Desire Line (20 page)

When the bell finally announced Kim's arrival, paranoia kept her cowering out of sight at first. What if this were just some sort of… what? A charade was the least frightening option. Maybe rough hangers-on were ready to spring into the house, on the attack the moment Kim gained entry. What if—?

The smile she managed for a Kim alone on the threshold was of reprieve. ‘Come in. I thought you may not be able to find the house. I was about to call.'

Kim glinted with moisture and brought in the sea. ‘Said twelve, didn't I?' She stepped past Sara, looking around, curious and openly disappointed at the smallness and bareness. Her old jacket was sloughed off; underneath she had dressed for business in a navy skirt so thin it outlined her leg bones at every movement, and a giant black T-shirt displaying DON'T ASK WHY with the rest of the slogan obscured by a mannish waistcoat. Minus beads, sunglasses, dangling earrings, she looked less unwholesome too, even about the hair. There was something touching in it all, the dark clothes' ripple making a downed bird of her. From the drawstring bag she took a plain wooden box and put it on the coffee table. ‘We're on our own, yeah?' and when Sara nodded, she added. ‘You need to sit across from here not at the side.' Josh's bruise, spreading as it matured from Sara's jawbone up to the corner of an eye, a massive stigmata that she expected to have to explain away, Kim didn't notice. They sat.

‘I wondered if you would want something of my daughter's?' Sara had ready the little moonstone pea. It rolled to rest on the table top.

Kim barely gave it a glance. ‘Yeah, well— can't do no harm.' Then an odd gesture: she stretched out her index finger as though to touch, and at the last moment pulled back. ‘Leave it there. I might— no… it'll be all right, there.' The box was placed in front of Sara. Out came a pack of playing cards, oversized, childish somehow. They were new.

Sara's panic rose again at this newness. The cards were part of the hoax, an acquired prop, whereas true skill should depend on weathered apparatus, shoddiness even. She watched as Kim squared up and tidied a deck the size of a brick, only the reverse of the top card visible, with its mundane patterning. ‘This is the Tarot,' Kim intoned. ‘It's not a laugh, OK? It's a proper thing I do. If you can't get your head round that— if you can't give it respect, we may's well not bother.'

‘Yes. I understand.'

She seemed satisfied. ‘Also, there has to be a charge— it's like I said, if I don't charge, the value's not in it? Y'see?'

‘That's perfectly acceptable.'

‘So what I'm saying is— it's like got to be a lot, 'cos if it isn't, it means nothing, right?'

‘How much?'

‘OK, well— it's got to be like, a hundred, hasn't it?'

An involuntary spasm of annoyance at this delay appeared in Sara's face and she saw its being read. ‘I would need to check how much I have in the house. There's a possibility I don't have that amount in cash.'

‘I'll wait then.' Kim leaned back from the table and stared out of the window.

Upstairs, with her head suddenly light, she thought if I allow myself to sit down anywhere in this bedroom, think, react rationally, I won't be able to keep it from Kim. Even if I decide to proceed. To find the beautiful matching purse she upended the beautiful scarlet tote onto the unmade bed: three twenties and a ten. Coins clinked in a jacket pocket… but nothing like enough.
Do you take plastic, Kim? How would a good, old fashioned cheque suit… Perhaps I could owe you? We will go straight to the cashpoint, immediately after this, I promise.
Clutching what she had, she descended. (If she were in her father's house now, Pryorsfield, she would have touched the carven Pryor newel post for luck). But there by the phone was Josh's address book and Josh's voice in her head from better days: Money in here if you ever… for emergencies…

Had she noticed any when she'd searched for Clive Upton's number? But twin fifty pound notes were folded and tucked into the inner cover.

‘Come on then,' Kim said.

First Kim shuffled with hands smaller than Eurwen's, smaller even than Sara's own.

Sara was ordered to cut. ‘Can I ask—?'

