All Sorts of Possible (16 page)

Mason picked up the leather briefcase, which stood beside Frank, and scowled as he judged its weight.

‘How light?’

‘A couple of hundred quid,’ said Jiff.

‘He’s just a chancer, boss,’ said Frank. ‘Thought he’d won the lottery when he found it.’

‘Not stupid though,’ said Mason. ‘Didn’t blow it all in one go. Or else we would have heard about that.’ He pursed his lips. Then trod slowly down on the
man’s broken wrist, making him cry out.

‘I’ll go easy on you, Mr Gates. You’ve had a bad day already by the looks of things. Ten per cent interest. Daily. That’s what you owe me now. It’s my money, you
see.’

He picked up a chair and positioned it squarely in the centre of the room and sat down. He flicked open the locks on the briefcase and stared at the money. Thin bricks of notes, each one with a
yellow rubber band around it. There were two spaces.

He felt underneath the money and found a slim black box. He flicked the small silver switch in its top right corner back and forth and then gave it a shake and listened to something
rattling.

‘Did you break the transponder?’

The man lying on the floor gurgled something. Coughed. Spat a string of blood. And then he shook his head because even such a small word seemed to be beyond him.

‘No, I expect you didn’t,’ said Mason, looking round the room. He lobbed the broken transponder at Frank. ‘Buy British next time.’

Snapping the briefcase shut, he smiled to himself as he drummed his fingers on the leather top. When he looked up at Daniel and Rosie, he stared at them for some time. Neither of them knew where
to look. Not at Mason. Or at the man gasping on the carpet or the gloved black hands of Frank and Jiff standing still as rocks.

‘You see what I can do when people disappoint me?’ said Mason.

Daniel nodded slowly. So did Rosie.

‘Well then,’ said Mason. He stood up and plucked a small brown teddy bear off a shelf with a red ribbon around its neck on which a tiny bell was attached and shook it close to his
ear. When he lobbed it at Rosie, the bell rattled when she caught it. ‘A memento. So neither of you forget.’

When they came back out into the alley where Mason’s BMW was parked, there was no longer any evening sun because a mist was curdling in the street, blocking out the sky
and slowly deleting the buildings around them.

In the car, Mason laughed and joked with Frank and Jiff who were sitting in the front seats. The BMW smelt of white leather and cologne and beer because Mason was sipping from a bottle of Bud,
which frothed against the glass every time he took a sip.

Daniel let down the window and smelt the mist and the wind funnelling down the street. He pushed his head out until all the men’s voices had disappeared in the roar so he could be alone
with his thoughts . . .

. . . the hope he had for what he and Rosie might be able to do to help his father . . .

. . . the man lying on the floor in the bedsit . . .

. . . Lawson.

He thought he heard Rosie’s voice above the drone of the wind and looked back. But she was facing straight ahead, beside him, with her eyes closed. She looked older, as
if time had played a trick on his memory of her. When she opened her eyes, Daniel smiled, but her lips stayed fixed, like two pink rods. So he took her hand in his and held it.

Mason popped the lid off two more bottles of Bud and thrust one under Daniel’s nose and waggled it, making the beer fizz white as it rose in the neck.

‘You’re one of the gang now.’

He held the bottle out until Daniel grabbed hold and took a fizzy swig and all three men cheered. And then Mason made Rosie drink from the other one too.

When they pulled up, they could barely see Rosie’s house through the mist. But they could all tell it was big and white, with a gravel drive that set it back from the
road.

‘Looks nice,’ said Mason. ‘What does your dad do?’

‘He’s a doctor,’ she said quietly.

Mason nodded as he thought about that. Gave her a nudge with one of his big arms. ‘But not a cancer doctor?’ And he laughed out loud like it was the punchline to a joke.

Rosie kept blinking at him, something ticking in her jaw, until she looked away, tucking a curl of hair behind her ear.

Mason grinned. ‘I said you’d learn to be scared of me, Rosie, didn’t I? Didn’t I say that, boys?’ Frank and Jiff grunted and nodded. ‘Maybe I’m a
psychic too. Come to think of it . . .’ Mason tapped his great bald head, his brow furrowed, then raised his hands like some TV evangelist about to preach a great truth. ‘Yes, I can see
it. I can see the future for both of you. Now you’ve found my money, you’re going to get me what I
really
want. The antique flask that Lawson promised he was going to track
down. And you’re both coming with me tomorrow to look for it.’

