The crowd was falling silent as he stared at the floor again, raising his hand to indicate toward the front of the middle section. “I’m down here,” he said. “I’ve got a woman here, short-ish and with curly hair. I think her name’s Trish, or Trisha.”
And that was it, he was off again. Over the course of the next hour and a half, he gave messages to a dozen different people, nearly every single time stating names and details with such accuracy that it made Grace gasp. And she began to realise it wasn’t always about the messages he brought through—sometimes there
wasn’t
a message as such. It was the little things he said that gave verification to the dead person’s loved ones that they still existed somewhere, in some other plane, and
that
was the important thing,
that
was what they came here for. It wasn’t to find out where Aunt Ethel had hidden the silver plate, or what the lottery numbers were going to be the next week. It was to be reassured that the people they’d lost weren’t gone forever, and comforted with the knowledge that one day they would meet them again.
At just after eight thirty, there was an interval, and Grace went with the others into the foyer to get a glass of wine to calm herself down.
They bought their drinks, found a table and sat there for a moment, sipping their wine and looking at each other.
“I don’t know what to say,” said Mia. She looked across at Freya. “You’ve been to this sort of thing before. How does Ash compare to the others you’ve seen?”
“He’s amazing,” said Freya. “I mean, wow. Everything he says, everyone says yes to. He’s so accurate, it’s just stunning. And God, what a body.” She pulled an
eek
face as Grace raised an eyebrow and Mia glared at her. “Sorry. I forgot he was yours.”
Grace’s cheeks went hot. “He’s not
mine
.”
“Er, yuh-huh, he is. If you want him.” Freya tipped her head. “If you don’t, can I have him?” She winced as Mia dug her in the ribs. “I’m kidding!”
Grace stood and walked over to the window. The view across the city was breathtaking, and she could see the streetlights sparkling all the way up Cuba Street.
A group of young women sat at the next table, talking about Ash. “Oh my God, he’s so fucking fantastic,” said a girl of around eighteen or nineteen, who Grace would have scolded for her language if she’d been at school. “And soooo horny.”
“Fuck yeah,” said her mate. “He’s hot as. He can do me a private reading any time.” The two girls sniggered.
Grace’s cheeks grew warm. She couldn’t believe the guy she’d been watching on stage was the same one she’d had sex with in the kitchen of his house. On the sheepskin rug in his living room.
In his bed
. “Oh God.” She leaned her forehead against the glass. Her head hurt. Suddenly, she wished she were at home, in the peace of her bedroom, sitting at her computer, writing romantic stories. She didn’t want this. She didn’t want to be in a relationship—or whatever you bloody well called it—with a medium-clairvoyant who was a superstar in her home city. This wasn’t her at all. She was nice, calm Grace Fox, secondary school science teacher, who led a nice, calm life and didn’t have sex on the sheepskin rug of a relative stranger. He’d led her astray, corrupted her.
But that was hardly fair, was it? Her scientist’s mind made her analyse the evidence properly. What about the sexy underwear and the sexy books? Ash didn’t have anything to do with those. She’d been writing for years, pouring out the passion she’d kept hidden onto the page, and she’d been wearing the black teddy the day she’d met him. That was what had started the whole thing off, for crying out loud.
So what about the issue of her view on the afterlife? Was that also a smokescreen for something else that simmered beneath the surface? Grace could remember when she was younger, before her father died, that she’d believed in God and sometimes talked to her grandmother, who’d died when she was nine. But when her father left her, she’d never received any kind of a sign that he still existed in another form. She could still recall the disappointment of her fourteen-year-old self, and the way her belief had faded like early morning mist. But in the extra-mural archaeology class she’d once taken, she’d learned that “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”, and she supposed that also applied to the afterlife. Just because she’d had no evidence of one, it didn’t mean one didn’t exist.
