The Other Side of Midnight (12 page)

“I didn’t have to. She’s sick,” I replied. “I was holding her hand. I felt it.”

“Well, then, Ramona had a lucky shot. I’ve seen it before.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I have the frustrating feeling we’re no further ahead than we were before, and it’s one o’clock in the morning.”

I was giddy with exhaustion, but it was almost freeing. I had spent three years going to bed at exactly ten o’clock every night, whether I slept or not, atoning in some way for all of the late nights with Gloria. I hadn’t seen one o’clock in the morning on the streets of London for a long time. “I didn’t choose this line of work,” I said to James, almost musing to myself. “But you did.”

“In a roundabout way. I was supposed to read for the bar.”

I raised my brows, trying to picture it. “A barrister?”

“Yes. It was what my parents wanted, and it was what I wanted; it all lined up. It was the only career I’d thought of having. I was
going to be a young, smashing success.” He shrugged, his shoulders flexing under his jacket. “Then the war came. Afterward nothing worked the way it was supposed to, including me. When I came back, the law seemed stupid. I was . . . broken.” He gazed down the darkened street. “I drank myself into oblivion for a long time. It was a sickness, like a fever. The war didn’t leave my head unless I was drunk. My parents disowned me. They expected a barrister son—war or not—not a drunk. And then I was at the veterans’ office one day for one of their health tests, and in the waiting room I met Paul.”

“The president of the New Society,” I said.

“Yes. He’d been an officer, like I had. He took one look at me and said that the New Society needed men like me to help, and he offered me a job.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “He says it was because he saw what kind of man I could be once I dried out. Maybe he just saw my desperation and pitied me. I don’t think I’ll ever know.”

I watched his face, and suddenly I was terribly lonely. I wished he would touch me, put his arms around me, with a longing that was almost a physical ache. I wished he would look at me the way he had when he first saw me, the way he had in Trafalgar Square. I wished he would make my blood pulse, make my skin come alive, make me warm. I had spent three years buried, fossilized, feeling nothing. To feel things was painful and terrible, but it was better than being dead. “It’s impossible to know, isn’t it,” I said, “what people see in you?”

He turned his gaze on me, and his understanding slid through my ribs and stabbed my heart. “She liked you, Ellie,” he said. “She just didn’t exactly know how to show it. Gloria didn’t like very many people.”

I stood up, brushing at my coat. “That’s an interesting theory.”

“I’m right.”

“I didn’t know you were an expert.”

“Do I have to be an expert to understand your friendship with Gloria?”

I descended the steps to the street, my feet icy in my shoes. “Who says it was a friendship?”

“Both of you,” James said to my back. “Stop fighting it, Ellie.”

“I’m going home.” I walked down the darkened street, heading for the Streatham High Road to find a taxi. It was too much to feel after three years of being numb: regret, longing, lust, shame, anger. I pulled my coat tighter around me. James did not call after me again, nor did he follow me. He was wrong. Gloria and I had not been friends; we had never been friends.

Tell Ellie Winter to find me.

The grief hit me again, as solid as a punch, just as it had that first night in my garden when George Sutter told me she was dead. I made a strange little gasping sound, but I kept walking. My heels clicked on the pavement. And I kept walking until the world had receded into nothing behind me, until all of it was gone.

I
first met Gloria Sutter in early 1919, a few months after the war ended. It was still frigid winter, and I was on a train home from Bournemouth, sound asleep in my seat in a compartment by myself.

My mother had given me a few precious days off to visit distant relatives of my father’s. My father died in Gallipoli in 1916, and I thought that visiting his relatives would bring me some kind of peace. My mother had known better; still deep in mourning, she had refused to accompany me. I’d made the trip only to find my father’s relatives cold, unfriendly, and deep in blame that my father had ever married my mother at all. The entire thing was exhausting and depressing, and almost as soon as I’d embarked on the trip home, the train swaying rhythmically, I’d pulled my muffler up around my neck and fallen asleep.

When I opened my eyes, there was a girl sitting across from me, watching me.

She was about nineteen, my own age, and the first thing I noticed,
almost with a pang of dismay, was that she was utterly beautiful. Her black raven’s wing hair was cut in a marcelled bob, a new fashion my own mother had strictly forbidden, and her big dark eyes were ringed with skillfully applied makeup. The effect of her was sophisticated and roughly sensual at the same time, and when she saw my eyes open she gave me a sly smile, as if I’d just done something clever.

“Oh, hullo,” she said.

I rubbed my eyes, taking in her pretty kidskin gloves and the expensive fur collar of her coat. “Sorry,” I said, the word automatic and pointless in my mouth, not feeling clever at all.

The girl shrugged knowingly, as if I’d made a joke, the smile still twisting her lips. “Would you like a cigarette?”

Another thing I’d never been allowed. “No, thank you.”

“Come on, now.” The girl had taken two cigarettes from a case and she held one out to me. “I hate to smoke alone.”

