Jess’s mind shied away from this bleak vision, but she forced herself to interrogate it. Alex had found her in the abyss, falling, and brought her back here. He knew his way through the night world, and how to walk there. How to find her body where it lay in the infirmary. So had he come here before her? That made no sense. Surely his link was to her, not to Fellside.
Was it possible that the night world’s geography was just different? That all spaces came together there? Perhaps she’d always been his focus, his tether, and didn’t even know it until her coming so close to death herself permitted them to see each other. But even that begged so many questions. Were killers and their victims always psychically joined at the hip? If so, Fellside ought to be teeming with unquiet ghosts.
In any case, she didn’t find it strange at all that rubbing up against all those minds, all those memories, had abraded the boy’s sense of himself. She’d seen first-hand how much he’d forgotten. But the description of the blazer and the badge had been so specific, so circumstantial, she thought it must mean something.
“So was there another school you went to before this one? Before Planter’s Lane?” she asked him. Alex didn’t answer, so she pushed again. “Did your parents transfer you for some reason? Because you were being bullied there? Is that maybe where you met the mean girl?”
Just more silence.
“I’m trying to help you,” Jess said. She could feel a little stridency creeping into her voice but she fought against it, tried to speak more softly. “Concentrate, Alex,” she coaxed him. “Think about it.”
He stared solemnly into her eyes. It’s hard. It was a long time ago.
“But you’re sure about the badge?”
Alex nodded emphatically. My badge had a goat and a flag. I don’t remember this badge at all.
Jess considered. It was still six days before her hearing. Paul had said he couldn’t help her any more, but this was a tiny thing. If she presented it as a personal favour, he wouldn’t refuse her.
She had to use up the last of her phone credit for the day, but she made the call. It went to voicemail and she left a message.
She would wait until the next day to call Brenda again. She didn’t have any choice.
62
Sally was leading a double life, and he wasn’t enjoying either of them.
His normal working week at the prison was comprehensively overshadowed by his hatred and fear of Dennis Devlin to the point where it was hard for him to see anything else. He was distracted and forgetful, allowing prescription drugs to run out, failing to submit reports, even missing clinic sessions.
Except for the Thursday clinic in Curie. That one ran like clockwork. And afterwards, like clockwork, Sally would go down to the meditation room, where he would drop off Grace’s basket of goodies. The weight of unhappiness that settled on him as he did this stayed with him for hours afterwards, cutting the fear and loathing with something even darker.
Sylvie Stock was very much aware of Sally’s perturbed state of mind since she’d switched to days now and was therefore the one who was mostly picking up after him. She had no idea what it was that was getting to him, so she made the same mistake as before and assumed it had to be her. She wound herself up into a tighter and tighter coil, convinced that her guilt was the one thing everyone was focused on. That preoccupation made her as negligent in her duties as Sally was in his. DiMarta kept the surgery together through that weird time, changing Passmore’s dressings three times a day and reporting on her progress to Dr Salazar’s more or less deaf ears.
Passmore was doing remarkably well all of a sudden. She’d hit the bottom and done a spectacular bounce, the same way Moulson had done a few weeks before. Miracle recoveries were becoming the regular backdrop to Salazar’s life, and to Stock’s – their patients rallying as they themselves fell apart.
Stock decided that the only way she would stay sane was if she could put the business with Moulson out of her mind altogether. Just forget it. Not think about it. Let the whole thing fall where it wanted to fall. The first day she tried this strategy out, she was called over to Dietrich block to sedate a patient who’d had a religious vision and responded to it with a hysterical fit. That was what she was told anyway, although the inmate, Waites, had calmed down by the time she got there. “He was an angel,” she whispered to Stock confidentially as Stock prepped the hypo.
“Was he now?” Stock murmured.
“And she was with him. That murderess with the ugly face. I think they’re friends now.”
“That’s nice.” Sylvie pushed the needle in and gave her the dose. Waites sighed, closed her eyes and settled back on her bunk, already half asleep. Sylvie only realised then what she’d been saying.
“Hey,” she said, giving Waites a hard nudge in the ribs. “Who? What murderess? Who are you talking about?”
Waites’s lips formed the shape of a name. Stock’s wide eyes took it in.
63
The night before her appeal hearing started, Jess finally got through to her Aunt Brenda.
It wasn’t for want of trying. She had stood in the phone line every day since Paul Levine gave her the number, using up her daily cash allowance each time in three vain attempts.
“Hello?”
Jess had given up expecting an answer, so the single halting word from the other end of the line startled her and scattered her thoughts. “Brenda!” she yelped. “Brenda, hey! It’s me. It’s Jess.”
“Jess!” Her aunt’s voice was slow and slightly slurred. She sounded like she’d had a few too many, but then the effects of a morphine drip were very like a mellow drunk. Her joy and relief came through in any case. “Oh Jess, it’s so good to hear your voice!”
“It’s great to hear yours,” Jess said, choking up a little. “How are you?”
“Let’s not go there, sweetheart. Not unless you’ve got an hour or two to spare.”
“I’ve got maybe seven minutes,” Jess said. It wasn’t a guess: the payphone had a digital timer, which was counting down relentlessly. “But seriously, how’s your back? How did the operation go?”
“Operations. Every time they fix one thing, they find something else that’s wrong. My back is made of Lego bricks, and they’re not load-bearing.”
“But do they think they’ve fixed—?”
“Jess, listen. Listen to me, please, just listen listen listen.” Brenda’s voice was still fuzzy and soft, but she won that tussle by speaking right alongside her niece until she shut up.
“All right. Listening.”
“Good. I wanted to tell you something about when you were little.”
“Still listening.”
“Actually it’s about Tish.”
“Tish?” Jess repeated blankly. “Made-up Tish? Imaginary friend Tish?”
Brenda sighed. It was a brittle, hollow sound fizzing with static from the bad connection. “The little boy,” she said. “You said you saw him in a dream. It made me think of something I hadn’t thought about in a long time. Was he in the Other Place, Jess? The place you used to go to at night?”
“I…” Jess hesitated. There were a lot of possible answers to that question, but she went with the simplest. “Yes. He was.”
“And that was where you saw Tish too.”
“Auntie B, I didn’t make this up. Alex is more than just a dream.”
Silence on the line. Then: “So was Tish, sweetheart.”
“What?”
“Her name was Patricia Mackie. She lived opposite you in Paley Close. And she was in your class at Heathcote Road. At least, she was for a little while.”
“But…” Jess tried to make sense of this absurd contradiction. “I made Tish up. She had wings. And a magic necklace that sang songs and shot fire.”
“In your dreams she did. In real life she was an unlucky little girl with a rare illness. Farber disease. I don’t remember all the details but it made her joints swell up so she couldn’t walk, and it affected her heart. That was why she stopped going to school. She was too sick.”