Authors: Tom Graham
‘I won’t go back because I see there’s no point now,’ Annie said, carrying on like there had been no pause. ‘There’s no point in me being a copper anymore.’
‘There’s
every
point in you being a copper, Annie. And me too. It’s what we’re here for.’
But Annie shook her head, and very quietly she said, ‘We’re dead, Sam.’
‘Not as dead as you think,’ Sam replied, gently rubbing her back to soothe her.
‘Then what the hell are we? I don’t understand. What
are
we?’
‘Difficult question, Annie. This place is
all
difficult questions. But it’s not so bad here, is it? Not much different from being alive?
Better,
I reckon.’
‘Is this heaven or hell?’
‘Neither. I don’t think it works like that.’
‘Is my dad here somewhere?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’
‘Why are we here?’
‘I think it’s to clear up unfinished business from our other lives. But don’t ask me to explain much more that that because, believe me Annie, I don’t know.’
‘Are we here forever?’
‘No. We’re supposed to do what we have to do then move on.’
‘Move on where?’
Sam recalled Nelson opening the door behind the bar at the Railway Arms and revealing a shining plane and the promise of wonders beyond. And yet that glittering vision had been only the merest outskirts of the future that awaited him and Annie together, if only they could reach it.
‘The place we’re going to go to is …’ Sam looked for the right words. ‘It’s somewhere really …’
‘Really what?’
‘Really
smashing,
Annie.’
‘And will we be safe there?’
‘Yes. Totally. Forever. All we have to do is get there.’
Annie lifted her face to look at him. Her tear-streaked cheeks were bloodless.
‘But we’re not safe
here
, are we,’ she said.
How much did she know? Did Annie now remember Clive Gould, and the things he did to her? Did she remember the beatings and the abuse she endured at his hands? Did she remember how it ended?
I don’t want to tell her what I saw today,
Sam thought.
I don’t want to tell her about Gould leaping onto Carroll like some sort of vampire. She’s dealing with too much tonight. Later. I’ll tell her later. For now, she needs to feel safe, to feel loved.
Sam held her tightly to him. Out here in this cold, dark, street, standing beneath the glow of the orange street light, was not the time or place for this conversation.
‘I’m taking you home now,’ he said. ‘My flat’s a dump, but it’s still better than the pavement. I’ve got some whisky in the cupboard. It’ll calm your nerves. Then we can sit and talk, and talk all night, if that’s what you need.’
‘I just want to feel safe again,’ Annie said, fresh tears threatening to well up. ‘I want us
both
to feel safe. Because we’re not, are we. There’s something out there. I don’t know what it is, but I know it wants to hurt
you,
Sam … and then it wants to come for me.’
He crushed her in a protective bear-hug, not wanting ever to let her go.
‘All these things you’ve been learning,’ Sam said softly, ‘they’ve made you suffer. But you’ve suffered enough. I want you to find peace of mind, Annie – even if it’s just for one night. Come on. Let’s go.’
Hooking his arm around Annie, Sam carefully led her out from under the street lamp and away along the dark pavement. Momentarily, he glanced back at the smoky lights of the Railway Arms – and there, silhouetted in the doorway, was a barrel-chested figure in a camel hair coat, watching in silence, one thumb hooked into his belt, a cigarette flaring red against the unreadable shadow of his face.
Sam turned his back on Gene, and took Annie home.
Sam unlocked the front door of his flat, reached in, and flipped the light switch. The yellowing bulb revealed a brown carpet with ingrained dirt; beige, flower-pattern wallpaper; a ghastly fold-out bed with a boxy, coffin-like headboard and a portable TV with chunky buttons and a whopping great tuning dial stuck on the front.
‘Sit yourself down,’ said Sam. ‘I’ll fix us both a drink.’
With the dazed face and stiff movements of a sleep walker, Annie crossed to the bed and perched gingerly on it. Sam rummaged through the kitchen cabinets, rinsed out a couple of tumblers, and dug out a half-empty bottle of a Bell’s.
‘Feel the glass between your fingers,’ he said softly, pressing the tumbler into her hand. ‘It’s still wet from the tap water. You feel it? You feel the cold water on your skin?’
He poured Scotch into the glass.
‘Hear that whisky going in? See how the light catches it?’
Annie said nothing.
‘Take a sip,’ Sam said. ‘Go on. Drink it.’
