Seeing Other People (10 page)

Fiona smiled enigmatically. ‘Let’s just say for now that I have my reasons.’

‘And am I meant to believe that one of them is that you’re precious about people hijacking your catchphrases?’

Fiona’s face changed in an instant. Her eyes narrowed, her lips thinned. She looked like evil incarnate. She uncrossed her legs, stood up and walked down to the bottom of the stairs. ‘So you think this is funny, do you? You think this is all one big joke? Let’s see if you’re still laughing when I’ve finished teaching you a lesson.’

‘What lesson?’

‘The only kind that counts, Joe: a life lesson. You see, the thing about people like you is that you always have to learn the hard way. Wouldn’t you agree?’

‘No,’ I replied. ‘Not at all.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really.’

Fiona sighed and sat down on the bottom step. ‘So, Mr I-Like-The-Easy-Way, what do you think would’ve happened if you hadn’t got mugged that night?’

‘What night when?’

‘Don’t play the innocent with me. I’m talking about the night before the morning after when you woke up in bed with that little trollop who isn’t your wife.’

I closed my eyes again. This was getting weirder by the second. Why was this hallucination I’d conjured up talking about that night? My memory of it was patchy at best. This vision of a teenage Fiona Briggs was nothing more than my subconscious trying to work things out. It was trying to tell me that I had been mugged that night but I knew for a fact that this wasn’t true. I hadn’t been mugged. At least—

‘At least what?’ quizzed Fiona, arching a carefully plucked eyebrow. ‘Is it all coming back to you now?’

‘Look, I’m not having this conversation. I didn’t say any of that out loud and the fact that you seemingly heard my thoughts just goes to prove I’ve made you up. I’m having some sort of breakdown and right now I’m alone in my hallway talking to myself.’

‘Nice theory dimwit, but let’s just park it to one side for a minute and concentrate on the matter in hand: were you mugged that night or not?’

I hesitated, unsure of whether or not to indulge this illusion any further. I sighed. I was this far in, I decided, so I might as well see it through.

‘Well, the truth is when I woke up that morning I was convinced that I had been mugged. My memory of it was so clear. It seemed so real. But then when there were no cuts, no bruises, no marks at all and I still had my phone and wallet, I realised it couldn’t have happened. It had to have been some sort of vivid dream. That’s all it was, wasn’t it?’

Fiona held out her hand to silence me. ‘Do I look like sodding Google to you?’

‘No,’ I replied.

‘Then stop with the questions, OK? From now on you only speak when you’re spoken to.’ Fiona took a deep breath and tossed her hair back as if to compose herself. ‘Right, where were we? Yes, that’s it, I asked you a question: what do you think would’ve happened if you hadn’t been mugged that night? And your answer is . . .?’

‘I don’t know,’ I replied, fighting back the urge to question her again, ‘because as I’ve just explained I wasn’t mugged that night.’

Fiona pulled a face. ‘Shows how much you know then, doesn’t it? Because Idiot Boy, in fact you were. By me.’

‘You?’

‘Well me, and my friend Chaz – you know the one, walks with a swagger, likes sportswear?’

‘The guy with the lighter?’

‘Bingo. It was one of Chaz’s favourite tricks when he was alive, a pincer movement with his mate Traps, he was good at it apparently but then Traps went and stabbed him in a row over a girl and it all got a bit messy.’ Fiona grinned. ‘I’m digressing aren’t I? You probably want me to stick to the point, which is this: I was the one who hit you over the head with this.’ She reached behind her and produced a cricket bat that I’d never seen before.

‘You hit me with that?’

Fiona nodded. ‘You should have heard the noise. Nothing quite like the sound of willow against numbskull.’

‘I don’t understand. Why would you hit me with a cricket bat?’

‘Because a tennis racket wouldn’t quite have done the trick.’

‘So you’re saying you wanted to hurt me? Why would you want to do that?’

Fiona laughed. ‘Think about it.’

I thought hard. ‘Because you’re a mean and spiteful bitch who despite going out with me for eighteen months couldn’t stand the sight of me?’