‘Shush-sh.' It was as if to an infant. With a practised movement, Kim reformed the pack. ‘Now you've got to say what you're hoping the cards'll tell you.
Don't
ask no questions. Say what you'd like to know
if
the cards wanna give it up.'

Sara swallowed down panic, her morning's alcohol intake too feebly diffused to be registering. ‘I want to know—' She began again, speaking slowly and precisely as if the cards were hard of hearing, ‘Would like to be told whether— no!
That
my daughter— Eurwen— is safe.' Desperate now, she scanned Kim's face for signs of approval, disapproval. There was neither.

The first card was turned up. Kim said, ‘The Emperor.'

Sara must crane her neck for a view of the bearded man seated on a throne.

Kim gave a cynical smile and rotated it. ‘No surprises there, then.'

‘Why? What do you mean?'

‘Never mind. It just tells you there's a man at work, like in a male power thing going on. But where's not, huh? Let's see what he's up against.' A second card was laid down. ‘The Ten of Pentangles.' It showed a slender girl with white hounds at her feet.
A girl
. The pentangles hung like bubbles about her in their golden circles. In the background, through a bridge's arch, stood a sandy-coloured tower.

‘It's Eurwen!'

‘Could be.'

‘Everything to do with her is there. You can't know. I promise you, it is.' But this was offensive and she blundered on, ‘I'm sorry! Sorry. Yes, you were saying…? What does the Ten of Pentangles represent?'

Kim shrugged. ‘It
might
be ‘bout things getting sorted… Like getting out of a bad sitch. You find the way that suits. And then just hang on in. Yeah, that's it.'

‘So she's… finding herself? Is that all?' Contempt wrestled with frustration which straggled despair. Yet on the very cusp of disbelief, her hunger was for more. Evil
omens
couldn't sway the prepared mind (she clung to an image of her father here)… in fact, unsettling news should be expected, almost comic. Clichéd! Kim piling on the agony to command attention. And hadn't comfortable assurances from Josh been offered with as little basis? It will be fine. Trust
me
. ‘So how does the Emperor interfere?'

‘Perhaps it's like… him doing the sorting.'

‘But he isn't a
dangerous
influence? There's nothing there to suggest it will lead her to harm?'

A slightest shake of head: ‘We'll do three cards today. I don't think we should do more than that. All right?'

‘I have no idea… If that's your advice.' She tried to hold herself in check, tried to take a slow breath against a pounding pulse. Kim, of course, intended to reveal what was to be the last card with extra slowness and recognising the cheap drama of it couldn't shore up her own waning control. The shivers and the beetle-crawliness returned and that ache in the back of the throat and numerous other bodily alarm calls if she deigned to listen. These were mere background chatter though in comparison to a totally novel sense of intellectual vertigo. Suddenly the air between Kim and herself was charged… and she believed. She
believed.
Knowing nothing of Tarot nor wanting to, stored fragments of data, phrases from somewhere, now suggested she was about to face Death on a Pale Horse… or The Hanged Man. Either could turn up. So when a voice said, ‘Judgement,' her heart filled with joy. But it was not a good card. She could tell by Kim's pursed lips and the hand that came up to them, preventing speech. ‘Let me see!
What is it?
' Firstly her eye was drawn to the central angel, a boy/man blowing a trumpet from which a red and white flag hung, a confusing emblem… definitely an angel, though, against a background of jagged mountain peaks. But the foreground was gruesome as a scene from Bosch. From their graves figures were being summoned by the Call, a naked father and mother with a child, a
girl
child, all displayed at the point of rising, their skins ghastly as befitted three corpses. ‘Oh God,' she could hear herself say, ‘Ohgodohgod. Not dead. No-o.'

