Dark Vision (3 page)

‘Yep,’ she said, ‘again. Mr McCauley calls me most nights, bless him. He’s become almost a friend. In fact, I’m starting to believe him … Maybe I should be looking for a different job.’

She stared at me, taking in my skin, which I knew was even paler than usual, my wet hair and generally freaked-out countenance.

‘You all right?’ she said. ‘I only ask because your pupils are so dilated they look like dinner plates. Have you been dropping pills and shagging boy bands?’

I snorted with laughter: she knew it was the last thing I’d have been up to, even though she’d said a million times I should. Carmel O’Grady thought my life would be a whole lot better if I just got what she termed ‘a good seeing to’. We’ve agreed to differ on that.

‘No, I’m not so good,’ I replied, feeling some of the wired energy drain from my body as I started to feel safe. Well, safer, anyway. Carmel had been adopted into a family of six boys when she was a baby, and could kick the shit out of any man, woman or beast who looked at her the wrong way. And as we are friends, I knew I’d fall within the circle of protection should any passing strangers – say, hot guys called Gabriel – have followed me to the building.

‘Tell me all,’ she said, leaning back in her chair. The phone rang, shrill and insistent in the silent office. I looked a question at her.

‘Ignore it. It’ll be that man in Freshfield telling me the demon squirrels are in his garden.’

‘What if they are? What if you’re missing the scoop of the decade?’

‘Stop avoiding the issue. What’s wrong?’

I wondered how I was going to explain everything without sounding like a total lunatic. Carmel is used to me and my eccentricities, but I have an underlying suspicion she thinks I should be accompanying Mr McCauley on his trips to pick up his clozapine.

‘I met this man …’

‘That’s a good start,’ she interrupted. I gave her a look, and she made a silly zipping gesture across her lips.

Deep breaths. Out with it – some of it, at least.

‘I met this man, in the club. And he was … well, he was gorgeous, but that’s not really relevant. I just thought it would keep your interest level up. I’ve never met him before, but he knew my name. And then he said it isn’t my real name. And then he asked what I know about my parents, who are kind of dead. And then I knocked him over and ran away. And then I got a cab and came here. And Frank outside is reading
The Stud
, which is odd, ’cause I thought he’d be more of an Andy McNab man.’

I stopped and sagged back against the chair. I’d run out of energy. It sounded even weirder out loud. Even though I’d left out the good bits, like the skeleton singers and the sweaty sex.

‘Can I speak now?’ she asked.

I nodded, feeling slightly nauseous at the thought of even having this conversation.

‘OK,’ she said, frowning in concentration. She does that a lot, and the two creases at the top of her forehead are the only things that mar an otherwise exceptionally pretty face. Despite her solidly Scouse-Irish name, Carmel O’Grady was born to an Egyptian mother, and her heritage shows in her deep-honey skin, high cheekbones and wide, whisky-coloured eyes.

‘So, first off, Lily – if that is in fact your real name – why do you seem to be taking this bloke seriously? Surely he’s just a random nutter trying to get your attention? Probably wants you to listen to his band’s demo, or something …’

She had a point. Bands and their PRs go to extraordinary lengths to get in the paper. I’ve been offered bribes in every shape and form, from chocolate drumsticks to 60-year-old bottles of Scotch. I’ve remained, of course, too noble to accept. By which I mean that Carmel always takes them instead. And the way she ate those chocolate drumsticks would have made a docker blush.

‘I don’t know. It felt … real. And I don’t know much about my parents. They died when I was six, in London. They went out to work one day and didn’t come back. I was told it was a car crash, and then before I knew anything, I was whisked up here to live with my nan, who I never even knew existed until then.’

She nodded. She knows all this already. I’m not much of a sharer when it comes to my past – there isn’t much to share – but Carmel has heard versions of most of it, dragged out of me during late-night chats. I was really just saying it out loud to straighten my own head, and she was letting me.

‘And having met your nan,’ said Carmel, doing a fake shudder, ‘I can only presume she was the last resort. I don’t think I’d even want to leave my dog in her care. But what about the name thing? Presumably you have all the usual stuff – birth certificate, passport?’

I paused. Made myself think about the little brown envelope of paperwork I have back at the flat. She was right. I do have all that stuff – and until now, I’ve had no reason to question it. It was only my encounter with the head-fuck Superman clone that had nudged something loose.

