Beyond Black: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

records the wrong numbers, too,” said a pert girl near the front. She had her friends with her; their sniggers ruffled adjacent rows.
    Alison smiled. It was for her to make the jokes; she wouldn’t be upstaged. “Yes, I admit we record the wrong numbers. And we record the nuisance calls, if you like to put it that way. I sometimes think they have telesales in the next world, because I never sit down with a nice cup of coffee without some stranger trying to get through. Just imagine—double glazing salesman … debt collectors …”
    The girl’s smile faded. She tensed.
    Al said, “Look, darling. Let me give you a word of advice. Cut up that credit card. Throw away those catalogues. You can break these spending habits—well, you must, really. You have to grow up and exercise some self-control. Or I can see the bailiffs in, before Christmas.”
    Al’s gaze rested, one by one, on those who had dared to snigger; then she dropped her voice, whipped her attention away from the troublemaker, and became confidential with her audience.
    “The point is this. If I get a message I don’t censor it. I don’t ask, do you need it? I don’t ask, does it make sense? I do my duty, I do what I’m here for. I put it out there, so the person it applies to can pick it up. Now people in Spirit World can make mistakes. They can be wrong, just like the living. But what I hear, I pass on. And maybe, you know, what I tell you may mean nothing to you at the time. That’s why I sometimes have to say to you, stay with that: go home: live with it. This week or next week, you’ll go, oh, I get it now! Then you’ll have a little smile, and think, she wasn’t such a fool, was she?” She crossed the stage; the opals blazed.
    “And then again, there are some messages from Spirit World that aren’t as simple as they seem. This lady, for example—when I speak about ear trouble, what I may be picking up is not so much a physical problem—I might be talking about a breakdown in communication.” The woman stared up at her glassily. Al passed on.
    “Jenny’s here. She went suddenly. She didn’t feel the impact, it was instantaneous. She wants you to know.”
    “Yes.”
    “And she sends her love to Peg. Who’s Peg?”
    “Her aunt.”
    “And to Sally, and Mrs. Moss. And Liam. And Topsy.”
    Jenny lay down. She’d had enough. Her little light was fading. But wait, here’s another—tonight she picked them up as if she were vacuuming the carpet. But it was almost nine o’clock, and it was quite usual to get onto something serious and painful before the interval. “Your little girl, was she very poorly before she passed? I’m getting—this is not recent, we’re going back now, but I have a very clear—I have a picture of a poor little mite who’s really very sick, bless her.”
    “It was leukemia,” her mother said.
    “Yes, yes, yes,” Al said, swiftly agreeing, as if she had thought of it first: so that the woman would go home and say, she told me Lisa had leukemia, she knew. All she could feel was the weakness and the heat, the energy of the last battle draining away: the flickering pulse at the hairless temple, and the blue eyes, like marbles under translucent lids, rolling into stillness. Dry your tears, Alison said. All the tears of agony you’ve shed, the world doesn’t know, the world can’t count them; and soberly, the woman agreed: nobody knows, she said, and nobody can count. Al, her own voice trembling, assured her, Lisa’s doing fine airside, the next world’s treated her well. A beautiful young woman stood before her—twenty-two, twenty-three—wearing her grandmother’s bridal veil. But whether it was Lisa or not, Al could not say.
    Eight-fifty, by Colette’s watch. It was time for Al to lighten up. You have to start this process no less than eight minutes before the end of the first half. If the interval catches you in the middle of something thrilling and risky, they simply don’t want to break; but