Visions (9 page)

Morgan looked at me as though she was just starting to put pieces together.

“Gillian asked me exactly the same question. She looks just like me.” She watched for Theo’s response.

He looked at me and nodded.

“Gill? What’s going on?” Morgan demanded.

I took a deep breath. “You won’t believe me if I tell you.”

              “That’s how she started off before she told me. She’ll believe you, Gill. None of us may be able to explain it, but she’s not going to think you’re lying. Besides, this

time you can prove it,” Theo said.

I brought a plate full of bagels to the table with the butter, jam, soft cheese and a knife each to spread.

              “Oh my God!” Morgan cried, her hand pausing mid-reach for a bagel. “It’s like the whole Amelia Carr running away thing, isn’t it? You saw this happen. Did you see Raheem proposing to Bronwyn?”

              “Not exactly. Well, yes, I did but I’ve never seen Bronwyn before, as you know. I thought he was proposing to you.. I was excited for you.” I felt my cheeks heat up, hoping she wouldn’t see it as the intrusion it felt like to me. “It was in a restaurant. I suppose I was focussing on him more than Bronwyn and she does look like you,” I explained.

              “I don’t get it, though. Did you dream this?” Morgan asked. I remembered I’d told her about seeing Amelia running away in a dream. There wasn’t really much point in hiding any details now.

              “It was kind of like a dream, but I was awake, if that makes sense. It’s more like a trance state than a dream.”

              “That’s a weird way to describe it,” Theo commented, scratching his head.

              “It’s weird full stop,” said Morgan. “How can you prove it? Not that I don’t believe you, Gillian, but I have to admit, it’s all a bit incredulous, don’t you think?”

              “I agree.” I wasn’t offended at all. Had it been the other way round, I doubted I would have been able to believe her without proof. I handed her my pad and Theo and I sat back, looking at each other while she read through my notes. When she’d finished, she put the pad down but seemed unable to close her dropped jaw.

“Gill, do you think you might be a psychic?” Morgan asked, her eyes wide.

Wishing we could change the topic to something more mundane, I only shrugged.

              “I’m wondering whether there might be a more rational explanation for some

of the things that are happening to Gill, though,” Theo said thoughtfully.

              “Ok, ok, let’s leave that subject behind. There must be other things more interesting than why I’m a total freak!”

              “It’s a shame because I think I would have to actually witness one to be able to consider any medical reasons why you’re having these visions,” Theo continued, addressing me, but looking at Morgan.

              “It’s weird that you only seem to have them when you’re on your own,” Morgan added.

              “Well, not if you count the car crash,” Theo added. “It could have been a vision that caused that. I mean, she was very confused when she came in.”

              “I don’t know about the car crash…” This time the voices trailed off, and I was fully in charge of their fading because I was walking towards the door, grabbing my coat and leaving them to it. I would have been surprised if they even noticed, they were so intent on their discussion.

              When I returned after twenty minutes of walking around the block, trying to clear my head, they had tidied and cleaned the kitchen between them, and were prepared with an apology for getting so carried away. I felt better but reluctant to pick the topic back up.

              “Why don’t we go to the cinema to take your mind off it?” asked Theo. I nodded, smiling.

              “As long as we watch anything but Bridesmaids, I’m in!” Morgan insisted.

14

At Logford the next week, I found myself starting to relax and enjoy teaching much more than I previously had. Darren Pierce was still on temporary exclusion and the year ten class was much easier to teach as a result. Scott and Phil actually included me in some of their banter, making them much easier to handle. Ally seemed to be getting used to me now and even wanted to tell me that she’d seen Morgan and me going into the cinemas on Sunday while she was there with her friends. “I was going to say hi but I didn’t know whether I should leave you alone,” she said.

              “It would have been good to see you!” I commented, continuing the conversation by asking her what she went to see and whether she enjoyed it or not.

              Amelia Carr was back in school at the start of the week, free of nits. I was surprised that her mother had given her the means to treat her hair, but then she probably would prefer to have her at school and out of the way, even if it meant putting some effort in. Despite clearly being less itchy and uncomfortable, Amelia was even more withdrawn than normal. She looked exhausted and in need of a good meal. Morgan was concerned because she didn’t cash in her tickets for free meals on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. In class, she barely bothered to acknowledge me or any of her classmates. She may as well have not been there at all.

              On Thursday, Amelia did not turn up to school at all. Morgan admitted she was worried and went to see Carrie straight after form to request a phone call home to get a reason for Amelia being absent. Morgan came to find me while I was teaching and interrupted the lesson to ask whether I’d ‘seen’ anything of Amelia. I knew what she meant, but had to tell her I hadn’t. I just had a normal instinctive feeling that something wasn’t quite right but anyone would be feeling that, knowing about the child protection issues surrounding Amelia. When Amelia’s class came in for their lesson, I hoped in vain that she might have come back in to school, but she wasn’t among the tall children coming in now.

