The Returners (9 page)

A new place. It is dusty. No, not dust. Ash. It sticks in my throat and my nose. It permeates everything. I want to leave here. It is a bad place. I watch the line, the pathetic line, weaving its way towards the doors, human but only just – not enough flesh to be fully human. Children clutching hands, men with hollow eyes, others with grit – they will not give up, not until they have to. The line moves and I move too. An ending, a beginning, I don’t know any more. This place is not what I expected. I breathe; the ash is choking me. I know where it comes from. I know. I walk forward. I look at no one . . .

And now another place, more familiar but I can’t place it. There are lorries, people being herded on to them. Like sheep. We are all sheep. It is for improvement. Flaws eradicated, evolution once more on track. The inside of the lorry is dark. People are screaming, they fear the lorries, they run, they are chased. Gunfire, then more screaming. Resistance is futile. Some give up. Others urge people not to make a fuss, not to cause more problems. I feel bodies pushing against me as more people are forced into the lorries. There are no lines, there is little organisation. A voice is shouting, ‘Britain for Britons. Britain for Britons.’ Someone shouts, ‘Bigots! You can’t do this!’ There is a loud bang. I feel something fall against me; it is a woman. She has long hair. She looks at me as she falls, her eyes wide in shock. She is bleeding. She clutches at my shoulders. ‘This must end.’ She is sinking down to the floor. I can’t help her. I am hot. I am sweating. I am screaming. No. No! NO!

I open my eyes. My bed is drenched in sweat. Did I shout out? I listen tentatively for Dad to come in, to see what’s going on; he doesn’t. I am panting, out of breath. It was a dream. Just a dream.

I get out of bed. It was just a dream, I tell myself again, more firmly this time.

I’m trembling. I realise I’m cold. I pull on some clothes. I don’t want to get back into bed. I need to get out of this room; I feel like I’m suffocating.

My eyes are drawn to the window. I pull back the curtains. I can see Claire’s room. The lights are off; she’s asleep. I look at my watch: 2.46 a.m. I look back at Claire’s room. Ten minutes pass. Without thinking too much about what I’m doing, I carefully open the window, doing my best to stop it squeaking too much. Then I hang my legs out of it, turn around so I’m holding on to the windowsill by my hands and drop down. The grass is wet beneath my feet. I look back up to make sure no one’s heard me then laugh at myself. Dad will have drunk too much whisky to hear anything.

I run down to the end of the garden and pull myself over the fence. Now I’m padding up Claire’s garden. I reach her house; I’m underneath her window. I stop. What am I doing? This is crazy. I’m going to go home. I don’t know what I was thinking.

I start to move, then stop. I bring my hands to my mouth and coo like a pigeon. It’s what we used to do. It was our call.

I wait a few seconds; she hasn’t heard me. Or she’s ignoring me. If I go now, I can pretend it never happened. I start to jog back towards the fence. Then I hear something. I stop. I turn around. Claire’s window is open. She is looking at me strangely, her face pale in the moonlight. She looks like Rapunzel, like I could climb up her hair.

‘Will? Is that you?’ She sounds incredulous but not surprised. ‘Do you know what time it is?’

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CHAPTER TEN

I don’t know why I’m here, can’t remember what propelled me out of the window. I’m embarrassed; I’m nervous. I have climbed up into Claire’s bedroom and she has given me a glass of water; I’m sitting at the end of her bed. She is looking at me expectantly. It’s nearly 3 a.m. and I have pitched up, cooing like a pigeon for the first time in years. I can’t believe she let me in, if I’m honest.

‘I should go,’ is all I can think of to say. What does she think of me? I don’t want to care, but I do. Desperately. Which is why I want to leave. I need her approval too much. It makes me feel vulnerable.

Claire rolls her eyes. ‘You came all this way to say that?’

I scowl. Her voice isn’t as soft as I’d like. Her eyes aren’t as forgiving.

‘I thought . . .’ I look down. I don’t want to leave, not really. ‘I don’t know what I thought. I just . . .’

‘Will, you’re as white as a sheet and you’re shaking. Just sit there for a little while if you want. Then you can tell me what the matter is. OK?’

It sounds reasonable enough. I nod. I like hearing her say my name.

‘So?’ Claire asks.

I get the feeling my little while is up. I shrug. ‘I guess I had a nightmare, that’s all.’

‘You still get those?’

I look at her sharply. ‘I got them before?’

‘You’ve always had them. Ever since I’ve known you.’

‘Right.’ I feel unsettled. I’d forgotten I’d had them so long. I’d sort of thought it had been a year, two years tops.

‘So what was your nightmare about?’

I feel stupid suddenly. It was just a dream. It’s not important or anything.

‘I dunno. People dying.’

‘Which people?’ She isn’t looking at me like I’m crazy. She seems interested.

‘People. First on a ship. I think it was a ship. Then . . .’ I trail off. If it was someone else I’d think they were only getting me to talk so they could laugh at me later. Claire, though, she’s not like that. I wish I could be more like her sometimes.

She’s looking at me intently, encouraging me to go on. ‘You’re here. You got out of bed and came here. So you might as well tell me,’ she says, as though she can hear my thoughts.

