The Other Lives Read online

  ‘I told you, it wasn’t my dream. I was somebody else, another boy standing on a bench with other children. It was too hot and too bright and my collar was far too tight. Everybody was wearing strange clothes. How could I have had someone else’s dream?’

  My father looked down at me with a quizzical smile. Then he replaced his spectacles and said: ‘We must always take things to their logical conclusions, Elliot. Now go to school.’

  So I did. It was the day Miss Craven died. Ever since then, well…It’s been handy, this gift of mine, and there was a time when I did it with everyone. Knowing what someone is thinking does tend to put you one step ahead of the opposition.

  But it’s not pleasant. It will never be as bad as the first time—that nauseous reel into the death of my teacher. But still, being another person…Put it this way: You don’t get to pick and choose their thoughts. It’s not like a buffet. You get the lot, all at once, and take it from me: That’s not something you want, even for just a few seconds. So now I only do it when I must.

  I call it diving because that’s what it feels like: a slow suck of gravity and pressure into the strange gloop of another.

  It starts with smell.

  That’s my route in — a rope, you might say, that leads me down from the shallows of somebody’s senses and into the depths of their being. The smell in Hunt’s nose is overridden by the afterglow of cocaine. Perhaps he had a bump before I entered the dressing room. Beneath that tang is expensive brandy and something I don’t recognise at first, but then realise is me, Elliot. The unique smell of my skin, clothes, breath and hair. You never truly smell yourself until you’re somebody else. And it’s always a surprise.

  Then comes touch. I am still me at this point, still Elliot Childs looking back at Callum Hunt. Only now I have aromas that don’t belong in my nose, and the feeling of bones, skin, muscle and fabric replacing my skeleton. It is a creeping sensation that starts at the scalp, prickling, and then enveloping me in a cloak of flesh.

  It moves faster now. Sounds arrive in my ear, replacing my own. I have a sense of being in an echo chamber — jarring reverberations everywhere.

  Then sight. Darkness at first, fizzing with fragments, and then a switch, and suddenly I am looking back at myself — hearing new breath, feeling a new heartbeat, seeing a different person. But I am still me, still Elliot. My thoughts are still my own. The shape of the world is still familiar.

  Then, finally comes taste. This is when things become truly unpleasant. You taste not just recent food or drink, but the person’s teeth, their tongue and cheek flesh, and the gas from their bellies. Hunt’s mouth is dry from the gak and ravaged by a stringent flavour that I recognise as burgeoning hunger. He hasn’t eaten since lunchtime — an overcooked steak at his club — and it is with the knowledge of this information that I know I am about to leave the shallows of his senses.

  And I become him. Amazing, isn’t it?

  At once, everything that was Elliot Childs is whirled away. I no longer know what it is like to be me anymore. I’m not even aware that this is happening. All I know is that I am Callum Hunt and that I am looking at Elliot Childs, thinking, What is he waiting for? A hug?

  Things are very different in here. They always are. The shape of everyone’s thoughts is excruciatingly unique — Callum’s are like pits and spires carved into an ice sea. I can look at these thoughts from any angle — up, down, around, sideways. They stretch out infinitely. Memories and expectations are all the same. Huge icebergs and dark, tubular holes, blue and black and searing white. Everywhere is the sound of whistling. His days are circular in shape, with clusters of activity at certain points, like fluff attached to ribbon.

  Callum doesn’t know this is how his thoughts feel — nobody does. Your thoughts have been with you since birth; they are the only things you have ever known and you have nothing to compare them against. I only know how different Callum’s are — as everyone’s are — when I return and compare them against my own.

  Now I am waiting for that strand connecting Elliot and Callum to snap back when it has found what it is looking for, which is, in this case, the truth.

  Waiting. Between the ice sculptures are vast tracts of nothing that I will later understand to be the calm resolve with which he conducts every meeting. I feel that nothing will come. But then, there, a glimmer. The presence of something. I snap back, and every sense snaps with me.

  My heart is beating fast, my head spins and my throat is dry — symptoms that are common with every dive and which I have learned to hide well.

