All Sorts of Possible (14 page)

‘Wake up,’ urged Daniel. ‘Please. I don’t know what’s going to happen if you don’t.’ The longer he sat beside his father, waiting for something to
happen, the more the frustration built up inside him as he thought about Mason. By the time two nurses came to give his father a bed bath, Daniel had already decided what he was going to do. As he
left the room, the nurses told him the ward would be in contact if anything happened and he nodded and said thank you for all their hard work and kind words before he left to find Mason and tell
the man that he should leave him and his father alone.

The lift was busy with patients and hospital staff leaving work and Rosie was stressed. There were elbows close to her face and bad breath coming in bursts. She began to
realize that somebody had just farted too as she glared at all the innocent faces around her, trying not to breathe too deeply. When she met her mother’s gaze, they raised their eyebrows at
each other.

Rosie felt a scream floating up from her guts towards her mouth like a bubble about to pop.

The lift rumbled down the inside of the hospital building like some missile being lowered into its silo, and she willed it to speed up and reach the ground floor more quickly so she could step
out and breathe clean air. It was a sort of test for her to try. The amazing things she had learnt to do in the past few weeks, since just before her diagnosis, like moving things a few centimetres
across her bedroom floor and catching glimpses of what people were thinking, had been exciting, but she wanted to do more. However, it was difficult to know how, even with the advice of her
grandmother, the only person Rosie had dared tell about what she could do.

The lift kept to its slow, rumbling pace however much she wished for it to go faster. Frustrated, she tried looking into the heads of the people standing beside her, searching for secrets to
distract her from the intolerably slow journey. But all she sensed were snippets of things, swirling round her, and she could not tell who was thinking what or which pieces of information belonged
to whom. It was like being submerged in some sort of private psychic soup of which no one else was aware. Like seeing into the Cloud, she thought.

When the lift stopped and the doors opened, Rosie silently gave thanks for the fresh air and then immediately cursed whoever had stepped inside and added to the crush.

It was a boy. Mousey-coloured. Plain-looking. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t have given him a second glance. But as the doors closed she kept staring at him, her eyes like magnets she could not
pull away.

She knew, somehow, that there was something special about him as he turned round to face the doors as they clicked shut.

Her brain ticked over until she suddenly recognized him. That was it. He was the boy who had fallen into the sinkhole and survived. She had seen a picture of him on someone’s Facebook
page, on lots of pages in fact. Even from her brief look at him before he had turned round, it struck her now how different people could look in real life, less real somehow than on a screen.

But Rosie’s curiosity wasn’t satisfied. There was something else about him. Without even thinking it might be rude or too forward, she reached out and touched him on the shoulder and
her fingers seemed to stick to him as if nailed there. As the boy tried to turn round to see her, struggling with her arm locked tight to him, Rosie heard voices instantly all around her and it
shocked her for a heartbeat until she realized what they were: the thoughts of each person in the lift. They were so loud a switch seemed to have been flicked on in her head. The boy appeared to
hear them too, pausing to listen for a moment, before he managed to turn right round and look directly at Rosie as her arm dropped away.

But Rosie still felt a connection to this mousey-haired, plain-looking boy. As if the air between them was charged. It made her feel invigorated somehow, open to the idea that she could do
whatever she wanted if she put her mind to it.

When the lights flickered and the lift lurched downwards for a second, everyone gasped as their stomachs hit their throats and Rosie blinked and told it to slow again. She felt excited and
afraid by what she had done while people all around her exchanged relieved looks as the lift continued to rumble on at its stately pace.

But the boy was still looking right at her as if he knew exactly what she had done. A thought occurred to her – that they had done it
together
. Somehow, he had made her gift more
powerful.

‘Go, Mum, I’ll be fine. Just let me hang out and be a normal teenager, will you?’ Rosie squeezed her mum’s hand as they stood in the foyer of the
hospital. ‘Honestly, you don’t need to worry about me every second of every day.’

‘But what about getting home?’

‘I’ll get the bus. I have change. Exactly the right amount, so there’s no need to worry.’ When her mother rolled her eyes at that, Rosie looked round at Daniel who was
waiting for her beside the rows of blue plastic seats. ‘I know him from school. I just want to hang out.’