I sat up. The girl’s eyes were hypnotically dark, almost black, and I had my first premonition that she was, in some way, not quite normal. “I’m not allowed.”

“Under Daddy’s thumb, are you?” she said.

I flushed and took the cigarette. The girl lit a match for me, and I took a drag, trying not to cough in front of her. I waved a hand through the smoke in the air as an unfamiliar feeling buzzed through my brain, as if someone was rubbing my scalp. “My father is dead,” I said, trying to sound worldly and casual.

“Jolly good,” said the girl. “That just means more freedom.” She rose and went to the door of the compartment, opening it a crack and peeking out as she took another effortless drag on her cig. Her legs, I noticed, were long and elegant under her dress. “Did you see the dark-haired man a few compartments down? The one in the cashmere coat?”

I was still numbly working through the fact that she’d said my father’s death was jolly good. “What?”

“I think he noticed me.”

Since she wasn’t looking at me, I dropped my pretense with the cigarette and just stared at her. I was starting to feel as if someone had spun me in circles. I frowned, recalling the man she was talking about. “He’s thirty, at least! And he had a pipe!”

“Men with cashmere coats and pipes have money,” the girl said. She glanced at my shocked face and rolled her eyes. “I don’t mean
that
,
you know. Even though he’s passably good-looking. I meant that men with money make good clients.”

“Clients?”

She shut the compartment door and leaned a shoulder casually on it, putting the cigarette to her lips again, and said nothing.

“What?” I said, growing more alarmed as the silence stretched. “What is it?”

“Hush,” the girl replied, the corner of her mouth curving. “I’m enjoying this.”

“Enjoying what?” I was starting to think fondly of the chilly nap I’d just taken.

“Watching you work it out. It’s all over your face, you know. The word ‘client’ has thrown you off. Am I one of those bad girls your mother warned you about, do you think? Or does the word ‘client’ mean something else?”

I swallowed in bewilderment. Of course the word “client” had meaning for me; it was part of my profession. What was this girl getting at? “I don’t—”

“Oh, come now.” She noticed the cigarette still in her fingers, took a last drag, and smothered it in an ashtray. “I know you just woke up, but think a little harder. Do you know who I am? Because I know who
you
are. It took me a moment to figure it out, but I saw the name when I looked into the compartment.” She pointed to my valise, which I had placed on the seat next to me, clearly marked in my mother’s careful hand with the word
WINTER
. “You look like her,” the girl said, “and I know she has a daughter.”

“Who has a daughter?”

“The Fantastique, of course.” She took in the expression on my face and smiled again.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll play along. I’m Ellie Winter. Who are you?”

“Gloria Sutter,” she said, holding out a gloved hand. “We’re in the same business.”

I had never heard the name and I didn’t know what she meant, but in an automatic reaction I took her hand in mine. And in that second, even though we were both wearing gloves, I knew.

Something extraordinary crossed the depths of Gloria Sutter’s eyes when our hands touched. For a long moment, her air of sophistication disappeared, and her expression was raw and almost hungry. Then she let out a long breath and a sound that was almost a laugh, a shrill exclamation of excitement that exactly mirrored the feeling that was jumping through my body.

“My God,” she said. “This just got interesting. When this train stops, we’re going for a drink.”

*   *   *

I
wasn’t supposed to do it, of course. My mother was expecting me home. But after I’d felt what I felt when I took Gloria’s hand, I could no more have walked away from her than I could have walked on the moon. After a lifetime of being strange, of being alienated from everyone except for my mother, I had met someone who
knew.

I found myself in Soho, following Gloria to her studio flat. I eyed the Home for Fallen Women on the corner half in suspicion, wondering whether it swallowed up girls who didn’t do what their mothers told them, girls who followed other girls they’d just met into seedy London neighborhoods.

The ground-floor psychic’s shop was shuttered; this was the woman, Gloria told me, who only inhabited the place when she came up with money to pay the rent.
OUR PRECIOUS BOYS DO
NOT DIE,
a hand-lettered sign in the window read.
THEY WISH T
O SPEAK TO US.
I
forced my gaze away; my mother and I had been inundated with mourning women for the past four years. Widows and bereaved mothers were a medium’s largest pool of clients, and the war had created a boom.
Tell me my son is happy. Tell me he did not suffer. Tell me he thought of his mother before he died. Tell me. Tell me.

At the first-floor landing, Gloria put a finger to her lips and motioned for me to be quiet, as if she wished to avoid someone. It didn’t work. As we passed, the first-floor door popped open and a mannish woman poked her head out. “You’re late,” she said, turning her suspicious eyes on me. “Who’s this?”

“Davies, dear, this is a friend of mine.”

The woman’s look of shock was unmistakable. “The hell she is. Who is she really?”

“A bosom sister,” replied Gloria. “A fly in my web. A deadly rival. I’m in love with her and I’ve decided to give up men.”

Davies’s eyes narrowed as I gaped at Gloria in openmouthed shock. “Am I supposed to pick one of those?” she grumbled. “Or none of them?”