  I swallow and steady myself. I am Elliot again, and I know that Callum Hunt is telling the truth.

  I raise my glass.

  ‘You had me at “cunt”,’ I say.

  He grins.

  ‘Trust, Elliot. No flaking out on me. That never ends well.’

  There are dozens of stories about Hunt and the methods he employs to keep his network in line. The reporter found dead in the Manchester Ship Canal, strangled by his own camera strap. The PA who disappeared at an Ascot press event, and whose body was found three months later in a Kansas junkyard. The Lord’s stately home up in smoke, with nothing left but bones and ash. All these stories are well-known, but nobody ever brings them up, least of all the police. Why? Because the line between conspiracy and truth no longer exists. Politicians, businesses, law enforcement — any type of power must break the laws of the system in order to rule it effectively. The people accept that peace requires corruption; that’s just the way things work.

  ‘I’m no flake, Callum,’ I say.

  Our glasses collide sharply, and we drink, maintaining eye contact.

  ‘So,’ he says. ‘What do you have on Mary O’Brien?’

  ‘It’s all in hand.’

  Hunt looks me up and down, his eyes narrowing.

  ‘Right then.’

  He swallows his vodka, slams down his glass and stands, buttoning his jacket. ‘Good.’

  There’s a knock at the door.

  ‘Yes?’

  The door opens and Nina’s there.

  ‘Your meet-and-greet, Mr Childs.’

  Two girls in their early twenties look expectantly over her shoulder. One waves, pulling at her hair. I consider my options, checking my watch. Normally, fucking yes, but after chatting with Callum, my heart’s really not in it. Besides, I’m hungry.

  ‘Girls. I have dinner. I’m sorry.’

  Their shoulders sag.

  ‘Ah, Elliot,’ says Hunt behind me. ‘I’d be happy to entertain if you have plans?’

  I look between the girls. Their eyes brighten a little.

  ‘Then I’ll see you tomorrow, Callum,’ I say. As I leave, I catch Hunt loosening his tie as the girls step inside.

  THE RAGGED MAN

  OUT ON THE STREET, the Thursday evening crowds are gathering like a storm. These other people; they get in the way, don’t they? They block doorways, fill elevators, clog pavements. And the traffic! Christ, I mean who would drive these days? Not me, that’s for fucking sure.

  I trot down the studio steps and jump into the broad, gleaming Lexus that’s waiting there just for me. There’s a smile on my face as I sink into the leather and the door shuts on the sea of faces outside. The tourists, commuters and revellers, the uplifted, sidelined and down-trodden.

  It’s enough to make you hurl. In fact I do feel a certain nauseous swell, although this is probably due to my recent tête-à-tête with Hunt. Diving sometimes makes me queasy, but it’s nothing a drink won’t fix.

  ‘Evening, Terry,’ I say to my driver, eyes still on the losers outside.

  Terry. He’s my kind of guy. He talks about the things he thinks, which, having been a driver in central London for most of his life, are numerous. He has seen four decades of change through his windscreen, navigating the city’s slow collapse like a lone horseman across a crumbling plain. The world has rearranged itself in his windscreen and rearview mirror and he has absorbed it all, weaving threads of wisdom from
each event, which he delights in sharing for me, and I in turn delight in hearing.

  Terry. I like him.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Childs. Where to?’

  The voice jars. I look in the rearview mirror, from which an unfamiliar face peers back.

  ‘Where the hell’s Terry?’

  ‘I’m afraid Terry’s sick, Mr Childs.’

  ‘Sick? Terry’s never been fucking sick in his life.’

  ‘Gastric flu, so I hear. Terrible business. I’m Colin, sir.’

  ‘Right.’

  We sit there for a moment, the engine idling. I stare at the mirror, and his eyes like watery blue needles skewered with crow’s feet. I consider a quick dive to see what this Colin’s all about, but decide against it. This nausea’s not going anywhere.

  ‘Pardon me, Mr Childs, but where was it you wanted to go?’

  ‘Er, Soho. The Cherry Tree.’

  ‘Right you are, sir.’

  We pull away and the car whistles north.

