The Winter's Child Read online

  “Where did you really go?”

  The question catches me off-guard, and because I don’t have a reply ready, she instantly knows the answer. She looks at me for a long minute.

  “Right,” she says wearily, and gathers Grace and Thomas together, corralling them like a sheepdog. “Come on, kids. It’s Auntie Susannah’s turn to pick, and she wants some pictures of you on the galloping horses.” Thomas points hopefully to the Mirror Maze. “No, not the Mirror Maze, you’re not bashing your nose in again. Galloping horses. Go.”

  “What happened to your nose?” I ask Thomas, in the brief pool of relative quiet by the dartboard games (“Prize Every Time Free Giant Minion If You Lose Score Over Ten To Win”).

  “He walked into a glass wall,” Grace begins.

  “Grace, I’m telling this story. I walked into a glass wall—”

  “That’s what I said—”

  “And it made my nose bleed. And it took me ages to get out.”

  “And when he came out he was crying,” adds Grace, with satisfaction.

  “Well, if you walked into a wall so hard you made your nose bleed, you’d cry too,” Thomas tells her. “And besides, you’re too little to go in, so you don’t know what it’s like, and anyway, stop trying to tell my—”

  “That’s enough,” Melanie tells them both. “No, seriously, that’s enough. Nobody’s come here to listen to you squabble. Do you want to go on the same horse or separate ones?”

  “Same.”

  “Separate.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake. Okay, Thomas, if you’ll go on a horse with Grace without complaining, you can go in the Mirror Maze again. Deal?”

  “Deal.” Thomas’s face is one huge triumphant grin.

  The carousel slows, then halts. Grace and Thomas scramble up the steps. Thomas helps Grace heave herself onto their chosen horse, Mickey, and hops up behind her. She leans confidingly back into the comfort of his jacket, and he looks at her for a moment, then drops a brief kiss on the top of her head. Melanie has a five pound note ready but I push her hand away and get to the showman first, hoping to soften her with generosity.

  “Okay,” says Melanie as the horses begin to twirl. “What d’you think you were playing at?”

  “It was just a laugh,” I say. Grace and Thomas go past, cherub faces turned outwards, starfish hands waving. I smile and wave back.

  Melanie says nothing.

  “I just saw the caravan and she didn’t have anyone with her so I thought I’d go for it.”

  Melanie says nothing. Thomas and Grace reappear. I raise my phone and take a photograph.

  “It’ll make a good post, that’s all. It was good material.”

  Melanie says nothing.

  “Look, if I can save just one person from what I went through – if I can reach just one person – save them from believing the shit they spout to get your money—”

  My voice cracks. Thomas and Grace reappear. I force myself to smile and wave. The shape of my face isn’t right. The pain’s showing. I hope they’re too little to notice.

  “It’s just,” I say, and I know I should keep lying, because these words will take me dangerously close to collapse, “it’s just I saw the caravan. And it… it called to me. I know that’s stupid, but it called to me. And I thought, What if this one’s the real deal? Maybe it means something that I’m being attracted to this one? So I just… I just… I had the money and everything, and I couldn’t help myself.” Thomas and Grace reappear, but blurrily, framed by tears lit up like jewels by the glow of the lights.

  Melanie turns to me then, and takes my hands in hers. I can read on her face all the love and all the exasperation, all the despair and all the longing, the complicated mix of emotions that comes when your older sister acts like an idiot for reasons you understand only too well.

  “Suze,” Melanie says. She’s the only person in the world who’s allowed to shorten my name, and even she only does it when no one else can hear. “You know they’re all the same. You know that. Better than anyone.”

  “She told me Joel would come back to me by Christmas.”

  “She what?” Melanie’s hands tighten on mine. “She told you what?”