After a pause, she did.
‘You taste that?’ he said, watching her face carefully. ‘You feel the bite of it against your tongue? You feel the burn as it goes down? That’s
real
,
Annie. That’s
life
.’
‘But we’re
not
alive,’ Annie said softly.
‘Then you can’t feel that glass in your hand, or taste that whisky. Only you
can.
And so can I.’
Sam downed his own drink in a single go and poured out a refill.
‘Light and dark, pain and pleasure, hope and fear,’ he said. ‘You experience all those things here. We all do. That’s not death, Annie. Death is numbness. Death is oblivion.’
He recalled the year 2006, the year he had come from, the year he had briefly returned to in the mistaken belief that it was
home.
A climate controlled, smoke-free office. Sober, fresh-faced work colleagues, each with their laptop, bluetooth device, and BlackBerry. A clean, modern boardroom with ergonomic chairs to prevent backache. Sam playing with a pen, unaware that he was repeatedly driving the point through the skin on the palm of his hand. Painless blood. Emotional flatline. Numbness. Oblivion.
‘This place isn’t death, Annie,’ he said. ‘It’s loud, and it stinks, and it’s dangerous and wonderful and shitty and strange and … and
alive.
And you and me, we have hearts that are beating. That’s not death. I’ve been here long enough to know that life and death aren’t as clear cut as we used to think. If you can feel; if you can think; if you can love somebody – how the hell can that be death?’
He set aside his glass and sat down beside her on the bed, making the wretched springs creak.
‘I’m really frightened, Sam,’ Annie said. ‘Something’s after us. I almost know what it is, what it’s called, but … I can’t quite remember …’
A sudden high-pitched whine cut through the room, making them both jump. Sam leapt to his feet, wincing at the sound.
Across the room, the TV had switched itself on. The test card was showing on the screen – the girl with the red headband smiling inscrutably over her shoulder as she played her eternal game of noughts-and-crosses with her clown-faced doll. At full volume, the dead tone of shutdown was screaming out, making the little speaker in the set buzz and rattle.
Sam strode over and yanked the plug from the socket. The picture remained, the dead tone continue to howl out.
‘Get out of here, you little brat!’ Sam shouted, and he thwacked the set with the flat of his hand. Sound and picture went dead instantly. It was like the TV set was sulking.
Annie’s face was white, her eyes round and frightened as she stared at the now-dark TV screen.
‘I dreamt that,’ she said in a drained voice. ‘The other night. The little girl in the test card … She said something to me … something horrid …’
‘Ignore her, she’s just a manipulative bitch trying to mess with your head,’ said Sam. He gave the set another slap for good measure and then crossed back to Annie, who had knocked back her drink, refilled her glass, and knocked that back too.
‘It’s been a hell of a day,’ Sam said. ‘For both of us. Let’s just rest. I need it. So do you.’
‘Yes. I do. I really do.’
They lay together on the bed, fully clothed except for their shoes, as chaste as brother and sister. Annie nestled her head against the crook of his neck.
‘I do love you, you know, Sam,’ she said, her voice so soft it was almost inaudible.
‘That’s all I’ve ever wanted to hear,’ he whispered back.
But even as he spoke, he saw that Annie’s eyes were closed, her breathing soft and shallow, her troubled mind drifting away into the realm of dreams.
‘Good idea, Annie,’ Sam whispered. ‘I think I’ll join you.’
‘Darling, I’m home!’
Coming through the newly double-glazed sliding porch, Sam set down his leather briefcase, hooked his bowler hat on the rack on the wall, and slipped off his shoes, mindful of the freshly vacuumed polyester carpet.
Annie appeared in the kitchen doorway dressed in her floral pinny. She walked with her hands held up, like she was at gunpoint. They were covered in flour.
‘You’re late!’ she called to him.
‘I’m sorry, darling. Bit of a hold up on the five forty-seven. Leopards on the track at Macclesfield, I think.’
‘Oh, you!’
Sam kissed her on the cheek. She kept her floury hands well away from his jacket.
‘
Something
smells scrumptious, darling, and not just your
Charlie
.’
‘Chicken pie, roast potatoes, and a homemade white sauce,’ Annie said proudly.
‘It doesn’t get much better than that!’
He checked the letters that sat in the letter rack by the door. Bills, bills, bills … and one addressed to Annie, with very neat writing on the envelope.
