Num8ers - By Rachel Ward Page 0,82

we haven’t. You don’t understand.”

“Then you’d better tell me.”

Faced with no alternative, I did. I told her about the numbers, like I’d told Spider, the day the London Eye was blown to bits.

She looked uneasy all the way through, fiddling with the foil food wrappers, and when I finished, she laughed, a really nervous little whinny.

“Come on, Jem. You don’t believe that, do you?”

“It’s not what I believe or not. It just is.”

She snorted and looked down at her fingers, restlessly squeezing and shaping the tinfoil.

“That’s not real, Jem. That’s not real life.”

“It is, Karen. It’s been my life for fifteen years.”

“Jem, sometimes things get muddled up. I know how tough it’s been for you. You’ve been through so much unhappiness and change. I knew that when I agreed to take you on. Sometimes, when things are confusing, anyway, we try and make sense of it our own way, we find ways of coping….”

She still didn’t understand. “I didn’t make it up! Do you think I want to live like this?”

“Alright. Calm down. You didn’t make it up on purpose, I know. I’m just saying that sometimes the mind plays tricks on you.”

“So I need a psychiatrist?”

“No, you need a proper home. There is nothing wrong with you that some stability — love, even — wouldn’t cure. All things I’m trying to give you.” Her eyes flicked up to me nervously. She was used to me throwing things like this back in her face.

The thing was, even as I was almost screaming with frustration, I could see where she was coming from. If someone else had told me my story, I’d have thought they were pulling a prank or were schizo or something. I wouldn’t have believed them. Karen’s world was one of routines and rules. She had her size-seven feet firmly on the ground. Of course this didn’t make any sense to her. She was looking at me now, just waiting to be kicked, and I would have just a few days ago, but what would be the point now?

“I know you are, Karen,” I said. “I know.”

And she pressed her lips together in a tight little smile, a grateful acknowledgment of the effort it had cost me to say that.

“’Nother cup of tea, love?”

I nodded. “Yeah. I’ll just stretch my legs while the kettle’s on.”

“OK.”

I got up and walked out into the abbey, surprised again at its sheer size, the space above me. All over the floor were stones with writing carved into them. I was standing on one: the marker for someone, dead for two hundred and thirty years. The walls, too, were a patchwork. Words that had lasted for hundreds of years — describing people nobody remembered anymore. I was surrounded by bones and ghosts.

I looked around the abbey, stopping here and there to read the stones. It should have creeped me out. It didn’t. I liked it — I liked the honesty of seeing people’s numbers. The stones told the facts: birth date, death date. The numbers were fine — it was the words that were more troubling. DEPARTED; LAID TO REST; TAKEN BY HER MAKER; GONE TO A BETTER PLACE. I stopped in front of this last one. Was it wishful thinking, belief, or even certainty? If I’d written that memorial, I would have rubbed out the last four words. Just GONE.

That’s all there was, as far as I could see. How could anyone possibly know any different?

It made me wonder where my mum was now, or where what was left of her was. What had happened to her after they’d taken me away in that car? Had she been buried somewhere, or cremated? Had there been a funeral, and had anyone gone? Or do junkies, dossers, and slags just get chucked in a ditch? All of a sudden, I really wanted there to be a grave somewhere for her. I wanted her messy, messed-up life to have ended properly.

Then a chill ran through me. What would they do for Spider? It seemed impossible that just over twenty-four hours from now, he’d be needing a gravestone. How could someone so alive, so fizzing with energy, just stop?

I felt a tide of panic rising up inside me. Despite what Karen thought, Spider’s life could be measured out in hours now — minutes, even. I’d seen his number so many times. It didn’t change. It was real. He would die in jail, or some police cell. Beaten up, probably. Unless he was ill. Perhaps he was