Num8ers - By Rachel Ward Page 0,12
pick him up.” I reached up to the frame. “No, not the photo, Jem,” she said sharply, “the ashes, in that box, look.”
What the…?
Sure enough, the photo was standing next to a sturdy wooden box. I hesitated. “Go on. He won’t bite you.”
I moved a couple of ornaments farther to the side, and took hold of the box. It was surprisingly heavy — thick, smooth wood with a little metal plaque on the top: CYRIL DAWSON, DIED 12 JANUARY 1992, AGED 41 YEARS. I carried it carefully and put it on the pouf, next to the tray. Val leaned right over and smoothed her hand across the top of it.
“Everyone says it’s a terrible thing to go young, but he had a great life, a young man’s life. None of this”—she rested her hand on her back—“aches and pains, slowing down, everything heading south. No, he lived life to the full, lived like a lion, and went out like a light. Just like that.” She clicked her fingers. “It’s not a bad thing.” She put her hand back on the box, thumb stroking the brass plate. “Just that you miss them so much. The ones that go. You miss them.”
Spider moved from the doorway, where he’d been leaning, and put his arms around his nan. “This your way of cheering Jem up? Daft old cow.”
“Here, you, less of that.” Her hand shot up to give him a smack. He grabbed it before it made contact and gave her a kiss on the cheek. When he let go of her hand, it rested affectionately on his face for a second. “He’s not a bad lad, Jem. Not a bad lad. Put your granddad back then, son.”
“Val,” I said, speaking before I’d really thought about it, “what sort of aura did he — Cyril — have?”
Her face registered surprise, and then she smiled, displaying a fine set of crooked, orange teeth. “You know, I’d love to know that myself. But I only started seeing them after he’d gone, love. The grief and that, I suppose it opened up my spiritual side. Never saw them before.”
Then, quick as a flash, her voice low and intimate, “What do you see, Jem?” I recoiled back into the sofa. “What do you see? I know you do. We’re the same, Jem. We know what it’s like to lose someone.”
She’d caught me with my guard down. I wanted so much to tell her. I had an urge to hold her bony hands in mine, feel her power. I knew that she would believe me. I could share this thing, unburden some of the loneliness it had brought me. I was teetering on the brink — she was drawing me to her. It was going to happen….
“Nan, if you do this to people I bring here, I’ll never have any mates. For God’s sake, leave her alone.” Spider’s voice cut through the energy lines between us like a sword. Released, I jumped up. “I wanna show you my new sound system, man. Come on, it’ll blow you away.” He led me up to his bedroom.
I glanced behind me as I went out of the sitting room into the hallway. Val was still looking at me, eyes focused on me even as she scrabbled in the pack and then lit another cigarette.
CHAPTER SIX
The music was throbbing through the stairwell. I picked my way over legs and bodies. People hardly noticed me threading my way through: They were getting loaded, getting into the beat, getting into each other.
I was on the lookout for Spider. “Baz is having a party, Saturday night,” he’d said, the day after the tramp died. We were down by the canal again, chucking stones at a can. “I’m in. Naturally. Come along, any time after ten. Third floor, Nightingale House.”
I didn’t know what to say. He said it so casually, but a party on a Saturday night sounded suspiciously like a date, and there was no way I was getting into all that boy-girl stuff. I’d just about got my head around having somebody to hang out with, but it was a big step to anything more. Anyway, not that I’d ever say it, but it would have to be someone decent. If I’d ever thought about it, which I rarely did, I pictured someone good-looking — not ten out of ten, maybe, but at least an eight. Not someone like Spider — long, lanky, twitchy, with a major personal cleanliness problem. And a couple of