All Sorts of Possible (5 page)

Daniel wound down the window to keep himself cool and breathed in the day, all the sounds and the smells and the sunshine, until he was calm and clear-headed.

‘I want to know more,’ he whispered into the world. ‘About the fit and what to do.’

But there was only the wind in his ears.

‘I know we’re like strangers right now,’ said his aunt, dumping her bags in the hallway, ‘so we’re going to have to take it a day at a time.
We’re flesh and blood. We must have things in common.’

But it didn’t seem like it, not when she opened her arms to him and they hugged, their elbows bumping awkwardly and Daniel treading on her toes.

‘Now,’ she said, fixing him with her pale grey eyes, ‘it must feel good to be home at least.’

Daniel took a deep breath, then let it out and nodded. But there was a photograph of his father on the dresser and when he caught sight of it he couldn’t look away.

His aunt clucked like a hen. She steered him round to look at her. ‘Your father’s almost as tough as me,’ she said and smiled. Daniel nodded, but his brain was ticking faster
and faster as he stared at her. He didn’t know who she was, this woman who said she was
tough
. He had never met her before in his life and now here she was, standing in his house,
because the sinkhole had opened and the world had changed.

‘Daniel? What’s wrong?’

‘Dad always said . . .’ He stopped and thought about it. ‘Dad always
says
that you and Mum were identical twins, but only on the outside.’

His aunt shifted in her flat black pumps, the leather seams creaking. ‘Whatever your father’s told you about me and your mother can’t be all true.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you’ve only heard his side of the story.’

Daniel thought about that. He heaved up her bags over his shoulder. ‘I’ll put these in the spare room for you,’ he said. But she caught him by the arm.

‘That’s a nice photo of your mother.’ She pointed at another photograph on the dresser, smiling as if remembering a younger, happier version of herself. And for a moment Daniel
looked at the picture . . .

. . . and then at his aunt . . .

. . . and back again . . .

‘When was it taken?’ she asked.

‘Just after they met,’ he said, heaving her bags higher and heading for the stairs. ‘When they were still at college. Dad told me she came top in every class.’

‘I could tell you things too, you know. I knew your mother for the whole of her life.’

She watched him pounding up the stairs, her mouth opening as if to say something.

Then closing without a sound.

After seeing her room, his aunt knocked on Daniel’s bedroom door and asked for a tour of the house. But Daniel said he was tired, one hand drumming his chest, his mind on
his father and the strange man Lawson. So, when she insisted, he walked her round as fast as he could, starting upstairs.

She carried a notebook, filling a page with spidery writing as she clucked her displeasure at the state of the ancient boiler, and wondered how his father had let the damp in the bathroom spread
so much in one corner.

But she just nodded and smiled faintly when Daniel could not bear to open his father’s bedroom door.

‘I know it must feel very strange without him here,’ she said and Daniel could only nod and look at the floor. The shirt and chinos his aunt had bought for him at the airport felt
tight and uncomfortable. They weren’t the sort of thing he would have worn at all, and he wanted to rip them off and change into his own T-shirt and jeans. He wanted to open all the windows
in the house too and flush out the smell of her lemony perfume.

He took her downstairs, through the dining room and living room, wafting his hand about and barely saying a word. She watched him in the kitchen, opening and closing the drawers so quickly the
cutlery crashed about, yanking the cupboard doors open and then slapping them shut.

‘There, we’re done,’ he said. ‘I’m going to my room now.’

‘How about we get some dinner?’ she suggested, looking at her watch.

‘I’m not hungry.’

‘Daniel, you’ve been on hospital food for the last few days.’ She took a breath and folded her arms. ‘I know it’s hard. I know it is. It’s all very different
for me too. But I want you to know you can tell me anything, anytime. I’ll listen. I thought we could sit down and eat and talk about practical matters to start with. How things are going to
work until . . .’ She paused, tapping her foot as if annoyed with herself for not saying the right thing. ‘I mean, how things are going to work for now.’