  We soon hit Piccadilly. Now, at this point Terry would be well into his first diatribe, probably about something he’d heard on the radio earlier that’s got his back up. But Colin is silent, gliding through the roads with indicators at every turn. I look out at pavements choked by hordes of wet tourists in cheap disposable anoraks.

  ‘Look at them all, Colin,’ I laugh. ‘Drenched. Idiots.’

  Just then, one of them — a man with a Mediterranean complexion and a mop of black, curly hair — suddenly steps, smiling, into the road. I grab the door as Colin slams on the brakes and we screech to a halt in front of him.

  ‘Jesus!’

  The man stands with his hands on the bonnet, staring back like a startled — and, in this case, well-tanned — fawn. Horns sound from the cars behind.

  ‘Will you look at that fucking tool,’ I say.

  But Colin, ignoring me, smiles and offers the man a gracious hand to let him cross in safety. The man smiles back, bows theatrically and scampers to the other side.

  Unbelievable. Terry would have been apoplectic by now. In fact, it’s debatable whether he would have even applied the brakes. As we pull away, horns still blaring behind us, Colin sighs.

  ‘People should be more courteous on the roads, Mr Childs. Especially to tourists. After all, they’ve spent all this money coming over here and then they’re ripped off by cheap shops and sold bad food in the rain. Least we can do is show them some —’

  A cyclist cuts through on Colin’s blindside. I steady myself as he swerves to avoid him.

  ‘Holy shit!’

  Colin tuts. It’s not quite the reaction Terry would have had — Terry who would, if he had his way, hang, draw and quarter every cyclist within the M25 and line their bicycle seat–skewered heads along Tower Bridge for all the world to see — but it’s promising.

  ‘Cyclists. Fucking lunatics, eh, Colin?’

  He glances at the mirror and shrugs.

  ‘Best means of transport in a city like London, if you ask me. It’s just a shame the roads aren’t built for them.’

  Fuck me.

  ‘Like in Amsterdam, for example.’

  As we turn onto Shaftesbury Avenue we pass a woman wearing a burka.

  ‘That’s one of them burkas,’ Colin says, watching her sail past.

  My ears prick up.

  ‘I have to say I don’t mind the burka,’ he continues. ‘In my view, they’re much better than some of the other things women wear in this country. I mean, have we no shame? Why do we insist on…’

  I reach for the button that raises the dividing screen between us, but before I can reach it a strange feeling overcomes me.

  ‘…forcing this outdated body image on women…’

  Colin’s voice mumbles away softly in the background.

  ‘…selling these ideas to children too…’

  We splash up Shaftesbury Avenue.

  ‘…Worry about my daughter, I really do…’

  The theatre billboards scream words at me, the names of the stars larger than the titles. It’s hard to describe, but a moment is approaching. I can feel it.

  ‘…she’ll grow up with twice the complex…’

  I am closing in. A moment is gathering. Colin’s words are like syrup, clogging time.

  ‘…And before long we’ll have a society where…’

  The day is falling away.

  And then it happens. We have stopped at some traffic lights. Colin is still talking, but his words are just noise now. My attention is drawn outside.

  A tramp is walking past. A proper tramp — old-school — although he is older than any school I can imagine. He looks as if he has hobbled from another time. His face hangs in the perpetual horror of old age, and a few lonely white tendrils of hair reach from his scalp like tattered flags on a fallen beach. His back is bent at almost ninety degrees to his legs and he clasps his hands behind it, carrying a dozen or so perishing plastic bags. Life has made him ragged. He wears a long cloak, buttoned at the neck, shredded to buggery at the hem and caked in two centuries of mud. He is like a Victorian preacher returning from hell.

  Above him the sky is blustering. Hooligan clouds maraud a deep and dangerous blue. The light falls quite suddenly as if some hidden engineer has pulled down a bank of faders.

  And the ragged man stops and turns.

  All I can hear is my blood. All I can see is this man, this creature, this thing. I feel like I am looking down through time, as if the width of the street between us has stretched by a hundred years.

