The man waiting for us in a silver Ford Galaxy with a sticker in the window saying MY OTHER CAR’S A PORSCHE made it clear he didn’t want to be giving us a lift at all. He didn’t introduce himself just said, ‘In the back. And I’ve just had it valeted so you’d better not get mud on it.’ He was sullen and silent for the whole journey, listening to loud music with a tinny beat that felt as though it was piercing my head. Billie sat next to me in the back seat and sang little made-up songs to Luna, who sat on her lap. It soothed me. I dozed.
‘Okay, out,’ the man said. ‘You can get the tram from here.’
I started awake and looked around. I had no idea where we were, but we clearly weren’t going to be taken any further, so I climbed out and hauled the rucksack after me. The man drove off almost before I’d slammed the door shut.
My brain was slow and it took a while to work out which tram to get. Once we were on, it was so loud and full of people I felt overwhelmed. It was so long since I’d been in a city, a normal city where people were living normal lives. Here were Christmas shoppers and tourists and people on their lunch breaks, noise, tourists, the sound of traffic and music blaring from cars and shops, the smell of chips and people’s perfume and mulled wine. It was too much. I’d been somewhere where time passed differently. Stepping back into the real world I felt I might crumble into dust, like in Grandpa’s stories.
Grandpa had told me Mum’s address was near the centre of the city. I didn’t know if I’d recognize it but I could hardly miss the castle on the hill from Mum’s postcard. We got off the tram, found a map of the city centre by the tram stop and began to walk.
My head throbbed and my legs shook as we turned into the street that had been written on the postcard. I paused to catch my breath, then we began walking again.
The road was wide and the buildings several storeys high, with tall windows and wide flights of steps leading up to front doors and down to basements. Some of the doors we passed looked grand, paint fresh and brass shining, others were peeling and tarnished. I wondered which kind Mum’s would be.
We must be getting close now. I counted down the numbers till we reached the one written on the postcard. Number fifty-two.
‘This is it,’ I said.
The blood beat in my head. The air seemed to flicker a little as though invisible things moved in it. The door at number fifty-two was painted black, the woodwork cracked.
Had I remembered the address right?
Yes, I knew I had. I had stared at that address, pressed it into my memory. The place where Mum was, where I would see her again.
I looked at the row of buzzers, searching for the handwriting I’d hoped as a kid I’d see on the envelopes of birthday and Christmas cards, the writing on the postcard. But by the buzzer for flat B was nothing, the space left blank. Everything was swimming a bit, in and out. My palms were prickling and sweaty but the rest of me felt ice cold.
What did I have to lose?
I tried to remember the little speech I’d been muttering to myself.
Oh, hello, I’m sorry—
No. No apology.
Oh, hello, I know this will be a surprise but—
Oh, hi. I hope this isn’t too much of a shock but—
Oh, shut up, Clem. It doesn’t matter how you say it. She either loves you or she doesn’t. There’s no magic order of words you can use that’s going to change that. Still, though. I felt sick.
‘Go on,’ Billie said.
Go on, Dad and Grandpa and Shaun said. I felt Granny’s emerald ring under my jumper, its millions of years pressed against my skin. If I put it under my tongue, I could see the future.
Mischa rolled her eyes.
Okay, yes, alternatively I could just push the damn buzzer and get to the future.
I pressed the square metal button, the vibration of it loud and grating, then stood, shivering, wondering, waiting. Waiting to find out whether I’d recognize her voice, whether she’d recognize mine, whether she would see how much I looked like she used to.
Waiting to find out whether she loved me.
‘You’re shivering,’ Billie said. She took my hand. I felt faint.
What if she was out?
I hadn’t thought of that, stupidly. I’d thought she’d just be there, waiting for me. We’d have to sit and wait. But as I was about to press the buzzer again a voice came through on the intercom.
‘Hello?’
The voice was a bit distorted but I thought it was familiar, maybe. It sounded bright and friendly, not like people’s voices usually do if they’re not expecting you, where you know they’re just waiting for a reason to tell you to get lost. Maybe she was waiting for someone else and would be disappointed it was me.
‘Hello?’ I said. ‘Is that…’
I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t say, Is that you, Mum?
I tried to remember the speech. I know this will come as a shock but—
But what?
In the end I just said, ‘It’s Clem.’
There was a silence. Billie looked up at me and squeezed my hand.
‘Oh, and Billie. My sister.’
‘Clem?’ the voice said. It had changed. It was soft, almost a whisper. ‘Clem, is it you?’
‘It’s me,’ I said, glad it was just an intercom and not a videophone so she couldn’t see what a state I looked. I wondered how she pictured me. Not the mess of greasy hair and stale clothes, the shivering, clammy-skinned wreck on her doorstep, I guessed.
‘My God,’ she said, her voice low. ‘My God. Wait there, Clem. Wait there. I’m coming down.’
The minute or so she took seemed like a lifetime, like my lifetime since she’d left, waiting to see her. My heart – that had beat inside her before I ever saw the world, before anyone but her knew I existed – bumped against my ribs. I felt I was swaying, or maybe the world was.
The door opened.
