Resurrectionists (36 page)

“They might understand. You don’t know.”

“I know. I know them. Part of me wants to run home and not be scared any more, but part of me is so afraid that if I do, things will return to normal and I’ll be miserable and unfulfilled for the rest of my life.”

She pushed her hair behind her ears. “This psychic thing is the only thing I’ve ever had that didn’t come from them. It’s
mine
. It’s not in the Fielding how-tolive guide. I’m desperate not to lose it.” Coincidentally, she felt exactly the same way about Sacha himself.

“Don’t be desperate. You’ll be a better psychic if you learn to relax,” Sacha said with an indulgent smile. “Do you want another coffee?”

She didn’t really – it was expensive and a little too strong. But she said yes anyway because Sacha was half out of his seat and on his way to the counter. He picked his way through the backpackers. One of the girls looked at him admiringly. Maisie broke a piece of crust off her caramel tart and popped it into her mouth. The dreams were getting to her. They insisted that she find out for sure how Sybill died, but she didn’t know where to start. She was hardly equipped for private detection, and she had a vague notion that the whole project might be misguided and . . . well, stupid.

Sacha returned shortly with two more cups. “So, you don’t think you’ll play cello any more when you go back to Australia?” he asked, moving the empty cups to the edge of the table and setting the fresh ones down.

“I don’t want to.”

“Why not? Just because you’re not passionate about it?” He edged into his seat.

“Yeah, that. And the people. I never really felt like I fitted in with the orchestra.”

“No?”

“No. I mean, they all expected me to be a genius or a snob because of who my parents are, but I’m neither. A lot of them are geniuses and snobs though. They’re either incredibly out of touch with the real world because their whole being is consumed with music, or they want to pretend they’re that way. There was this one girl, a violin player, who really pissed me off. She always used to say that she’d never seen a Hollywood movie, and she was really proud of that. It’s so boring. It’s so elitist. And I think a lot of them disliked me even before they met me, because they thought I only got the job because of my dad.”

“Are you sure you weren’t just being paranoid?”

Maisie shrugged. “Maybe. But I still felt bad about it. I can’t help the way I feel.”

“What will you do instead?”

“I don’t know. I’m desperate to stay out of the orchestra, but I bet that even as we speak my mum is making a deal with the management to get me back in. That’s going to be the hardest part, telling Mum to butt out of it.” She looked up, and noticed that he was staring past her shoulder and out the window. She guessed she’d bored him. “Did you ever have aspirations to do something different?” she asked carefully. He returned his attention to her, smiled and said deadpan, “No, working in a bakery is my life’s dream.”

She laughed out loud.

“With me it’s never been about career,” he

continued, more seriously. “It’s always been about people or places. I don’t really care what I do as long as I’m where I want to be, or with whom I want to be with. I like living across the road from the sea. I like Whitby, and I have friends nearby. It wouldn’t really matter what I did. I don’t need much money or fancy things like my dad does. Just enough to keep my van running and have a few drinks with the lads from time to time.”

“It sounds very uncomplicated.”

“Yeah, well life doesn’t have to be complicated.”

Maisie thought about this. It sounded good but she didn’t believe it.

“My dad’s coming home tomorrow night,”

Sacha said.

“Oh? So we have to leave?”

“I’m afraid so.”

The thought of returning to Solgreve made her fearful. She tried to analyse it, figure if it had anything to do with Adrian’s warning about the threatening phone call. But the fear seemed to be centred around the wood behind the cottage which she kept dreaming about.

“Maisie . . .” Sacha started, then trailed off as if it was too difficult to say what he had to say.

“What?” she asked.

“You know what you said about how I should get to know my dad?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve thought a lot about it and I’ve decided you’re right. Would you mind terribly if I stayed a couple more days to talk to him? It would mean you have to go home alone.”

Alone was the last thing she wanted to be on returning to Solgreve. And what if Sacha and his dad got on so well that he never came back? Who would teach her to be psychic? She couldn’t stand the thought of not seeing him again.

“Maisie?”

“Of course I don’t mind.”

“I’ll give you Chris’s address and you can pick up Tabby and my van so you can drive straight home.”

While the idea of driving a strange vehicle along strange highways was kind of scary, at least if she had his van he would have to come back for it, right?

“That will be fine.”

