David Mitchell - The Bone Clocks

Mum used to call me a gannet; and as a journalist I’ve been called a vulture, a dung beetle, a shit snake; a girl I once knew called me her dog, but not in a social context. “A mole.”

“Why?”

“They’re good at burrowing into dark places.”

“Why d’you want to burrow into dark places?”

“To discover things. But moles are good at something else, too.” My hand rises like a possessed claw. “Tickling.”

But Aoife tilts her head to one side like a scale model of Holly. “If you tickle me I’ll wet myself and then you’ll have to wash my pants.”

“Okay.” I act contrite. “Moles don’t tickle.”

“I should think so too.” How she says that makes me afraid Aoife’s childhood’s a book I’m flicking through instead of reading properly.

Behind the arcade, seagulls are squabbling over chips spilling from a ripped-open bag. Big bastards, these birds. A row of stalls, booths, and shops runs down the middle of the pier. I can’t help but notice the woman walking towards us, because everything around her shifts out of focus. She’s around my age, give or take, and tall for a woman though not stand-outishly so. Her hair is white-gold in the sun, her velvet suit is the dark green of moss on graves, and her bottle-blue sunglasses will be fashionable some decades from now. I put on my own sunglasses. She compels attention. She compels. She’s way out of my class, she’s way out of anybody’s class, and I feel grubby and disloyal to Holly, but look at her, Jesus Christ, look at her — graceful, lithe, knowing, and light bends around her. “Edmund Brubeck,” say her wine-red lips. “As I live and breathe, it’s you, isn’t it?”

I’ve stopped in my tracks. You don’t forget beauty like this. How on earth does she know me, and why don’t I remember? I take off my sunglasses now and say, “Hi!” hoping that I sound confident, hoping to buy time for clues to emerge. Not a native English accent. European. French? Bendier than German, but not Italian. No journalist looks this semidivine. An actress or model I interviewed, years ago? Someone’s trophy wife from a more recent party? A friend of Sharon’s in Brighton for the wedding? God, this is embarrassing.

She’s still smiling. “I have you at a disadvantage, don’t I?”

Am I blushing? “You have to forgive me, I–I’m …”

“I’m Immaculée Constantin, a friend of Holly’s.”

“Oh,” I bluster, “Immaculée — yes, of course!” Do I half-know that name from somewhere? I shake her hand and perform an awkward cheek-to-cheek kiss. Her skin’s as smooth as marble but cooler than sun-warmed skin. “Forgive me, I … I just got back from Iraq yesterday and my brain’s frazzled.”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” says Immaculée Constantin, whoever the hell she is. “So many faces, so many faces. One must lose a few old ones to make space for the new. I knew Holly as a girl in Gravesend, although I left town when she was eight years old. It’s curious how the two of us keep bumping into each other, every now and then. As if the universe long ago decided we’re connected. And this young lady,” she gets down on one knee to look eye-to-eye at my daughter, “must be Aoife. Am I correct?”

Wide-eyed Aoife nods. Dora the Explorer sways and turns.

“And how old are you now, Aoife Brubeck? Seven? Eight?”

“I’m six,” says Aoife. “My birthday’s on December the first.”

“How grown up you look! December the first? My, my.” Immaculée Constantin recites in a secretive, musical voice: “ ‘A cold coming we had of it, just the worst time of the year for a journey, and such a journey: the ways deep and the weather sharp, the very dead of winter.’ ”

Holidaymakers pass us by like they’re ghosts, or we are.

Aoife says, “There’s not a cloud in the sky today.”

Immaculée Constantin stares at her. “How right you are, Aoife Brubeck. Tell me. Do you take after your mummy most, do you think, or your daddy?”

Aoife sucks in her lip and looks up at me.

Waves slap and echo below us and a Dire Straits song snakes over from the arcade. “Tunnel of Love” it’s called; I loved it when I was a kid. “Well, I like purple best,” says Aoife, “and Mummy likes purple. But Daddy reads magazines all the time, whenever he’s home, and I read a lot too. Specially I Love Animals . If you could be any animal, what would you be?”

“A phoenix,” murmurs Immaculée Constantin. “Or the phoenix, in truth. How about an invisible eye, Aoife Brubeck? Do you have one of those? Would you let me check?”

“Mummy has blue eyes,” says Aoife, “but Daddy’s are chestnut brown and mine are chestnut brown, too.”

“Oh, not those eyes”—now the woman removes her strange blue sunglasses. “I mean your special, invisible eye, just … here.” She rests her fingers on Aoife’s right temple and strokes her forehead with her thumb, and deep in my liver or somewhere I know something’s weird, something’s wrong, but it’s drowned out when Immaculée Constantin smiles up at me with her heart-walloping beauty. She studies a space above my eyes, then turns back to Aoife’s, and frowns. “No,” she says, and purses her painterly lips. “A pity. Your uncle’s invisible eye was magnificent, and your mother’s was enchanting, too, before it was sealed shut by a wicked magician.”

“What’s an invisible eye?” asks Aoife.

“Oh, that hardly matters.” She stands up.

I ask, “Are you here for Sharon’s wedding?”

She replaces her sunglasses. “I’m finished here.”

“But … You’re a friend of Holly’s, right? Aren’t you even going to …” But as I look at her, I forget whatever it was I meant to ask.

“Have a heavenly day.” She walks towards the arcade.

Aoife and I watch her shrink as she moves further away.

My daughter asks, “Who was that lady, Daddy?”

SO I ASK my daughter, “Who was what lady, darling?”

Aoife blinks up at me. “What lady, Daddy?”

We look at each other, and I’ve forgotten something.

Wallet, phone; Aoife; Sharon’s wedding; Brighton Pier.

Nope. I haven’t forgotten anything. We walk on.

A boy and girl are snogging, like the rest of the world doesn’t exist. “That’s gross! ” declares Aoife, and they hear, and glance down, before resuming their tonsil-tickling. Yeah , I tell the boy telepathically, enjoy the cherries and cream because twenty years on from now nothing tastes as good . He ignores me. Up ahead, a picture spray-painted on a rolled-down metal shutter captures Aoife’s attention: a Merlinesque face with a white beard and spiral eyes in a halo of Tarot cards, crystals, and stardust. Aoife reads the name: “D-wiggert?”

“Dwight.”

“ ‘Dwight … Silverwind. For-tune … Teller.’ What’s that?”

“Someone who claims to be able to read the future.”

“ Class! Let’s go inside and see him, Daddy.”

“Why would you want to see a fortune-teller?”

“To know if I’ll open my animal-rescue center.”

“What happened to being a dancer like Angelina Ballerina?”

“That was ages ago, Daddy, when I was little.”

“Oh. Well, no. We won’t be visiting Mr. Silverwind.”

One, two, three — and here’s the Sykes scowl: “Why not?”

“First, he’s closed. Second, I’m sorry to say that fortune-tellers can’t really tell the future. They just fib about it. They—”

The shutter is rattled up by a less flattering version of the Merlin on the shutter. This Merlin looks shat out by a hippo, and is dressed up in prog-rock chic: a lilac shirt, red jeans, and a waistcoat encrusted with gems as fake as its wearer.