Behind it was a woman, older but not so changed that I didn’t recognize her, her face a picture of wonder as she took us in.
‘Clem,’ she said, in the way people do when they’ve known you for ever. ‘Just look at you.’
She stepped forward and held out her hands to me. I thought for a second she was going to shake mine but she took hold of my arm and pulled me to her and held my face in her hands as she studied every freckle and eyelash, and tears spilled down her cheeks as she threw her arms around me—
Polly watches me.
‘That’s not what happened though, is it?’
I look around at the office, the grey-streaked windows, the row of spindly cactuses on the sill, the piles of leaflets about assorted mental health issues on Polly’s desk.
‘I guess not,’ I say, refusing to meet her gaze. ‘Or I wouldn’t be here. I remember imagining it though. Before.
‘I dream it sometimes, I think. Sometimes my dreams feel more real than this. Do you ever have that? Where you can’t remember if something’s a dream or real. Some people think your dreams are your real life and everything else is a dream. And how would you know?’
I’m talking and talking, to avoid saying anything.
‘Anyway,’ I say. ‘You asked for my story. That is my story. Stories don’t have to be true.’
Polly doesn’t speak, she just lets me ramble until I run out of words.
Then there’s silence. Polly waits.
I sigh. ‘You know what really happened.’
‘Yes,’ she says, gently. ‘But not in your words. Tell me.’
I pressed the square metal button, the vibration of it loud and grating, then stood, shivering, wondering, waiting. Waiting to find out whether I’d recognize her voice, whether she’d recognize mine, whether she would see how much I looked like she used to.
Waiting to find out whether she loved me.
How long had passed? Time often distorted itself now, and my fever had begun to creep back around the edges of my consciousness. Had it been seconds or minutes since I pressed the buzzer?
Not hours, or it would be dark by now. I pressed it again.
Nothing.
I felt faint. I’d thought she’d just be there, waiting for me. But why would she be?
I’d have to sit and wait till she came home. Which was worse, much worse. Telling her over the intercom would have meant I wouldn’t have to see her face as she realized who I was. Accosting her on her doorstep, my hair lank and greasy, my clothes stale and grimy… I shrank into myself at the thought of it.
But what else could I do?
It was dark now. Eventually someone, a longish-haired man with round glasses and expensive trainers, walked up the steps to number fifty-two.
‘Excuse me.’
He looked round at me, surprised and wary, ready to tell me he didn’t have any change. ‘Do you know the woman who lives in flat B?’
He frowned.
‘Flat B? It’s empty.’
I stared at him. The world shifted around us.
‘What?’
‘Yeah. She moved out a few months ago. Maybe more actually.’
I tried to take in what he was saying.
‘Do you know where she’s gone?’
He shook his head. ‘Sorry. Only found out she’d gone when the landlord came round asking questions. Think she owed rent. He reckoned she’d gone abroad. He wasn’t best pleased.’
I had no idea what to say or do.
‘I really need to find her,’ I said eventually.
‘Sorry, I can’t help,’ the round-glasses guy said.
I thanked him anyway.
‘Are you okay?’ he said. ‘You look a bit pale.’
‘We’ll be fine. But we’d better get going before it gets dark.’
He looked uncertain.
‘Are you sure you’re all right? You seem…’
I nodded, my head fuzzy and throbbing. ‘No. Fine. Really.’
‘Okay, well, if you say so,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you’ll track her down eventually. Do you know her well?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t know her at all.’
The road seemed longer going back. It seemed to stretch ahead and the buildings crowded in on either side. My skin burned despite the knife-edge wind that cut through my thin coat and jumper. The rucksack felt as though it was full of rocks, dragging me down with every step.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ I said. ‘What should I do?’
Billie said nothing. Her face seemed to hover nearer and then fade as my head throbbed. I had to close my eyes.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Sorry, B. It’ll be okay. I just need to…’
I needed to lie down. I felt like lying down there in the road.
Find a pharmacy, Clem. You need paracetamol. Water. Eat something if you can.
Who had said that? I looked around. Was it Mum? No. It was Claudia’s voice.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Thanks, Claudia. Come on, B.’
I pushed my leaden legs on up the road, back towards the city centre, the great castle looming over it all like on Mum’s postcard. There was a Christmas market ahead, thronging with people. Tinny carols came from loudspeakers, Christmas lights hung above us, twinkling, blurring, hurting my eyes.
The ground felt spongy, pulling my feet down, like walking in mud wearing wellies. There was a Superdrug a little further on. When I got inside, the overhead lights hurt my eyes. I stood in front of a display of lipsticks, transfixed. The tubes glittered like jewels. Mischa swatched colours on our hands. But no, that wasn’t right. Mischa wasn’t here. Where was she? She went to get fries. I tried not to panic but I wanted to call out for her.
Cooler colours for you, babe, Mischa said. But not too blue or you’ll look like a corpse, and not in a hot vampire way. No offence. Plummy tones, that’s what you want… Here, Damson Jam – that’s more you.
‘I thought you’d gone, Misch,’ I said.
You don’t get rid of me that easy.
I picked up the purple shiny tube and drew a line on my hand. It looked like a cut.
‘What do you think, B?’