“Whatever you like.”

“God, you’re being difficult again. Is it your time of month?”

Again, I stared openmouthed.

“Perhaps, sweetheart,” Gloria said. “You’d know better than I, wouldn’t you? You keep the schedule, after all.”

“Fine.” Davies threw her hands in the air in frustration. “I can’t deal with you when you’re in this mood. I’m only trying to tell you that Number Thirty-One wants to see you at seven.”

“Tell Number Thirty-One I am indisposed.” Gloria hefted her valise and turned to continue up the stairs, her legs flashing before me as I scrambled to follow. “Ellie and I have things to discuss.”

Once in her flat, Gloria dropped her handbag and coat in a mess and disappeared behind the thin curtain of her bedroom. I stared at my surroundings, at the clothes spilling from the wardrobe, the
mermaid painting on the wall. She lived alone here, I realized. No mother, no flatmates. Gloriously alone, like a man. I eyed the séance table. “Who is Number Thirty-One?”

“A client,” came Gloria’s voice from behind the curtain. “They expect complete privacy, so Davies and I assign them numbers, just in case.”

“You really do this for a living?” I asked, tugging off a glove and touching the séance table. It vibrated under my hand, as if attached to an electrical wire. I pulled my hand away.

A hand came up and pulled the bedroom curtain aside. Gloria had shed her skirt and blouse and now wore a sleeveless dress of midnight black, belted just above the hips. Her body was long, sleek, and slender, with a narrow waist and breasts that sat high and round under the bodice. The hem of the dress swept down just past the knee, and I could see her stockings and high heels. It was a shocking length for 1919. Over the next few years, I would watch Gloria’s hemlines rise even faster than London fashion allowed.

“Darling,” she said, something steely flashing across her eyes, “I not only do this for a living, but I’m the best there is.”

“And you know my mother?”

“Not personally, no. But I know who she is, just like I know about every skimmer and showgirl between here and Calais. I make it my business to know about my competition.”

The idea of my mother, who almost never left the house, competing with this girl made me laugh out loud. “What did you do, hire an investigator to look in our windows? You can’t possibly be serious.”

Gloria’s eyes narrowed and she raised one penciled eyebrow, an extraordinary expression that was both witty and menacing. “I assure you, I’m serious,” she replied. “It isn’t personal, but I’m afraid I’m rather competitive. Even that hag on the ground floor is competition. I steal most of her clients, by the way. That’s why she can’t pay the rent.”

I rubbed the palms of my hands together, trying to get rid of the
lingering sensation from the séance table. “All right. It just seems rather bloodthirsty to me.”

“I’m a girl on my own, darling. I pay the bills myself, and I keep myself in lipstick and heels. Are you telling me that The Fantastique isn’t in business to make money?”

“Of course she is,” I said. “If she didn’t take clients, she’d be doing char work, especially since my father died. But people are grieving, and there are frauds everywhere. We— My mother means to help people.”

“How noble.” Gloria moved to a side table, picked up her cigarette case, and turned it over in the long fingers of one hand, the silver glinting in the dim electric light. “Nothing I do helps people. It only makes them worse.” She raised her eyes to me. “How surprised do you think I am that The Fantastique has passed her talents on to her daughter?”

I thought of the sensation I felt when we’d shaken hands, and my cheeks flushed. Even though I lived with my mother, there was so much I didn’t know, so much I couldn’t ask her. I was desperate for answers. “How long have you known?” I asked Gloria. “About yourself, I mean. How early did you know what you could do?”

“Almost from the beginning,” she said. “My family hates me. If I lived four hundred years ago, I’d be burned already. As it is, my family thinks I’m a liar and a tart.”

She said the words with such calmness that my heart jumped in my throat, and I asked the question that burned inside me, that kept me awake at night. “Doesn’t it bother you?” I asked her. “Seeing the dead? Don’t you ever want to stop?”

Gloria tilted her head. “And do what?”

“Tell fortunes. Read palms,” I said. Both were impossible, and therefore a lie—according to my mother—but sometimes I thought that lying would be better than telling those grieving women the truth. “Anything but endure those visions—the dead.”

Gloria’s gaze had gone curiously still as she looked at me, and I could tell she was calculating something. I’d said too much, perhaps, though in my distress I couldn’t fathom what I’d said wrong. “It bothers you, then?” she said almost softly. “The visions?”

“How can you ask that?” My voice cracked, and I fought to keep control. My emotions were tumbling out of me of their own accord. “This power means I’m a circus freak. A witch—you said it yourself. A girl who will never have a normal life.”

Gloria arched an eyebrow again. She put a hand on one hip and regarded me for a long moment. Then she walked to the door and slipped on her coat with its beautiful fur collar again.

“I’ve never wanted a normal life,” she said to me, “so I can’t help you with that. But it seems to me that your problem is that you have no life at all. Come with me, darling. Let’s get drunk and see what we can do about it.”