Ferryman (2 page)

She wanted to take him, but if her dad saw Egbert he’d think she was a baby. She hugged him to her chest, undecided. Then she put him on the bed. She drew back her hand and looked at him. He seemed to stare back, looking unwanted and abandoned. Instantly feeling guilty, Dylan grabbed him and placed him gently on top of her clothes. She zipped up the bag, then half unzipped it and chucked him back out. This time he fell face down and couldn’t gaze forlornly at her with his one accusing eye. She zipped up the bag again and walked determinedly out of the room. Egbert lay discarded on the middle of the bed. Exactly twenty seconds later, she dashed back in and grabbed him.

“Sorry, Egbert,” she whispered, kissing him quickly before stuffing him unceremoniously into the bag as she ran back out of the door.

If she hurried she might be able to catch the earlier train and surprise her dad. This thought carried her down the stairs and along the street. There was a café en route to the train station; maybe she could nip in, grab a burger to sustain her till dinner. Dylan picked up the pace, mouth already watering in anticipation, but as she passed the high metal gates of the park, something stopped her dead. She stared through the bars at the melee of greenery, not quite sure what she was looking at.

Déjà vu.

She squinted, trying to work out what had triggered the feeling. A glimpse of tousled blond peaked out beneath the branches of a wide oak. For a second, Dylan had a flash of that same halo of hair, wrapped round a face, featureless but for eyes of shocking cobalt blue. The dream.

She sucked in a breath, her pulse suddenly pounding, but a cackle of boyish laughter shattered the illusion. As she watched, the head turned to reveal a smirking mouth pouting out a stream of smoke, cigarette dangling from his lips. MacMillan, with his pals. Dylan wrinkled her nose in disgust and stepped back before he could see her.

Shaking her head to chase the last tendrils of the dream away, she crossed the road, eyes fixed on the hand-painted sign above the greasy-spoon café.

“
I
t’s outrageous. Scandalous.” The stranger had clearly decided that, as reading was out, he would concentrate on the next best thing: complaining. Dylan glanced at him dubiously. She did not really want to get into a discussion with this
tweed-covered
, middle-aged man and end up being drawn into awkward conversation all the way to Aberdeen. She shrugged, a gesture almost lost under her heavy parka.

He carried on, unfazed by her lack of enthusiasm. “I mean, the prices they’re charging, you’d think they could be on time. But oh no. Outrageous. I’ve been waiting here for twenty minutes, and you know when it comes in there won’t be a seat to be had. Terrible service.”

Dylan looked around. Though a cross-section of society loitered under the various points of shelter, the platform was not so crowded that she could just melt away and disappear.

The tweed man turned to look at her. “Don’t you think?”

Forced into a direct response, Dylan tried to be as
non-committal
as possible. “Mmmm.”

He seemed to take this as an invitation to continue the diatribe. “Better when it was National Rail. Knew where you were with them. Good, honest men working the trains then. It’s all gone downhill now. Run by a bunch of charlatans. Outrageous.”

Where
is
the train, Dylan thought, desperate to be relieved of this social charade. And there it was, rolling in like a knight in rusting armour. One glimmer of hope in a day full of embarrassment and torment.

She reached down for the rucksack at her feet. It was faded and showing signs of wear and tear, like most things she owned. As she took both handles in her hand and heaved the heavy bag off the ground and over her shoulder, a faint ripping sound made her grimace. It would be in keeping with the pattern of today for the seam to tear open and a phantom wind to gust up and whisk her underwear across the station. Mercifully it held, and Dylan shuffled forward with the rest of the weary passengers towards the train as it coasted slowly to a standstill. It stopped with a hiss of hydraulics, leaving her equidistant between two sets of doors. She quickly eyed the direction in which the tweed stranger was headed and dashed, as fast as she could under her burden, towards the other door.

Once in the carriage she glanced left and right, trying to identify the crazies – drunks, weirdos, people who wanted to tell you their life stories (which often involved odd alien abductions) and philosophise with you on the meaning of life and other theories. These people seemed inexplicably drawn to her when she took public transport, and she was anxious to avoid them today when she had so many other things on her mind. Her surveillance picked out the free seats and it did not take long to work out why these remained open in the packed train. A mother with her screaming baby, its red face puckered up and angry, sat at one end with a pram and several bags filled with everything a baby could possibly need scattered in dissaray around them. On the other side of the aisle, a few seats down, there was a double-seater opposite a pair of drunken teenagers in blue Rangers’ tops. They were drinking from a bottle of what looked suspiciously like Buckfast hidden inexpertly in a paper bag, and singing loudly and very out of tune.

The only other option was in the middle of the carriage, squashed in beside a large woman with an array of shopping bags, which she had arranged on the seat beside and across from her in a manner that made it blatantly clear that she did not welcome company. However, glaring or not, she was the most appealing option.

“Excuse me,” Dylan muttered, shuffling over to her.

The woman sighed loudly, her displeasure obvious, but she moved the bags nonetheless and Dylan, after shrugging out of her jacket and hauling it and her bag up onto the overhead shelf, settled herself down. A quick root around in her bag on the platform, as she waited her turn to enter the train, had produced her MP3 player and some headphones. Sticking them roughly in her ears, she closed her eyes and turned the volume up high, letting the heavy drumbeats of her favourite indie rock band drown out the world around her. She imagined the bag lady glaring at her and her awful music, and the image made her smile. Too quiet for Dylan to hear, the train groaned and strained, picking up speed as it raced on towards Aberdeen.

