Num8ers - By Rachel Ward Page 0,85

Me. I was the only one to see the numbers. I saw something that no one else saw. My eyes, my mind, me. Whether they were real or imagined, the numbers were me and I was them.

Without me, would they even exist?

The lever running along the wall gave another lurch and the minute hand thunked forward again. Suddenly, I had to get out of there. The room would suffocate me if I stayed a minute longer. I sprang up and started running, across the walkway, back to the stairs, and then on and up, blindly, to the top.

Although it was cold on the staircase, the iciness of the open air was a shock again. There was nothing up there, just a flat roof and an empty flagpole. Another stone wall ran ’round the edge. The view was even better up here — the orange lights of the town sprawling up into hills all around. There was a swimming pool on one of the roofs, turquoise water lit from below. And immediately below me, another pool, square and green, with statues ’round the edge and steam gently rising up from it. From here, it felt like you could dive off the tower right into it. You could dive down and wipe it all away: the memories, the pain, the guilt. All you’d need to do was climb up on the little wall and jump….

From far down below, a voice drifted up to me. “There she is!”

In the abbey yard, floodlit faces were turned upward now. This far away, they all looked the same, a crowd of puppets. And it struck me, they weren’t tourists down there, they were actually waiting to see me.

Someone screamed, their terror drifting up to me a split second after it had left them, infecting me, suddenly making me afraid. The ground below seemed to be moving, the people merging into a random pattern, swimming and shifting in front of my eyes.

My legs gave way and I sank down. Who was I kidding? I couldn’t jump off there — my strength and my nerve had gone. My legs were so wobbly now, I couldn’t even manage the stairs. So I bumped down them on my butt, one at a time. I’ve no idea how long it took — I didn’t lock the door behind me, just bumped and crawled my way all the way down into the abbey and then across the cold floor into the vestry.

I curled up in my makeshift bed, next to Karen, and shut my eyes tightly, but the numbers were still there: Mum’s, Karen’s, the old tramp’s, the bomb victims’.

And Spider’s.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

“It’s all right, Jem. It’s only us. Simon and me.”

I swam up to the surface again, through the green, green water of sleep toward the light. A woman’s voice was speaking to me, and from somewhere a long way away my memory started to put the pieces back together. I sat up, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, swallowing back the sour stuff at the back of my throat. Anne was over by the table, and Karen was already up.

“I’ve brought some juice,” said Anne. “Shall I put on the kettle as well? You and Karen can have a cup of tea. Simon, would you like one?”

There was a shakiness in her voice that I couldn’t put my finger on. She was trying to sound normal, say normal things, but the tremor in her voice made her sound afraid. What was she afraid of?

I felt embarrassed, these people seeing me in bed, at a disadvantage. I swung my legs out onto the floor and heaved myself to my feet. Just for a moment, it went red and then black behind my eyes, and I clutched the edge of the table to stop myself from falling.

“Stood up a bit quickly?” Anne had her arm half around me, supporting me, although she held me away from her body. I got the feeling that if she could have used tongs, she would have. “Sit down here, that’s it. You don’t look like you’ve been eating much. Try a bit of toast. Here.” She unwrapped a foil parcel.

There was a little pile of toast inside, cut into triangles. I couldn’t do it, couldn’t eat any — it actually turned my stomach to look at it. I’d only just woken up. I brought the edges of the foil together, hiding its contents away again.

“Um, I’m not hungry yet. Maybe in a bit.”

“Have some tea, then.