The Houdini Effect (15 page)

The couple was looking up.
The way they seemed to stare in my direction was eerie, almost as
if they could see me. It made me feel as if they knew I was there
watching them through time and space which was, I suppose, pretty
much what I was doing. It was just such a pity that the mirror
didn’t work like a videophone or webcam. If it did, we could have
had a face-to-face, spoken con-versation. I could have asked them
why the hell they were there, ask them if they had any idea at all
of what they were doing to my head, turning up like this and
turning my familiar world up-side-down and
back-to-front.

As it was, I could only
look and attempt to make a ‘wild surmise.’ (Another poetical quote,
this time from the ill-starred romantic poet John Keats. He’d
always seemed too
soft
a writer but in recent times I’d taken a shine to him.) An
attempt was as much as I managed. Even though I tried to force my
mind to understand what was happening, I didn’t succeed. Not one
iota. My mind stayed an artistic blank.

Laurie and Iris quietly faded from the
mirror

and my phone beeped a text
at me. I blinked. Laurie and Iris had completely gone but the
text-message remained, illuminated by the blue backlight of my
phone. I decided to ignore it, for now. It would only be Rach or Em
again.

At least I was certain of
now was that I had not imagined them, Laurie and Iris I mean. That
they had been a figment of my imagination was possible once, maybe
even twice, but definitely not three times. It wasn’t until my back
started aching from having sat hunched on the edge of the mattress
for so long, that I finally decided one thing. Those images weren’t
simply
like
photographs, they
were
photographs. Once I had accepted that notion it
seemed so obviously right that it had to be true. Nothing else
seemed truer. Not that this ‘discovery’ shone a bright light on
matters for me, far from it. I was still woefully
ignorant.

Ignorance is meant to be bliss but it felt
to me more like some sort of cruel and unusual punishment. Laurie
and Iris were going to do my head in.

I got up and paced my room. Once you decide
something is a ‘fact’ it sometimes becomes easier to move onto the
next ‘fact’. How good were the chances, I wondered, of the images -
the photos - being the very same ones that had once decorated
Laurie and Iris’ home, each photo a precious memory of a part of
their lives together? Even though neither Laurie nor Iris
themselves, nor their photographs, were themselves any longer in
the house, had their long presence there made them visible to me
via the mirrors? (Yes, I know this

sounds like Harry’s séance
stuff and nonsense,
but
. . .) And if so, why was I seeing them?
Why me, and no one else? Was it because the mirrors had begun
to haunt me before Laurie and Iris had even made an appearance in
them? Could be.

And, the biggest question
of all,
how
?

I had no answers. And then, just as I felt I
was reaching out to take hold of a vague intuition of

how I might find out something more, my
phone began to make another sound, not a text this time, but an
actual call. I got such a shock, my vague intuition dissolved,
dissipated, disappeared and died.

Is this how the Trojan War began?

It was Troy.

‘
Uoy detxet I.’

‘
What?’

‘
I texted you,’ he
translated.

‘
Did you?’ I looked down at
my phone. He was right. It hadn’t been Rach or Em.

‘
Just a minute.’ I opened
the text.

Do you know about Palindromes? it read.

What on earth did that mean?

‘
What on earth does that
mean?’ I asked him.

‘
I just wondered if you
did,’ he said. ‘And if you do know about them, do you like them. I
do.’

‘
Like you like speaking
backwards?’

‘
Yeah. Palindromes are the
coolest things. They read exactly the same forwards or backwards.
You can have single words like ‘radar’, or whole sentences like
‘Dammit, I’m mad!’’

‘
You said it,’ I said. ‘Is
that all?’

‘
Not, there are lots more.
There are even

palindromes in the DNA sequence.’

‘
I mean is that all you
wanted?’

‘
I guess so.’

‘
You texted me and then you
rang me to talk about palindrones?’

‘
Palin
dromes
.’

‘
Palindromes.’

‘
Yes.’

I hung up.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. So
I did both, in that order.

Heart to (h)ear(t)

Em rang next, an hour or so later. This was
unusual for her. As you know, she much preferred to text than to
talk. So I gathered it must be important.

‘
The three of us weren’t
planning to go to the mall today, were we?’ I said.

‘
No, but Rach and I went
anyway,’ Em said. ‘We were going to tell you but, you know, you
explained how you and Harry were busy with some talent
thing.’

So, my best friends were deserting me. (I
know, I was over-dramatising, but . . .’)

‘
Would you have come if
we’d asked?’ Em asked in the pause that followed.

‘
Maybe,’ I said.

‘
Or maybe not,’ said
Em.

‘
Things have been pretty
hectic here lately,’ I said. ‘It isn’t as if I haven’t wanted to go
out, it’s not that at all.’

‘
Well, there’s still plenty
more days,’ said Em, in a conciliatory voice. ‘We want to hear all
about

the talent thingy, you know.’

‘
I sort of got roped into
it before I knew what was happening,’ I said, realizing that since
my generous offer of help to Harry, my fabricated excuse had
metamorphosed into a genuine one.

‘
Will we see you and him on
TV?’

‘
I’m trying not to think
about that,’ I replied. ‘Maybe.’

‘
Will we be able to come
and cheer for you?’

‘
I’ll let you
know.’

‘
Make sure you do. Anyway,
I - we, that is, cause Rach is listening in and agreeing with
everything I’m saying - just wanted to say sorry, you know, about
Troy. Getting him to call you and all that. And for the way it
turned out.’

‘
That
was
uncalled for,’ I said.

‘
We know. And we’re sorry,
really sorry. We didn’t mean to go and spoil things.’

‘
Spoil my illusion,’ I
said. ‘It was probably for the best.’

