*
‘Hello, little spirit,’ whispers a voice.
I’m lying in a soft, warm bed with an old-style quilt and blankets and a huge pillow that is leaking down out of its seams. It’s the biggest bed I’ve ever been in, I barely reach halfway to the end where the brass bedstead rises up like the bars of a cage. To my left a boy is sleeping far away on the other side of the bed – all I can see of him is a pink nightcap pulled down onto a shock of black hair.
Between us lies an enormous fox, making strange giggling noises in its sleep.
‘Little spirit,’ hisses the voice. ‘Awake now.’
The Shadow Lady is standing at the end of the bed but I don’t want to talk to her. I’m warm and comfortable and want to be sleeping. But this isn’t my bed and the white boy in the pink nightcap is not my idea of a good time. The fox? Yeah, well, I was getting used to the foxes.
‘This is not your sleep,’ says the Shadow Lady. ‘This dream belongs to somebody else.’
That wakes me up a bit – enough anyway to remember who I am, but not enough to sit up. I’m still comfortably snug and drowsy.
‘It is not the most agreeable of revelations to discover that one has already passed over into the afterlife without realising it,’ says the Shadow Lady. ‘Even worse is the realisation that one is not even a spirit, but instead a poor shadow of oneself.’
‘An echo,’ I say.
‘Precisely,’ says the Shadow Lady. ‘And I do not intend to continue in this state for very much longer.’
‘What convinced you?’ I say, and struggle up until I am half sitting.
‘I looked out of the window,’ she says. ‘Such marvels. I only wish I could partake in them myself but . . .’ She opens the fingers of her shadow hand as if letting something go. ‘But before I shuffle off, I would like you to satisfy my curiosity in the matter of women.’
My mind is wavy as shit but I see a chance.
‘You have to answer my question first,’ I say.
‘Equitable,’ she says. ‘Ask your question.’
‘You treated Charles,’ I say. ‘What was wrong with him and what did you do?’
The Shadow Lady sighs.
‘The white plague ailed him,’ says the Shadow Lady. ‘Consumption, that is. As to my treatment – there is a conjecture that the disease is caused by tiny animals, smaller even than a flea, that infest and breed inside the body. Some have speculated that by infusing a patient with magic, one might strengthen the body’s resistance to these animalcula and encourage a recovery.’
‘How did you infuse the magic?’
‘I poured it into this bed,’ she said. ‘I saw no evidence as to its efficacy.’
No, I think, but now we know the spark around which the house grew. Which means I should get out of the bed, but I’m still sleepy and Indiana the dog yawns and snuffles and the pillow is so soft.
‘Little spirit,’ says the Shadow Lady. ‘We had a bargain.’
‘Yeah, question,’ I say.
‘If you are truly from the future, pray tell – what is the condition of women?’
‘Better,’ I say, and wonder why she won’t leave me alone.
‘Better in what way?’
Why do people always want to ask you questions when you’re tired? I try to remember what Miss Redmayne taught and what they said on that episode of Horrible Histories.
‘Own property, can vote, get condoms, get paid, same-sex marriage – next year.’
My eyes keep closing, but it seems to me that the Shadow Lady has bowed her head and her shoulders are shaking as if she’s crying, but I can’t tell why.
I’m tired, the bed is warm. I close my eyes.
*
The girl stands upon a fantastical flying machine made of balsa wood, brass and gutta-percha. She is dressed in a severe grey skirt, a scarlet riding jacket and a top hat with goggles. She has a pistol in her belt, a dagger in her boot and holds a brass telescope to her eye to see the way forward.
Her name is Abigail the Adventuress, the treasure hunter . . .
No.
Abigail the Ghost Hunter, then. Flying to darkest Africa . . .
No. I’ve been there. Sierra Leone, anyway. Met about a million relatives and only got to go to the beach twice, which was an outrage.
To Paris then . . .
School trip.
The girl stands on the poop deck of a pirate ship, the wind bellying the canvas as her men hoist the Jolly Roger.
Dysentery and anaesthetic-free dentistry – no thanks.
The girl stands on a high branch in the forest, clad in a leopard skin, a longbow across her back and a quiver of arrows at her hip. In the tree next to hers she can see the nest of the legendary phoenix. Within the nest is a clutch of eggs, just one of which will bring her fame and fortune beyond her wildest dreams. All she needs do is jump the piddling gap between the branch on one tree and one on the next. A matter of a few feet . . . One could almost step across it.
Or you could climb down, walk over to the right tree, and climb up that.
But the mother phoenix could return at any moment.
About that – phoenixes have got to be endangered species, right? You can’t just tax their eggs like they were chickens. I’m not having this any more – none of these things are real.
I roll out of the bed while, behind me, Charles cries in frustration.
‘Stay here. You can be anything!’
But I already am.
37
The Clinic
I am standing in the ghost of a Victorian nursery on the top floor of an old house in Hampstead. Or it might be the memory of a Victorian nursery, or the embodiment of a story about a nursery, or something there isn’t a word for – or at least one I haven’t