  “She said he’d come back to me by Christmas, and then we’d never be apart again. Why would she say that if she didn’t know something? She might know something—”

  “Suze, you have to stop this. It’s not true. Darling Suze, I don’t know where he is, none of us do, but I’m as sure as I can be that some random Fair woman in a painted caravan can’t tell you, all right? Please don’t do this to yourself again, you’ve been doing so well recently. Look, the ride’s stopping, I’ll go and get the kids.”

  The watching circle of parents moves around the ride like clockwork, following their children scrambling down from the golden horses, wobbling on dizzy legs, ready to be lifted down while a legion of replacement riders scramble greedily up. John once told me he’d love to film the scene from above, people flowing like blood around the body of the Fair, driven by the beats of the rides as they stop and start and stop again, as lovely as the hearts he repaired on the operating table. He tried to get Joel interested too, to show him the hidden connections that drive the universe, but Joel would grow panicky and anxious and then naughty, frustrated and frightened by his inability to please his father. Thomas and Grace will be back in a moment. They’ll want to see the photos. I turn away and try to get my face in order.

  It’s the sight of the discarded milk carton that does it, tossed carelessly into the black rubbish-sack on top of the polystyrene chip trays and the cheery paper cones. I blink just once and then I’m back in before, the very last time our family was together. John and Joel clashing as they so often did, Joel’s face alternating between rage and terror, as John shook the plastic bag in his face, battering down Joel’s Don’t I get any privacy then and It’s not even illegal in lots of places with How dare you bring this crap into our house, how dare you put our family at risk like this? Joel turning away, slamming the front door, yelling something about his friends understanding him and one day he’d live with them and never see either of us again, pausing to drain the milk carton into his mouth and fling it furiously into our front garden. I ran into the front room to watch him go, and our eyes met through the glass and in that moment I saw the little boy he still was, despite being fifteen and taller than I was. Help me, Mum. Help me. I need you.

  And I would have gone after him. I would have run down the street and grabbed his hand, told him it was all right, it was all right, I’d call the school and say he was ill, and we’d get the bus into town, go to a café and get some breakfast and talk about it. But then John was there beside me, and when I tried to follow Joel he put his arms around me in what felt almost like a hug, and he said, “Not this time, pet. We’re at the end of our tether here. We need to get tougher with him. Let him go. We’ll talk about it tonight.” And his embrace was so warm and solid and comforting, and I was so tired, and he seemed so sure he was right.

  So I stayed in the living room with John. I did not follow Joel down the street. I did not phone the school to say Joel was ill. We did not get the bus or go to a café. Joel went to school, registered for his first and second lesson, went out at lunchtime, saying he was going to meet someone, then vanished. His official status is mysterious. Neither definitely living nor definitely dead, he is simply missing. One of the thousands who vanish and do not return.

  The fortune-teller recognised me, that’s all. She knows my story, which is also Joel’s story. She was tormenting me with what she knew, and what she knew I wanted to hear, dabbling her hard nicotine fingers in the pool of my neediness, fishing with her cold clever hooks for the money in my purse and the hope in my heart. She was punishing me for making it my calling to protect others from the spiritualists and the mediums and the spirit-channellers, the cold-readers and frauds and the vultures who scour the newspapers, the deceivers, the liars, the hungry ones, the greedy ones. I know all
this. I should write this up as a blog post, another warning in a long chain of warnings, and then I should forget every jaggedy hurting word.

  But instead I stand still and silent in the heart of the Fair and stare at the tawdry plush creatures that dangle bright and hopeful from the booths and replay her words, locking them into place in my head. I’m a fool, and a hypocrite, and I so desperately want to believe that what she told me is true. I want this to be the last Christmas I will spend alone, waiting up until midnight in the vain and foolish belief that at last, this year, my lost boy will come home to me.

  Life Without Hope:

  Five more ways psychics fool us

  1. They do their research

  Some psychics use pre-event registration to harvest personal details. Once they have your name and your age, they can often find out if you’ve lost someone recently. If you, like me, have a loved one who’s missing, know that we’re particularly vulnerable to this because we do everything we can to get ourselves and our stories into the public eye.

