“I’m glad I don’t smoke,” Alison said. “It wouldn’t be very professional.”
“Huh. Professional,” said Emmie. “You, a professional. That’s a laugh.”
Alison thought, I may as well change the whole thing while I’m about it. I don’t have to stick with any part of my old self. She went to a bookshop and bought one of those books for naming babies.
“Congratulations,” said the woman behind the till.
Alison smoothed down the front of her dress. “I’m not, actually,” she said. Sonia Hart. Melissa Hart. Susanna Hart. It didn’t work. She managed to lose Cheetham, but her baptismal name kept sliding back into her life. It was part of her, like Morris was.
Over the next few years she had to get used to life with Morris. When her mum went off to Bracknell she made it clear she didn’t want a daughter trailing after her, so Al got a temporary billet with Mrs. Etchells. Morris no longer stopped at the gate. He came inside and exploded the lightbulbs, and disarranged Mrs. Etchell’s china cabinet. “He is a one!” said Mrs. Etchells.
It was only when she got older and moved among a different set of psychics that she realized how vulgar and stupid Morris really was. Other mediums have spirit guides with a bit more about them—dignified impassive medicine men or ancient Persian sages—but she had this grizzled grinning apparition in a bookmaker’s checked jacket, and suede shoes with bald toe caps. A typical communication from Sett or Oz or Running Deer would be, “The way to open the heart is to release yourself from expectation.” But a typical communication from Morris would be: “Oh, pickled beetroot, I like a nice bit of pickled beetroot. Make a nice sandwich out of pickled beetroot!”
At first she thought that by an effort of will and concentration, she would make him keep his distance. But if she resists Morris, there is a buildup of pressure in her cheekbones and her teeth. There is a crawling feeling inside her spine, which is like slow torture; sooner or later you have to give in, and listen to what he’s saying.
On days when she really needs a break she tries to imagine a big lid, banging down on him. It works for a time. His voice booms, hollow and incomprehensible, inside a huge metal tub. For a while she doesn’t have to take any notice of him. Then, little by little, an inch at a time, he begins to raise the lid.
five
It was in the week after Diana’s death that Colette felt she got to know Alison properly. It seems another era now, another world: before the millennium, before the Queen’s Jubilee, before the Twin Towers burned.
Colette had moved into Al’s flat in Wexham, which Alison had described to her as “the nice part of Slough,” though, she added, “most people don’t think Slough has a nice part.”
On the day she moved in, she took a taxi from the station. The driver was young, dark, smiling, and spry. He tried to catch her eye through the rearview mirror, from which dangled a string of prayer beads. Her eyes darted away. She was not prejudiced, but. Inside the cab was an eye-watering reek of air freshener.
They drove out of town, always uphill. He seemed to know where he was going. Once Slough was left behind, it seemed to her they were travelling to nowhere. The houses ran out. She saw fields, put to no particular use. They were not farms, she supposed. There were not, for instance, crops in the fields. Here and there, a pony grazed. There were structures for the pony to jump over; there were hedgerows. She saw the sprawl of buildings from a hospital, Wexham Park. Some squat quaint cottages fronted the road. For a moment, she worried; did Al live in the country? She had not said anything about the country. But before she could really get her worrying under way, the driver swerved into the gravel drive of a small neat seventies-built apartment block, set well back from the road. Its shrubberies were clipped and tame; it looked reassuringly suburban. She stepped out. The driver opened the boot and lugged out her two suitcases. She gazed up at the front of the building. Did Al live here, looking out over the road? Or would she face the back? For a moment she struck herself as a figure of pathos. She was a brave young woman on the threshold of a new life. Why is that sad? she wondered. Her eyes fell on the suitcases. That is why; because I can carry all I own. Or the taxi driver can.
She paid him. She asked for a receipt. Her mind was already moving ahead, to Al’s accounts, her business expenses. The first thing I shall do, she thought, is bump up her prices. Why should people expect a conversation with the dead for the price of a bottle of wine and a family-size pizza?
The driver ripped a blank off the top of his pad, and offered it to her, bowing. “Could you fill it in?” she said. “Signed and dated.”
“Of what amount shall I put?”
“Just the figure on the meter.”
“Home sweet home?”
“I’m visiting a friend.”
He handed back the slip of paper, with an extra blank receipt beneath. Cabman’s flirtation; she handed back the blank.
“These flats, two-bedroom?”
“I think so.”
“En suite? How much you’ve paid for yours?”
Is this what passes for multicultural exchange? she wondered. Not that she was prejudiced. At least it’s to the point. “I told you, I don’t live here.”
He shrugged, smiled. “You have a business card?”
“No.” Has Alison got one? Do psychics have cards? She thought, it will be uphill work, dragging her into the business world.
“I can drive you at any time,” the man said. “Just call this number.”
He passed over his own card. She squinted at it. God, she thought, I’ll need glasses soon. Several numbers were crossed out in blue ink and a mobile number written in. “Cell phone,” he said. “You can just try me day or night.”
He left her at the door, drove away. She glanced up again. I hope there’s
