Thin Air (27 page)

Jay shrugged. ‘I just wanted to
see whether I could.’

‘You can’t mean that,’ Terry
answered, ‘otherwise you wouldn’t be here now.’

Jay smiled. ‘Perhaps. Can people
leave here?’

Terry stuck out his lower lip
thoughtfully. ‘Don’t really know.’ He paused, then said, I’m not
sure how big ‘here’ is. I did used to wonder about it, because
Lestholme never seems crowded.’

‘When did you stop
wondering?’

Terry laughed, but there was a
strained undercurrent to it. ‘The day I did what you did.’

‘How did you get here?’ Jay
asked him.

‘My life, everything I was,
everything I had, was all gone.’ He glanced at her rather sharply.
‘People don’t ask here. It’s up to us to tell. You’re a journalist,
aren’t you?’

Jay wondered how best to handle
this. ‘Well, kind of, but...’

Terry laughed. ‘Even some of you
end up here. That’s rich!’

He did not like the press. He
blamed them for the breakdown of his marriage, the disintegration
of his life.

‘But didn’t you have
responsibility, too?’ Jay asked carefully, aware of feeling
defensive. ‘You can’t blame other people for all of it,
surely?’

‘It didn’t help,’ he said.

Jay thought momentarily of Dex,
of the stories that ran in the music press, week after week, when
he was on tour; the reports that relished his bad behaviour.
We
all do things we regret occasionally
, she thought,
especially when we’re drunk, and the next day we might feel
embarrassed about it, but the memory fades after a while. What must
it feel like to know that you won’t be allowed to forget it, that
everyone will be reading about your indiscretions a few days later,
making judgements, voicing their own opinions? Failures and
weaknesses would be emblazoned in headlines, fixed in the minds of
those who read them.

‘That’s exactly what it’s like,’
Terry said, and Jay realised she must have been thinking aloud.

‘Are you happy now?’ Jay
asked.

He nodded. ‘It’s more than a
word, or a passing pleasure. I
am
happiness.’ They had
reached his cottage gate. ‘Call in sometime,’ he said.

‘Thanks.’

‘But no more talk like today,
OK?’

‘Yeah. Sorry.’

He smiled in reply and sauntered
up to his open front door.

Jay carried on into Lestholme
and met Jem coming out of one of the village shops. She was sucking
a lollipop and carried an old school satchel over her shoulder. ‘Hi
Jay, I knew you’d come by. I was waiting for you.’

‘I’ve been for a walk,’ Jay
said.

‘I know. Fancy another?’

Jay sensed immediately that Jem
had something to say, and assumed this would be associated with
Dex. She agreed readily.

‘Let’s climb the hill,’ Jem
said. ‘You’ve never seen it. Ida’s packed me some sandwiches.’ She
patted her satchel. ‘We can have a picnic up there.’

‘Sounds great,’ said Jay. ‘Lead
on.’

The hill was surrounded by
ancient forest, thick with lush bracken, threaded by narrow tracks.
Its smell was powerful, almost overwhelming; a composite of leaf
and mould and flowers. The path they followed was steep, covered in
loose stones. Sometimes Jay had to grasp tufts of bright green
grass at the side of the track to keep her footing. Beside them, a
narrow stream tumbled down the hill-side, splashing from pool to
pool in a series of rocky waterfalls. Ferns hung over the water
and, in places where sunlight came down through the trees, the air
was iridescent with spray. Jay realised how out of condition she
was. Jem climbed steadily ahead, her bare legs streaked with
bramble scratches, her sure feet encased in scuffed leather
sandals.

Eventually they emerged from the
woods onto the crown of the hill, which was blanketed in purple
heather and gorse bushes in flower. Elderberry trees, laden with
heavy white blooms, dipped their branches towards the ground. The
air was full of the hum of bees and the flash of quick insects.
There were ruins on the hill, now covered in dog rose. Jem said
that once a house had stood there. She and Jay sat down on the warm
stones of the ruins and ate their picnic. Jay could see the ghost
of a garden in the profusion of bushes and flowers. Wild strains
had strangled many of the cultivated plants, but tall, unruly rose
trees still stood, gnarled and wild, draped in purple clematis. And
some distance away, looking out over the valley, stood the soaring
monument. The figure on its summit had its back to them, its arms
outflung.

