I Hear You Calling Page 10

  ‘Well ring me anytime you need to, even if it’s the middle of the night and, if you change your mind, just shout and I will come.’

  ‘Thanks Jen. I really love you, you know that don’t you?’

  ‘Course I do, and I love you, you’re my baby sis.’

  I was shaking when I put the phone down and I really wanted to talk it all through with Mark. But he was working late, again.

  Normally I would have talked to Rae about what was happening with Mark but this was so the wrong time to be off-loading my worries onto her. She did a difficult job as it was, all day every day trying to solve problems for naughty kids and their schools, but now with Barney as well and her own on her own, well, there was just no way that I was going to drop more problems on her.

  Anyway there was a good chance that I was just being stupid, he probably was just working late a lot and then, of course, he would be too tired to talk with me when he got in. Who wouldn’t be if they were working all those hours?

  If they were……….

  Rae

  I didn’t sleep at all that night, didn’t even try to go to bed in fact. I sat in my armchair with a blanket wrapped around me and listened to every sound I could hear. I was hoping that one of them would be the sound of Barney coming back. I imagined him escaping and racing home, like in a Disney film.

  I was also dreading the sound of Jim breaking back in now he knew I didn’t have Barney there to protect me.

  Although I never closed my eyes and ears once, I didn’t hear either sound.

  Jen rang me at eight the next morning.

  ‘I have been awake most of the night thinking,’ she said. ‘When Molly next door lost her cat she made fliers on the computer with a photo and her phone number on. She put them through people’s doors and in shop windows and stuff. It worked, Rae. Somebody phoned her up and said the cat was in their garden shed.’

  ‘That’s a great idea Jen, if the animal is really lost. But Barney’s not lost, he’s been taken. I keep thinking of him and how he must be feeling.’

  ‘You don’t think he’ll hurt Barney do you?’

  ‘I have no idea. Maybe I will do your flier thing, just in case somebody spots a dog suddenly moving in next door or something. A bit like on Crimewatch. Thanks for ringing Jen but I have to go work now so I’ll ring you tonight.’

  ‘Why don’t you take the day off?’ she suggested.

  ‘I can’t sit here all day just listening out for him; I have done that all night and I am going to go demented if I don’t think of something else for a while. I might finish at lunchtime though.’

  I shouldn’t have gone to work really, I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I added data to the exclusion spreadsheet and then realised that I had put everything in the wrong columns; I was looking at the figures and my brain just wouldn’t compute.

  ‘I can’t bloody work this out. Stupid bloody figures,’ I said, and I pushed the paper files off my desk onto the floor. I knew it was the behaviour of a spoiled child but I just couldn’t hold it together any longer.

  Instantly Pam was there, bending over, picking up the scattered sheets, ‘I’ll enter these,’ she told me. For a second I wanted to get up and hug her. I had told her a brief outline of yesterday but hadn’t mentioned Jim, I just let her believe that a stranger had taken Barney.

  While Pam worked away at my job I designed a “Have you seen this dog?” flier on my computer, using one of the many photo’s I had on there of my handsome boy.

  I spent the afternoon going in and out of shops in the village, asking people to display a flier in their windows. I even stuck a couple of them onto lamp-posts, although I knew you’re not really supposed to do that.

  ‘The fliers are out,’ I told Jen that evening.

  ‘Good. And how are you feeling today?’

  ‘Numb really, but I think I am knackered, I didn’t sleep a wink last night.’

  I thought I wouldn’t sleep again but I must have been so exhausted that within minutes of getting into my bed I went out like a light.

  Richard

  I haven’t told Mum and Dad about the man. They haven’t argued since parents evening and it’s really nice but I think if Dad knows about the man he will get all excited and worked up again and it will all be horrible again.

  I tell Tom about the man though.

  I am almost asleep when it happens but still a bit awake. It’s always the same. I hear the man’s voice but I can’t tell what he’s saying; it’s like he’s talking to me down a long tube and his voice is kind of muffled. But I know he really wants to tell me something. I just know it’s important; he wants me to help him but I can’t because I can’t tell what he’s saying.

  Sometimes I get cross and shout at him, ‘I can’t tell what you are saying,’ and that’s when Mum sometimes hears me and comes in. She hugs me and tells me that I have had a nightmare. But I know I haven’t.

  Tom says that the spirits would sort of “test out” all kinds of mediumship on me to find the best way that it works for me. He says that voice thing is called mental mediumship. That makes me laugh.

  Tom says what I am really good at so far is called trance mediumship, that’s when a spirit sort of used your voice to speak. Mental mediumship is not about being mental, he says, it’s about when you hear voices in your head and they talk to you and you pass the messages on in your own voice.

  This spirit man is trying to see if he can talk to me and Tom says that, ‘cos I can hear him, it means I will probably be a mental medium as well as a physical one. He says that the channel will get clearer and that I will be able to tell what he is saying one day. I say I wish it would happen soon ‘cos this man is driving me nuts.

