you go wherever you want.”
I wish! Though actually, to be honest, after last Christmas, I didn’t want to go anywhere on my own. It took me ages to get my confidence back.
How it all started, really, was one wet Saturday afternoon towards the end of term; the Christmas term. Chloe and Dee had come round, and we were up in my bedroom. We were huge best mates in those days, the three of us. We’d all gone to St Mary Day from different schools, but we’d palled up immediately. We spent most Saturdays either round at my house, or Dee’s; just occasionally we’d go to Chloe’s, but Chloe had to share a bedroom with her little sister, who was one big pain and totally hyperactive, if you ask me. So we didn’t go there often as it led to scenes, with Jade and Chloe threatening to punch each other’s teeth down their throats or pull their hair out by the roots. Come to think of it, Chloe herself is a bit hyperactive. She’s always on the move, can’t sit still, can’t keep quiet. Can’t stop giggling (when she’s not fighting with her sister). It gets her into terrible trouble at school.
Dee, on the other hand, is quite cool and laid back. She is a very serious sort of person. I suppose I would have to say that I am midway between the two. Sometimes I have fits of the giggles, other times I contemplate life and what it all means, and try to think deeply about God and religion and stuff. But I can see, now, looking back on it, that we were a fairly odd sort of threesome. However, we did have a lot of fun, before I went and ruined it all.
That particular Saturday afternoon, that Saturday at the end of term, it was pouring with rain drip drip dripping off the trees, plink plonk into the water butt. We were upstairs in my room, all cosily huddled under my duvet with Dee and Chloe doing their best to push me into playing The Game – which makes me think that really, I suppose, before going any further, I should stop and explain what the Game is all about.
OK. Basically it’s about me being a bit psychic. Well, more than a bit, actually. According to Mum, I have “the gift”. Mum is also psychic; I get it from her. Only she says that with me it is even stronger than it is with her, or will be, when I am grown up. Mum makes her living as a professional clairvoyant.
People come to visit her, and she does readings for them. It is all quite honest and above board. Mum is not a charlatan! She explained to me, once, how clairvoyant simply means “seeing clearly”. She doesn’t pretend to be able to tell what is going to happen in the future. She can tell what might happen, if people keep on doing the things that they are doing, but it is up to them whether they act on what she says. She is not here to change people’s lives for them; only they can do that. She doesn’t use tarot cards or a ouija board, she doesn’t use a crystal ball, or call up spirits from the other side.
What Mum does, she asks people to give her some object that they have handled, like it might be a watch, or a bracelet, just something small and personal, and by holding it, and concentrating, she can, like, see inside a person’s mind.
She can tell them things about themselves that they hadn’t realised they knew; things that are hidden deep within them. Things, sometimes, that they have deliberately suppressed. Or maybe she’ll dredge up something from their past that they’d forgotten, and suddenly everything will fall into place and make sense and they’ll say, “Ah! Yes. Now I understand.”