‘You can climb up it,’ Jem said,
noticing Jay’s study of the ancient stone. ‘There are steps inside.
But it’s dangerous at the top. There’s no safety rail or
anything.’

Jay shuddered, imagining the
beating of the wind at the head of the monument, how a person could
spread-eagle themselves against the statue’s stony flank, and be
pressed against it or plucked away and flung to their death below.
‘I bet you come here a lot,’ she said. ‘It’s a lovely spot.’

‘Yes, I like it,’ Jem said.

They munched in silence for a
while, then Jay said, ‘Do you have any friends your own age?’

Jem frowned at her, then smiled.
‘My own age? I have friends. We’re all friends, but I like to come
here alone.’

‘Then I’m honoured, am I?’

‘I thought you might like it
too.’ She paused. ‘I have noticed your
difference
, Jay.’

‘Difference?’ Jay bit into a
sandwich carefully. She would not push Jem because she’d already
learned how flighty the villagers could be, how the wrong question
could send them off at a tangent into their pasts.

‘Yes. You are in the present,
very much so.’

‘Hmm. Do you think you’re the
same?’

Jem nodded, her face grave.
‘Yes. I think it’s because I didn’t give everything up, and neither
have you.’

Jay sensed she must be careful.
‘I’m not sure I understand.’

Jem took an apple out of the
satchel and bit into it, talking with her mouth full. ‘People here
don’t want to question things, but I did - like you do.’

Jay held the girl’s gaze with
her own. ‘I think it’s good to question things. It’s how we expand
our knowledge.’

‘I know, but it’s not quite the
same here. Part of coming to Lestholme means letting go of the
questions and simply ‘being’.’

Jay made sure she asked no
questions, but just offered suppositions. ‘The people here were
damaged. They were all running away.’

‘They are the missing,’ Jem
said. ‘Except that for many of them, no-one has missed them at
all.’

Jay sighed. ‘Well, I guess it’s
time I told you my story, if you want to hear it.’

Jem touched her arm. ‘Of
course.’

Had all those things really
happened to her? Jay felt removed from it now. Admittedly, her
story was far less traumatic than the majority of those she’d heard
in Lestholme, but now, speaking it aloud, her former life seemed so
bleak and empty. Jem listened without interrupting, her brow
furrowed.

‘I felt I’d lost everything,’
Jay said in conclusion. ‘So I drove out into the countryside,
looking for Dex. Or at least I thought I was. It was winter time. I
left my car and walked into a field, then it all gets muzzy.
Somehow I walked into summertime, into Lestholme, and met you in
the church. I don’t understand it, Jem. How long had I walked, or
had I been somewhere else for a while? You can appreciate why I
thought I might be dead and this was some kind of after-life.’ She
risked a laugh. ‘I still wonder whether I’m dreaming all this.’

‘It’s not any of that,’ Jem
replied. ‘At least, I don’t think so. But how can we tell?’

Jay told Jem about her meeting
with Terry Mortendale earlier, and now she had to start asking
questions. ‘
Does
anyone ever leave here, go back?’

Jem contemplated this for a
moment, then said, ‘I think they must do - or else they go
somewhere else - otherwise Lestholme would be a city, not a
village.’

‘That’s what Terry implied. Have
you ever seen people go?’

Jem shook her head. ‘No. This is
a different life. You have to accept that things don’t happen the
same way as outside.’

‘But how did we
get
here,
Jem? Who runs the mysterious bus - which incidentally I’ve never
seen - that brings some people to Lestholme?’

‘People say it’s God’s bus.’

Jay laughed. ‘Some fiery
chariot!’ She sighed. ‘Come on, Jem, there has to be a rational
explanation.’ She paused. ‘Do you want to stay here forever?’

Jem wrinkled up her nose. ‘It’s
not a case of wanting or not wanting, it simply is. I used to think
about it, and how it must have involved a choice at some stage, but
I must have forgotten that moment. There’s nothing outside that
calls to me. I’m here, and this is everything.’

‘Is it happiness?’

‘I’m not sure that exists for me
anymore. I’m not unhappy.’ Jem rested her cheek on her raised
knees, her skinny arms clasped around her shins. ‘Days pass, and
sometimes I can’t remember them. I come up here to think, and it’s
always the same.’

‘You seem older than you look,’
Jay said. ‘You must think a lot.’