  A funny thing though, when Tom is walking me home after our talk we see a poster in the chemist window. It’s about a missing dog and Tom says it’s Rae’s dog. I feel sad for her then ‘cos he looks a really nice dog.

  And then I remember that Rae had gone looking for me with this dog when I was missing so I tell Tom to tell Rae that I will look out for Barney and try to find him for her.

  Rae

  I was walking through the woods on a crisp autumn morning –russet red leaves were falling like a carpet in front of me and crunched under my feet as I stepped forward. I could hear birds warbling their morning songs in the distance.

  A huge black shape started to appear on the path in front of me and, before my eyes, the shape grew and then morphed into Barney.

  An intense rush of relief and joy ran through me I ran towards him calling his name. The big dog looked into my eyes for a full 30 seconds before opening his mouth and saying “I hate you, you let him take me. You were supposed to look after me.”

  I woke up with a start, I had tears pouring down my cheeks and a feeling of total emptiness.

  Barney had been gone three days and I was feeling totally wretched. I forced myself to get into work that morning – the horrible guilt feeling of the dream staying with me.

  ‘There’s a package here for you,’ Pam told me. ‘I haven’t opened it because it is very clearly personal’

  As I took the small brown paper wrapped box I appreciated the irony of Pam’s remark; the word private had been stamped at least 20 times around the printed address label. Pam busied herself with her paperwork and tried to look uninterested as I tore open the wrapping. Inside was a load of tissue paper, and when I moved it aside I saw the golden, furry ear nestling there. I screamed, then everything went blurry and I swear my heart literally stopped.

  Rushing to my side Pam reached into the box, took out the ear and gently showed me that it was taken from a toy.

  ‘It’s not real,’ she whispered. ‘Feel it Rae. It’s only a toy…it’s definitely not Barney’s ear.’

  Even knowing this I couldn’t stop crying for ten minutes.

  ‘I think you shou
ld go off sick for a couple of days,’ Pam suggested when the torrent of tears had finally ceased. ‘This is making you poorly and, if you forgive me for being so blunt, you don’t look as if you have slept for a week.’

  ‘No, that would make it worse.’

  I was beginning to pull myself together and a growing sense of embarrassment probably made my words sound sharper than I meant them to.

  ‘I’m fine Pam, honestly – it was just a shock.’

  ‘I should think it was,’ Pam said. ‘What kind of a sick person would do that to you?’

  “Oh, you don’t know the half,” I thought to myself to as I tried to pick up my professional persona again.

  ……………….

  ‘You must ring PC Carmichael right away,’ Jen blazed when I told her the “dog ear” story that evening.

  ‘And say what ….someone sent me the ear from a toy dog? They can’t find my real dog let alone a toy one.’

  ‘Not the point and you know it,’ Jen responded quickly. ‘He told you to inform him of anything else that happened. Ring him Rae. I know you hate all of this but this time you don’t have to fight him alone you know.’

  ‘I’m not sure the police believe it’s him anyway,” I said. ‘I think they still believe that Barney ran away.’

  ‘Well in that case they may change their minds when they hear about today. They can’t possibly think that Barney posted you that ear himself can they? Anyway,

  I have a feeling that Barney will be back soon.’

  ‘Now don’t you go getting all psychic on me. I can’t help thinking that, if what Chris Banks believes is true, how come he didn’t know before that all this shit was going to happen?’

  Jen laughed. ‘Would you want to know your future if you could?’ she asked.

  Like most people I guess, I had asked myself this question before and decided that the answer was no; If I knew something bad was going to happen I would just curl up in a ball and wait for it in misery and miss out on the time in-between and, if I knew something good was coming, I would just curl up in a ball and wait for it in eager anticipation and miss out on the time in-between. Either way it would mean a lot of curling up in a ball.

  ‘No, not my detailed future as such…but I would just like to feel that everything is going to be ok. It must be a great security blanket, believing that no matter what happens here your life will go on and nothing can damage your spiritual self. Makes them feel almost invincible I guess. You know, when we were kids, I was always jealous of my friends whose family had a religion; I was always hoping that one Sunday Mum and Dad would take us to church and that we would all dress up in our best and then come home and eat a big lunch.’

  ‘Too much Enid Blyton,’ Jen scoffed. ‘And would we have had lashings of ginger beer with that Sunday lunch?’

  ‘No, just lots of conversation and laughter.’

  Jen may have mocked me but I knew that a part of her knew exactly what I was feeling.

  PC Carmichael wasn’t on duty that night when I rang. I asked for him to call me back the next day. And then Tom rang.

  ‘Rae, I saw a flyer this afternoon about Barney, did he run off in the woods?’

  ‘No, it’s a long story Tom but, basically, he was dog-napped from my house.’

  ‘What a vile thing to have happen. You must be demented, I know I would be if some bastard took Herman. I’ll keep a very close eye out for old Barney everywhere I go.’

  I was drifting into the deep sleep of emotional exhaustion when I heard the scraping noise.

  ‘Oh shit, that’s all I need. Mice, great.’

  I lay still and tense for a minute listening to see if I could tell where the vermin had landed.

