The Bone Clocks

Holly sees the subtext, takes off her glasses, and pinches the indented mark on her nose. “Okay, Hershey, you win. Summer of 1985. I was sixteen. Jacko had been missing for twelve months. Me and Sharon were staying at Bantry in County Cork, with relatives. One wet day we were playing snakes and ladders with the smallies, when”—three decades later, Holly flinches—“I knew, or heard, or ‘felt a certainty,’ whatever you want to call it, what number the dice was next going to land on. My cousin’d rattle the eggcup and I’d think, Five. Lo and behold, the die landed on five. One. Five. Three. On and on. A lucky streak, right? Happens all the time. But on it went. For over fifty throws, f’Chrissakes. I wanted it to stop. Each time I thought, This time it’ll be wrong and I’ll be able to dismiss it all as a coincidence … but on and on it went, till Sharon needed a six to win, which I knew she’d roll. And she did. By now, I had a cracking headache, so I crawled off to bed. When I woke up, Sharon and our cousins were playing Cluedo, and everything was back to normal. And straightaway I started persuading myself that I’d only i magined knowing the numbers. By the time I got back to boring old Gravesend, I’d half persuaded myself the whole thing’d just been just a … a one-off weirdness I was probably misremembering.”

I think I’m drunker than I realized. “But it wasn’t.”

Holly picks at her ring. “That autumn, my mum got me enrolled on an office-skills course at Gravesend Tech, so at least I could do a bit of temping. I managed it okay, but one day in the canteen, I was on my own, as usual, when … Well, all of sudden, I knewthat this girl, Rebecca Jones, who was sat chatting with friends on the table opposite, was going to knock her coffee onto the floor, in just a few seconds’ time. I just knew, Crispin, like I know … your name, or that I’ll go to sleep later. I’ve never believed in God, really, but I was praying, Please don’t, please don’t, please don’t. Then Rebecca Jones flapped out her hand to illustrate her story, it hit her coffee cup and smashed it onto the floor. Little streams and puddles of coffee everywhere.”

“What did you do?”

“Well, I bloody legged it, but … the certainties chased me. I knew that round the next corner I’d see a Dalmatian cocking its leg against a lamppost. As if I’d already seen it, only I hadn’t. Round the corner, lo and behold, one Dalmatian, one lamppost, its hind leg up. A hundred yards from the railway bridge, I knewthat when I crossed the bridge, the London train’d be passing under. Right again. On and on, all the way back to the pub. Then, as I passed through the bar, a regular, Frank Sharkey, was playing darts and …” she pauses to look at the goosebumps on her forearms, “… I knew I’d never see him again. I knew, Crispin. Sure,” she winces, “I ignored it, it was nasty and morbid. Old Mr. Sharkey was as much a friend of the family as a regular. He’d watched us all grow up. I told Dad I’d come back from college ’cause of a migraine, which by now I had. Went to bed, woke up, felt tons better. It’d stopped. What’d happened was harder to dismiss as fantasy, of course; I couldn’t. But I was just glad it’d stopped and tried not to think about Mr. Sharkey. But the next day, he didn’t appear, and even then, I knew. I nagged Dad to call a neighbor who had a key. Frank Sharkey was found dead in his garden shed. He’d had a massive heart attack. The doctor said he’d have been dead before he hit the floor.”

She’s persuasive, and she’s persuaded herself, I can see. But the paranormal ispersuasive; why else does religion persist?

Holly stares sadly into her glass. “Many people need to believe in psychic powers. A lot of them latch onto my book so I get accused of milking the gullible. By people I respect, even. But s’pose it wasreal, Crispin, s’pose youhad these certainties, which can’t be altered or second-guessed—about, say, Juno or Anaпs. Would you think, Happy Days, I’m psychic?”

“Well, it depends …” I think about it. “No. At the risk of sounding like a GP, how long did all this last?”

She sucks in her lips and shakes her head. “Well … they’ve never stopped. Aged sixteen, seventeen, I’d be mugged by a bunch of facts that hadn’t happened yet, every few weeks, rush home, and bury myself in my bed with my head in a duffel bag. Told no one, apart from my great-aunt Eilнsh. What would I say? People’d just think I wanted attention. Aged eighteen, I went grape picking for the summer in Bordeaux, then worked winters in the Alps. At least if I was abroad, the certainties wouldn’t be Brendan falling downstairs or Sharon getting hit by a bus.”

“This precognition doesn’t work long distance, then?”

“Not usually, no.”

“And do you get inside info on your own future?”

“Thank Christ, no.”

I hesitate to repeat my question, but I do. “Rottnest?”