The Firebird

‘Oh.’ I’d handed the phone over, and Rob had dialled a number that set off an answering ringtone from one of his own pockets. Calmly ringing off, he’d passed my mobile back across the aisle. ‘Thanks.’

‘That’s a sneaky way of getting someone’s number.’

‘What?’

‘You could have asked.’

He’d looked at me, all innocence, and said, ‘I’ve no idea what you’re on about.’

And looking at those eyes I had agreed with Dr Fulton-Wallace, that he was a devil. But I’d missed him when he’d left the train at Berwick.

Ten miles out, my mobile had chimed out the tune that meant a text message had just arrived. ‘Am safely back in Scotland,’ it had told me. ‘Where are you?’

We’d texted back and forth for the next three hours, my whole way down to London. I had asked him later why he’d gone to all that trouble, typing all those texts, when he could simply have reached out to me with thoughts. He had the skill.

He’d told me, ‘You weren’t ready for it, then.’

I’d slipped my hand in his and said, ‘I’m ready now.’

But I’d been wrong.

I set Rob’s wristwatch on the shelf beside the pillow of the bed and curled myself into the blankets, staring dry-eyed at the dark.

I didn’t want to think about the rest of what had happened on that evening after I had bought the watch for him, after we’d walked out holding hands into the rain-slicked street, with all the street lamps coming on. I’d played that evening over in my mind enough times since that I could run it forward like a film at will, and feel that I was back there; feel the dampness of the air, the rising chill that made me glad of Rob’s more solid warmth beside me as he held the pub’s door open so that I could go ahead of him.

The pub was crowded, but with patience we found two stools at the bar together, and when Dr Fulton-Wallace turned up a short while later, Rob gave up his seat to her and stood behind us, close against my shoulder so the three of us could talk.

‘Thanks for coming,’ she said, getting to the point: ‘I’ve been looking at both of your scores on this latest psychometry study, and I’d like to have your permission to film you.’

‘Oh aye?’ said Rob.

‘I’ve been doing this twenty years now, and I’ve never seen anyone who can do what you can do, Rob. And both of you working together – I think it would really inform the community, if we could properly document it.’

I felt a cold flip in my stomach.

Rob said, ‘Well, I’d have to apply for permission to take part in something like that – we’ve got rules in the force about public appearances – but if ye send me the details I’ll certainly ask.’

I kept out of the whole conversation that followed. If Rob even noticed he didn’t let on; he was talking enough for the two of us anyway, and Dr Fulton-Wallace was too focused on the details of her project and the good that it could do to be distracted by my silence.

The big man behind her who only a moment before had been talking and joking along with his mates had gone silent as well, leaning closer as though he were listening. And when she finished her last drink and thanked us and wished us good night and went out, he made some comment thickened with whisky and expletives that made his friends burst out laughing.

‘Did ye ever, in your whole life, hear a bigger load of shite?’ he asked them, and they all agreed that they had not. Then more loudly, so everyone round us could hear, he announced, ‘This lad here and his girlfriend, they’re reading our minds.’

‘Freaks,’ said a lanky young man with a shaved head who stood on the fringe of the group. ‘Go on, then.’ He stepped forward and faced Rob, belligerent. ‘Read my mind. What am I thinking?’

Rob answered him calmly, ignoring the looks we were drawing. ‘You’re wanting to fight.’

The big man prodded Rob like a bear-baiter. ‘And are ye seeing a fight in his future, then, laddie?’

Rob said, ‘I am, aye. But not with me.’ Tilting his head to one side he looked quietly at the young man with the shaved head a moment, then told him, ‘Your mother …’

‘Right, here we go!’ someone predicted, to more scattered laughter.

Ignoring them, Rob said, ‘She’ll be home from hospital soon. And you’ve nothing to fear, it was never her heart.’

In the moment of nearly stunned silence that followed, he finished his pint, set the glass down, and looked at me. ‘Ready to go?’

Feeling colder than ever, I went with him, hearing the talk and the comments beginning again at our backs.

Freaks.

Outside it was starting to rain again, lightly, the street lights and headlights reflecting and running together the way all the colours had done in a painting I’d once seen deliberately ruined by acid. A beautiful picture destroyed.

And it wasn’t Rob’s fault, but I turned on him anyway. ‘How can you not let that get to you?’

‘I’m a policeman. That’s not the first drunk in a pub I’ve come up against.’

‘No, I mean everyone pointing and whispering, saying you’re different.’

He shrugged. ‘I am different,’ he said. ‘So are you.’

‘I don’t want to be different.’

He slanted a thoughtful look down at me. ‘Aye, but you are. Were you thinking to hide it your whole life?’