Daniel’s fingers played with the two pieces of Lawson’s business card hidden in his trouser pocket. He was desperate to know more about the man and what he had done in his
father’s hospital room. The warm golden glow that had appeared as if by magic in Daniel’s chest was the first time he had felt anything good in the last few days. He wanted to feel it
again. He wanted to know what Lawson had meant by the fit and what it could do.

‘How about a takeaway then?’ he suggested to his aunt. ‘Me and Dad use that Indian all the time.’ And Daniel pointed at a menu pinned to the refrigerator by a silver
star. ‘It’s a twenty-minute drive, but it’s worth it. I’ll stay here and hold the fort.’

‘Isn’t there anything nearer?’

‘I bet you haven’t had a decent curry in years. Not in California. The rental car has a satnav, so if we put in the postcode it’ll take you straight there. I can ring ahead
with the order. I know exactly what I want.’

His aunt chewed her lip as she stared at him for a moment. And then she flipped her notebook shut and clipped the pen on to the white spiral binding at the side. ‘If that’s what you
want then of course I’ll go.’

He watched her pluck the menu from the refrigerator door and scrutinize it. ‘Tandoori king prawns and pilau rice for me,’ she said as she pinned the menu back under the star and
turned round. ‘You’re sure you’ll be OK?’

Daniel nodded. ‘Thanks,’ he said.

‘You want some time alone, I understand.’

‘No, I mean for flying all that way.’

As she picked up her handbag from the kitchen worktop, she smiled. ‘Daniel, like I said, we’re family.’

Daniel laid out both pieces of Lawson’s card on the desk in his bedroom, staring at the word
HELP
. It was as though the man had reached inside his head where all his
secrets were hidden. When he turned the pieces over, Daniel realized there was only Lawson’s name, no address or telephone number or email.

‘Hello?’ whispered Daniel in the quiet. ‘Reverend Lawson? Are you there?’ But there was no reply. ‘How am I supposed to open my heart? What do I do to show you I
want to make the fit?’

Ever since Lawson had left the hospital room, there had been an empty space inside Daniel, cold and dark, unknown to him before. But Lawson had known about it and he had mentioned helping
Daniel’s father too. Somehow, the strange man had given him hope about his father that no one at the hospital had been able to provide.

Daniel laid his hands one on top of the other over his ribcage, trying to feel for something different in his chest. But there was just bone and gristle and the beating of his heart.

When he closed his eyes, all he could see was a black that was bottomless, into which he could fall forever. He forced himself to keep staring into it, as though it was a test to face the dark
again, as he tried searching for what was different inside him. His eyes kept popping open at first, whenever he was spooked by noises in the walls, afraid the world would disappear if he
wasn’t watching out for it and he would find himself back underground. At the hospital there had always been a gentle hum of voices, and the sounds of people doing things to reassure him, so
it was scary closing his eyes now that he was on his own in the empty house. He kept remembering how cold it had been in the dark too, and a chill crept stealthily over his arms and up his neck.
Finding that it was too difficult to ignore, he wrapped his duvet about him and sat in his desk chair until gradually he got used to staring into the void, reassuring himself he was still above
ground, that being on his own was OK.

He sat still and quiet for some time, looking inside himself for any clue. But, when rain started pattering against the bedroom window, Daniel struggled to keep his eyes shut tight. The burble
in the guttering outside made him gasp and tremble, reminding him of the sounds of the underground stream, and his eyelids flew open of their own accord.

His aunt was standing in the doorway, her damp hair shining. ‘I knocked,’ she said softly, as if the rain had washed most of her voice away. ‘When you didn’t answer I
thought you might be asleep.’

She stood waiting for Daniel to say something, but he didn’t. When she saw the pieces of Lawson’s card on the desk, spelling out the man’s name, she studied it for a moment and
then nodded towards the stairs. ‘Dinner,’ she said, before disappearing back on to the landing.

Daniel sat for a moment longer, until the rain began pounding the windows, and then he sloughed the duvet on to the floor and quickly switched off the light, and followed the warm waft of curry
coming up the stairs.

