I slide the elastic off and sift through the pile. There are old photographs, some in grainy black and white; wedding pictures, children, dogs. A folded newspaper clipping shows a young man astride a motorbike, helmet in hand, grinning. The headline readsDEATH-TRAP CORNER CLAIMS ANOTHER LIFE.
“That’s Patrick Trevail. He died last summer. Him and his bike went right under a lorry. His poor mother. I’ve heard she collapsed at the funeral. He was her only child.”
“It’s heartbreaking,” I say, opening up a folded scrap of paper. It has a series of letters and numbers and below it one word printed in ink.Kittiwake.
“Far as we can tell it’s a boat,” Lisa says. “Those numbersalong the top are nautical coordinates. Paul said there was aKittiwakelost in the fog down by Mousehole but that was over a hundred years ago.”
“All these people,” I say, more to myself than anything. Babies in christening gowns, a man in a hospital bed with his head bandaged, a woman lying on a beach and laughing, her face tilted toward the sky.Linda, Algarve, ’78is written on the back in a sweeping hand. Among it all is a star-shaped medal on a striped and faded ribbon.
“That’s a Burma Star from the Second World War.” Sam sifts through the pile, picking it up and holding it to the light. “What you’ve got here Lisa are psychometry tokens.”
“They’re what?” Lisa snorts, but I think I might already know. I remember when Sam told me about his visit to the psychic; she had asked for something of Maggie’s in order to make contact.
“It’s an object belonging to or representing someone who has passed on,” I offer, and Sam nods. “Apparently it can help to make contact with them.”
“Well, someone needs to tell them it isn’t going to work,” Lisa says crossly, crushing her cigarette out in the ashtray. “It’s just taking up space in my bloody drawer.”
“Why do they think she can speak to the dead, Lisa?”
Lisa frowns, thinking. Two bright spots of color burn high in her cheeks.
“She was saying such odd things. At school, then here at home. Sometimes it was like she was listening to music you couldn’t hear, you know? I’d catch her just staring at the fireplace and her lips were moving but no sound was coming out. When I asked her what she was doing, she said”—here Lisa sighs, fretful and ill at ease. It’s clear she isn’t comfortable talking about this—“she said that the dead wanted her to open her throat.”
Sam casts me a brief, concerned look. Lisa waves smoke away from her face and gives a tired, dry laugh.
“One of the specialists at the hospital mentioned schizophrenia. All this hearing voices and that. It’s frightened me to death. Then there’s all the other stuff.”
“What other stuff?”
At that moment the back door opens and a tall girl with wavy hair the same muddy blond as her mother walks in.
“Alice.” Lisa gestures toward her. “Come and meet our guests.”
I’m not sure what I’d been expecting but the Alice I’d pictured in my head had been willowy and slender and goth-looking, face a pale slice between two long veils of black hair. I’m almost embarrassed at how far off the mark I am. Alice is blond and tanned, wearing shorts and a T-shirt printed with the wordsPOBODY’S NERFECT!tied at her midriff. Her small, rounded belly is just visible over the waistband of her cutoffs, legs long and coltish. She’s the girl you see giggling with her friends at the back of the bus or fooling around in the arcades. Normal. Unexceptional. I’m almost disappointed. How can this be the haunted young girl Sam and Lisa have been describing?
Alice walks barefoot to the fridge and opens the door, crouching down to peer inside. I can hear the tinny sound of music through her headphones.
“Hi, Alice,” I say. “My name is Mina Ellis. I’m hoping we’ll have the chance to get to know one another while I’m here.”
Nothing. She pulls out a carton of orange juice.
“Alice!” Lisa snaps.
Alice looks over at us dumbly. She slowly removes the headphones. I notice she has a wad of chewing gum stuck to one finger, which she eases back into her mouth.
“What?”
“This is Mina. She wants to talk to you.”
Alice takes three quick gulps from the carton. She looks at me with a slow, sly smile and just for a moment I wonder if maybe thereissomething about her after all, some strangeness baked into her like clay. It’s in the curve of her smile, that quick flash of teeth. Like something is hiding there under the surface. I tell myself to get a grip. It’s the heat. All those stories Sam told me, they’re getting to me. I turn toward her in my seat, unfolding my arms. I smile to show her I’m not a threat.
“We have something in common, Alice.”
“What’s that, then?”
“Our names. They’re both from books.”
I keep smiling, even as she slides her headphones back up again, gaze lingering on me for a moment. Her gum snaps between her teeth as she walks back out through the open doorway without another word. “I’m sorry,” Lisa says evenly. “It’s that age, I’m afraid. She’s got worse since the sickness started. I used to get rotten headaches that seemed to last for days at her age and now it looks as though I’ve passed them on to her. What shitty luck. Do you have any children, Mina?”