  The scratching got a bit louder and then, in the silence, a very definite deep, loud bark.

  I’ve often read in books that people “leapt out of bed” and could never imagine myself being energetic enough to do it. I did it then.

  As I opened the back door my beloved Barney flung the full force of his golden body at me and almost knocked me over. Laughing and crying at the same time I hugged him and kissed him for a while before checking him over to make sure he was ok. That’s when I found it. The note tucked into his collar. I say a note, it was a scrap of paper, and on it were a line of x’s. Jim was sending me his love.

  I lay on the sofa all night with Barney close beside me. Drifting in and out of sleep I had to keep waking myself up to check he was still there. Every time I woke up and touched him he lifted his head and looked at me with those huge soft brown eyes and I got the feeling that he was also checking that I was still there.

  I rang Jen as soon as I thought she would be awake.

  ‘Oh thank God,’ she sobbed down the phone.

  ‘He even brought his dishes and blanket back, they were on the doorstep with him.’

  My laugh was a little on the hysterical side I knew but my mind was struggling to cope with the emotional roller-coaster it was travelling through with extreme tiredness to hamper its journey. But deep down I already understood; Jim had taken Barney to show he could still make me unhappy, sent me the ear to work to tighten the screw but also to let me know that he knew where I was working. And then he returned him, just to let me know that he could also make me happy. For the last few days my ex-husband had been in total control of my emotions, again.

  ‘I have to go Jen, I’ll call you tonight.’ I needed to get off the phone quickly; I could feel the tightening in my chest that told me that, for the first time in a long time, I was about to have a full- blown panic attack.

  Richard

  I am lying on my bed in my pyjamas, even though it is nearly eleven o’clock in the morning. Earlier this morning I get up and put my school uniform on but then Dad comes in and tells me to take it off again.

  ‘You’re not going back to that place until things change.’

  I don’t argue with him, he looks really angry and anyway, I am a bit scared about going back, so I just take my uniform off, put my pyjamas back on and lie down on top of my bed.

  I have never noticed before that my ceiling has a few cracks in it, only little ones, but I start to count them and got up to seven when I hear Mum and Dad start shouting at each other downstairs. Although Dad shouts quite a lot Mum doesn’t; she must be really angry to be yelling at him like that.

  ‘Don’t be stupid Chris,’ I hear her shout. ‘Of course I am angry about it, but I just think enough is enough. I’m sick of thinking about what the spirit world needs, what about what Richard needs?’

  ‘Oh well at least you have come out and said it now.’ Dad’s voice sounds like he has a bad sore throat. ‘At last you have admitted that you agree with them.’

  ‘Oh fuck off Chris and grow up.’

  My mum said the f word – I have never heard her swear before at all, and now she has said the f word.

  I hear the front door slam and then the car start up on the drive.

  I hear Mum crying in the hallway. I am sucking my thumb, I haven’t done that for years, but it feels like the right thing to do now.

  That’s it then, they will definitely be getting a divorce now, now Mum has said the f word.

  Rae

  ‘I need to speak with you,’ Janet spoke so quietly into the phone that I was struggling to hear her. ‘But you can’t come here. Where can we meet?’

  Half an hour later she arrived at my office. She looked awful, her complexion was grey and grainy and her hair hung lank onto her shoulders and she shuffled into the office like a woman 20 years older than her age.

  In fact she looked exactly how I had been feeling recently.

  ‘I can’t be long, Chris doesn’t know I am here. He thinks I have just popped out to the post office, but I really need your help. He’s drinking and he’s not supposed to, he’s on tablets you see and they don’t mix do t
hey? And this morning he wouldn’t let me send Richard to school. He says he is keeping him at home until you sort things out properly. I don’t blame you Rae, not at all, but Chris has lost his senses at the moment. He is so angry with me now and I don’t know what to do anymore.’

  She was gabbling so fast I was finding it hard to grasp everything she was telling me but, if I had understood, I thought I had found my way out of this mess.

  ‘Well I’m not sure that I can help any more. By refusing to send Richard to school you have made the problem about attendance rather than behaviour. I should refer you to the attendance officers now. They are really helpful though, I think you might find them useful.’

  Janet was shaking her blonde head furiously as I spoke.

  ‘No,’ she interrupted me. ‘You don’t understand – I want Richard to go to school.

  But Chris is saying that he is going to take legal action against the school because their ignorance and prejudice caused Richard to be ill.’

  ‘And you don’t agree with him?’

  ‘I don’t know what I think right now about the rights and wrongs and political correctness of it all. I just want my son to be healthy and happy again. Please, can you find him another school, where they don’t know about any of this, and he can start again?’ Janet was crying now so painfully that I had to swallow hard and look away for a second, to make sure that I didn’t start myself in sympathy.

  ‘Poor Richard is being torn apart,’ she continued. ‘He is not sleeping well, he keeps having nightmares.

  ‘Will you talk to Tom about the spiritualist bit and see what he thinks?’ I asked. ‘But will you also take Richard for a medical check-up, just to be on the safe side?’