“Great. I’ll ring Chris beforehand so you’re expected. You’re a good sport, Maisie.”

She didn’t know how to respond, so she said nothing.

***

Maisie emerged from her bathroom and sat down cross-legged on the floor in front of the mirror to brush her hair. Going back to Solgreve tomorrow. Last few hours with Sacha. She put down the brush and stared at herself in the mirror. Hardly even recognised herself because she had dissected that face too many times: eyebrows, all wrong; mouth, too small; eyes, too dark; colouring, all the same. But all around her trembled the promise of seeing herself as desirable if only Sacha would look at her as if she were. He was probably asleep now, separated from her by two closed bedroom doors which would be easy enough to open. In less than two weeks she would have to leave England. Who knew how long he would stay with his father? Perhaps she should march out there right now, wake him up, tell him that she was his if he wanted her and damn the consequences. Damn the future, damn loyalty and all those other things that kept her suspended in one position, from where every other position looked more satisfying. She closed her eyes, thought about the way his top lip seemed to turn up a little in the middle, making it wide and flat. The thought of that tiny spot, less than a square centimetre of flesh, made her feel wild, desperate. As though all the answers to life beckoned there; if she could just touch it once with her own top lip, or her bottom lip, or even the tip of her smallest finger. This was a desire like lunacy. But she didn’t leave her room to seek out Sacha. And she wouldn’t, she knew that. She would return to Solgreve tomorrow, and then a week or so later she would return to Brisbane and her life would pick up again like an orchestra returning from a coffee break. Crescendos and decrescendos in place, movements following on from one another as they had already been written down, the notes carrying her inexorably to the final cadence. Adrian, expensive wedding, upper-middle-class suburbia, children with good teeth, obligatory European trips, teaching music in hushed rooms, illness perhaps, then death.

Thanks for coming.

Clutching Sacha’s hand-drawn map, Maisie walked up from York train station looking for the street where Sacha’s friend Chris lived. She hoped he was home. She hoped he wasn’t like Curtis. Leaving Sacha in London had been a wrench; as they waited on the platform at King’s Cross Station he had confessed he didn’t know when he’d be returning for his van, but he hoped it would be before she left the country. If not, she was to leave the van keys under a certain rock in the front garden for him. As well as she could, she hid the despair that the thought of never seeing him again awoke in her. When it was time for her to board the train he’d hugged her briefly, pressed his lips into her right cheek, and stood back to wave goodbye. As though it might be forever.

Maisie looked up and checked the house number. This was where Chris lived. She took the stairs slowly and knocked at flat number eight. Her next challenge was managing to get the van home without too much drama or embarrassment. She waited by the door and within thirty seconds a short woman with a blonde ponytail answered it.

“Hi,” said Maisie. “I’m looking for Chris.”

“I’m Chris. You must be Daisy.”

Okay, so Chris was a girl. No need to panic.

“Maisie,” Maisie corrected her. A grey cat and a white cat twined around the girl’s ankles. “I’m here for Tabby and Sacha’s van keys.”

“Sure,” Chris said. “Come in.”

Maisie followed her inside the tiny, but modern, flat. It smelled strongly of old cat litter and the heating was up too high. Tabby glanced up and wandered over at her own pace to say hello.

Chris was looking in a drawer for the keys. “So Sacha decided to stay in London with his father?” she asked. She said the “th” in father like a “v”.

“Yeah, apparently they don’t get on so well.”

“I know.”

She knew. Maisie looked around, wondering if she’d be staying long enough to remove her hat and gloves.

“Here they are,” Chris said, pulling out the keys and slamming the drawer with her hip. With a smile which Maisie suspected was one hundred percent false, Chris handed her the keys.

“Thanks.”

“You were expecting a man, weren’t you?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You were expecting a man to open the door. I saw you were surprised.”

“Well, Sacha only referred to you as his friend Chris, and I guess that’s a man’s name.”

“His
friend
?”

“Yes,” Maisie said slowly, wondering what she was implying.

“I’m his girlfriend.”

“Oh.”

“He didn’t tell you that?”

“No.”

“We’re on a break. You know, having a bit of time apart.”

“I see.” A vague nausea sat in her stomach. And anger. Why hadn’t Sacha told her? But then, why should he tell her? Chris was still looking at her, chin slightly raised as though in challenge.