I set the class up in groups, each working through a card sort activity on persuasive devices. It was the kind of thing they liked because they just had to find the answers rather than come up with them, and they could all help each other so they shared responsibility if it was wrong. The class was giving off a light buzz of chatter, most of which I was pleased to note was about the activity. I was sitting at my desk watching them when George whispered something to Dennis and then put his hand straight up in the air. Knowing that George would not have the confidence to call anything out in class, I got up and started walking towards him.

Then I stopped. Why had I stopped? I could see George looking confused, but he was becoming fainter and fainter. The low hum of my year eleven’s voices seemed to disappear. There was sudden screaming. It was so loud it hurt and I wanted desperately to put my hands over my ears to block some of it out, but I couldn’t feel my hands to move anywhere. I was completely immobile, but now I wasn’t standing in the safety of the classroom.

I was in a small room, with close purple walls, a huge television set, and a tatty grey sofa that may or may not once have been cream. There was a man in the room. He was huge and incredibly angry. As he turned, pulling his fist up behind him in slow motion, I recognised him. It was Mr Collins, Amelia Carr’s stepdad. His fist flew forwards at the speed of a bullet, causing the screaming to intensify. There was a curled up ball of a child lying on the floor, doing her best to protect her head and face. The fist landed on her neck, sending her flying across the floor. It was Amelia. Mr Collins was pummelling her and there was nothing I could do about it. Punch after punch rained on her and I was a silent, immobile witness. I wanted to shout at him to stop, grab him, take some of the punches for her; anything to help her, but it was useless. The hitting continued. Amelia’s screaming grew weaker and weaker, turning into harsh sobs. I had to get out of the vision and tell someone what was happening. If they didn’t believe me, I would run all the way there myself and stop him from hurting her. If I didn’t get out soon, she was going to die. Surely a frail child of her size wouldn’t be able to take much more of this.

Suddenly, I could feel my hands again. I was rubbing them against each other over and over; it was the same movement I would make if I was washing them. I looked down to see they were shaking. Then there was another person’s hand closing over them.

“Gillian, can you hear me? I’m going to guide you over to a chair so we can sit you down. You’re safe with me. I’ve got you.” The voice was soothing and familiar. Was it my Uncle Ian? No, it was somebody I’d heard before who sounded like him. I had to piece what was going on together for Amelia’s sake. I allowed myself to be led to a chair and then looked up from my hands. The year eleven class was gone, but I was still in the classroom. Corinne was perched on the edge of my desk, holding her face in her hands. She looked really worried. Maybe she already knew about Amelia. Then I saw the paramedics and realised it was me she was worried about. “Gillian?” That voice again. It must be the same paramedic who helped me after the crash. That was why he sounded so familiar. I looked up at his kindly eyes.

“You have to help her,” I whimpered.

“We’re going to help you, Gillian. You’re in safe hands now,” he said, still gripping my hands. I realised he was probably taking my pulse. “Do you remember me, Gillian? My name is Paul…”

“Not me. Her! You have to help her.” I saw the paramedics glance at Corinne.

“She’s confused,” the female paramedic concluded. “We’ll take her in for a check-up. See if we can figure out what’s happened and stop it from happening again.” Why was she talking about me and not to me when I was clearly there in front of her? It made me feel like a child again and I felt angry. “I assume you have a contact number for her next of kin?”

“Er, yes, her mother, Gayle,” Corinne said. “I’ll ring her straight away. I know where she works, so I should be able to get hold of her immediately.”

As the paramedics led me away, I tried to speak to Corinne, but she was already marching away and I felt so tired. I heard some of the older students trying to ask me how I was, but other members of staff ushered them away.

The ambulance ride seemed long as I desperately tried to get Paul, who was riding in the back with me, to understand. I was aware that I was babbling but I couldn’t seem to piece my sentences together correctly. He kept patting my arm and reassuring me that everything would be fine. As my confusion cleared, my frustration grew.

Once at the hospital, the paramedics insisted on transporting me to a ward in a wheelchair, even though I was pretty sure I would be able to walk fine by now. They pulled me backwards, so I couldn’t see where I was going. All I could see were lots of people rushing around with faces that displayed a whole array of emotions from despair to relief. My hands were still shaking, but I’d come round and felt like I was coherent.

“Gillian?” I looked up to see who had called my name, as I was dragged down the never-ending corridor. It was a young doctor with blond hair, but he didn’t look familiar to me. I looked at him blankly, wondering whether it was possible that he had confused me with another Gillian. Unlikely though. There aren’t many of us around. I presumed he must know me from my last visit here.

There was a bed and a woman doctor waiting for me when we got to the ward. She insisted I lie down on the bed, though it was the last thing I felt like doing, before checking my heart rate and taking some blood. She then asked another girl, who looked young enough to be one of my pupils, to get me some water to drink. She left me alone to drink it and came back a short while later with my mum in tow. “She did seem quite confused when she first came in,” the doctor was explaining to my mum. “She kept wringing her hands over and over. Is that something she does a lot?”

