The Orphan Choir Part 13

'Wait and see, Stuart. I promise you let me take Joseph out of Saviour and I'll be fine. We'll all be fine.'

'All right, then, here's the deal,' he says. 'When does next term begin?'

How can he not know the date? Saviour's calendar is pinned up on the kitchen noticeboard at Weldon Road; it's burned into my brain: the day Dr Freeman will reclaim my son if I don't stop him.

'January the ninth,' I say, scared again. Why is Stuart trying to offer me a deal when he's only just agreed to mine? I don't want to talk about this any more. I have things to do, important things. I have to apologise to Bethan, then ring round other Cambridge schools and choirs to see which have places for Joseph.

'If you still feel the same way on January the eighth, I won't argue with you,' Stuart says. 'We'll take Joseph out of Saviour, no questions asked. But in the meantime ... we go to this extra Choral Evensong as planned. He does the Christmas Day service.'

'No! He leaves now we email Dr Freeman today.'

'Lou, that's not fair. We're surely not going to die between now and Christmas Day?' Stuart attempts a laugh. It comes out as a bark.

But he's right: the danger is in February, not between now and Christmas. The first danger, anyway. Unless I'm wrong.

I don't think I am.

Can I risk it? No. I don't want to.

Stuart sits down on the bed beside me and takes my hand in both of his. Feeling the warmth of his skin, I am suddenly aware of how cold I am. 'Lou,' he says. 'Our son was picked from hundreds of boys to be a member of Saviour College choir. That was and is an amazing achievement.'

'I know.'

'I'd like him to do one Christmas service as a Saviour chorister. Please. I tell you what on Boxing Day, if you haven't changed your mind, I'll ring Dr Freeman and tell him Joseph's leaving. First thing Boxing Day.'

No. Absolutely not.

'You have my solemn promise. But ... please let him do these last two services. Let's hear him sing with his choir a couple more times. I've been looking forward to it.'

I nod. 'Okay. If it's so important to you.' No, no, no. On no account.

Between now and Friday, I must find a way to stop this from happening and still get what I want. I'll think of something; I have to. I can't let Joseph do Choral Evensong. Or the service on Christmas morning. I can't let him anywhere near Saviour's choir ever again.

'Thank you, Lou.'

As Stuart kisses my forehead, I wonder if I could make him too ill to travel on Friday without doing him any serious harm. I would never dream of doing that to Joseph, but to Stuart ... maybe.

Bethan's square wooden house turns out not to be called The Cube but The Hush. 'I thought of the name myself,' she says proudly as she puts the kettle on to make us both a coffee. Her kitchen/dining/living area is open-plan, like The Boundary's, and colour-coordinated to within an inch of its life depressingly so. The cushions are the same yellow as the kettle and the mugs; the coasters, throws and rugs all contain yellow, beige and green, which are also the colours of the bland abstract prints on the walls.

'Normally new homeowners pick a house name from the estate's list, but you can choose your own if you want, as long as the board approves it. The Hush went through with no ha.s.sle they only really object if someone wants to use something that's not in keeping with the ethos and atmosphere of Swallowfield. Once we had a chap who applied for permission to use the name This Is My Smallest House.' Bethan giggles. 'He meant it in a tongue-in-cheek way, but the board thought some people might take offence. It was one of the biggest houses he was buying, and other homeowners might have thought he was boasting.'

I wonder if I should interrupt her flow, try again to apologise. I tried as soon as she opened the door, several times, but she wouldn't let me. 'Let's put it behind us and move on,' she insisted, beaming at me. 'I could tell you weren't yourself yesterday.'

I'm grateful for her willingness to let bygones be bygones, but also suspicious of it. Why won't she let me explain even a little bit? Has she really cast it from her mind as if it never happened? How can she have? If someone I knew who had previously always been friendly and polite suddenly swore at me for no reason, I'm pretty sure I'd want to hear what they had to say about it afterwards.

Perhaps Bethan's cheery banter is a cover for embarra.s.sment: she doesn't want to get into a heavy or awkward conversation. Which would be fair enough. She hardly knows me, really.

'The Hush is the perfect name for this house,' she says. 'It's so quiet. I mean, the whole of Swallowfield's quiet, obviously, but here you literally don't even hear another voice from one day to the next. That's why I sometimes have the radio up quite loud there's no danger of anyone being disturbed by it. Apart from you, no one's ever wandered over here before. I don't know how you managed to find it it's really tucked away, on the far side of Starling Copse. Most of our homeowners don't know this little area exists. To be honest, the board kind of made that a condition when I told them I wanted to buy.'

She brings our coffees over to the lounge part of the room, hands me mine. I expect her to sit opposite me in one of the two armchairs, but instead she sits beside me on the sofa. A strange choice; now I will have to move either my head or my body in order to see her. She's wearing too much perfume. It smells the way fruit with far too much sugar on it would taste. I wonder if she's one of those women who gets all drunk and giggly on nights out and then expects other women to share a toilet cubicle with her as a sign of close friendship.