‘I recognise him.’

‘Yeah, the sinkhole, you know? With his dad.’

Her mum nodded. ‘You never said he was at your school, Rosie.’

‘No? Well, I’m sure I never said he wasn’t either.’ Her mum kept looking at her, as if trying to figure out if Rosie was really telling the truth or not with just her
eyes. ‘I’m a big girl, Mum.’

‘You’re a sick girl, Rosie.’

‘I know. But life doesn’t stop because of it, remember? We agreed that.’

‘But you’ve got an important day tomorrow.’

Rosie rolled her eyes. Nodded. ‘Yeah, I know and I’d like to forget about it, just for a little while.’

Her mum took a deep breath. ‘You promise you won’t overdo it. That you’ll be sensible?’

Rosie held up her hand. ‘I do humbly swear to uphold the law according to my mum.’

When Daniel said hello and they introduced themselves, he noticed the girl was as pale as the pink on a rose. It made all her other features come alive. Her green eyes and
black hair. Cheekbones as sharp as razors. The delicate veins in her hands were so blue they were like tiny underground streams.

She was the sort of girl he would have glanced at, but would have been too embarrassed ever to speak to.

His mouth slapped shut when he realized he had been staring and saying nothing. All the questions in his head were logjammed somehow.

Rosie laughed and nodded. ‘I know, right,’ she said. ‘I’m blown away too. It was really something in the lift. Our . . . connection?’

‘It’s called the fit,’ replied Daniel. He dug at the rubber floor with the toe of a trainer. ‘So I’m guessing you don’t know anything about it?’

Rosie shook her head.

‘I don’t know much. A bit, I guess. It lets people like you with particular gifts do more than you could before. That you plug into me somehow. But I don’t know how it works.
All I can tell you is how it feels for me.’

‘And how’s that?’

‘I get a sensation in my chest, a good one. Warm and golden. Like something good is happening.’

‘Can we try it again now? Do I need to touch you first to get some kind of—’ But when Rosie took a step towards him, and held out her arm to touch his shoulder like before,
Daniel stepped back, his hands closing into tiny fists.

‘Wait!’ His shout was so loud that people looked up as they passed him by. ‘We have to be careful,’ he said more quietly, ‘before we try anything.’

‘Why? Daniel, what’s the matter? Whatever we did in the lift was great. Fantastic!’

‘When I tried making the fit with someone else, things went wrong.’

‘How do you mean? Daniel, what happened?’

‘I think it can be dangerous if you push too hard. I don’t know why. Because I don’t know much about how it really works. I want to try with you, I do. Because I have to find
out if we can make something very important happen, something really good. But we need to know how it works first to make sure nothing goes wrong.’

A thought bubbled into Rosie’s head almost immediately. ‘You want to help your dad, don’t you? He’s here in the hospital, right? You want to find someone to make this fit
with so you can help him?’ When Daniel nodded, Rosie felt something exciting rising inside her. ‘And what about helping other people, not just your dad?’

Daniel looked at her, through all her beauty, and beneath it he saw how pale and fragile she really was. ‘You’re ill, aren’t you?’

‘Tumour.’ And Rosie tapped her head. ‘Up here. A couple of weeks before my diagnosis I started doing things, making stuff happen that ordinary people aren’t supposed to
be able to do.’ She rubbed her hands because there were goosebumps all over her fingers as she remembered. ‘I know someone who might be able to help. I trust them more than anyone else
in the world. They’re the only person who knows about my secret.’

As Rosie continued talking, Daniel realized he wasn’t listening to her any more. He was watching the lift doors open, letting people spill out into the foyer. Suddenly, he wanted to rush
for them before they closed and take Rosie straight to his father’s bedside to see if they might be able to help him.
Mason would never know
, he thought. But his feet stayed stuck to
the floor because there was so much he didn’t understand yet about the fit.

When Rosie touched him on the shoulder, he flinched.

‘Daniel, did you hear me? I said my gran will know what we need to do. She can help us. She’s only a bus ride away.’

‘Can you trust her?’