My mum nodded, slowly and deliberately. “She used to when she was a child. Have you pulled her file? It might be useful to speak to her GP. He’ll have all her notes from when she was a child.”

“Certainly,” the doctor replied, as though she’d already been planning to do that and my mother was pointing out the obvious. “I want to ask some questions of Gillian first, though, and it might be better if you stay, in case she gets confused again.”

“That’s fine,” my mum said, sitting down on the visitor’s chair at the side of the bed.

“Do you ever pass out seemingly without reason?” the doctor asked, enunciating slowly.

“I don’t know,” I replied, thinking I was adding to her reasons to treat me like an idiot with that answer. “I seem to go into…trances and have…visions. Oh! It all sounds so stupid! I’ve been in the middle of doing something before and come round some time later crouched or lying on the floor but usually, I just stay still.”

“Have she ever had a seizure?” The doctor asked my mum.

“She used to go away from us mentally when she was younger quite frequently. Her body would be there, but she was completely unresponsive. Usually after a while of calling her name, she would come out of it, sometimes with fantastic tales to tell and other times speechless and withdrawn. We thought it was daydreaming, but it was never actually explained conclusively…this is why I think you should speak to her actual GP.” My mum was sounding quite testy by this point.

Then the curtain twitched and Theo appeared round it. “Dr Arnold, you can’t just come in here while I’m speaking to my patient!” the doctor snapped.

“No, that was quite unprofessional and I apologise,” Theo responded, smoothly. “Gillian is my… she is my girlfriend.” He looked at me for confirmation and I nodded, trying not to look too enthusiastic given the circumstances. He came over, took my hand and kissed it while my mum stared in shock. “My friend, Ross, was on shift and he saw you being brought in. You probably don’t remember him, but he remembered you from the night we met when we were out. He texted me so I came in to see if you were ok.”

“I had another vision,” I explained, my voice clear now.

“Do you have your pad with you?” he asked, calmly taking charge.

“What do you know about this?” the female doctor asked, obviously feeling quite undermined and understandably, too.

“I haven’t told him as a doctor. I told him as a …boyfriend, I guess,” I explained. “It’s not important though. Amelia... I have to tell someone about Amelia!”

Theo patted my arm; that response again. “I’m not trying to take over, Dr Cornwell, but have you ordered an MRI scan?” asked Theo.

Dr Cornwell’s nostrils flared as she took a deep breath and visibly tried to

calm herself down. “Are you thinking of some form of epilepsy, because that’s what had occurred to me?”

“It’s fully possible.” Theo turned to me and glanced at my mum to let her know this was going to be important information for her as well. I opened my mouth to speak but he continued before I could begin. “An MRI scan won’t be able to tell us definitely that you have epilepsy, but it will show us any smaller abnormalities, such as scarring or damaged areas of the brain that could be triggering some sort of seizure. These might not have shown up on the CT scan you had after the crash, as we were looking more for head injuries then. Dr Cornwell, would you mind?”

“I’ll go and put an order in now.” She scurried away, gripping her clipboard, gritting her teeth.

“New doctor inferiority complex!” he joked. “She’s actually really good at what she does. She just needs to work on her bedside manner a bit.”

Before I could ask for more information on the whole epilepsy diagnosis, an image of Amelia curled in a ball flickered behind my eyes. “Theo, I need to talk to you about what I saw.”

Theo and my mum came closer.

“Have you told him all about this, Gilly-Bean?” my mum asked, nervously. I saw fear in her eyes. She didn’t want her daughter stigmatised by mental illness.

“I’ve told him everything I can, Mum. This is really important. I saw Amelia Carr, one of our year eleven girls being beaten viciously and relentlessly by her stepdad. She’s already on the child protection register due to neglect and there is suspected abuse. He was punching her, as hard as he could, and she was curled up in a ball on the floor…” I started to sob, uncontrollably. Theo checked his watch.

“School will be finished, but I can get hold of Morgan if you want me to and see if she knows what to do.”

“Should we not phone the police?” I asked, desperately.

“Oh, Gilly-Bean! Just because
we
believe you doesn’t mean the police will and if it hasn’t happened yet, you could get in trouble for wasting police time,” my mum explained. I knew she was talking sense.

“My mobile phone is in my handbag. Do I have it?” I asked, not remembering whether it had come to the hospital with me or stayed in school. My mum held it up for me to see. “Get the phone out and ring Morgan. She’ll have to go over or…something.” Theo got the phone and scurried off the ward to make the call. My mum clutched my hand and shook her head, tutting.

“My poor baby, what you have to endure . . . I’m so sorry.”

I sat up and cuddled her. “It doesn’t matter as long as Amelia is ok, Mum. If what I saw has already happened, she’s going to be in a bad way.”

“Try not to worry about it. I know, I know, it’s easier said than done, but just because you’ve seen it doesn’t make it your responsibility. There are hundreds of awful atrocities that take place every single day and not one of them is your fault.”