‘Are you okay?’ A bleach-blonde shop assistant was looking at me doubtfully.
‘Yes thanks, we’re fine,’ I mumbled. ‘I am going to pay for it, don’t worry.’
I bought the lipstick along with a box of paracetamol. It was only when I got back outside I realized I’d forgotten to get any water. I sat on a bench and forced myself to swallow the tablets down, grimacing at the taste and the pain of my swollen throat.
It’ll be tonsillitis, Clem. You know you always get it when you’re run down. You probably need antibiotics.
‘It’s just a sore throat, Claudia. Don’t fuss,’ I said.
Billie was looking at me, her eyes big.
‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I just need to think. I just need to…’
What did I need to do? I didn’t know. I had no phone. I had barely any money. I couldn’t go to the police. Without Mum I had no reason to be here. Would they send us to a camp, a detention centre? Would they send us back to London?
Perhaps we were safer just staying here. If my head would just stop hurting, if everyone’s voices could just stop so I could work out what was real and what wasn’t—
I closed my eyes, waiting for the pain to ease. My eyelids felt tight and hot.
Billie was singing quietly.
Away in a manger, no crib for a bed.
I felt her head resting against my arm.
I think I fell asleep.
When I woke up the light had changed. It wasn’t dark yet but it would be soon. The lights seemed brighter, the castle and the hills darker. I was numb with cold but somehow still hurt everywhere. I stood up like an old person, every bone and muscle stiff and painful.
‘We need to walk… I know, I know, but it’s too cold to sit here.’
The city moved and blurred around me as I walked through it. The spiced smell of mulled wine, the noise of the shoppers talking and laughing, the screams of people flying above us on a fairground ride, the lights – it all felt too loud but faraway, all spinning, dissolving, unreal.
The castle had moved now. It wasn’t behind me any more but almost in front of me, its points reaching up into the orange-pink sky. We were walking on cobbles, there were people sitting outside bars and restaurants and I was sure suddenly that one of these places, just up the hill, was Granny and Grandpa’s café, the one where they’d met, the one where he’d given her the emerald ring. I pulled the chain out from under my jumper and held the ring in my hand.
‘It led me here!’ I said to Grandpa. ‘The ring. It brought me here.’
‘I know,’ he said.
But it couldn’t be Grandpa. It must have been Billie.
But Billie was silent.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘You’re tired. Just wait. I just want to look…’
I walked towards the tables outside the café and watched. Groups of students laughing, couples holding hands. And a woman watching me.
I didn’t know her but I felt like I did. She felt the same, I think. Have you ever had that, even though the person’s a complete stranger? Grandpa says when that happens it’s because somewhere in the multiverse you do know each other and you’re catching an echo of it. I don’t know if I believe it, or even if he does, but I hope it’s true.
I walked a bit closer to her. I could tell she didn’t want me to, but she also did want me to. She was kind really, I could tell, but she didn’t want to admit it.
I tried to tell her, about Grandpa and Granny and the ring, but the words wouldn’t come out right. She looked sad and I thought I was making her sadder, so I’d better go.
And then I turned back to Billie and everything went strange and bright. I was flying, not high up in the sky but above people’s heads looking down, reaching down to Billie.
And then everything tipped. The cobbles hit my face.
I fell into the dark.
‘What?’ I say.
Polly is smiling. ‘Not many people describe my sister as kind. She’s not a natural do-gooder.’ Her smile fades. ‘You reminded her of her daughter, I think.’
I nod. ‘Is her daughter dead?’
Polly looked at me. ‘I wasn’t sure whether to tell you in case it freaked you out. How did you know?’
I shrug. I know because I know. I know about seeing ghosts.
‘So, that’s it,’ I say. ‘Then I woke up in the hospital and then I met you and we came here. I’ve told you the whole story.’
Polly watches me. ‘The whole story, yes,’ she says at last. ‘But not the whole truth.’
I say nothing.
‘Not many return from the island,’ the boatman said. ‘You will find things have changed when you arrive back in your own land.’
The boatman’s blindfold was gone now. One of his eyes was bright and blue, but where the other should have been there was a cracked mirror.
‘Look into my seeing eye and tell me what you see,’ he said.
The girl looked in the mirror and saw the face of an old woman. For the girl did not know that time passed differently on the island of the blood-red flower. A hundred midwinters and midsummers had passed while the girl had waited on the island for the flower to bloom. If she had not been carrying with her the blood-red flower, she would have become nothing more than dust blown on the wind the moment her foot touched the land. But the powerful magic of the flower protected her. She touched it to her lips and in the boatman’s mirror eye she saw her reflection grow younger until she looked like herself again.
They reached the shore and the girl climbed out of the boat. Her foot touched the ground and she did not become dust blowing on the wind. She turned to thank the boatman but both he and his boat were gone.
Carrying the flower like a precious jewel, the girl travelled day and night and night and day all the way to the forest. This time, when she reached the darkest part deep among the trees, the flower broke the witch’s enchantment so the girl did not get lost.
Before long she came to the wall of rose thorns that surrounded the witch’s castle. She touched the flower to the thorns and instantly they sprang back and made a path for her into the castle.