Is Anybody There?: Seeing is believing

We didn’t talk any more about it for a while after that. I didn’t have any more visions, either; not that I can remember. Just one or two when I was in Year 6, but nothing to worry about. Nothing upsetting. It got a bit annoying when I changed schools and it started happening more regularly, but I very soon learnt how to recognise the signs and take avoiding action. Nowadays, I can almost always blot it out. You have to blot things out, or life would become intolerable. Mum is lucky that way, she doesn’t have to. This is why she says my gift is more powerful than hers. Mum actually needs someone to be there, in person, before anything can get through. On the other hand she has to concentrate far harder than I do, which is why it tends to wear her out.

On my eleventh birthday, Mum told me that I was old enough, now, to take responsibility for the gift I had been given.

“I nearly said, ‘saddled with’, but that wouldn’t be fair. You can do so much good with it, Jo! But you must treat it with respect. It’s not something to just play around with. It’s not a toy.”

She told me that just as I could do good with it, I could also do harm.

“Do you understand me? I hope you do, because this is serious.”

I said that I understood, but I don’t really think I did. It was hard to see what harm it could do, just amusing my friends now and again. Anyway I didn’t ever boast about being clairvoyant, but when Chloe and Dee asked me one day what my mum did, and I told them, and they wanted to know whether I could do it, too – well, naturally, I said yes. So then they wanted me to show them, which I knew Mum would have said I shouldn’t; I knew she would have said it was treating my gift like a toy. But I just didn’t see what was so wrong about it!

“It’s only a bit of fun.”

That was Chloe. Everything is a bit of fun with Chloe. If things aren’t fun, she can’t see any point in doing them. An attitude which does not go down too well with some of our teachers! Dee, being more serious, said that she could “sort of understand” why Mum was concerned.

“After all, being clairvoyant isn’t exactly the same as being musical, or being able to dance, or … do gymnastics, or something.”

“Whoever said it was?” wondered Chloe.

“What I mean,” said Dee, “is you’re not going to hurt anyone, just playing the piano. But you might hurt someone getting into their mind. Specially if they didn’t want you to, or you discovered something scary.”

“Like what?” said Chloe.

“Like if someone was going to die.” said Dee. At which Chloe gave a delighted screech and clutched herself round the middle. Honestly! She is just so ghoulish. She is totally mad about horror films, or anything with blood. Not me! Urgh.

“That would be so gross!” squealed Chloe.

I said, “Yes, it would. How would you like it if I saw that you were going to die?”

That shut her up. Well, for a little bit. But there and then, we laid down rules. If we were going to play the Game, we were only going to do it using objects that belonged to people who’d given their permission.

“Otherwise,” I said, “it’d be like … well, like prying into someone’s private affairs.”

Dee agreed immediately, and after a bit so did Chloe. She said she thought it was a pity, as she would have liked me to do some of the teachers, she thought that would be fun, but Dee and I made her promise – “On your honour!” – that she wouldn’t ever cheat. That way, we thought it would be safe.

Even so, we didn’t play The Game too often. For one thing, I had to be in the mood, and for another I always had this slight guilt feeling, like maybe I was doing what Mum had warned me not to: using my gift “irresponsibly”. It did niggle at me every now and again, but I told myself that it was just Mum, fussing. Mums do fuss! All the time, over just about everything. You have to decide for yourself whether it’s a justified fuss, or just a Mum fuss. If it’s just a Mum fuss, then it’s OK to ignore it. Well, anyway, that’s what I told myself.

That particular Saturday, what with it being nearly the end of term and Christmas only a couple of weeks away, I guess it was a bit like, “So what? Just a Mum fuss!” We messed about for a while, and I did Chloe’s cousin Dulcie, and had Chloe in fits of the giggles when I saw “Seven little people … I am definitely seeing seven little people! I can’t work out what it means.”

Dee said, “Maybe she’s going to get married and have seven babies.” and Chloe squealed and rolled herself up in the duvet.

“Is she happy about it?” said Dee.

“Mm … yes. I think so. But she’s kind of a bit … anxious.”

“You would be,” said Dee, “if you were going to have seven babies!”

Chloe squealed again and shot out of the duvet. “She’s not going to have seven babies! She’s playing Snow White in her end-of-term play … Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs!”

“That is so politically incorrect,” said Dee.

“It’s better than having seven babies,” said Chloe. “Let’s do another one! Do my Auntie Podge. Look! This is her hanky. I did ask her.”

But I didn’t want to do Chloe’s Auntie Podge. “I’m tired,” I said. “I’ve had enough.”

