Resonance (6 page)

She smiled every time he looked at her, unaware of his motives or the fragility of the world in which she lived. Should he tell her? Or was that too cruel a burden to place on anyone's shoulders.

And in between the smiles, she talked. She talked about her life in Boston, about how she'd always wanted to visit London. But mostly she talked about her dream.

"It's got to be something that's going to happen. Something I'm meant to stop."

Graham was unconvinced. The orange-haired Annalise had unravelled. The chances were she'd taken her future with her.

"Maybe I can find out when it's supposed to happen? It's got to be summer because everyone's wearing summer clothes. Maybe there are other clues? Like maybe there's a clock somewhere in the dream or some guy reading a newspaper with a date on it. Or, I know!" She nudged Graham hard in the ribs. "The license plate! Next time I have the dream I'll try and get the black car's license plate. Then we'll know who's after you."

Graham didn't say anything. A new world had formed over the skin of the old. The black car could have disappeared with the unravelling thread. Maybe the men too. Or maybe on this new thread of reality they hired a different car, or hunted a different target.

Who could tell in a shifting world?

The endless tail-chasing tired him. And he had something else to worry about. He had a visitor. He'd never had a visitor before. Ever. Where was she going to sleep? She couldn't have his parent's room. She'd have to have his, he'd sleep downstairs on the sofa. And what did she eat? Did he have enough food in; should they stop off at the supermarket?

Graham turned the key counterclockwise for the final time and pushed his front door open.

"Wow," said Annalise, "that's some lock you've got there."

Graham pushed through into the hallway and set Annalise's case down by the hall table. Annalise followed and closed the door behind her.

"Can I use your bathroom?" she asked, setting her case down beside the other.

"Up the stairs and first door on the right."

Graham dropped his keys on the hall table and walked towards the kitchen. He'd put a kettle on, she was certain to want a cup of something. Wasn't that the first thing a host provided for a guest? Or would she want something stronger? Did he still have that bottle of whisky in the lounge?

He dithered by the lounge door before deciding against the whisky. And noticed a small pile of dust on the carpet. Barely a quarter of a teaspoon but where had it come from? He was meticulous about cleaning. The house was hoovered every day.

He stepped into the hall closet, fumbled in the darkness for the Hoover and lifted it out. He was just unwinding the electrical lead when he looked towards the front door.

Both suitcases had gone.

He pulled open the front door and looked outside.

Nothing.

He ran to the gate. No Annalise. No car racing off into the distance. No person struggling with heavy luggage.

He ran back inside.

"Annalise?"

Silence. He ran upstairs, wondering if he was overreacting, what would she think if he knocked on the bathroom door?

He didn't have to knock.

The bathroom door was open.

No one was inside.

He felt the towels—they were dry. He checked the sink, looking for something—anything—a lipstick, a toothbrush, a hairbrush. She couldn't have unravelled. Not again. Not so soon.

He looked behind the door, he ran onto the landing. "Annalise!"

Silence.

He checked his bedroom, the storage room. He hovered by his parents' door, his hand fluttering a few inches above the handle, hope and foreboding mixed in equal measures.

He grabbed the handle, turned and pushed. He had to find out. An empty room stared back. No Annalise, no mother, no father.

He was alone.

Again.

He checked his jacket pocket, pulled out the note and read it.

Nothing had changed.

Same job, same room, same address.

Only Annalise had disappeared. Though he wondered for how long? Was she out there somewhere now? Sitting in a shop doorway, or boarding a flight for Heathrow?

And what of ParaDim and the men in the black car? Were they waiting for him on Westminster Street or lying forgotten on a discarded thread of possibility, never to return?

Graham did not want to think about it.

He walked slowly around the house, proceeding from room to room, cataloguing what he found, checking what had changed this time.

Very little had. A few books, a few items of clothes, a vase that his mother had broken ten years earlier had reappeared—pristine and filled with flowers.