After his aunt had taken a sleeping pill and gone to bed to try and battle her jet lag, Daniel googled Lawson, but found nothing online about the man. As his mind wandered,
Daniel surfed the Internet, clicking the mouse, trying to find out anything about the fit Lawson had mentioned and what it might be. But there was no explanation of the term that seemed to match
what he was looking for.

He had Facebook messages from people he knew at school asking if he was all right. Some of them had posted pictures of the newspaper headlines and YouTube news clips of the sinkhole. A message
pinged through from his best friend Bennett saying he would be back from holiday in a couple of days so they could meet up then.

When Daniel typed the words ‘induced coma’ into the search engine, his finger hovered over the return key as his mind ticked over. And then he deleted all the text and logged
off.

After shutting the computer down, Daniel’s mind was too alert for sleeping, like something hard and brightly polished, so he paced round his room with the light on. When he stopped he
found himself staring at the PlayStation on the shelf beneath the TV screen. He took a tartan blanket from the chair in the corner and covered the console with it.

When the landline rang, Daniel rushed out to the phone on the landing to answer it, thinking it might be the hospital. But a rough form of English conjured itself out of the crackle on the line,
pleading with him to pray for a sick relative, saying he had been blessed. Daniel listened, trying to interrupt, not knowing what to say, before giving up and clicking the phone back down.

The phone rang again before he had reached his bedroom door and when he answered the line was too distant and crackly to hear much of anything except that it was the same voice as before.

When it rang a third time, he clicked it off quickly as his aunt emerged on to the landing, hugging her nightie round her.

‘They’re just crank calls,’ said Daniel as the phones started ringing again. ‘I’ll pull out the point.’

He disconnected the phone in the kitchen and the one in the hall at the bottom of the stairs, but he soon realized that the main point was in his father’s bedroom. He stood in front of the
door for some time, his hand resting on the handle. But, when he heard the phone start to ring again, he walked straight in and yanked out the cord and stood there, breathless in the silence.

His father could have been away on a business trip or staying with a friend. When Daniel thought of that, something in his heart trembled and broke and it felt like angry red drops were rattling
down inside him, spreading into the soles of his bare feet, making the carpet hotter and hotter.

A fly was lying dead on its back on the windowsill, lit by the street lights. Daniel picked it up and dropped it into the bin, cursing it for being there, for dying in that room, then reassuring
himself it meant nothing at all. But whisperings started up in his head, telling him it was no coincidence, that it was an omen of what was to come for his father, and to drown them out he plucked
a tissue from a box on the dresser and wiped down the dust from the windowsill, lobbing it like a dirty snowball into the bin as well.

But the whispers were still there.

He turned on the light and started cleaning everything he could find. Peeling off dust in woolly strands from the blinds. Wiping down the chest of drawers and the bedside table and the top of
the headboard. He went into the bathroom and cleaned the basin and then the bath. He rinsed the toilet bowl with bleach, turning the water into a tiny blue lagoon.

He didn’t want to stop. But, eventually, there was nothing left for him to do and crying was the only way to drown the whispers out.

He lay down on his father’s bed and sobbed into the pillows, inhaling the faint notes of aftershave left on the linen.

After he had finished, it seemed enough just to lie there in the quiet, being as close to his father as he could be for now, remembering all the good things they had done, until a memory from
long ago came back to him which felt very different in a way Daniel had never thought of it before . . .

. . . Standing with his father on a vast moor, watching a peregrine falcon fold its wings and fall out of the blue sky like a grey droplet and flatten into the purple heads
of heather . . .

. . . And his hand creeping into his father’s as the bird rose again, a baby rabbit hooked in its talons, the soft fur catching fire in the sunlight as the rabbit screamed.

It was difficult for Daniel to fall asleep. So he wrote down every word that described how he was feeling on the notepad his father kept on the bedside table for his
‘wide-awake’ moments in the middle of the night. To help him, Daniel remembered what their lives had been like together. All the sounds and the colours. The arguments and the smiles.
The love and affection. The down days. The up days. And the somewhere in between. It was only when the page had become so black with ink that the words could not be read that he managed to fall
asleep, as if some poison had been drawn out and put on paper.