‘I can’t,’ mumbled Rosie.

Mason grunted. He plucked the brown teddy bear from Rosie’s lap and waggled it, making the bell around its neck jingle.

But Rosie shook her head. ‘I have my first chemotherapy treatment tomorrow.’

‘What time?’

‘All day. They have to do blood tests and then they make up the drugs the same day, which takes time, and then I’m given the infusion. It’s non-negotiable.’

Mason cricked his neck. Sighed. Looked at the teddy bear and shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think she’d lie. Naughty bear for thinking such a thing.’ He cuffed the
teddy’s head. ‘You wouldn’t lie, Rosie, would you? Not now we have an understanding?’

He paused when Rosie reached across Daniel and clicked open the door. Quickly, she took Daniel’s head in her hands and kissed him. He tasted apricots and peppermint. Her hair smelt of
ginger. When she hugged him hard, she whispered something quietly so no one else would hear.

‘Ten o’clock tomorrow with your dad.’

All four of them watched her blurring at the edges as the mist rolled round her until she was drifting towards the house like a ghost.

Mason pinged his electric window down and shouted, ‘You forgot teddy!’ They heard the front door slam shut. ‘They’re touchy, these psychic types,’ said Mason as he
rolled the window up. ‘Or maybe it’s just the tumour.’ He patted Frank’s shoulder and they pulled out on to the road, and drove through the mist in silence until they pulled
up in Daniel’s street.

‘She in, do you think?’ asked Mason.

‘Who?’ Daniel felt something in his throat and couldn’t swallow it down.

‘Your aunt.’

Daniel looked at his feet and tried to think of something else.

‘Maybe.’

‘I should meet her.’

‘Not sure you’d want to.’

‘Beat your balls, does she?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well then.’ And Mason drummed his fingers on the leather seat beside him as if it helped him to think. Eventually, he produced a mobile phone from the inside of his jacket pocket.
‘Give me a shout if you need anything. I’m under M. For Mason.’

‘I’m not sure I will.’

But Mason kept the mobile in his palm, and Daniel took it and put it in his pocket.

‘Anything,’ repeated Mason. ‘Remember, you’re one of us now.’ And Frank and Jiff in the front seats growled as if in agreement. ‘Keep the phone with
you,’ said Mason as Daniel opened the door and got out of the car. ‘I’ll be in touch about the flask.’ And then he leant across and slammed the door shut and the BMW drove
away into the mist.

As Daniel walked in the direction of his house, he heard the shriek of an animal. A metal bin crashed to the pavement and a lid rolled somewhere like a giant penny and clattered to a stop. In
the silence afterwards, Daniel waited in the mist, his breath soundless and white, wondering what was happening until a fox appeared suddenly on the pavement in front of him, its damp fur
bejewelled and the white of its throat roughed with the damp.

The creature sniffed the air and blinked and then trotted away, its shoulders like pistons under its pelt. Its brush twitched before it disappeared into the mist as if adding the finishing
touches to a brand-new world in which everything had been painted out except for Daniel himself.

When Daniel’s aunt woke in the middle of the night, she wondered why until she heard Daniel crying out again, his muffled voice coming through the walls. She got up and
padded out of her room and down the landing and opened his bedroom door.

Daniel was asleep, curled up like a dormouse in his duvet. His aunt listened when he started crying out again, burbling words and names she did not know, and then, before she knew what she was
doing, she went and crouched beside him and started stroking his hair, shushing him.

When he moved sharply in his sleep, the duvet swilling like sea foam around him, her hand froze. Then, without warning, his eyes fluttered open and he blinked up at her.

‘Mum?’ His voice was full of sleep and his eyes were dreamy.

‘Yes,’ she whispered back immediately before she knew what she was saying, instantly regretting it, and holding her breath to see what he might say when he realized it was not a
dream. But all he did was blink and nod and seem to decide through some sleepy mechanics of his brain to close his eyes and settle seamlessly into sleep again. She watched him for some time, as if
guarding him from the world, listening to him breathing peacefully, the nightmares inside him gone.