But what about proof? She was a scientist. Her whole career focussed on the idea that you couldn’t accept something was so because of a one-off event—you had to carry out a set of carefully monitored trials and evaluate the results. And it was important to remember that a negative result was as important as a positive one—you couldn’t just discount a result because it didn’t fit into your hypothesis. Ash had been ninety-five per cent correct with his readings, but he’d still said some things that the person he was reading hadn’t understood. What did that mean? That he hadn’t interpreted the pictures he’d seen properly? Or that this was, in fact, a load of nonsense and she’d just been under his thrall, the same as the rest of the audience?
“Grace?” Mia touched her on the arm. “The bell’s rung. It’s time to go back in. Are you all right?”
“I don’t know what to think,” Grace admitted. “It’s making my head hurt.”
“I know. I can hear the cogs whirring inside your brain. Come on. Let’s finish the show, and then we’ll go home, have a glass of wine and have a chat about what we’ve seen, eh?”
“Okay.” Grace let Mia lead her back into the auditorium.
They took their seats quickly, because Ash was already on stage, pacing up and down, hands in the pockets of his jeans. A few people were still filtering in when he began, clearly eager to continue.
“Okay I’ve got a woman here called Dana who was a nurse, and she wants to talk to Jack. I think I’m over here.” He indicated at the back, to the far right.
Grace settled in her seat and listened as he relayed messages, making his way through seven or eight different people as the hour passed. Most of the people he read appeared to have had friends or relatives who had passed suddenly or violently, and it seemed to Grace that it was more important for them to be told their loved ones were now well and happy wherever they were. In that sense, did it matter whether Ash was actually talking to the dead, or indeed reading the minds of the audience, or however else he did it? It wasn’t as if he were asking people to give him the combination to the family safe, or the secret location of buried treasure. Every person he spoke to sat down happy and relieved at the things he told them. How could that be a bad thing?
She checked her watch—it was twenty past nine. The show was supposed to finish at nine thirty. She looked up as everyone clapped. He’d just finished a reading.
Everyone waited expectantly as he paced the stage, gaze fixed a few feet ahead of him. Grace scanned the audience, seeing the eager faces. There was such a small chance of him picking any one particular person, but everyone was still hopeful. And yet, even though it was unlikely they’d be picked, she could see they’d all enjoyed the other readings, and had drawn their own comfort from the validations he’d given the lucky few.
She looked back up at Ash. He’d stopped pacing and was smiling wryly. He glanced up at the audience and laughed. “Sorry. I’ve got a guy here who’s singing to me.” The audience chuckled. He waited again, still smiling. “He’s got a lovely voice—I’m pretty certain he was in a choir or something when he was alive.” He grinned. “It’s a song that has a special meaning for me, by the way, that’s why I’m smiling. He’s singing ‘Amazing Grace’.”
Grace stared. Freya made a kind of gasping noise next to her, and Mia elbowed her sharply in the ribs. But Grace could only stare, her heart doing a tap dance beneath her ribs.
Ash listened for a bit. He glanced up at the audience and smiled again. “I’m telling him he’s got a lovely voice and asking for his name.” He waited. Then he said, “His name’s Bill.” He gestured in their direction. “I’m over here, I think.”
“Oh Christ.” Grace nearly passed out.
“It’s you,” Mia hissed.
Freya’s eyes nearly popped out. “Was that your dad’s name?”
“Yes,” hissed Mia. “And he used to sing in a choir.”
“Fucking hell.” Freya prodded her. “Stand up.”
“I can’t.” Grace knew she’d die. “I can’t, don’t make me!”
“You’ve got to,” Freya urged. “He won’t let it go. He’ll keep asking questions until you admit to it.”
The two women in front of them had been listening, and one of them put her hand up and waved to the man in the suit who was walking slowly down the aisle with the microphone. “Over here!” She indicated behind her.
Grace slunk down in her seat, almost in tears. “Oh God, please, Mia…”
Mia gripped her hand tight. “Grace, you’ve got to do this. This is fate. This was meant to be. He’s not making this up, love, this is real. Your father wants to talk to you.”
