Num8ers - By Rachel Ward Page 0,89

thought of dying mirrored my creeping horror of being left alone. Two sides of the same coin.

Suddenly, the walls of the vestry started to close in on me. I needed a bit of breathing space. I wandered out into the abbey. There were quite a few people around, and I had a feeling that several of them had clocked me as I walked over the memorial stones, trying not to tread on the names of the dead.

After a few minutes, a woman wearing a head scarf came up to me. I was in the chapel, the place where I’d sat to get warm the morning Simon had let me in.

“Excuse me,” she said uncertainly. “Are you Jem, the girl they’re all talking about?”

“I dunno,” I said. “I am Jem, but I don’t know about anything else.”

“You’ve been on the news, the hunt for you, and there are all sorts of stories on the Internet.” She was standing in front of me, but her legs were starting to sag. “Do you mind if I sit down? I’m a bit…tired.”

To be honest, I did mind. I had a pretty good idea where this conversation was heading, and I didn’t want to get into all that. I just wanted to be left alone. I said nothing, but she sat down anyway, right up close to me on the cushioned stone bench.

“The thing is,” she carried on, “they’re saying that you can see the future. People’s futures. That’s why you ran away from the Eye.”

She stopped and looked at me, and I met her gaze and I did see her future, or at least her end. Two and a half years away. And I thought, You stupid, stupid girl, Jem. I should never, never have told anyone — it should have been my secret right to the end.

“It’s just rumors,” I muttered. “You know what people are like.”

“But there’s something, isn’t there? There’s something different about you.” She was searching my face, like she’d find some sort of answer there. “Can you?” she said. “Can you see into the future?”

I was squirming in my seat now. I tried not to look at her, kept my eyes down at my hands and my feet, kept my mouth shut. It didn’t put her off. In fact, she reached up and picked at the end of her scarf, and then unwound it, revealing her scalp, nearly bald, with a few tufts of hair here and there. It made her look shockingly naked.

She reached out to touch my hand. I wanted to push her away, tell her to back off. I can’t explain to you how odd it was to have a stranger sitting up close to me, wanting to touch me. I’d spent a lifetime making sure there was space between me and everyone else, putting up walls. Physical contact with anyone made me make a face, show my revulsion, move away. Except with Spider, of course.

Everything had been different with him.

The strength of this woman’s longing stopped me, though — perhaps somewhere deep inside me I was a decent person after all. I put my hand on top of hers and gently moved it away. Her fingers closed on mine, she felt the scar on my hand and turned it over, gasping when she saw the red, angry tear from the barbed wire.

“What?”

“The mark of the cross on your hand.”

This was too much now.

“You’re joking!” I said. “I cut it on some barbed wire, that’s all. That’s all.”

She continued to cradle my hand in hers.

“Please tell me what you know. I can take it.”

I shook my head. “I can’t tell you anything. I’m sorry.” I felt trapped, useless. I stood up. “I’m sorry, I’ve got to…I need to…”

She took the hint and stood up, too, gathering her bag and her scarf. She started to wind it ’round her head again.

“I’m sorry I can’t help you,” I said, and I meant it. She pressed her lips together into a line and nodded, her emotions too near the surface now for her to speak.

I left her there, fiddling with her scarf, and blundered out into the main church. Simon was standing with his back to me, talking to an old man, halfway down the main aisle. When he saw me, the man broke off in midsentence, pushed past Simon, and headed straight for me.

He was so thin his skeleton was showing through his skin, and his eyes were almost glassy. I tried to avoid looking at him, but