‘I do, yes. But there is something … something at the back of my brain that wants to get out. I don’t remember much about that time, or the time before it. And who’d want to? It was all horrible. But after the funeral, I remember being in a small room with my nan, and some men in black … I assumed they were with the undertakers. I’d never seen them before. Nan was scared of them, I could tell. The whole thing was odd anyway, with hindsight – I mean, it was at night. Who holds a funeral at night?’

‘Goths?’ said Carmel, one eyebrow up.

I ignored her, which is often for the best. ‘And they were handing her a package,’ I continued, ‘and telling her something about it all being for my own good … and the next day I moved here. Everything changed. Everything. And I think … I think that might have included my name.’

‘And you’re only just remembering this now?’ said Carmel, incredulously.

‘Yes!’ I snapped, feeling as angry with myself as her. It was all there, but hazy, like a scene from a film I’d watched as a child. ‘And I know that’s weird! If I could just drag it out of my memory …’

It was so frustrating. Here I was, the human oracle, able to see any number of futures I had no interest in – but completely incapable of seeing into my own past.

‘Hmm,’ she said, ‘maybe we should call Mr McCauley. See if he has a spare alien mind probe lying around. Look, this is probably nothing, but I can see you’re upset. Why don’t you tell me what you do know – when they were killed, where, their names – and I’ll log on and see what I can find out for you? It’s not like I’ve got a newspaper to produce, or anything. And while I do that, you go and get us some coffee from the machine. I’m still not convinced your drink wasn’t spiked.’

I nodded gratefully, and recited the little information I had. Carmel had access to online libraries for all the newspapers in the UK, and was a whizz at pulling out facts and stats. It was how she revised for her weekly pub quizzes and filled in the down time between calls from the Prank Parade. She jotted it all down, and I stood up, fishing for change in my pocket. I paused, looked at her.

‘Am I being mad?’ I asked.

‘Yeah. Probably. But I’m not one to quibble over an identity crisis, am I?’

Carmel has spent years and a small fortune trying to trace her birth mother, to no avail. She’s in an off-spell at the moment, but I know it’s only a matter of time before she starts again.

‘Now, shoo!’ she said, gesturing me away with her hands. ‘I have magic to work! Get me a cappuccino …’

I left her, and ambled towards the break room. The canteen closes at night – there aren’t enough staff to justify opening it – but one wall is banked with vending machines offering soggy BLTs and Mars bars that usually get stuck in the mechanical arms on their way down. The lights were flickering on and off, and I blinked to adjust to the fit-inducing rhythm.

My phone buzzed, and I reflexively pulled it out to check. A text.
I can help
, it said.
Meet me at Lime Street Costa tomorrow morning at 10
. From an unknown number, but somehow I instinctively realised it was from him. Gabriel. The list of things he knew about me obviously extended to include my phone details. He was one scary dude.

I ignored it, and with shaky hands approached the drinks machine. It took three attempts and robbed me of £1.50, but I finally managed to extricate two steaming cups of brown gunk. I pulled my sleeves down and wrapped the ends around my hands to prevent scalding as I gripped the thin plastic cups, and walked back to the newsroom.

Carmel was sitting staring at her computer, that frown doing overtime as she scanned the screen. I put the drinks down and waited for her to speak. Wondered if I should reply to the text; if I should meet him in the morning; if I should just buy a ticket to Rio and reinvent myself as a cocktail waitress.

‘This is odd,’ she said, tapping at the screen with a pencil.

‘There’s a surprise,’ I replied, sipping bitter black coffee so hot my lips recoiled in protest.

‘No, it’s really odd. I can’t find anything about your parents … or at least about the McCains. What I have found, though, for exactly the same time and the same place, is a car crash in St John’s Wood. A Volvo estate, same as you said, in collision with a white Transit van. The driver of the van was never found.’

‘Yes, that’s what I told you – that’s how it happened. I do remember that part.’

‘But this is the odd bit. The Volvo wasn’t driven by your parents. It was driven by a man called Francis Delaney. He died in the crash, along with his wife, Sarah, who was in the front seat. And there was a third fatality … a child. A six-year-old girl. Their daughter, Maura Delaney.’

I dropped the coffee, saw the searing-hot liquid soak through my clothes to my skin, but felt nothing.