'When I first started here as sales director, I never for one minute imagined I'd end up buying a house,' she says. 'I couldn't afford it, to be honest, not even one of the apartments over by the main playground, but then I fell head-over-heels in love with the place. I had to buy a house here, I yearned to. So we did.' She smiles, but not happily. There's a sadness in her voice too. 'We sold our house in Rawndesley downsized to a two-bedroom flat. It's a bit poky, but I've never regretted it.'

Then why do you sound as if you do?

'Swallowfield had to come first.' Bethan nods as if to a.s.sure herself that she's right. 'If you've got two homes, it makes sense to have the best one in your favourite place, like my husband said at the time. And how could Swallowfield not be anybody's favourite place? It's like paradise, isn't it?'

It wasn't like paradise yesterday. I'm starting to feel as if I might have to leave in a hurry. Normally I can handle small talk as well as the next person, but today it feels almost negligent to be indulging in it. I'm not sure I can fight the rising tide of everything I'm not saying for much longer.

'Trouble is, it's obviously a bit funny for one of the Swallowfield sales team to be a homeowner too bit of a conflict of interests, maybe?' Bethan prattles on. 'That was the board's worry. They didn't want to lose me as sales director, though not to blow my own trumpet, but I'm pretty good at my job so they offered to build me a house miles away from any other homeowners, at a knock-down price, and here we are! The Hush.' She looks admiringly around her own lounge. 'I was amazingly lucky. But, much as I'd love to rave about my lovely home at Swallowfield when I'm showing prospective buyers round, the board asked me not to. That's why I didn't say anything to you about living here. I think they think ... well, I've got my own island, haven't I? I can hardly say, "Sorry, none of the other properties have got that, only mine." The sort of people who come here wouldn't take kindly to a sales pitch from someone with a better second home than she's offering them. Not that the other houses aren't just as special in their own way,' Bethan adds quickly as she realises what she's said and how I might take it. She pats my arm. 'Yours is particularly lovely I've always thought that.'

'The music you were playing yesterday, when I was outside,' I blurt out. 'What was it?'

'Music? Oh, you mean on the radio? I don't remember. Why?'

'Was it "Don't Stop Me Now" by Queen? If it wasn't, then I really am losing my mind.' I start to weep, except it doesn't feel as if it's coming from me. It's as if a flood has started inside me without warning. Normally I know a few seconds in advance when I'm about to start crying; I can get away from whoever I'm with and do it in private. I hate crying in front of people.

I try to apologise but can't get the words out through the tears.

Bethan takes the mug from my hands and puts it down on the coffee table next to her. I pray that she won't hug me or, even worse, pat me on the back. If she says and does nothing, and doesn't touch me, I might be able to pull myself together. 'I think it was,' she says. 'It was definitely something by Queen. Yes, I'm pretty sure it was "Don't Stop Me Now".'

I pull my bunched fists out of my eyes and look up at her. She's frowning. Wanting to be certain she's given me the right answer. I feel guilty for thinking bad thoughts about her perfume, and her bathroom habits.

'Louise, what's wrong?' she says gently. 'I don't want to pry, and you don't have to talk about it if you don't want to but ... well, I'm always happy to listen. And I never judge.'

How is that possible? I judge all the time. So does everybody I know: Stuart, my family, his family, my colleagues, the choir parents, Dr Freeman, Mr Fahrenheit. Even Pat Jervis, who has no b.l.o.o.d.y right.

I wonder if 'I never judge' is the polite way of saying, 'So you'd better not judge me.' If so, I can't imagine that it's a particularly effective strategy. The judgemental would surely blacklist the non-judgemental ahead of any other group.

I can't figure Bethan out. At all.

The urge to cry is gone, completely vanished. I couldn't if I wanted to, even though my face is still wet. What I feel compelled to do instead is tell the story from the beginning. To someone who isn't Stuart, someone who doesn't know me very well and is capable of being objective because there's nothing at stake for her. Someone whose reaction I can't predict: a woman who sits too close to me on the sofa but doesn't hug me when I burst into tears. Who appreciates the beauty of Swallowfield, but furnishes and decorates her home here like a buy-to-let inner-city landlord with no time and little imagination.

I want to know what Bethan thinks. I need to know.

I tell her everything the whole story, even the parts of it that I might have imagined or hallucinated. I tell her about Mr Fahrenheit, Pat Jervis, Joseph being a boarder at school and how much I hate it, the choral music that I heard in my bedroom and then on the street the music no one else heard.

And then, because I can't allow the secret to swell inside me any longer, I tell her about the Orphan Choir. She listens without interrupting, without looking scornful. When I get to the end of the story and she's sure I've finished, she hands me my mug of coffee. 'It'll be cold by now, but ...' She shrugs.