“I’d better take the cat and go home,” Maisie said.

“If you want a good home for Tabby when you go back to Australia, I’ll gladly take her. I’ve already got two but I could look after three.” Pronounced “free”.

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Maisie bent over to pick up Tabby who squeaked in protest but didn’t try to run away.

“Do you want some help starting the van? It’s a temperamental old thing.”

Temperamental old “fing” or not, Maisie did not want this woman around her, demonstrating her intimate knowledge of Sacha and his possessions. “No, I’ll be fine. Thanks anyway.”

Downstairs, cooling off in the winter late afternoon, Maisie put Tabby in the van and got into the front to start the engine. Sacha had instructed her to let it warm up for a good five minutes. She did so, finding indicators, heating vents and windscreen wipers, and experimenting with levers to move the seat forward. She hadn’t driven a car with manual transmission in two years. She and Adrian shared a shiny Japanese coupe with an automatic gearbox and power steering. The drive back to Solgreve was going to be a trial. She checked the other side of Sacha’s map, where he had written

instructions for which entries and exits to take to get home, and memorised them as best she could. When she was sure all was okay, she checked Tabby in the back (even the cat looked nervous), put the car in gear and drove as smoothly as possible away from that awful Chris woman and her smug smile and mispronounced consonants. Wondering what Sacha ever saw in her. Maybe it was the unfamiliar car and the unfamiliar road; maybe it was the dark clouds building on the horizon, threatening rain; maybe it was the way the wind became gustier the closer she got to Solgreve. For some reason, anxiety began to drift around deep inside her on the last few kilometres home. She became aware of her own pulse in her throat, she couldn’t stop nibbling her fingernails, and she had a vague, jittery feeling. She took deep breaths to try to fight it, but as she took the last turn-off before Solgreve’s main street, she realised she was almost frantic with fear.

Something bad is going to happen.

This was unbearable. She wanted to turn the car around and drive straight to Heathrow. Instead, she drove down past the bus stop and the church and the cemetery and the ghostly remains of the abbey, took the right-hand turn into St Mary’s Lane, and pulled up outside the cottage. Killed the engine. She leaned for a moment on the steering wheel, looking at the front of the cottage. It looked the same as it always had: no broken windows, no pentagrams painted in pig’s blood, no axe-wielding shadows moving around inside. Situation normal. This anxiety was not presentiment. Tabby was already scratching at the door.

“Okay, cat. Let’s go in.”

She opened the back and retrieved her suitcase. Tabby scampered out and, within seconds, was mewing at the front door. Maisie followed the cat down the front path to the house and unlocked the door.

Almost as soon as the door swung inwards, she was overcome with acute dizziness. A sudden shift in her perception popped in her ears. She let go of her case and cried out. Hands to her temples, she gulped for air. She dropped to sit on the doorstep, her mind reeling. Every sound in the street and beyond – the sea, the wind, every branch moving on every tree – was screaming at her. Every colour’s brightness had been turned up, every scent on the air was acrid in her nostrils. And the horrible fear she had experienced indistinctly all the way home suddenly became an agonising black barb to her mind, the kind of terror one might feel on Judgement Day. Not just fear for her life, but fear for her eternal soul. She wondered for a split second whether she could live through this feeling. Then as fast as it had hit her it was gone again, but she was left with the impression that her sensations were somehow magnified. The paint under her

fingertips on the doorframe felt particularly smooth, the tickle of a strand of hair on her cheek particularly keen, the smell of the house behind her, musty from being locked up and unlived in for a week, particularly cloying. She knew, with certainty, that this had to be some kind of after-effect of all the psychic work she had done in London. She shakily rose to her feet and closed the door behind her, stepped gingerly into the lounge room afraid that the act of entering a new room may set the feeling off again. No, she was fine. The hammering of her heart had begun to slow. She forced herself to make a fire, practical steps one after another, willing herself to return to normal. In the kitchen, Tabby was headbutting the cupboard where her food was kept. Maisie fed her, then went through each room in the house, reassuring herself that she was safe, that the awful feeling wouldn’t come back again. She ended up in the laundry, peering out the back window, looking at the dark wood behind the garden. The wood she kept dreaming about. The sky was dimly overcast, but full darkness was still about an hour away.