Maura Delaney.

I knew that name.

I knew it because it was mine.

I parked my car outside the house, in front of an anonymous door painted an anonymous cream, on an anonymous street in the Anfield area of Liverpool. It wasn’t far out of town, and the rows of terraces were overshadowed by the might of Liverpool Football Club, quiet in the week and awash with traffic on match days. A whole industry has built up around it: kids offering to ‘watch’ cars for a quid, the implied promise being that if you didn’t pay up, your car might accidentally lose a window while you’re gone.

Today was a Sunday, and all was quiet. Kids played on bikes; litter blew around in mini tornadoes, and a few women were out scrubbing their steps. They really do still do that here.

Number 19. The house I grew up in. The house that had, technically, been my home from the age of six upwards, but had always just felt like a collection of walls and windows and roof tiles.

I knocked just to let her know I was there, then used my key to let myself in. I knew she’d be up. She barely sleeps – never has – too much nervous energy fizzing round her clogged veins.

‘Nan!’ I shouted, making my way through the hall and into the kitchen. She was exactly where I knew she’d be: sitting at the table, listening to Radio Merseyside, a Silk Cut hanging from the corner of her mouth.

She’s not that old, my nan. Coleen McCain. She’s only sixty-five, in fact, but she looks a lot older. Has one of those faces you see a lot of in Liverpool: faces that have weathered one too many storms, smoked one too many fags, witnessed one too many tragedies. Her hair is straggly and streaked with grey, and her face is always clear of both make-up and expression. Her eyes are an icy blue and about as welcoming as the Arctic. Not your archetypal loving granny figure, by a long stretch.

‘All right, girl?’ she asked, surprise flickering across her creased face. ‘Want a cuppa?’

Without waiting for a reply, she stood and flicked on the kettle, sucking on her ciggie the whole time.

‘Bit early for a visit, isn’t it? What’s up with you?’

I sat down at the table and scratched the plastic gingham cover with a fingernail, watching as she dunked a tea bag haphazardly in a mug. It was early. Barely past eight, a time of day I rarely see. But I hadn’t slept, my mind tortured by visions of burning Volvos, and men in black, and a little girl trapped in the back of a hunk of twisted metal.

‘I want you to tell me who I am, Nan,’ I said, taking the tea from her and using the mug to warm my hands. It was cold in the house. It always has been. Nan is obsessed with the price of fuel, and, wrapped in seven layers of clothing, always hoarded heat like precious jewels, only ever agreeing to switch on the radiators when we were both shivering and our lips turned blue.

She stubbed out the cigarette in an already overloaded ashtray, and stared me down. I looked away first. Too much conditioning to challenge her.

‘Don’t be bloody stupid, Lily. You know who you are. You having one of them mid-life crises a few decades early, or what?’

‘No,’ I replied, fighting to stay calm. ‘Just a my-life crisis. I want to know who I am. And I want to know who Maura Delaney is. Don’t pretend you don’t know.’

She ignored me, reached for her Silk Cut with trembling hands, lit it up and sucked for dear life. I could feel the lie coming a mile off. It didn’t take psychic powers to see she was stalling, preparing a good one. Her eyes narrowed behind the haze of smoke.

She opened her mouth to speak, and I felt anger seething through me. I’d had enough. The night from hell, no sleep, and adrenaline for breakfast. Not a good combination.

This woman had raised me, sure enough. She’d taken me into her home. Fed me, clothed me, made sure I went to school. But she’d never offered me affection, or encouragement, or anything that vaguely resembled the love a young child needs. Whoever she was, whoever I was, I was sick of the lies. Of the fact that I’d suffered through a miserable childhood that was based on fiction.

I reached out and grabbed her wrist, holding it tightly as she struggled. Opened my mind, willed it to happen, urged it on, wanting to feel that familiar buzz, the mental tingle that told me I was about to see something I shouldn’t. I waited. And waited.

Nothing. Just an old lady trying to prise my death-grip from her papery skin and birdlike bones.

I howled in frustration and dropped her hand to the table. I felt like crying. My whole life I’ve avoided human contact, avoided the touch of others, for fear of what I’ll see about them. Scared of my freaky-ass visions. And now, when I wanted them, when I needed them – nothing. They’d gone AWOL. Bloody typical.