Keeping her eyes closed, she thought about the coming weekend. Nerves and excitement fought for control of the butterflies in her stomach as she contemplated stepping off the train and searching out the man who was all but a stranger to her. It had taken months of persuasion and wheedling for Joan to relinquish the phone number of one James Miller, her father. Dylan remembered how her hand had shaken as she’d dialled, hung up, dialled again, and then hung up. What if he didn’t want to talk to her? What if he had his own family now? What if, worst of all, he turned out to be a huge disappointment? A drunk or a criminal? Her mother had been unable to give her any more details. They didn’t talk, ever. He’d left when she’d asked and never bothered either of them again, also like she’d asked. Dylan had been five years old at the time, and in the decade that had passed his face had become less than a memory.

After two days of inner turmoil, Dylan had called in the middle of the day, finding a quiet spot in the school playground that wasn’t already claimed by the smokers, amorous couples or gangs. Her hope was that he’d be at work and no one would answer. It worked. After six heart-stopping rings, the answer machine beeped and she suddenly realised that she hadn’t thought about what she was going to say. Panicking, she left a hesitant, rambling message.

“Hi, this is for James Miller. It’s Dylan. Your daughter.” What else to say? “I, um… I got your number from Mum. I mean, Joan. I thought, maybe, we could meet up, maybe. And talk. If you want to.” Breathe. “This is my number…”

As soon as she’d hung up, she’d cringed. What an idiot! She couldn’t believe that she hadn’t planned a message. She’d sounded like a bumbling moron. Well, there was nothing to do now but wait. And she had waited. All afternoon she felt sick to her stomach. Biology and English passed in a blur. At home she’d numbly watched
Ready, Steady, Cook
and the news, not even changing channel when the stupid soaps came on. What if he didn’t call? Would he have listened to the message yet? What if he never got the message? Dylan had imagined a female hand lifting the receiver and listening, then slowly pressing a painted red fingernail on the delete button. The image had made her look over at the cordless phone beside her and chew her bottom lip, indecisively. Too scared to phone again, she’d had no choice but to cross her fingers and stay within easy reach of her mobile.

It took two days, but he did call. At four o’clock, just as she was sloshing home through yet another rainy day of school with wet socks and increasingly wet shoulders, her phone vibrated in her pocket and began chirping out the piano chords of the
Once Upon a Time
theme tune. This was it. Her heart seemed to stop beating as she yanked the phone out of her pocket. A quick glance at the caller ID confirmed it: although it wasn’t a number she recognised, it was the Aberdeen area code. Sliding her thumb up the glass screen, she pressed it to her ear.

“Hello?” Her voice sounded rough and strangled. She tried to clear her throat quietly.

“Dylan? Dylan, this is James. Miller. I mean, your dad.”

Silence. Say something Dylan, she thought. Say something, Dad. The silence hung between them, but in the stress of the moment it sounded like screaming.

“Listen.” His voice broke through it, melted it away. “I’m so glad you called. I’ve wanted to get in touch with you for so long. We’ve got a lot to catch up on.”

Dylan closed her eyes and smiled. She took a deep breath and started to speak.

It had been so easy after that. Talking to him felt very comfortable, like she’d known him for ever. They’d talked until Dylan’s mobile ran out of charge. He wanted to know everything about her, her school, hobbies, who she hung out with, what movies were her favourites and what books she liked to read. Boys – though there wasn’t much to say there, not from the selection on offer at Kaithshall. In return, he told her about his life in Aberdeen, where he lived with Anna, his dog. No wife, no kids. No complications. And he wanted her to visit.

That had been exactly one week ago. For seven days Dylan had been wrestling with her nerves and excitement about meeting him, and trying not to fight with Joan, who made no secret of the fact that she disapproved of Dylan trying to connect with her father. She’d no one to talk to about it except snatched MSN conversations with Katie whenever her friend’s crazy mother gave her five minutes alone. They’d managed to sneak one such chat last night. Katie’s mother had done a
late-night
shopping run – she hated to go when there would be lots of people around – and Katie had managed to convince her that she needed to go to bed early for school. Dylan had received her text and two minutes later they’d been connected.

Dylan had hit the send button and waited. Her heart had been racing ridiculously. She’d wanted Katie to say something nice; wanted someone to tell her that she was doing the right thing. There’d been a pause that seemed to last for ever before the little box had popped up:
Katie’s writing
.

A cautious response. Her friend hadn’t wanted to stick her foot in it.

The reply had come through instantly.

Dylan had laughed out loud, then clamped her hand over her mouth. Joan would go mental if she knew she was on the computer this late. Typical Katie, she always saw straight through her pretence.

Dylan held that very train ticket in her hand right now. She was supposed to text her dad to let him know she was on her way. She’d been impressed that he could text; Joan couldn’t even make a call on her mobile. When she’d broken down once she’d had to ask a stranger to show her how to contact the RAC.

Digging into her pocket, which was difficult being surrounded by the glaring woman’s bags, Dylan pulled out her phone. She opened up a new text and began to type.

Just as she hit the send button, the window beside her went black. Fabulous, she thought, a tunnel. The mobile – an expensive Christmas gift that Joan had paid for through several extra shifts at work – scrolled one word across the screen:
Sending
. It rolled through three times before the little phone emitted a double beep:
Message failed.

“Dammit,” Dylan muttered. Irrationally she tried holding the phone up above her head, knowing that it was useless. They were still in the tunnel; no signal was going to get through that much rock. She was poised like that, arm in the air like a mini Statue of Liberty, when it happened. Light vanished, sound exploded, and the world ended.