‘For you,’ he said, holding it out to her.
‘I didn’t spot it,’ Annie said, peering at it. ‘Don’t know the handwriting.’
Sam glanced at the back: ‘The return address just says “Trencher’s”. Where’s that?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, darling. I don’t have time for this, I’m up to the elbows in pastry.’
Annie wouldn’t touch the envelope with her floury hands, so Sam popped the letter under her arm.
‘I’ll open it when I’m cleaned up,’ she said, heading back to the kitchen. ‘You go and relax, darling.’
‘All right, darling.’
Sam nipped into the lounge and fixed himself a tonic and Gordon’s from the mini-bar.
From the kitchen, Annie called through to him, ‘Oh, and I’m also doing asparagus.’
Using plastic tongs to drop ice cubes into his glass, Sam called back to her, ‘Asparagus, eh? It’s only C.J. and his wife coming over, darling, not Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon!’
‘I want to make a good impression!’ she replied, clattering about by the oven. ‘I’m going to serve prawn vol-au-vents for starters, and I’ve got an arctic roll for desert, but it’s a really posh one with special nuts in it. Pinocchios, or something. And I’ve got three bottles of Blue Nun in the fridge.’
‘Where have you been doing the shopping – Harrods' food hall?!’
Sam went to the French windows and looked out into the back garden. The evening would be warm and dry enough for them all to take their drinks out onto the crazy-paving patio. He’d fetch the fold-out plastic garden chairs from the shed once he’d finished his G and T.
‘Darling,’ he called out. ‘Who’s that strange man at the end of our garden?’
At the far end of the lawn, past the greenhouse, down amid the vegetable patch that had been set up in a short-lived attempt at self-sufficiency, a man was blundering about. There was something about him that struck Sam as being familiar. Surely he had seen this man before.
‘Is this really what you want, Sam?’
The voice came from behind him. He didn’t turn to look – he didn’t have to, because he knew that voice all too well by now. Instead, he just rattled the ice around in his drink and took a sip.
‘Well, Sam? Is it?’ the Test Card Girl prompted him
‘Are you referring to the man in my garden?’ said Sam.
‘Forget him,’ the Girl said. ‘And tell me – is this the life you dream of having with Annie?’
‘Well, I’m dreaming of it right now and it seems pretty fine to me. But who
is
that out there? I’m going to go find out.’
‘No, stay here,’ the Girl said, and now she was standing right beside him, her tiny, frozen hand seeking his own and gently hooking onto it. ‘This is your dream then, is it?’
‘Looks like it. Don’t make me wake up. Let me enjoy it just a little longer.’
‘So this is what you’re hoping to achieve? Your little seventies nest in the suburbs. A beige sofa. A fondue set. An Austin Allegro sitting on the driveway.’
‘There are worse things.’
‘Such as?’
‘Oh, too many to mention. The world I came from was full of them.’ Sam peered at the man in the garden. ‘Who
is
he? I’m going to go and speak to him.’
‘No, no, he’s not important,’ said the Girl. ‘You were saying that the world you came from was full of worse things than this place. What things would they be, Sam?’
‘Microwaveable meals.
X Factor
. Kids playing music from their iPhones on the bus.’
‘More, Sam. Tell me some more.’
Still watching the man waving to him, Sam said: ‘Oh, let me think. Well, there were so many awful things. Internet pop-ups. Al-Qaeda. Russell Brand. The
Star Wars
prequels. Two hundred satellite channels without a single programme worth watching. The Pussycat Dolls. The state of Radio 1.’
‘Keep talking, Sam.’
Sam was about to dredge up another litany of pet peeves, but suddenly he felt sure that the Test Card Girl was deliberately trying to distract his attention away from the man in the garden.
‘Wait a minute,’ he said, freeing his hand from hers and pressing his nose against the glass of the French windows. ‘I
do
know him. It’s Mr McClintock. What’s he doing in my private dream? How did he get here?’
‘He’s just a memory, something that drifted in,’ the Girl said. ‘Forget him.’
‘No, I’m going to speak to him.’
‘Don’t.’
‘But we had an agreement, me and him. If something happened to one of us –’
‘Forget him, Sam.’
‘– then we would try and get a message to the other. Maybe … maybe something
has
happened. Maybe he’s in trouble.’