Fiona wagged a finger at me nonchalantly. ‘Sticks and stones, Joe, sticks and stones.’

This had to be what a nervous breakdown felt like. Talking hallucinations. General madness. Things sounding like they made sense when really they made none at all. I took a deep breath and made a superhuman effort to remain calm.

‘I apologise,’ I replied. ‘But try and see this from my point of view. My wife’s just left me and for some unknown reason I’m having visions of a dead ex-girlfriend. I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on.’

‘Aren’t we all?’ said Fiona. ‘The thing is, Joe, I actually saved you from yourself that night.’

‘Saved me, how?’

‘By stopping you from meeting Slag Face.’

‘You mean Bella?’

‘No, I mean Slag Face. I must say I thought you had better taste in women but obviously I was wrong. Anyway, I saved you. You should be thanking me, not casting aspersions on my character by trying to pass me off as a hallucination. Have you any idea how offensive that is?’

‘But none of this makes any sense. I know I wasn’t mugged that night. I almost wish that I had been because then I wouldn’t have met up with Bella, or slept with her and made the biggest mistake of my life.’

Fiona clapped slowly. ‘Finally, he gets it. Were you always this dense or is it a recent development?’

My head felt like it was going to explode. ‘So are you saying that I didn’t actually cheat on Penny?’

‘Well not unless you’ve mastered the art of being in two places at once. You haven’t, have you? I’ve got a new friend who can do that but she’s been practising for years.’

‘This is ridiculous. It makes no sense at all. How could I not have cheated on Penny when I know for a fact that I woke up in Bella’s bed?’

‘It’s a real conundrum isn’t it?’ said Fiona sarcastically. ‘Any ideas? No? Well, let me spell it out for you in a manner that even you will understand: you were mugged that night by me like I said. You never were in bed with Slag Face. And right now you’re lying unconscious face down on a pavement in a dodgy part of East London, oozing blood from a cracking head wound. It’s genius really.’

I stared hard at Fiona as she stretched out her arms triumphantly. It was incredible how intricate this hallucination was. The heavy-handed eyeliner, the detailing of her clothing, even the sweet heavy scent of her perfume was accurate for the Fiona I remembered. I tried to recall its name.

‘Poison by Dior,’ clarified Fiona. ‘Best. Perfume. Ever.’

It triggered the sudden release of a fragment of memory from the depths of my mind. The morning I’d woken up at Bella’s I’d smelled that same fragrance. But that didn’t mean anything, did it? There could have been a million and one explanations for it, all of them more plausible than this. I laughed out loud. My imagination really was quite spectacular.

‘So you’re trying to say that none of this is real? That everything that has happened since that night has all been, what . . . some kind of dream?’

‘If that’s what your tiny brain can cope with at the moment then go with that.’

‘That’s ridiculous. This isn’t Narnia, it’s Lewisham! It’s been months since then. So much has happened in that time, how can you possibly expect me to believe that it’s still that same night?’

‘I don’t
need
you to believe anything. I’ve got a job to do and this is me doing it.’

‘What job? What are you talking about?’

‘The details aren’t important right now. Just the facts. That night you stood at a crossroads: one path leading home to your wife and kids and the other leading to Slag Face. The thing about crossroads, Joe, is that no matter which path you take there’s always part of you wondering about the road not taken. Thanks to me you’re going to find out exactly what lies at the end of that road and the journey has already begun. You think you only get to live one life? Well, from now on this is yours. Enjoy.’

This was all too much. I shut my eyes, willing this whole thing to be over, and when I opened them again Fiona was gone.

10

I didn’t move for an hour after the hallucination ended. I couldn’t. It was like I was rooted to the spot. I’d obviously suffered some kind of post-traumatic stress episode brought on by Penny’s leaving. What other explanation could there possibly be for my dead ex-girlfriend popping back for a visit? It had seemed so real and the idea that my brain was capable of doing something like this while I was fully conscious terrified me because while it wasn’t exactly great that I’d blocked out the night that I’d slept with Bella, it was altogether a different kind of ‘not great’ to be conjuring up Fiona. And though my every instinct was to put the hallucination and everything that came with it into a file at the back of my mind to be worked on another day (along with my missing night with Bella), each time I tried to do so the same question would present itself: was that really a ghost or have I officially lost my mind?