  2. They exploit large groups and the laws of probability

  Large events open to the public are popular with psychics, because they can use the law of probability to quickly score lots of easy hits. They’ll take a look at the people in the room and start throwing out some names. I have a message here from someone whose name begins with D, perhaps David or Dave. Someone called Jim or James or Jamie, is anyone hoping to make contact with them? Chances are, someone in the room will pick up on the names they’re offering. They do the same for common diseases of old age. Did she have trouble with her heart? Her heart, or maybe her joints, definitely something that affected her mobility a bit?

  3. They know how to exploit contradictions

  When they describe our lost loved ones, they’ll use sweeping statements and opposing descriptors to sound specific while staying very vague. She enjoyed her own company, but she loved a good get-together when she was in the mood. He worked hard at putting other people first, but he could be a little bit self-centred from time to time. She loved to laugh, but there was more to her than that. Sometimes she was very serious.

  4. They get us to fill in the blanks

  A skilled psychic makes sure their sitters do at least half of the work. I’m seeing a letter, they say, or There’s a piece of jewellery that’s significant. Then they’ll ask, What could that mean, do you think? And before we know it, we’ve done their job for them.

  5. They blur the timelines

  When they make a prediction that turns out to be a miss, they’ll say it’s just because it hasn’t come true yet. Don’t know anyone called Bob? Not yet received that letter? Hold onto that; it will be important in the future.

  Ultimately, all of this only works because we let it. When all other hope has been taken from us, we want to believe that this might work. It’s hard for us to recognise how much we collaborate in deceiving ourselves. But the truth is, that’s what is happening. They thrive off our belief. We’re what keep their profession alive.

  Posted on 24th November 2013

  Filed to: Why All Psychics Are Frauds

  Tags: psychic fraud, missing people, support for families, Susannah Harper, Joel Harper

  Chapter Two

  Sunday 15th October 2017

  In the silent darkness of my bedroom when we return from the Fair, as the showmen pack away their stalls for another year and Saturday tips over the peak of midnight and becomes Sunday, I dream that I’m standing on a wooden platform by water. Something has happened to disrupt my senses, because the world around me is dim and fuzzy and the smell of the river – brown and barren, the scent of sterile earth turned over in winter – pours off the surface and coils around me like the smoke from the fortune-teller’s cigarette.

  As I stand and breathe in the muddy fumes, I realise that there is someone there with me, standing just behind me and to the left, close enough that if I reached out my hand behind me it would meet theirs. I can’t tell if they are a friend or an enemy.

  “Help me,” I say, without turning round, without knowing who I’m speaking to. “I need you to help me. Please help me. I’m lost.” And when two hands clasp my waist, I can’t tell if they want to embrace me or to push me into the water.

  If this were a film of my life I would wake flailing and gasping, struggling from the strait-jacket of sleep into violent consciousness. Instead I wake quietly, smoothly, and sit up and fold back the duvet as stealthily as if there’s still someone beside me in the bed who is exhausted and needs his sleep, someone who if I wake him will reach out and smile and draw me back beneath the covers. I’ve slept alone for four years, but I still sleep only on my side of the bed.

  I make myself wait before reaching for my phone. This is part of the discipline I’ve learned to impose on myself, to keep myself sane and well. Hope is the enemy, pinning you to the past with an iron spike that will gradually corrode inside you. I have a text waiting, but I know it won’t be from Joel.

  The message is from Melanie. Before I open it, I make myself smile, because the actions of your body can be used to compel your brain into feeling better emotions. I’ve been unlucky in one terrible way, but lucky in many small ways, and since I can’t get back what I’ve lost, I have to make the best of what I still have. I’m lucky that my sister loves me, and that her children also love me. I’m lucky that, amid the busy mundanity of getting two exhausted overexcited children to sleep, she’s taken the time to text me. Perhaps it’s to confirm plans for my birthday, or an invitation to join them at the local fireworks display for Bonfire Night. Perhaps there will be a picture of Thomas and Grace, fast asleep in Melanie and Richard’s bed after our wild and beautiful night at the Fair. Perhaps in their sleep, they will be clutching the prizes they won on the Hook-a-Duck stall.

