The Messengers (20 page)

When I woke, it was already morning. My head felt heavy and my mouth dry. The room was a shambles. There were clothes everywhere; the bedside lamp was smashed, the glass from the bulb all over the floor, and the curtains had been dragged off the pole. I must have really lost it.

I looked at the clock. It was past ten. Disaster. I had less than two and a half hours. I put on my jeans and T-shirt and ran into the hallway. Auntie Lizzie was standing there with a glass of juice. She looked like she’d hardly slept.

“Are you OK?” she said. Her voice was low, serious, worried.

“Yeah. I’m fine. Thank you,” I said.

“You were in a bad state.”

“I’m sorry about the mess,” I said.

She shrugged. “We got you to calm down a bit, then gave you some sleeping tablets. Here, drink some fluids. It’s lime cordial, like you used to have at Nana’s when you were small.”

I took the glass. It occurred to me suddenly that since I hadn’t delivered the message, then someone might be starting to feel very sick right now. “Christ,” I said under my breath.

“Frances, what’s wrong?” Auntie Lizzie said.

“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong with
me
. How about you? You’re not unwell?” I stared at her closely, checked her eye whites and her lips.

“I’m fine, Frances, what are you talking about?”

“What about Max? Is he OK?”

“Yes. He’s playing video games. He’s going to keep you company while I sort out some breakfast downstairs.”

“Keep me company . . .”
I said. She obviously meant
guard me
. “Listen, I
really
need to go out. It’s . . . it’s very important that I speak to . . . certain people.”

“We just can’t let you go, Frances. You are clearly feeling unwell. You weren’t rational last night. It would be wrong of us to allow you to leave the house.”

I kept hold of my temper. I knew that the angrier I got, the harder it would be to get out. I sighed. “Right,” I said.

“That’s my girl. You’re going to be just fine. You need to rest,” she said, and kissed my cheek.

I went back into my room and tried to think. My loved ones were supposed to get sick if I didn’t deliver the message, but who
were
my loved ones? Auntie Lizzie and Max were fine. Maybe, I thought for a second, Peter, who had now become my closest friend, but I dismissed that idea.

Fragments of conversations with Peter came back, and suddenly it became clear. I was in the double bind, just as Peter had been with Tabby. Johnny was the person closest to me, and Johnny was the recipient. So if I delivered the message, he’d die, and if I didn’t, he’d die anyway.

What was I going to do?

At least if I could get to him and deliver the message, I would have a chance of saving him. If I just sat there and let it all happen, he was doomed.

I tried to direct my energy toward getting out of that soft, plush prison. I stuck my head out into the hall and listened. Auntie Lizzie was in the kitchen, so both the front and back doors would be in her line of sight. In any case, I was aware that even if I got out of the house, I still didn’t know where Johnny was or how I was supposed to get there.

My mouth was dry, so I gulped down half of the lime cordial in the bedroom. The nostalgic taste was painful. I wished I was a little girl again. How much would I alter if I could go back? I shook my head. There was still a chance, however small, that I could change what was happening
now
.

I took the message out of my rucksack and stared at my brother’s face. I saw how it had changed since I’d last seen him. He looked wasted and weak in the picture, like he hadn’t been eating. But there were no further clues.

I looked up at Peter’s painting of the boat, which I’d leaned against the wall on the bedside table. I remembered what he’d written at the bottom.
Just because something is off to the side doesn’t mean it’s not the point
.

I looked back down at the message and tried to ignore Johnny. In the background, I saw a figure. It was a man, but he was too far away to see any telling details without scanning and zooming the image. I let my eyes wander over the wire fence behind Johnny. I let them wander over the fields behind the fence. I had the uncanny feeling, suddenly, that I knew the shape of those hills. It was as if my recent dreams had spilled over into real life. And then I saw it, way off in the distance: his shed. His old shed on Nana’s land, just as it had appeared so many times in my mind these past few weeks. He was somewhere in Whiteslade.

I went over to the window. If I was quiet, I could drop down onto the garage roof. I took hold of the window sash, but it was locked. They’d barricaded me in. “Let me out!” I shouted, and I heard footsteps on the landing. I was becoming delirious again. I needed to calm down.