‘I have no age,’ Jem answered.
‘None of us have. Time is different here.’

Jay laughed uneasily, feeling
the firm contours of her reality beginning to wobble again. ‘This
must be a dream!’

‘I had the same thoughts as you
once.’ Jem twisted her mouth to one side, frowning. ‘People like to
talk about the things that happened to them, but I don’t. That’s
why I’m different. And you, you don’t have the same kind of thing,
at least I don’t think so. When I found you in the church, you were
a ray of light, a mind that had come to me. If this is a dream,
maybe I conjured you up.’

‘You were lonely? You wanted to
talk?’

‘Yes, that might be it.’ She
looked Jay directly in the eyes. ‘When I lived in the outside, I
saw something, something awful.. It happened to my mother and
little brother. That’s why I’m here.’

‘God, Jem...’ Jay reached out
and took one of Jem’s hands in her own.

Jem returned the pressure. ‘It’s
OK. I want to tell you about it. A man came into our house one
morning. Broke in. I remember it was a beautiful day. I was
upstairs, and I heard my mother yell out. When I came down, she was
dying, bleeding on the floor, all stabbed. He was just a black
shape, formless almost. The strange thing was, I wasn’t scared. I
didn’t feel anything. I just stared at him, and to this day, I
can’t remember what he looked like. Maybe he wasn’t a man, but
something else. Surely a man couldn’t do what he did? It made no
sense. He didn’t know us. My brother – he was barely more than a
toddler - was screaming, in a terrible high-pitched, desperate way.
The man must have hated that sound.’ She paused, put her head in
her hands. ‘I can’t tell you how he killed little Ben. I
can’t.’

‘Ssh,’ Jay soothed. ‘You don’t
have to.’ She was crying, tears running freely down her face.

Jem raised her head. Her face
looked old, full of despair. ‘I ran outside, trying to scream, but
only this weird, thin sound would come out, like in a nightmare. He
must have come out behind me, hit me with something. But he was on
his way really, by then. He just sat down in the middle of the
road, apparently, and started honking like a pig or something.
People came pretty quickly. I’d have been dead probably if they
hadn’t.’

Jay felt sick. A story like that
didn’t belong in this golden world of perpetual summer. But of
course, Jem’s experience, and everyone else’s here, were part of
what made Lestholme. They were its core of darkness. ‘Jem,
that’s... oh God, there are no words to say what it is.’

Jem made a visible effort to
control herself. ‘I know. I survived, and people wanted to know me
because of it. It was very strange. For a long time, I was in the
papers, like Terry and the others. The stories said how brave I
was, what a wonderful person, but eventually all that interest
faded away and I was alone again with what had happened.’

‘And that’s when you came
here?’

‘I can’t remember properly. My
father had died a year or so before, and I ended up living with my
aunt, but I don’t think she knew how to deal with me. She wasn’t
unkind, but just constantly awkward and embarrassed. Too cheery, if
anything. Then there’d be days, whenever she looked at me, when
she’d set her face in this puppy-dog, sympathy expression. I hated
it.’

‘How long ago was this?’ Jay
asked tentatively.

‘I can’t say. I told you time is
different here.’

‘But roughly: a long time - like
years - or a short time?’

‘It feels like a long time,’ Jem
said. ‘But I haven’t changed.’

Jay stared at her. ‘Jem, are you
saying that time stops in Lestholme, that you’ve grown no
older?’

‘That’s what I’m saying.’ Her
head sank to her knees once more.

‘That can’t be.’

Jem didn’t answer.

For a few moments, the only
sound was that of the wind, then Jem raised her head from her knees
and gazed up at the monument, her profile looking like that of a
much older girl. ‘Did you ever wonder what happened to all those
people, the ones who were famous for a while? For just a short
time, everyone’s interested in them, but it doesn’t last. That
interest is like a big wave of energy that’s constantly moving,
seeking out new prey. And the people: sometimes, they are lost and
empty. Their lives have been changed, they have been picked up by
the wave and carried along in it for a while. The wave can be good
or bad. It didn’t hurt me as much as it hurt Father Bickery, even
though what happened to me was far worse than what happened to
him.’

Jay spoke softly. ‘What
is
this place, Jem? You know, don’t you?’

Jem stared at her for a few
moments, and Jay wondered whether she’d answer. ‘It’s somebody’s
conscience,’ she said at last.