He checked the kitchen window, looking for signs that it had been broken.

It hadn't.

He rummaged through his drawers, looking for any notes he might have written to himself. Anything that mentioned ParaDim or Annalise or expressed concern about his safety.

Nothing.

He ate his evening meal in silence, broken by the muffled sound of next door's TV and the hum of passing traffic. Occasionally, he looked up when he thought he heard someone walking past. But it was never her.

By eight o'clock he'd lifted his jigsaw down from the top shelf and had started sorting out the edge pieces. By nine he'd forgotten about everything except fairy wings and the jagged silhouette of a woodland glade.

The next day saw him back inside his fairy glade—kneeling on the lounge floor, the huge frame of the jigsaw in front of him, pieces scattered around him; sorted by color and shape.

Late Saturday afternoon he dragged himself away, there was shopping to do, housework and the garden needed attention.

He mowed the back lawn, dead-headed the roses, tied back the shrubs that were flopping over, weeded the patio. He vacuumed, he dusted, he . . . stopped.

The brass candlesticks on the lounge mantelpiece were not where they should have been. They'd been switched. The one on the left had a slight scratch. It should have been on the right-hand side, a thumb's width in from the edge.

He switched them back, carefully aligning them with his thumb. He looked at the clock in between. It was centered correctly but it was too close to the wall. He should have been able to push his index finger between the clock and the chimney breast.

He checked the other ornaments in the lounge: the vases, his mother's figurines, the holiday souvenirs. They were all slightly out. An inch here, a quarter inch there. But they should have been placed exactly. Every ornament had a home. He measured them precisely, using fingers and thumbs and reference points; the edge of a tile, the tip of a leaf on a wallpaper pattern, a knot in the wood.

Had the last unravelling knocked everything askew? Or had someone searched his house?

He put all the ornaments back, carefully sliding them into position. And wondered what else had changed? If someone had been inside his house, would they have taken things away? Maybe removed any notes he'd written to himself?

He checked the other rooms. A similar picture; items slightly out of place or rotated. Even the freezer compartment of his fridge wasn't immune. Someone had put frozen peas on top of the beef burgers. Something he'd never do. He always kept his vegetables on the left and meat on the right.

Why would anyone want to search his fridge?

And should he care? The rate the world was unravelling at the moment it was unlikely that anything would last more than a few days. All he had to do was sit out the weekend and everything would change. Once these ParaDim threads worked themselves loose, the world would settle down—a thought that kept him content all the way through to late Sunday night.

He yawned, stretched and staggered to his feet. His knees were killing him and he was starting to see fairies in the wallpaper.

He picked up his cup and carried it to the kitchen, stopping by the light switch to flick it on. The fluorescent light flickered once before humming into life.

She sat on the floor between the fridge and the back door—Annalise, with long black hair this time—leaning back against the side of the fridge, her knees drawn up. She grinned, placed a finger to her lips and held out a slip of paper.

"Don't say a word," it read. "Your house is bugged."

Graham stared at the note and then at the girl. She was wearing a long, pale green dress. And she looked younger again. Or was that the hair? Long, straight and fringed at the front.

She rummaged in an embroidered canvas bag on her lap and brought something out, something black, the size of a small radio. She extended the aerial and switched it on, a red light pulsed slowly. She pointed it at the door and then slowly brought it around until it pointed at Graham. The pulse changed frequency. She handed the detector to Graham along with another note.

Red light = bug. Fast pulse hot, slow pulse cold.
Find bugs, stomp them. All bugs dead, make coffee. 

He looked at the detector slowly flashing in his hand and then at Annalise. Maybe he was tired and seeing too many fairies but he couldn't understand why Annalise was sitting on the floor behind the fridge.

Annalise must have noticed his confusion; she took the note from his hand and scrawled two words on the back—
hidden cameras!
 