“But I promised!” wailed Chloe. “I said you’d do her!”

“I’ll do her another day.”

For a minute it looked like Chloe was going to go off into one of her sulks, but then she suddenly snatched my nightie from under the pillow and cried, “OK, I’ll do you! I’ll tell you what you’re thinking …” She scrunched the nightie into a ball and made this big production of screwing her eyes tight shut and swaying to and fro (which I do not do, though I do close my eyes). After almost swaying herself dizzy, she began to chant in this silly, spooky voice.

“Is anybody the-e-e-re? Is anybody the-e-e-re? I see something! I see … a shape! I see … a boy! I see … DANNY HARVEY!”

I immediately turned bright pillar-box red.

“Told you so, told you so!” Triumphantly, Chloe hurled my scrunched up nightie at Dee. “Told you she was mad about him!”

“I am not,” I snapped; but by now my face was practically in flames, so fat chance of anyone believing me. The truth was, I’d had a thing about Danny Harvey ever since half term, when he’d come to our Fête Day with his mum and dad. (His sister Claire’s in Year 7.) He’d visited the cuddly toy stall that I was helping look after. He’d bought a pink bunny rabbit! From me. I thought it was so cool, a Year 10 boy buying a bunny rabbit. I may not know as much as I would like to about boys, but even I know that they would mostly be too embarrassed to buy a cuddly toy!

Mary Day, unfortunately, is an all-girls’ school, so we don’t get much of a chance to mix with boys; and if, like me, you are an only child, and specially if your mum and dad have split up, you practically live the life of a nun. Like, the opposite sex is utterly mysterious and you might just as well hope to meet aliens from outer space as an actual boy. But I knew where Danny went to school, it was Cromwell House, just down the road from Mary’s, so by using a different bus stop, and doing a bit of carefully timed lingering and lurking, I did occasionally manage to catch a glimpse of him. For weeks and weeks a glimpse was all, but just a few days ago, joy and bliss! He’d smiled at me and said “Hi”. He’d remembered! He’d recognised me! He knew I was the one that had sold him the bunny! Which, needless to say, had set me off all over again. Just as I thought I might be getting over it …

“Poor you,” said Dee; and I sighed, and she hugged me. And although she didn’t say it, I knew what she was thinking: Poor old Jo! She doesn’t stand a chance.

It was then that Chloe had her bright idea. We knew that Danny worked weekends and Thursday evenings at the Pizza Palace in the High Street (I had my spies!), so why didn’t we organise an end-of-term celebration for the day we broke up, which just happened to be a Thursday?

“We could say it’s for everyone in our class, ’cos they won’t all come, but if it’s just the three of us it might look kind of obvious, or parents might even want to be there …”

Dee and I groaned.

“Whereas if it’s for the whole class,” said Chloe, “they’re more likely to let us go by ourselves. And then” – she beamed at me – “you can get all dressed up and flirt as much as you like!”

Naturally I denied that I would do any such thing; but already I was mentally whizzing through my wardrobe wondering what to wear …

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Fifteen of us signed up for our end-of-term celebration. We arranged to meet at the Pizza Place at six o’clock so that we could be home by nine, which was what most people’s parents laid down as the deadline, it being December, and dark, and the High Street being full of pubs and clubs and wine bars, not to mention Unsavoury Types that hung about in shop doorways. It was Mum who said they were unsavoury.

“Why do you have to go into town? Why can’t you find somewhere local?”

I said, “Because not everybody lives somewhere local.” Plus anywhere local is totally naff. “Anyway,” I said, “you don’t have to worry … Dee’s dad will come and pick us up.”

“So long as he does,” said Mum.

I said, “Mum, he will.”

Dee lives just a bit further out from Tanfield, which is the boring suburb where I am doomed to dwell; her dad always gives me a lift. So Mum said all right, in that case she would let me go, and I rushed off to ransack my wardrobe and see what I had that was even remotely wearable, and to ring Dee and tell her that she could go ahead and book a table, or get her mum to.

Of the three of us, it was always Dee who did the organising. Chloe was too scatty, she would be bound to get the wrong day, or the wrong time; even wrong year. Mum used to say she was “mercurial”. Dee and I just said she was useless. I am not useless, but Dee is one of those people who always has everything under control. She’s the same at school. She always knows what’s been set for homework, she’s always done her homework. She’s the one who’s always filled in her timetable correctly, the one who tells the rest of us where we’re meant to be, and when. I bet you anything you like she’ll end up as head girl, keeping us all in order.