  There is no picture, only words like tiny snakes waiting to strike:

  Hey it’s me. Can we have a chat about Grace and nightmares about being taken away by bad people please? She’s woken up twice already. – Mx

  The time-stamp is 2.15am.

  My heart thumps guiltily, although I can’t think why. The stolen-by-the-Fair-people story resurfaces in the school playground at the beginning of every October, passed down through the generations along with the woman who died in a fire and bit off her lip and and the boy who choked on a gob of chewing gum and the old man who keeps mad dogs in a shed at the back of the playing fields. Melanie must know this. She must know I’d never, ever do anything to frighten Grace. When she was born, a scant six months after Joel’s disappearance, everyone was terrified that I would take against her, but instead she became the first small glint of light that reminded me life might still be worth living.

  Still, I’ll go and see them later, maybe take Grace a present. Something with Peppa Pig on perhaps, or a new stuffed toy. I allow myself to replace the picture of Grace waking in terror with one of Grace beaming with joy over a new plushy animal. Melanie says I spoil her, but I can’t help myself.

  That’s it. No more text messages. The first part of my daily admin’s completed. There are things I need to do on my blog, but those can wait until after breakfast.

  I take a shower. Wash my hair. Get dressed. Go to the kitchen and make myself coffee, peel a banana and eat it. I watch the clock while I do this, making sure I don’t take too long over any particular step, because even though all my deadlines are self-imposed, I need structure to my life. When I’ve eaten my banana and drunk my coffee, I go out into the back garden.

  The ancient apple tree at the bottom of the garden is growing ugly with spotted yellow leaves, its usual preparation for winter. A few apples lie rotting in the long grass around the trunk where the lawnmower doesn’t quite reach. Once the leaves have fallen and the grass has died back the tree will become beautiful again, its rough bark and twisted branches stark against the winter sky, but for now it’s simply a nuisance, creating a dank mouldy carpet that will have to be raked up before it smothers the lawn. Nevertheless, I walk down to
it and lay my hand against the bark. When I look up at the house next door, I see my neighbour, standing in the window of the back bedroom and looking down at me.

  The man who lives next door is frail and white-haired like an angel, and like an angel he watches over me with a tireless silent benignity. He was described to me by the people we bought the house from as The most perfect neighbour we’ve ever had. He lives on his own, dead quiet, but he never complains, even when the children are shrieking the place down. God, we wish we could take him with us. He took a tender interest in Joel, shuffling down his front path to peer into the pram and touch a thin dry finger to Joel’s peach-fuzz cheek when I, proud and shaky, made my first solo voyage around the neighbourhood. When I crept out of the house on the mad, purposeless searches that consumed the emptiness of my nights when Joel first left us, I would often come home to find him standing in the front windows of his house, and when I looked at him he would raise one arm in greeting and I would know I was not alone. Once, he wrote a note that saved me.

  And on the morning after John left me, beneath the apple tree was a bunch of long-stemmed white roses wrapped in a cone of paper. I went out to gather them in, turned around and saw my neighbour standing in the back bedroom, the room the local gossips had told me he had not been into for more than twenty years, since his own daughter died in there. As I stared up at him in wonder, clutching my roses, I saw there were tears on his cheeks and something passed between us and I knew I had found the first glimpse of my future. That was the day when I wrote my first blog post for Life Without Hope. Since that day, I wake each morning at the same time and make my pilgrimage to the apple tree.

  I look up at my neighbour and he looks down at me, and we wave to each other in silent solidarity. I’ve made it through another night so that I can be here and make sure you are still alive. I will be here tomorrow.

  The morning wears on. I fill the minutes with the tasks I need to do. When my cleaning is done, I go to the little office we made in the small bedroom over the porch to check my blog for activity.