I picked up my phone and dialed Peter. It went straight to voice mail. “Please, Peter,” I said. “Please call me. I can’t get out of here. It’s Whiteslade. My brother is in Whiteslade. He doesn’t have long. You know what, Peter? After everything I did for you — I hate you for this.”

There was a knock at the door. I hung up. “What?”

Max came in. He seemed shaken. He sat on the bed, holding a console and his kendo mask. “Do you want to play some games?” he said.

“Games? Bloody games? I don’t have time, Max!” I said angrily. He looked petrified. I had sort of forgotten that he was younger than me.

“I’m sorry, Max. It’s just that I need to get out of here, and nobody is listening to me.”

“OK,” he said.

“Have you been sent in here to be the new prison guard?” I said.

He nodded.

“Max,” I said, realizing that he was probably my only hope, “can you help me get out of here?”

He winced. “Look, Mum said you’re not feeling too good. I don’t want to do anything that puts you in danger.”

“I need to get out!” I shouted. He flinched and I lowered my voice. “Can you answer my questions? Can you at least do that?”

“Nothing wrong with answering questions, I suppose,” he said sadly.

I was about to ask him where the key to the window was, but I changed my tactic at the last moment, knowing that he wouldn’t tell me. Not yet.

“Do
you
think I’m mad, too?” I asked.

He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, which looked small without the magnification of the spectacle lenses. “I’ve certainly thought about it,” he said quietly.

“What did you decide?”

He stared away from me.

“What if I told you that Johnny was in danger?” I said. “Do you think that’s a crazy thing to say?”

“No. It’s obvious Johnny’s in danger. He’s on the run.”

“OK, what if I told you I knew how to save him? What would you think then?”

“I don’t know.”

I hadn’t seen him like this. He was never a chirpy lad, but he usually had a calmness about him. That was gone. The thought arose, fleetingly, that he might be worried about me.

“You haven’t answered my first question. Do you think I’m mad?”

“There’s plenty of evidence to say that you are,” he said. “It’s not only that you smashed the room up. It’s more the other stuff. First you’re trying to stop some woman who doesn’t even know you from getting drunk, then you’re looking after eleven-year-old boys at the skate park. What’s it all about, Frances?”

“My dad always said you should try to do good whenever you can,” I said instinctively.

“Did he?” Max said.

“No,” I said. “My brother said it, actually.”

Max thought for a moment. “Well, if you’re crazy, then as far as I can see, it’s making you do the right thing all the time. You’re pretty much my hero at the moment.”

I nearly broke down. “Bless you, Maxi,” I said.

His shoulders sank back into place now, as if he’d made a decision. The old Max was back.

“Any more questions?” he said.

“If you needed to get to Whiteslade and you had . . .” I looked at my watch. “Jesus. And you had an hour and a half, and no car, what would you do?”

“Whiteslade? Like, near Nana’s old house? God, that’s a bit remote. Well, I’d probably steal my dad’s Vespa.”

“Your dad has a
motor scooter
?” I said.

“Of course he does,” Max said.

“And can you ride it?” I said.

“Theoretically.”

Perfect. I grabbed my rucksack, put the message inside, and turned to the window.

“Dammit,” I said. “And how might you get out of the window if it happened to be locked and the key was nowhere to be seen?”

“I’d probably check under the wardrobe,” he said, standing from the bed.

I retrieved the key and stood. He smiled. “Shall we?” he said.

The Vespa was in the garage, under a dust sheet. It was sky blue, with fancy silver letters. I couldn’t help the tiny voice in my head saying,
Uncle Robert — what a poseur
. Max looked at the scooter and bit his lip — he knew he was going to get in trouble, but he didn’t say anything about it.

“There’s only one helmet,” he said.

“You take it,” I said.

“No way,” he said. “Someone’s got to look after you. Besides, I’ve got this.” He put a kendo mask on over his glasses. “Bought it in the sale.”

I put on the blue helmet and looked at my watch. The thought occurred to me that we might not get there in time, that I might be on my way to find my brother’s body. I shook the thought off.