Graham immediately swung round, looking up at the ceiling above his kitchen cabinets, wondering what he should be looking for—a black dot, a video camera, a strange box that shouldn't be there?

And then he remembered the detector in his hand and felt foolish. The red light pulsed slowly. He slipped the note into his pocket and took hold of the detector with both hands, sweeping the room in a slow deliberate arc. The pulse increased when he pointed it towards the kitchen table. He moved the detector over its surface, the light flashing fastest over the far left-hand corner. He set it down and felt underneath where the leg met the top. There was something there, shaped like a bolt.

He swung down and peered under the table. There was a piece of metal, the size of a small button, attached to the wooden corner brace. He tugged at it, dug his fingernails between the metal and the wood and pulled. It came away. A small button of metal with three tiny spikes protruding beneath.

He placed it on top of the detector and the red light flashed continuously. Someone had bugged his house. He stared at the transmitter in his palm, wondering how long it had been there, trying to remember what it might have recorded. The sound of water running in the sink, the clink of glass and plates. Was someone really recording all that?

Annalise waved at him and tapped at her watch. He looked back at the transmitter and rolled it between his finger and thumb. It didn't look that easy to crush.

Annalise beckoned him over and held out her hand. Graham gave her the transmitter and stepped back.

She rolled it around in her hand for a few seconds before placing it carefully on the floor beside her. She took a stick of chewing gum out of her bag, unwrapped it and folded it into her mouth. Graham watched transfixed. Was she going to soundproof the bug with chewing gum?

Annalise tapped her watch again and pointed at the kitchen door. His work hadn't finished.

Graham checked the rest of the house. Every room had at least one bug, even the closet under the stairs. Some were like the one he'd found in the kitchen, spiked and pushed into crevices in the woodwork. Others were concealed inside electrical sockets. He had to turn the electricity off at the mains and unscrew the sockets by torchlight.

And then there were the cameras. One in the lounge, masquerading as an electrical junction box. And one in the hallway, in the light fitting, directly above the spot he'd found the small pile of dust on Friday night. The instant before Annalise had disappeared.

Or had it been the instant after?

He carried everything back to the kitchen, taking extra care with the cameras, placing a finger firmly over each lens.

Annalise covered both lenses with chewing gum and then took everything out into the back garden.

Graham watched from the doorway, the light from the kitchen spilling out across the lawn. Annalise stood in the shadows by the back fence, tossing bugs into the night. Some to the left, some to the right, some into the gardens of the houses in back. A few must have hit stone, Graham heard the slight crack and skittle as they bounced.

"How did you know the house was bugged?" asked Graham as he filled the kettle under the tap.

"A spirit told me," said Annalise, sitting on the kitchen table, swinging her legs back and forth. "I'm a medium."

Graham turned off the tap, he must have misheard with the noise of the running water.

"A medium?"

"With two hundred spirit guides all called Annalise. Go figure."

He knew he had his mouth open but he couldn't help it. Annalise was a medium? He turned his head to see if she was joking.

"What?" she said. "Is there something in my teeth?"

"No, sorry," he looked away hurriedly, swung the kettle over to the stove and switched on the gas.

"Ever heard of the De Santos case?" asked Annalise. "Teenage heiress goes missing? Big news last year, all over the Midwest."

He shook his head. He never watched TV, never read a newspaper. The only news he ever picked up was second-hand—snatches of conversation he overheard at work or travelling on the tube.

"September last year, Des Moines, Iowa. My home town. Kimberly De Santos, aged twenty, went to a party, never came home. Headline news everywhere. Police didn't have a clue. No ransom, no witnesses, no clues, no motive."

Graham took two clean cups from the near cupboard.

"Anyway, one night I'm communing with my spirit girls and I ask if anyone knew what had happened to Kimberly. One answers. 'You mean the girl who got shot in the bungled kidnapping?'"

She paused for effect, looking directly at Graham.

"Her exact words, the girl who got shot in the bungled kidnapping. Spooky, right?"