I tell her. I describe the dreams in all their detail – and I find I can remember way more than I thought I could. As I talk I feel the hairs on my arms standing upright and the fear returning. No, not fear. It’s like fear but different. It’s more like dread. I shiver.

She’s frowning, nodding her head every so often. Active listening, they call it. I learnt that phrase from my therapist. He said Dad and I should listen to each other more. He told Dad that listening didn’t mean just sitting there; it meant taking an active interest, nodding, saying things like, ‘That must be hard for you,’ or, ‘And how does that make you feel?’ That was when I realised that the shrink was doing it too; that he wasn’t really interested, he was just pretending to be interested by saying the right things. Active listening. Phoney listening. I stopped going to him after that.

But Claire isn’t nodding and saying things because she learnt how to do it. She’s doing it genuinely. I feel a sudden burst of love for her, a huge surge of emotion that threatens to take hold of me, make me grab her or do something else crazy. I swallow. I box it as quickly as I can, push the emotion away.

I tell her about the least scary dreams first; I want to ease her in gradually. I describe a dream where I was in a ship. I felt seasick. There were too many men down there with me.

‘A ship?’ she asks seriously. ‘You were at the bottom of it?’ she asks. I nod. ‘Describe it,’ she says. ‘As best you can.’

I describe what it was like. I describe the smell, the atmosphere of fear and desperation. I describe the walls of wood, the deafening sound of the waves crashing against them, the feeling of claustrophobia, the knowledge that for good or ill we were all in this together, that we would all sink or swim together.

‘Right . . . OK. Wait there.’ She gets off the bed and moves over to her computer, turning it on and staring at it seriously. She starts to type something, then she turns back to me.

‘Tell me about the next dream.’

I take a deep breath. Then I start talking. About the comrades, the strange bitter chocolate, about the lines of people. And somehow I don’t stop. It’s 5 a.m. by the time I’ve finished. I feel exhausted, as though I’ve run a marathon or something. But the release . . . it’s incredible, like gasping for air when you’ve been drowning. I don’t show it, of course. I do nothing. I box the feelings, hide them.

Claire’s still clacking away at her computer. I lean back on her bed and close my eyes. It’s warm here. Cosy. Safe. There’s something about girls’ rooms – the smell of creams and sweet things, the layers of things. Like not just a duvet, but a duvet and a sheet and a blanket and a throw and cushions and a teddy bear. Girls get away with having teddy bears when they’re way too old for them. No one thinks they’re pathetic. Even the lighting’s good – she’s got a little lamp and she’s draped a scarf over it so it emits this low-level pinky sort of light that makes you feel as if you’re in a womb or something. How do girls think of things like putting scarves over lamps?

‘OK.’

I open my eyes slowly. I must have drifted off. ‘OK what?’ I pull myself up; I’m sheepish suddenly – I’ve been sleeping on Claire’s bed. I’ve still got my shoes on and I can see I’ve left traces of grass and mud on her yellow checked blanket.

‘OK, I know what these dreams are,’ she says. She looks excited, like she’s solved a puzzle. Triumphant, in fact.

I raise an eyebrow. ‘You do?’

‘Yes!’ she says, grinning now. ‘So the first one: you were dreaming you were on a slave ship. Look!’ She pulls an image of a ship and my eyes widen in recognition. ‘This was the sort of ship they transported slaves in. From Africa to the Caribbean. It’s exactly as you described it.’

I stare at the screen uncertainly as she scrolls down. ‘I dreamt about slaves?’

‘We studied them, remember? About three years ago? You never seemed to be paying attention but you must have been.’

I don’t remember studying slaves. Mind you, I don’t remember a lot of things. Dad calls it selective memory; he says I only remember what I want to.

‘And the others?’ I ask. I feel as though someone’s opened a door, like I’ve been in prison and suddenly realised there’s a way out. It’s just History lessons giving me nightmares. I’ve always hated History lessons and now I know why. It’s not because I’m stupid or lazy; it’s because they mess with my head. They’re to blame for everything.

Claire claps her hands. ‘It’s all history. You described the decimation of a Native American settlement. Look, there’s a first-person account here, a letter written by a white man who befriended the Indians, and it virtually describes everything you said.’

‘We studied Native Americans?’ I ask. I want to believe her, want to buy into this theory.

‘Well, no, but we studied the other things . . .’ Claire’s forehead wrinkles. ‘You must have seen the Native Americans somewhere. Television maybe.’

I nod uncertainly.

‘Next?’

She looks down. ‘I think . . .’ She bites her lip. ‘I think the one with the line of people, the smoke . . .’

I look down. I don’t want to remember it. I’m feeling very strange. I’m not feeling warm and cosy any more; I’m feeling as if the walls are pressing in on me.

‘I think it might have been . . . I mean, I’m not sure, but I think you were dreaming about the concentration camps. The Nazi ones. The ones we’re doing now.’

‘So basically I’m a historical genius?’ I force a little laugh, but already I’m getting a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach. Sick again. I know now that the headache will follow. I want to clutch my stomach as it spasms but I don’t want to look like a weirdo.