Max was shaky on the scooter at first, but he soon got the hang of it, zipping through the city traffic onto the coastal road, past the backs of the beach huts. I looked at Peter’s and the square of flattened grass where his final box of possessions had been. He’d really gone.

We went through Crowdean, past the retirement home, with its painful memories, and out toward Whiteslade. The scenery changed, became more farmish. The towns unraveled. I started to recognize the potholed roads from when I was a kid, when Nana was alive, but it all looked so small now. Overgrown hedges clambered over random little houses. There was a run-down high street with charity shops and a couple of cafés. There were more Saint George flags in the windows here. More patriots, although one lone house had an Italian tricolor draped over the veranda.

I couldn’t see the shed up on the hills behind, and even if I could, how was I going to find the street where Johnny was to die? The sun was bright and mean. I tapped Max on the shoulder and gestured that he should pull over and park the scooter.

It was almost noon, and nothing looked familiar. How many square meters in a place like Whiteslade? Too many. He could have been anywhere. I walked in one direction and then spun round and ran in another, but I was just guessing. Max followed me, and he looked more and more disturbed.

“Frances, are you OK? Can you explain what we’re doing?”

I held my head. “We’re . . . we’re looking for Johnny. . . . I need to sit down.”

We found a bench next to a telephone box. “Think,” I said to myself. I took the postcard out of my rucksack and stared at it again.

“What’s that?” Max said.

God knows what he could see when he looked at it. He probably thought it was an abstract art print from the local museum. “Max, I’m trying to find a street, but all the streets look the same here. You see that den — the small ruin on the hill?”

He turned around. “Yeah.”

“That’s my only landmark. But you can see it from every damn street in the village. I think Johnny might have been hiding there.”

“So why don’t we just go there, then?” he said.

“I’m afraid that I’ll miss him. He’s going to be somewhere down here in . . .” I looked at my watch. “He’s going to be here very soon anyway.” I put the postcard down on the bench and put my head in my hands.

Max took off his glasses, laid them on the bench, and rubbed his eyes. He’d put the left lens of the spectacles over the postcard. The image was magnified. Johnny’s face had expanded. I picked up the glasses and moved them like a spyglass to focus more clearly. There was something — some detail — reflected in the lenses of Johnny’s aviators.

I couldn’t see it clearly, but it was all I’d got — my last hope.

“Max, was there an Internet café on the high street?”

“I think so.”

“Let’s go.”

He didn’t move, and I could see he was thinking he’d made the wrong decision. He was thinking that I was crazy after all, and that he was going to get into serious trouble about the scooter.

I kissed him on the forehead. “Max. Thank you for coming with me. Maybe you were right. Maybe one of us should walk up to the den. Why don’t you go?”

I knew Johnny wouldn’t be there, but I’d involved Max too much already. I had to do this alone. He looked up at the den.

“Take a little walk, eh?” I said.

“OK,” he said. “If you’re sure you’ll be all right. I’ll meet you back here.”

I barged into the Internet café and sat at a machine. I was frantic now, shouting at the computer to load. People were looking over, but I didn’t care. I scanned in the postcard and it came up. I scrolled along and caught the figure in the distance that I’d noticed that morning. It was a policeman running toward Johnny. They’d found him. They’d chased him. Maybe it was the police that caused his death. It was hard for me to zoom in on Johnny’s face, but I had to do it. I could see the shock in him, his mouth open. I went up to the lenses of his aviators, hoping to God for some clue to where he was.

There
was
a clue to his location, but that wasn’t what I noticed first. What I noticed first was the reflection of another man crumpled at the waist, cruelly twisted, and sprawled across the bonnet of a light-colored car. There was no doubt who it was.

Peter.

I raised my hands to my head. What was happening? It took me a moment to work it out. The message wasn’t for Johnny at all. It was for Peter. I kept thinking. In my mind, I saw the flattened square of grass behind his hut. He’d been back there, which meant he’d probably found the note and the copy of the picture. He’d surely have looked at the picture. Without either of us knowing it, I’d delivered his death message.