Like any decent twenty-first-century man my first step once I’d gathered my wits about me was to sit down at the kitchen table with my laptop and Google ‘Suffering from hallucinations why?’ Within 0.2 seconds I was faced with 3.3 million potential diagnoses. I took a look at the first five to get a brief overview of my condition. According to everything that I read hallucinations took several different forms but usually only ever affected one of the senses. For example someone might hallucinate a smell, or a sensation, even a sound, but rarely, if ever, all three. Yet my hallucination had been so real, so complete. I’d heard Fiona talking, I’d smelled her perfume and I’d seen her sitting on my own stairs looking as real as anyone I’d ever seen. Potential causes of hallucinations ranged from schizophrenia through to substance abuse but given that until this morning I’d never seen anything that wasn’t actually there combined with the fact that I hadn’t so much as touched a glass of wine since the weekend I doubted either of these could be the cause. One thing that did strike a chord with me was the mention of anxiety being a key factor. This made absolute and total sense. After all, what could be more anxiety-inducing than watching my wife leaving me? No, there wasn’t anything seriously wrong with my mental health. I just needed to calm down and relax a little then talk to Penny and try to sort things out.

I reasoned that the best way to re-establish normality was to busy myself with mundane household chores. I stacked the breakfast things into the dishwasher, put a load of washing on, tidied the kids’ bedrooms, cleaned the bathroom and then after lunch vacuumed the hallway and made a sizeable dent in the ironing pile. Although I was still unsettled, the performance of these tasks did soothe me somehow and had the bonus of showing Penny, when she did return, that I’d made an effort and kept the wheels turning. As feeble attempts to get on the right side of a woman wronged went it was pretty pathetic, but at that moment it was all I had.

I was already filled with dread as I stood in the school playground waiting for the kids to come out but when the bell went signalling their impending arrival I was nearly sick. They were going to want to know where Penny was and I didn’t have the faintest clue what to say or how to say it.

Jack came through the doors first and on spotting me he bounded across the yard and into my arms. I scooped him, his parka, book bag, water bottle and sandwich box up into my arms and landed a big kiss on his cheek.

‘Where’s Mummy? Couldn’t she come too?’

‘She’s had to go and visit Grandma and Grandpa because Grandpa’s not very well,’ I explained.

Jack looked up at me quizzically. ‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘Nothing too bad but I think Mummy’s a bit worried and wants to see for herself that he’s OK.’

Jack thought about it for a moment. ‘Mummy does worry a lot, doesn’t she?’

‘Yes, but only because she loves us all so much.’

I set Jack on the ground and we began walking over to the junior playground to pick up Rosie. ‘Will we get to speak to her tonight?’

‘Of course, and she’ll want to know exactly how your day’s been. So come on, how was it?’

Jack face fell and he pushed out his bottom lip. ‘Rubbish.’

‘How come? That Lucas kid and his mates haven’t been bothering you again, have they?’

Jack shook his head.

‘I’m not scared of him anyway.’

‘Never said you were. So what’s happened to make your day rubbish? You were really looking forward to it this morning.’

‘Mrs Millard told me off and sent me down the zone board because I told Kayleigh Sanderson that she was going to die.’

I stopped in my tracks.

‘You said what?’

‘I told her she was going to die and she started crying and told the teacher. But I was right, wasn’t I? You said every living thing dies eventually.’

I cast my mind back to the previous weekend when the conversation in question had occurred. We had all just finished watching
The
Lion King
and Jack – who for as long as I could remember had had a bit of a dark side – asked when he would die. Cursing Elton John and his ‘Circle of Life’ I’d reassured him that he wouldn’t die for a long time. Then Jack asked when Rosie would die, to which I responded not for a very long time. Then Jack asked when Penny and I would die and so very much aware of my son’s ability to continue this line of questioning long after bedtime I replied that while we wouldn’t be going anywhere any time soon every living thing dies eventually.