After closing the door, she stood on the landing until her hands had stopped shaking in the dim orangey light coming from the street lights outside. When she felt ready, she went downstairs and
picked up the photograph of her twin sister off the dresser in the hallway.

‘You don’t need to worry,’ she said. ‘I’ll look after him, I promise. I’ll do the best I can, just as if he was Michael. I won’t let you down. Either of
you. I won’t.’

Bennett checked his watch to stop his foot tapping. It was 10.05. He was about to ask Daniel if he had remembered to tell the ward staff that Rosie was coming when the door
opened and she stood there, blinking at them. She looked so willowy and tall, Bennett expected her to sway back and forth in the draught from the door as it shut behind her.

‘It took me a while to get rid of Mum,’ she said. ‘I sent her off shopping.’ She held up a bleeper. ‘They’re going to let me know when they want me back for
my chemo so we’ve got a little bit of time.’

Bennett stood up and introduced himself and offered her his chair and then leant against the wall with his arms folded.

‘I don’t want to get in the way,’ he said. ‘I’m just here in case it doesn’t work, for moral support.’ And he raised a thumb at Daniel who nodded
back.

Rosie sat herself down beside Daniel and looked at the man lying in front of her. ‘He looks so calm.’

‘All the sedatives are out of his system,’ said Daniel. ‘That’s what the nursing staff told us. He’s definitely in his own coma now.’

‘We’re going to do everything we can,’ said Rosie. ‘We’re going to help your dad. We’re going to find out what we can really do with these gifts of
ours.’

Daniel watched her sit up straight in her chair as if preparing herself for some testing question. ‘What happens to you when we make the fit?’ he asked. ‘What do you
see?’

‘A light,’ she said, staring at Daniel’s father. ‘I see a ball of bright white light inside me. And I know it’s there to help with whatever I’m trying to do.
It’s there like some battery for me to draw on. It’s strange and yesterday is the first time I’ve felt it. It’s when I’m with you, Daniel. It’s only there when
we make the fit.’

She took hold of Daniel’s father’s limp hand and closed her eyes. A moment later, Daniel felt little golden sparks flitting in his chest. ‘Can you see that ball of bright
light?’ he asked anxiously. ‘Is it there?’

‘Yes,’ said Rosie. ‘It’s right inside me, just like it was yesterday.’

Daniel felt the golden warmth in his chest increasing as Rosie made the fit between them stronger.

‘I can feel how much your father loves you,’ she whispered. ‘I can sense it through all the things you’ve done together. All his memories are there inside him. His whole
life is there for me to see.’ She was smiling. ‘You’ve done so many things together. Oh, Daniel, he loves you so much.’

‘Can he hear us? Does he know we’re here?’ Daniel sat further forward on his chair and touched his father’s arm. ‘Dad, if you can hear us then let Rosie know;
please tell her so we know you’re there.’

Daniel’s chest was full of a golden heat now and he was beginning to sweat. Rosie’s white face was twitching and flickering as she made the fit stronger, trying to look deeper into
the man in the bed beside her.

‘He’s very hidden,’ she said. ‘I can’t find
him
, the thinking part of him, the dad that you know.’

‘Keep looking,’ said Daniel. ‘Please, Rosie. Please don’t stop. There’s got to be more than just memories inside him. There can’t just be the past. He’s
got to be there too.’

Rosie was flinching now and her arms were twitching. Her lips were trembling and peeling back to show her perfect white teeth. Little currents raced up and down the muscles of her throat.

Daniel put his hand to his chest when he felt the heat in it starting to become painful, just like it had done with Lawson. But when he saw his father’s face beginning to flicker he told
himself to ignore it.

‘You’re doing something, Rosie,’ he told her. ‘Something’s happening!’ Daniel heard Bennett’s voice muttering in astonishment behind him, but he was too
excited to turn round. His father’s whole body was twitching now and his mouth was moving as if the man was trying to speak. One of his eyelids rolled slowly back and Daniel ignored the pain
in his chest and leant over.

‘Dad! Dad! Can you see me? It’s Dan! Can you hear me?’

He heard one of the machines chiming a warning sound and he looked up at Rosie, her face shining with sweat. Before he could tell her to keep going, he felt the pain rising rapidly in his chest.
It was so harsh it took his breath away and for a moment it was impossible to speak.