‘Yes, of course! She’s my gran.’ Rosie frowned as she looked at him.

Daniel watched the lift doors closing and when they clicked shut it seemed that the world had decided for him what he should do.

‘OK, let’s go and see her. I’ll tell you everything that’s happened to me since the sinkhole on the way. Then you’ll understand why I’m being so careful about
who I can trust.’

When Agatha heard the doorbell, she thought it might be a salesperson or somebody canvassing for votes. No one she knew pushed the button as hard or for so long.

She crept to the spyhole and saw a bald man, his face globed like a fishbowl, waiting on the step. He was smartly dressed in a blue suit with an electric sheen, all three single-breasted buttons
done up, and a black tie and white shirt. No clipboard or folder. Some instinct told her not to open the door. But when he rang the bell again, even longer and louder than before, she wondered if
he might be a potential client.

He rang again, his face bulging as he moved closer to the spyhole, as if he knew she was watching him. His suit moved with him like some reptilian skin and Agatha thought it must be tailor-made.
His tie and shirt looked expensive too. She smoothed down her grey hair and turned the Chubb lock.

The man beamed at her when she opened the door, holding out a large manicured slab of a hand, a silver cufflink emerging from his sleeve jacket and winking in the early evening sunlight. So big
and solid, he was like a statue come alive. He kept staring, his thumb cocked back like a trigger and his fingers fused and ready to fire, grinning, as though Agatha was expected to do him the
honour of shaking his hand.

She could still feel his grip after it was gone.

Suddenly, she wanted to shut the door, but before she could—

‘I’m Mason,’ he boomed, stepping up on to the white marble step, nostrils flared like a bull ready to charge. ‘A little birdy told me you help people.’

Agatha looked beyond him. A blue BMW was parked on the other side of the road, the windows too dark to see if there was anyone else inside. The colour clashed with Mason’s blue suit and it
made her feel dizzy and she coughed and cleared her throat.

‘Can I ask where you heard that?’

‘A friend of a friend,’ said Mason, and his hands made a bird shape and fluttered all around. ‘A little birdy, like I said.’

Agatha was cold in his shadow. She moved to one side, into the rays of low sun coming past him, and Mason stepped inside the house, like an old friend for whom it was the most natural thing in
the world. The soles of his black leather shoes hissed on the carpet as he took a few paces and then turned round. He put his arms behind his back and studied her.

‘I’m afraid I only see clients in the mornings unless they’re regulars,’ she said.

‘I just need five minutes of your time,’ said Mason and folded his arms.

They sat in the study, at the small card table Agatha used for readings.

She took a breath and then smiled. ‘So how can I help you, Mr Mason?’

He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and placed a silver signet ring on the green felt between them. ‘I need to know more about this ring. I found it and want to return it to
its rightful owner.’

Agatha licked her lips. ‘Why don’t you tell me why you’re really here?’

Mason grinned. ‘So you are psychic then.’

‘People tend to be economical with the truth their first time. I need to know your real motive for coming. To help with my sight.’

‘So you think it’s my first time seeing a psychic?’

When Agatha swallowed, her throat seemed lined with tiny shards of glass. ‘I’m presuming it is, going by what most new clients tell me.’

Mason nodded, picking up the ring, which was far too small for any of his fingers. ‘It belonged to a man I knew. I’d like to know more about him.’

‘So you didn’t know him that well?’

Mason’s eyes flicked up at her and something swelled in his jaw, but then it disappeared and he smiled, holding out the ring in the flat of his palm, as though there was no more time to
discuss it.

It was lighter than she had imagined. And colder. She half expected it to melt in the warmth of her hand like a snowflake.

‘I’m looking for a good psychic to help a friend of mine,’ continued Mason. ‘He’s having trouble finding the right person he needs so I thought I’d rally
round and help him out. He doesn’t think there’s anyone out there for him, but I believe there is. Fate always lends a hand when it’s required. So this . . .’ and he nodded
at the ring, ‘. . . this is a kind of test to find someone. That’s why I looked you up.’ He plucked a black notebook from the inside pocket of his suit and flipped it open.
‘See? You’re number one on my list,’ he said, pointing to her name at the top of a column.