‘I don’t know about genius, but it makes sense, you have to admit,’ Claire says.

‘I’d better go. It’s late.’ I’m trying to sound normal, trying not to let my discomfort show. If I’m going to freak out, I don’t want to do it here.

‘It’s early, you mean. Don’t go. We’re getting somewhere.’ There’s the faint trace of a smile on Claire’s lips. It makes me feel a bit better. Maybe I can stay. Maybe I’m not going to freak out after all. I take a deep breath. The spasms are slowing. I can control this. I have to. I don’t want to go, not yet.

‘So what about the last dream?’ I say. ‘Come on then, which lesson is that based on?’

‘I don’t know.’ She frowns. ‘But we’ll find out.’

‘Maybe,’ I say, sounding more sarcastic than I’d intended. It’s disappointment really. I want everything sewn up neatly; don’t want any unanswered questions hanging around.

‘Definitely,’ Claire says. ‘Anyway, the point is, your dreams aren’t anything to worry about. You’re just reliving History lessons.’

‘History lessons I don’t remember,’ I say.

I don’t know why I’m being obnoxious. Actually, I do. It’s what I do. A defence mechanism, my shrink would have called it. Probably. I realise I’m staring at Claire. I realise she’s staring back at me. I go red. I’m hot. I don’t want to look away. I don’t ever want to look away.

She smiles uncertainly. ‘So they went into your subconscious mind instead of your conscious one,’ she says. ‘Just go to sleep when you do your GCSE and you’ll get an A.’

I find myself laughing. Then she’s laughing too.

‘There I was, thinking I was deep,’ I say with a little grin. ‘Guess I’m not after all.’

‘Guess not,’ Claire deadpans. She’s still looking at me. Is there tension in the air or is it just me? If I was someone else, if we were somewhere else, I’d kiss her. I’d grab her, like they do in films, and I’d kiss her. Or maybe I’d just bury my head in her shoulder and pull her really tight, feel her heart beating through my skin.

No, I’d definitely kiss her.

Does she want me to? Should I?

She’s going to say something. What? I move closer. My skin feels all prickly.

Her expression is intense. ‘Will?’

I nod in response. I don’t trust myself to speak.

‘Is your dad any further on Yan’s case?’

A hit to the stomach. A moment of readjustment. I recoil inside. I can’t let her see my disappointment. Yan. Of course. ‘I dunno.’ It’s a meaningless answer, but it’s all I can come up with.

‘My parents think they’re going to try and pin it on him. Because Patrick . . .’ She looks at me warily. ‘Because your dad’s friend wants to make a political point.’

‘Yeah?’ I try to sound uninterested, hoping she’ll change the subject.

‘The Nationalist Party. It’s trying to get support for the deportation of immigrants by making out they’re all criminals and on benefits, which is patently ridiculous. I mean Yan’s father owns a big company.’

‘Which laid off five hundred people last month,’ I say. She was the one who brought it up. If she wants to talk about Yan and his father, that’s fine by me. Absolutely fine.

‘Like every other company, Will. We’re in a recession, remember?’

She’s got fire in her eyes; I shrug. Always so political, Claire.

‘Look, the police know what they’re doing,’ I say. I want her to look at me again with that intensity. Or was I imagining it?

‘Maybe they do. But that doesn’t mean they’re doing the right thing. Did you know that in prisons the ratio of British nationals of foreign descent to white British has increased twenty-fold in the last few years? And that attack on the steelworkers – it was driven by the sort of propaganda that the Nationalist Party have been churning out. Like it’s them against us. But it isn’t. We’re all in this together. We’re all just people, Will. And now Yan’s in prison for something he didn’t do. It’s terrifying, don’t you think?’

I look at her irritably. The intensity isn’t going to come back. She never wanted me to kiss her. And now we’re talking about Yan. How does he manage to work his way into everything even when he’s banged up?

‘I don’t really know,’ I say.

‘You don’t know?’ She’s agitated now; I regret even responding. ‘You know that any first-generation immigrant is now deported as a matter of course as soon as they leave prison? That they can’t come back, ever? That’s why the prisons are filling up with immigrants. It’s deportation by the back door. Mum says it’s a huge conspiracy. She says the Nationalist Party is behind it. They want to get rid of anyone who isn’t white. The chief of police is a member.’

Her eyes are boring into me; I can’t look at them.

Her eyes, imploring. She won’t look away. She holds up her baby. The ice is melting and I can’t stop it. Cracks are appearing. No. I mustn’t look at her. But she is too compelling. I can’t look away . . .

I shake myself. I don’t care about whatever it is Claire’s blathering on about. It’s nothing to do with me. What happens to Yan, to all these people, is nothing to do with her either.

‘Look, I should get going,’ I say, more determinedly this time.

‘That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to say?’

God, she’s hard work. I’d forgotten about that. I get up and walk towards the door, then I realise if I’m going to get out of her room unnoticed by her parents I’ve got to go the way I came in. I walk back towards the bed. Claire’s staring at me. Her clear, honest eyes, looking right into mine. Eyes that make me want to be better than I am. Eyes that make me feel like I
can
be better.