'Thank you.' I take a sip. It tastes disgusting.

'I can make you another one if you like? A hot one.'

Then why wait to offer until I'm drinking the cold one again?

'This is fine,' I say.

'My son's very musical too,' Bethan says. 'Ed, he's called. He's nine, so a bit older than Joseph, but he's in his school choir. He's one of the best singers they've got, and I'm not just saying that because I'm his mum. It's only a state school we can't afford private but the music teacher's brilliant. They learn all sorts songs in Latin, Irish folk music. They're absolutely incredible.'

It's a relief not to have to justify, immediately, the more implausible aspects of the story I've just told. A relief to hear anything that isn't: But you can't have seen that. It can't have happened. It's just not possible.

'Where's Ed now?' I ask. 'Hasn't his school broken up yet?'

'No. Tomorrow they break up.'

Why is she saying nothing about the Orphan Choir? Is she too non-judgemental to tell me that my story sounded like complete nonsense? I interrogate myself silently: did I definitely tell her? Could I have imagined telling her?

'But ... Ed doesn't live with me, so ...' A shadow pa.s.ses across Bethan's face. 'I won't be seeing him, even over Christmas. He lives with his father. Rod. We're separated.' She blinks away tears: more discreet ones than mine tears that will take no for an answer. 'I know how painful it is to lose a child, Louise. Believe me. Death and abduction aren't the only ways it can happen, though they're the only ways people sympathise with. Ed's getting on with his life, getting on well at school. He seems happy. I see him every fortnight, for the weekend. No one can see that I've lost him except me. I mean, people know he lives with Rod, but ... that's different from a tragedy, isn't it? In most people's eyes. It feels like a tragedy to me, though.'

'I'm so sorry,' I say. 'Did you ... Could you ...' I don't know how to ask without making her feel as if it's her fault, or as if I think it might be.

'I didn't fight Rod for custody, no. No point.'

'He'd win?'

'No, I think I would. But winning would be losing.' She shakes her head, murmurs something under her breath. 'If I tell you, you'll think I'm spineless.'

'No, I won't.'

'Rod told me from the start before we had kids, before we were engaged, even that he'd never let any woman take his child away from him to live under another man's roof. He wouldn't have married me if I hadn't agreed. I was in love I thought it was sweet, that it was fine because we were never going to split up. Rod was so serious about being a dad, he wanted it so much, but he wouldn't have gone into it if there was even a chance that some woman would separate him from his kids. It used to really worry him even stopped him from having relationships for a while. Before he met me. We used to tease each other about it when things were okay between us. If Ed and I were nipping into town, Rod'd say jokily, "Taking my son away, are you? I seem to recall promising to kill any woman who did that." And I'd say, "Don't worry, you'll have him back in a couple of hours you'll be poorer though, because we're going into town to get him a new coat. Lucky you've not sworn to kill anyone who spends too much of your hard-earned money!"'

Seeing my expression, Bethan says, 'I know it sounds awful but it was just one of our running gags. Neither of us thought the situation'd ever arise.' She falls silent.

'And when it did, you let Rod keep Ed because you knew it wasn't really a joke?' I ask.

'I don't know if he'd actually go as far as killing me. I'd rather not find out. He'd do something, that's for sure. Kill himself, maybe. I can't risk it. Anyway ...' Bethan smiles determinedly and pats her lap with both hands: the signal for a cat to leap up into it, except there is no cat. 'You didn't come here to listen to me pouring my heart out with a tale of woe. We should be talking about you and what happened to you yesterday. I must say, that's something we don't have in common: I've never had a ... an out-of-body experience like that. What do you think it means?'

'The Orphan Choir?' It feels so odd saying the words out loud. 'It wasn't an out-of-body experience exactly. I was in my body, and my mind, but they were ... different. Everything was different. It's so hard to explain. But I do know what it means I think. No, I know. But it'll sound crazy if I tell you. Crazier than what you've already heard.'

'Try me,' says Bethan. 'Like I said, I don't judge.'

'Then can you start now?' I am joking but not joking. Like Bethan's ex, Rod. 'I need someone to tell me if everything I'm thinking is a complete fantasy and I'm stark raving mad or if there could be any truth in it. I don't trust myself any more.'

'Go on.'

'I think the Orphan Choir's ... visit was a warning. It was Joseph's choir.'

'You saw Joseph with them?' Bethan asks. 'You didn't mention that.'

'No, he wasn't one of them, but the three that told me their names they're Saviour choirboys.'

'But one of them was a girl, you said Lucinda Price.'

