A Line to Kill

‘There!’ she said. ‘I’m seeing a lady. Her name was Mary or Margaret. She was here for seventy years before she crossed to the other side …’

I’d seen it all before, starting with the choice of ‘Mary or Margaret’, which immediately doubled her chances of making a score. Put a hundred people in a room and the odds were huge that one of them would know a Mary or a Margaret who had died, and if those names didn’t work, she could move on to Mabel, Miranda and Miriam.

‘She has wet hair,’ Elizabeth added.

I had to admit, I wasn’t expecting that.

There was a short silence. Elizabeth was still gazing in the direction of Tom Cruise. Then someone shouted: ‘That’s Mary Carrington!’

‘Lady in the fourth row. Fifties. Glasses,’ Sid muttered. He hadn’t spoken for a while.

Elizabeth’s head swung round. ‘Who was Mary Carrington?’ she asked.

The same person replied. ‘She lived in town. Everyone knew Mary. She used to have a sweet shop. She slipped getting into the bath. She hit her head and drowned.’

‘She is with her husband … Eric.’

‘It wasn’t Eric! It was Ernest!’ a man called out from the back.

‘She wanted to be with him and now they’re happy together, even though they miss you. They miss the island.’

‘She always said she hated it here,’ the man remarked.

‘She said it but she didn’t mean it. Now …’ Elizabeth took a deep breath as if she had heard someone creeping up on her from behind. ‘There is another presence here. A young man. He left us far too soon. His name is …’ She hesitated, unsure. ‘William?’

I knew it was all trickery. I have an interest in magic and have read biographies of Harry Houdini, who spent half his life exposing fake mediums. I used to watch the Canadian magician James Randi on television and he explained exactly how it worked. If nobody in the audience knew a William who had drowned or been run over or whatever, Elizabeth would make something up and move on. The audience wanted to believe her and that was the weapon she was using against them. How had she known about Mary Carrington? It would have been easy for her to find out. Maybe she had come across the story in a back edition of the Alderney Journal. I was sure it would have been reported.

She was waiting for someone to respond to the arrival of William and I was expecting her to move on to Walter or Wayne when she added, in a surprised voice, ‘Is Anne here?’

I hadn’t noticed it until now but it had become very warm in the cinema. There was no air conditioning and although they’d left the door open at the back, the flow of air was sluggish. I felt the one hundred people pressing in on me and heard their collective breathing. In the half-darkness, the blind woman on the stage seemed almost threatening. I remembered going to pantomimes when I was a boy and living in terror that I would be chosen by one of the actors for a sing-song or a bit of fun on stage. I felt the same way now. My father had died young. I hoped with every fibre of my being that he wasn’t going to show up next – although he’d never taken that much interest in me when he was alive.

‘Anne?’ Elizabeth scanned the audience sightlessly.

Sid reached out to her. ‘Do you mean Anne Cleary?’

‘Yes.’

‘Second row. Just to your left.’

Elizabeth tilted her head in that direction. ‘There’s someone called William. He was very close to you. Was he your son?’

I looked at Anne, three seats away, and my heart went out to her. All the blood had drained out of her face. She was in a state of shock. ‘Please …’ She didn’t want Elizabeth to continue.

‘William was very troubled and he made a terrible decision. He was very young when he left you. And he knows how sad you are. He caused you pain. He wants you to forgive him. He died—’

‘He died of an overdose while he was at university.’ Anne’s voice cut in, supplying the information, perhaps trying to short-circuit this before it went any further. All around her, the audience had become very still, uncomfortable to be witnessing this personal tragedy.

‘Yes …’ Elizabeth nodded slowly, her gaunt face full of compassion.

‘He was an addict. He didn’t know what he was doing.’ Anne’s voice cracked. She hadn’t mentioned her son when we’d had dinner the night before, although she had said she had a daughter living in London. Even as we had laughed together it had struck me that there was an air of sadness about her, a sense of something unsaid. I hated what was happening to her now. It was horrible and unfair.

‘Don’t be sad, Anne,’ Elizabeth said from the stage. ‘There is no sadness on the other side of the mirror. He’s left all that behind him.’

‘That may be true.’ Anne stood up. ‘But he’s left me and his family behind him too and the pain has never gone … not for us.’ She had said enough. I saw her make the decision. Breathing heavily, she pushed her way to the end of the row, passing close to Hawthorne and myself, and without looking back left the cinema.