‘
The holidays haven’t been
the same without you Athens.’

‘
The holidays haven’t been
the same, full stop,’ I said.

‘
What
is
the
matter?
Really
the matter?’ Em asked. ‘We’re both worried about
you.’

‘
Things are just . . .
busy,’ I said. ‘Unexpectedly busy.’ (Funny how truth could
sometimes disguise a lie. Or should that be the other way round? Or
- DEEP THOUGHT - was one thing a mirror image of the other -
palindromic?)

Finding out more

It was obvious that, apart from what May had
told

me, I knew next to nothing about Iris and
Laurie. A picture might be worth a thousand words but the pictures
I was seeing were saying next to nothing. I had to find out even
more about them - Laurie and The Missus, I mean.

In my room, alone, I continued to cogitate.
In the distance I heard the bang-thud of a hammer and guessed Harry
was busy on his escape-chest

reconstruction. I briefly wondered if, when
he heard the sound, Dad would promptly investigate and throw
(metaphorically speaking) cold water on Harry’s plan. I figured
probably not. Dad tends to favour any sign of Harry, or me for that
matter, following in his DIY footsteps. The beat of hammer on wood
brings joy to his heart.

I got back to doing some
serious thinking about Laurie and Iris, trying to retrace my steps
to the idea I’d first had when Troy had rung and interrupted. May
had said she might be able to tell me more but I guessed that when
it came down to it she wouldn’t have much extra to tell. Not enough
to satisfy my questions, at any rate. It didn’t seem as if Laurie
had taken either of them - May or Barry - into his confidence,
especially not in his later, alone-years. May wasn’t the pushy type
either. She wouldn’t have questioned Laurie too closely or pried
into his personal life.

I diverted briefly into wondering whether,
if May and Barry had had kids, Iris and Laurie would have turned
out to be surrogate grandparents and things might have been
different for all of them.

Anyway, none of these speculations were
helping me. May said she hadn’t heard from Laurie for about a year
and nothing at all from the son who’d managed to persuade his
father to leave

the family home. And there was the
brain-wave I’d almost lost sight of. Laurie’s son. Of course!

But how could I get hold of him? The answer
was strikingly close to home. Dad.

I went on the hunt and found Dad in the
lounge where Harry had held his séance, poking in and around the
fireplace not, as I’d guessed correctly,

harassing Harry about the damage he was most
likely inflicting on his (possibly valuable antique) chest. Dad
heard me come in.

‘
Here,’ he said. ‘Feel the
bricks around the mantelpiece.’

I touched them. ‘What
about them?’ I said.

‘
Rock them a bit,’ he said.
‘Try this one.’

I gently pushed and pulled on one of the
bricks. I felt it kind of unclick. It started to come away from the
wall, in a dry-powdery sort of way.

‘
That’s enough,’ said Dad.
‘Leave it there for now.’

‘
But it’s loose,’ I said.
The brick felt uncannily like a wobbly tooth. Once it started to
wriggle I wanted to keep nagging at it until it popped out. Not
unlike the way I’d niggled at my nearly forgotten idea until I’d
remembered it.

‘
They’re all like that,’
said Dad. ‘The tendrils of dry rot have spread through the mortar.
It’s in the process of eating up the whole structure. The downward
pressure of the brickwork is possibly all that’s holding it
together. If we shifted a few random bricks the whole thing might
collapse.’

‘
Don’t sound so perversely
excited about it,’ I said. ‘It sounds mega dangerous.’ I took a
step back, not at all keen for the chimney to fall on top of
me.

‘
Not so dangerous if we
dismantle starting from the top,’ said Dad. ‘Brick by brick. Were
you looking for me, by the way?’

‘
I was,’ I said.

‘
Fire away then,’ said
Dad.

‘
When you and Mum bought
this house,’ I began, ‘did you ever get to meet Laurie and Iris’
son. He was selling it for Laurie, remember?’

I could see Dad shifting mental gears as
his

brain moved from fireplaces to house
sales.

‘
Yes, sort of,’ said
Dad.

‘
What do
you mean,
sort of
. Sort of meet him or sort of he was
selling?’

‘
Oh, he was definitely
selling it on Laurie’s behalf,’ said Dad, ‘but as he lives up north
the actual business side of things went through an agency and our
respective lawyers. We were never in touch with him directly about
anything to do with the house.’

That was a disappointing answer but
hopefully not the end of the lead I was pursuing. ‘Do you have a
document with his name and address on it?’ I asked.

Dad thought about this. ‘Possibly. I can’t
remember. The contract we signed will very likely have it on with
him as the person who had power of attorney.’

‘
Power of what?’

‘
Attorney. POA. That just
means he was able to act on his father’s behalf.’

‘
Laurie would have given
him permission, you mean?’

‘
That’s it. A POA is
usually something you put in place while you’re still in your right
mind, before you’re not anymore if you know what I

mean? Actually your Mum and I should set up
one of those for us as well before it’s too late.’

‘
Don’t say things like that
Dad!’ I said to him.

Dad shrugged, a little apologetically. ‘Time
marches on for all of us,’ he said in a gloomy

voice.

‘
You’re sounding like our
clock,’ I said. He knew what I was referring to. Did Dad’s words
suggest that when he looked into a mirror he also

didn’t much like what he saw there -
age-wise, I mean? Somehow I didn’t believe so. Dad wasn’t the sort
of person who looked back with regret.

I asked him, ‘Do you think it meant that
Laurie had lost his mind by the time he moved north?’

Dad considered this. ‘Not necessarily,’ he
said. ‘It may just mean he gave permission for his son to handle
the sale of the house because he didn’t want to have to deal with
all the complications it would have involved. I don’t really know
for sure, sorry.’