Chapter 14

Into Forward Rhyl even earlier than usual after a chill-no-jacket ten-minute ride. The sky's cloudless, the sea free of its usual chop and letting the sand bars of Rhyl Flats show mauve as beds of underwater heather. Survivors out at the wind farm seem to poke through it, barely creaking round. Daylight's crossed England and the rivers Mersey and Dee and now it's caught up with snail-like, stupid Rhyl. Needless to say workstations are all unoccupied when I walk in. I wander straight past them to look down on a mega truck, parallel parked to our building, engine running, come to take away temporary barriers. Or those that have not been already stolen. A patch of new tarmac spills out from under the truck's wheels like an oil slick. No one's loading, no one's even standing around and gulls have settled on its cab. When a dull thud echoes from inland there isn't a single bird bothers to lift off. They don't even complain.

PalmWalk is my prize for being in early. The new route. Just a path in one sense, but one that'll stitch together the entire broken beachfront since The Wave, one that will let me do what years of picking and patching never could, use all that energy for a purpose. I bring my plan alive and run yet one simulation, gathering perspectives – here's out across a populated beach, the next is down the Water Street intersection then down Abbey Street – ahead is a glimpse of river now. Honestly? I'm struggling with it, convinced there's a best line of sight at some spot, probably where the line-walker rises that extra half-metre and the distant prominence of Great Orme rears up. Can't find it yet. Has to be past SkyTower. You don't want both in. What does it matter? Tess asked when I showed it first, not expecting help – she's technically untrained.

The two things shouldn't crowd each other, I say. A progression that's designed to surprise –
and give you a buzz, Tess!
– should actually work.

—Well nothing else round here does.

I repeat some things don't connect. Sara, for example, can't have trusted in Kim's ‘talent'. Where was the scholar in her? You only had to look at this shell of a person to ask yourself how likely is
it? Tomiko's craziest sayings make more sense. And respect for Sara isn't easy to maintain after Kim Tighe— I'm distracted by that woman now, seen running away from Avonside with money in her pocket, fear in her wake, wearing black and totally right too, Kim Tighe, a variable overhead even Josh couldn't cover. If Kim Tighe hadn't latched on things might have ended differently—

—Outside there's a commotion. In fact what sounds like a fully ripe rumble's in progress. A car hoots. An extra loud, aggressive ‘Yeah-h-h!' is the response. But by the time I'm across to the window again the truck's being driven off. Empty. Vehicles pass underneath and a few pedestrians, old, young, in-betweens who've witnessed
something
, drift away and keep going. It's nearly eight now and maybe a handful have jobs to be at while the rest are just out, sea-gazing, waiting for events like this one, any happenings. Whatever it was happened. That I've missed and they caught. Most of them will still be boarded in cramped, makeshift accommodation. A recent news story was about a family preferring to camp in St Thomas's vestry – what's a vestry? the reporter joked to camera – instead of the badminton court they'd been given space in.

Twinned with Soweto, it made me think.

Rhyl isn't ever properly awake till past midday not till, to quote Libby, the streets are aired. But it's given itself a shake, rubbed its private parts and yawned— which is virtually what Glenn Hughes is doing when he comes in. He nods and starts unpacking a rucksack. He's wearing an open-neck shirt, mauve against Celt-pink flesh. The jeans are the latest cut. I get a wicked grin, obviously to do with the small wrapped object he drops in front of my screen which I've blanked anyway.

‘Either your Casino numbers have come up or Alice Norman's home.'

‘Gottit.' Glenn's smile is crafty. ‘This is for you. She told me ‘bout them last time she was over. I said to get you one— for putting me up.'

I handle a squat cylinder, heavier than expected at around 400 grams. No rattle. ‘You bought me the poster.' Giving in, I peel away paper and padding to free a white earthenware mug. The curved handle's poorly proportioned against height and circumference. Drinking from it won't be comfortable.

‘Turn it round.'

On the other side is a pair of silver blobs contained by black ovals. Eyes. Cartoon eyes. No, the more you looked at them real
eyes
. ‘Thank-you.'

‘Don't thank me yet. Move about a bit and watch!'