  He looks through the hurrying crowd, eyes darting about. He seems to sniff the air. Rain pours down upon him and he does not flinch from a single drop. A car swishes by and hurls a puddle at his cloak, but he is oblivious to it. He is here for something, and whatever it is, it terrifies me.

  The rain halts, like a shower turned off, and the sound of the world disappears. And at that moment, I have the first inkling that I am hovering on the edge of something very familiar, a feeling I had a long time ago.

  A memory that does not belong to me.

  Somebody else’s dream.

  And then he sees me. There and then, he sees me. We lock eyes, and his widen in all their terrible white glory. His mouth opens and closes like a drowning pike. He staggers back two steps, then shuffles forward, crossing the street.

  I check the lights, still red, then turn back to window. The ragged man’s face is now inches away. He peers in at me and my blood reels. The glass and all the space between us, the atoms and the dust and the people, are all sinking away like thick weed in brine.

  I can hardly breathe or move. You, his eyes say. You, you, you.

  A fat drop of water hits his forehead. Then the rain resumes, the light rises and the busy street carries on its bustle. The ragged man is lost in the crowd, the lights change and we’re away.

  THE CHERRY TREE

  ‘HERE WE ARE, MR Childs.’

  I’m unaware that we have stopped, having been busy looking back along the narrow, cobbled street, searching for a flap of cloak in the crowd. We’re at the restaurant, somewhere in the twisted bowels of Soho.

  ‘I’ll wait here, shall I, sir?’ asks Colin. ‘I can park across the road. Are you all right, Mr Childs? You look pale.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Here, take my number, just in case.’

  He holds out a shabby business card, which I snatch as I step out into the rain. With one last look down the street, I laugh and push through the heavy door of the restaurant. I’m free of the moment, unaware that another is waiting inside.

  The Cherry Tree serves coarse Eastern European food in a long, candlelit room of bare brick, wood and scuffed metal. The new and the old do battle inside — areas of wallpaper stripped to its Victorian ancestor; floorboards lifted in a corner to expose the blackening of old fire damage. Reminders of life and death accompany your rabbit stew, pickled beef and icy red wine.

  Neat conglomerations of pictures fill the walls. Art from the 1920s mi
ngles with Napoleonic portraits. Woodstock hippies make peace signs next to Great War soldiers. The back wall is a bar with fittings of brass and brushed steel, proud and precise. The glasses gleam from steam-cleaning, thick-rimmed and frosted with emblems. The beer is good, the spirits artisan, lined against a great, gold-framed mirror in bottles quilled with black and gold script — London’s propensity to favour antique fantasy over the messy, technological squalor of its current reality. The only reminder of modernity is the bizarre inclusion of a fruit machine in the far corner of the bar room, winking and gurgling in spasmodic bliss as an old man in a cap feeds it coins. The scene is incongruous with the rest of the place, and yet perfectly in keeping with it. Everything is mixed up, like pinholes of light from a million unrelated moments.

  It’s also fairly exclusive; the kind of place where I can go without being bothered. But it’s busier than usual tonight, which makes me nervous. I can already sense a few eyebrows raising.

  I spot Patti nursing a gin at a corner table. But as I head over, time slows. Reality jitters. Another moment has arrived.

  A woman is leaving, heading for the door. As her jacket swoops over her shoulder, the chatter of the bar is extinguished and all I can hear is the slow echo of her footsteps towards me on the thick wooden floor. Cool light from a mirror bathes her face. Skin: golden brown. Lips: glorious and full. Eyes...eyes that could stop a heart.

  Other light sources flurry to illuminate her — she’s caught in the shaft from the mirror, the spotlight overhead, a sweep from the headlights of a car outside. She is lit up before me, and the rest of the bar is in darkness. When my eyes are finally able to leave her face, I catch a glimpse of her clothes. They’re not old, but they’re not new either and certainly not expensive. Cargo pants, Doc Martens, a black hoodie, leather bomber jacket.

  She catches my eye. There’s a glimmer of something, I can’t make out what. It’s like recognition, but not quite. Some ancestor of it.

  Then she’s past me and the door opens and closes and she’s gone. The noise of the bar returns and I find myself still standing in a cloud of her scent, blinking and dripping rain from my jacket.