“I don’t remember any of this,” Jess protested, but already that was a lie. Memories were starting to stir at the back of her mind, to bubble up and burst in quick flashes of random association. Pink plastic beads threaded on elastic. A school satchel with the initials P.M. embossed in flaking gold. Her own name, Jessica, pronounced with a long “a” at the end: Jessicay.
“She was your best friend in Year One, and then she was gone. You weren’t even allowed to see her because she had to be kept in a germ-free environment. Except that you did see her, of course. You saw her in the Other Place.”
As Tish. A composite figure assembled from half a dozen books Jess had read to her, with wings and pirate boots and a sword and many magical accessories. That necklace… it… It had been pink. Pink gems all in a line, all identical. It was a magnificent thing but Jess knew that the cheap little toy she’d just remembered had been the source material for it.
“You didn’t want to let her go,” Aunt Brenda was saying. “Of course you didn’t. So you made her into a hero in your stories. But then you said that she was happier in the Other Place. She was stronger there, and she could do all sorts of things she couldn’t do in real life. You said… she’d decided not to come back.
“And that was the night she died.”
Jess’s stomach clenched. The room turned a circuit around her.
“Jess? Jess, are you there?”
It was true. All of it.
She remembered now all the things she’d worked so hard to forget.
She’d cauterised her mind after Dr Carter. Tish was one of the things she just made herself not think about. But Tish wasn’t a casualty of Dr Carter; she was already gone.
I’m going on a long sea voyage, Jessicay. To a million places.
“I’m here,” she said. “Auntie B, was that…?” But she didn’t know how to get the question out.
“That was why your mum took you to a psychologist, yes. Because you didn’t seem to be coping with Patricia’s death. And because what you said was so upsetting. That she actually wanted to be dead.”
No, not that. I never said that. I said she wanted to be in a place where she could run and fly and fight and explore and do magic. Being dead was just the price of admission.
“Jess?”
“I’m still here.”
“I hope you’re not upset. But what you were saying about… the boy. It sounded so much like what you said back then, when you were just a child…”
Jess bowed her head until it pressed against the top of the payphone cabinet. The touch of the cool metal was soothing. “I get it,” she said. “The old crazy stuff coming back.”
“Not that. Not crazy, Jess. But we all have our own ways of dealing with stress. With grief. Like Dr Carter said, we make the things we need. I wanted you to remember because it might make you stronger if you know that you’ve been here before, and survived it.”
“Thank you. Thank you, Auntie B. I won’t forget that.”
“And Jess… I’m so glad. I’m so glad you’re back. That you didn’t decide to—”
The counter hit zero and the line went dead, but Jess could finish that sentence off for herself. And she knew why poor Patricia had come into Brenda’s mind so vividly. It must have seemed to her that her niece was making the same choice. To go off on that long sea voyage and never come home.
After lights-out, she lay in her bunk and counted the hours. She didn’t even try to sleep because she knew she wasn’t going to get there.
Alex came and sat with her, but for a long time they didn’t talk. Jess was thinking about a lot of things. Paul Levine’s offer of a place to stay. The memories her talk with Brenda had stirred up. And looming over everything else, the orders she’d received from Big Carol.
Paul had implied that she had a good chance in her appeal, but that almost seemed like a side issue right then. Whatever happened, she was going to reach the crunch point with Harriet Grace long before any verdict came in. If she refused to make the pick-up, Grace would have her beaten and perhaps killed. But if she said yes, she might lose something even more fundamental. Because whatever power had sent her Alex and offered her this second chance to help him, it had to have a working definition of failure.
Unless the power was hers. Perhaps it was just a knack she had, to talk to the dead, and the dreamers, and the dreaming dead. To gather them around her.
Grace. She had to decide what to do about Grace – and the package. She could go to the prison authorities, of course. But from what she’d seen, it seemed that Grace owned the authorities. And she had no evidence at all. Nothing but bare assertion to set against the weight and mass of an entire institution.
The dead boy interrupted her fretful thoughts. You’re going away tomorrow.
Yes.
She’d told Alex about the appeal more than once. He’d seemed to listen, but then treated it as new and unwelcome information every time she brought it up. Now that he’d finally got his head around the idea, she moved quickly to reassure him.
But I’ll be back in the afternoon. It’s just a few hours.
And the next day?
The same. And the day after that, probably.
The original trial had taken two weeks. The appeal would run for at least three days, with the first day and part of the second devoted to procedural submissions and arguments that were technical, abstract and complex. Any one of those quibbles could get the original conviction declared unsafe and turn the appeal into a retrial, so they had to come first. That was just how lawyers rolled, according to Levine. But it was all foreplay. The main event, barring a miracle, would start on day two, after the judge had worked through all the summary rulings.
Jess hadn’t thought about freedom for a long time. She was still getting used to being alive again. But freedom would have two big advantages: it would cut her loose from Harriet Grace, and it would mean she could go looking for Alex’s friend and his tormentor – the nice girl and the nasty girl – herself instead of having to cajole Levine into doing it for her. She’d be a better agent for Alex as a free woman than she could ever hope to be cooped up in Fellside.
So you want to leave? Alex’s tone was uncertain, almost accusing.
Yes. I think so. And you’d go with me, right? You must have come here with me in the first place. We’d still be together.
I suppose. He sounded as though he didn’t suppose at all.
Jess sat up and looked across the cell at him. He was sitting on the floor – or close enough – with his knees drawn up to his chest. Just a little kid at first glance, then on the double-take a scary optical illusion, lit up by remembered sunlight, clearly visible despite the full dark.
I wouldn’t leave you, she told him.
Alex looked at his shoes, his face studiously blank. She could see that he wasn’t convinced, but she couldn’t think of anything she could say that would reassure him. Out of ideas, she settled for a diversion.
Alex?
He looked up at her. Yes?
She held out her hand. Let’s go for a walk. I want to see the other world again. Your world.
This time leaving her body was almost effortless. Walking was easier too: she ballasted herself against the storm of thoughts by thickening the stringy limbs of her imaginary body, giving them muscle and bulk and sinew, thinking of herself as solid and weighted down. She could feel it working at once, much more quickly than the other times. She was able to hold to more of a straight line as they threaded their way through the chaos. That in itself made it less frightening.
She threw out a froth of chatter. How long had it taken him to learn to navigate the dream space? Did it scare him at first, or had he always taken it for granted? How had he found the pit?
I woke up there, he said to this last question. After they hurt me.
“They?” Jess picked up on the plural pronoun at once.
She. When I opened my eyes, I was just there, on a ledge a long way down. It took me a long time to climb out.
“And then?”