'Yes. Sorry.' Why is my brain not working properly? Bethan shouldn't know more about what happened yesterday than I do. 'The two boys, Alfie Speake and George Fairclough they're choristers. Lucinda Price isn't, obviously no girls are allowed in Saviour's choir. She must be one of the choirboys' sisters. In fact, all the girls I saw must be. That's why it's the Orphan Choir what else can it mean? If the choirboys are orphans, their parents must be dead. If their parents are dead, that would make their sisters orphans too.'

Jagged and silver in the night; blue-white eyes shining. Wide black mouths scream-singing.

'So ... you said you thought it was a warning?' Bethan prompts.

'Sometimes Saviour's choir sings in other places apart from the college chapel. Not often, but it happens. In February they're going to be singing at St Paul's in London. They're going by coach, with the choirmaster, Dr Freeman. There's a separate coach booked to take parents and families.' Since yesterday, my mind has been full of all the terrible things that might happen to that coach. Will it plunge off a hill road and crash into the valley below, killing everyone on impact? There are no hills between Cambridge and London, so probably not. Will it overturn on the M11 and burst into flames?

'And you're worried it's going to crash and kill you all?' Bethan asks.

'Not me, not Stuart. We're not going to be on that coach. I need to warn all the other parents, but how can I? They won't believe me. You don't believe me, do you? I won't blame you at all if you don't. I'd rather be wrong. I'd rather be mad! At least if I'm the crazy one then the rest of the world still makes sense!'

'The girls, though,' Bethan says, frowning. 'That's where your theory falls down.'

'What do you mean?'

'Well, if they're sisters of choirboys, they'd be on the second coach too, wouldn't they? The parents' and families' coach, the one laid on to transport the audience. Not the one that's taking the choirboys. So '

'They wouldn't be alive and orphaned. They'd be dead along with the parents.' I finish Bethan's sentence for her. 'Yes, I thought about that. But ... maybe not everyone on the second coach died? Or some of the choirboys' sisters might have been left at home with a sitter, a grandparent maybe those girls are the ones I saw and heard in the Orphan Choir.'

'"Dies", you mean. Not "died". None of these parents and sisters are dead yet, are they?'

I appreciate Bethan's matter-of-fact approach. She's the one making it possible for us to continue this conversation, not me.

'Should I warn them?' I ask. 'We're going to Cambridge this Friday for a Choral Evensong. I'll see all the choir parents there.'

Bethan rubs the palm of her left hand with the thumb of her right as she thinks about it. 'I don't think you need to warn anybody,' she says eventually. 'Why wouldn't the Orphan Choir warn the other parents, if they warned you? To be honest ...' She stops. 'Do you want to know what I really think?'

I nod. A grey stone of dread has started to form at the base of my throat. I need to be right about this. I know I can avoid that coach trip; I need it to be that and nothing else that I have to avoid.

In case I can't.

'I think it was a warning, like you say, but nothing to do with a coach trip,' says Bethan. 'I honestly don't think all the choir families are going to die on the way to St Paul's Cathedral. I don't believe in ghosts or anything supernatural like that do you?'

'No. Nor premonitions, not usually, but ... I can't deny what happened to me yesterday. It definitely happened.'

'Yes. It happened in here' she taps the side of her head with her finger 'because you desperately want your son back. You want and need to get him out of Saviour College School you've been miserable since he started there. That's the warning. You're missing Joe so much, you're seeing orphaned choirboys who've been tragically separated from their parents. You don't like this Dr Freeman, or trust him further than you can throw him ... The mind's a powerful machine, Louise. It can do an awful lot to us that we don't understand.'

'I know that.'

She's wrong. The Orphan Choir means more than she thinks it does. It didn't come from inside my head.

She's wrong because of the girls.

Why would my mind produce girls, when the choir from which I am desperate to extricate my son is a boys-only choir?

'Your subconscious is panicking, Louise that's what's going on. Here at Swallowfield you've got Joe with you and you're happy, but this holiday period can't last for ever. Subconsciously, you know that the start of term's going to be even more painful because you've had Joe back for a bit and soon you'll have to say goodbye to him again.' Bethan shrugs. 'Or else it's this Dr Freeman maybe you don't like him for a different reason from the one you a.s.sume. He might not be fit to look after children he might be a monster.'

No. Ivan Freeman isn't a monster; he is someone whose wishes and self-interest clash with mine, that's all. That's enough.

'Maybe on a gut-instinct level, you've worked out that you need to get Joe away from Dr Freeman double quick.'

My son's name is Joseph. Not Joe.

'I don't believe in ghosts, but I definitely believe dodgy people can give off danger vibes that can make alarm bells ring,' Bethan says. 'And so can situations. I don't know if it's separation from Joe you're afraid of or Dr Freeman, but whichever it is, you should heed the warning your brain's trying to give you all the warnings you've had since Joe started school and move him to a different school, a day school. Get him back for good and I promise you, you won't be seeing any more choirs of orphans hovering above lakes.'