“I’m going to be sick.”
“You’re not going to be sick. Come on. I’ll stand up with you.” Mia took the microphone as the man in the suit leaned across Freya and offered it to them. She stood, pulling Grace with her. “Here,” Mia said clearly into the microphone. Then she passed it to Grace.
Grace knew she was scarlet and clutched the microphone so tightly she felt it give slightly under her fingers. She took a deep breath and forced herself to relax and look up at Ash, trying not to remember there were around a thousand people now watching her.
Ash was staring at her, hands on his hips.
“Hi,” Grace said weakly. “Fancy meeting you here.” Her voice echoed around the auditorium. The crowd murmured, obviously realising something odd was going on.
Ash looked at the ground in front of him, then back up at her. He cleared his throat. “Maybe we should save this reading for later?”
Grace opened her mouth to agree, but Freya kicked her at the same time that a chorus of boos went up.
Ash held up his hand. “This young lady is known to me, and a) I don’t want to embarrass her, and b) it’s hardly a validation for you guys if I give messages for somebody I’ve met personally.”
“We don’t care!” yelled someone.
“Do it!” yelled someone else.
Grace’s pulse was loud in her ears. She could see the interest in the faces of the people around her—they were intrigued by the fact that she knew him, and they wanted to see if he revealed something about their relationship in her reading. He held out a hand. “It’s up to you, Grace.”
She heard the whispers as everyone realised why her father had been singing that song. She met Ash’s gaze, all the way up there on the stage. He looked wary—he didn’t want to do this. And she knew she shouldn’t agree either. It was madness.
But the truth was, she was burning to know what he was going to say. This was the ultimate test. She wanted to believe in him. But her brain wouldn’t let her. She needed him to convince her beyond all reasonable doubt that he could really speak to her father.
“Okay,” she said. “Go for it.”
The crowd murmured. Ash studied her, and she could see by the way he narrowed his eyes and his lips curved wryly that he understood her unspoken challenge. He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Okay.” He looked at the floor. Then he went quiet. He closed his eyes.
Grace stood there, heart pounding, waiting for him to speak. Her mouth had gone dry, and her palms were slippery with fear.
“So I’ve got your father here,” he said, opening his eyes. “He’s about six foot tall, tufts of grey hair over his ears and a very wide parting.”
“I’ve got a photo of him in my purse,” she said. “You could easily have seen that.”
The crowd murmured, obviously sensing she wasn’t going to make this easy for him. Her heart thumped. She didn’t want to make him angry or upset with her. But equally, she knew she had to do this. She had to test him.
Ash ignored her words, however, and continued, “He’s in uniform. Navy, I think.”
“Yes, true, he was, when he was younger.”
He nodded. “He’s showing me the actress Isabella Rossellini. Does that mean anything to you?”
Mia’s hand tightened on hers but Grace ignored it. “My mother’s name is Isabella. But you could have found that out from any of my friends.”
“True,” he said. Everyone in the crowd seemed to be holding their breath, conscious of the battle going on between them. He listened for a moment. “He’s telling me your brothers’ names, but I’m telling him I already know them. That’s not going to impress you.” The crowd tittered and they both smiled. He listened again. “He’s showing me the number eighteen, and the number four. The eighteenth of April, maybe?”
“That’s my parents’ wedding anniversary,” she admitted. “That’s a little more impressive, but a check at any records office would have sorted that out.”
He looked down. “Who’s Arthur?”
“That’s his father.”
He frowned thoughtfully. “He’s telling me ‘Grace’ again, but saying, ‘Not her, not her’.”
“It was my grandmother’s name—Arthur’s wife. I’m named after her.” The crowd gave a collective sigh. “Don’t fall for that,” she told them. “He could have got that from the records office as well.”
“You realise you’re ruining my career,” Ash said wryly, and the crowd laughed, while someone shouted, “We believe you, Ash!”
“Sorry,” said Grace. “But you’ve got to do better than that.”