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We walk into town in silence. I follow him into a coffee shop. It’s a normal coffee shop, one of those ones that sells fifteen types of coffee, where you have to speak Italian just to order something. It’s not busy – a couple of harassed-looking people in suits queuing up, a man with a laptop at a table, two women with babies. It feels so normal. I wonder what would happen if I shouted, if I pointed at the man and told everyone he’d brought me here against my will.
He didn’t bring me here against my will, though. I followed him.
I still don’t know why.
Do I?
I’m too hot. I shrug off my jacket. Still hot. Prickly under my shirt. The man is talking to me. I’m not listening. He tries again; I do my best to concentrate.
‘Drink, Will? Do you want something to drink?’
I shake my head. Then I nod. ‘Water,’ I say. ‘A bottle of water.’
He orders and we make our way to a table. I open the water, guzzle it down like I haven’t drunk anything for days, like I’ve been trekking across the desert or something.
‘Now what?’ I ask sullenly when the man doesn’t say anything. I feel stupid, as though I’ve walked into a trap; I should have known better.
‘Just wait, Will. The others are coming.’
‘The others?’ I wipe my forehead, drink some more water. I’m burning up. What have I done? There’s still time to leave, to walk away. But I’m not going anywhere. I know that.
We wait.
I drum my fingers on the table.
The girl is the first to arrive – the girl from the shopping centre and the river. She smiles at me, a hopeful smile, the sort of smile you give someone after an argument when you’ve tentatively made up, when you want them to be your friend again. I don’t smile back. She’s not my friend.
And yet . . . perhaps she was once; some residual memory, an image . . .
No. I give myself a mental kick. No, I don’t remember her, I don’t know her at all. It’s my mind playing tricks. Any feeling of familiarity is a mirage, is false memory.
She sits down on the other side of me. I’m cornered. I look at the door. I look at the other people. The man with the laptop takes out his phone. All so normal.
Two more people arrive – a man and a woman. The young woman from my garden. I shrink back; she smiles, her eyes still ghostly sad. I clutch my water bottle – it’s empty, but it’s something to hold on to.
‘More water, Will?’ the man asks.
I don’t want anything from them. I put my hand in my pocket – as usual I find money in there. It suddenly disturbs me that I don’t know where the money is coming from. Then an idea comes to me. Dad – maybe he puts the money in my pocket. Maybe it’s his way of looking after me. This thought makes me feel good, makes me feel stronger. He cares. Dad cares about me.
I hand the man a couple of pound coins. ‘Thanks.’
He looks slightly hurt at the gesture, but takes the money and goes back to the counter. Three more people arrive – two men, one woman. The men are old, much older. The woman is maybe thirty, I’d guess. They cram round the table; it occurs to me that we should have sat somewhere with more room.
The man comes back, gives me my water. I open it hurriedly and drink half of it in one go. Then I look up.
‘So?’ I say. My voice is shaking. My whole body is shaking.
‘So,’ the man from outside the school gates says. ‘I suppose you want to know what this is all about.’
I shrug. ‘I want to know why you all follow me,’ I say, reddening as I speak. ‘I want to know . . .’
‘How we know you, Will?’ His voice is kind. Warm. I hadn’t noticed that before.
‘Yeah,’ I agree. ‘How you
think
you know me.’ I put my bottle of water on the table and look round at them defiantly.
The man looks at the others; their glances give him the go-ahead to speak for them.
‘This is difficult,’ he says, ‘because the situation is unprecedented. You are a Returner, Will. You are . . .’ He sighs. ‘Everyone here is a Returner. We . . . We return. Again and again. But never before has someone . . . We’ve been looking for you, Will. You’ve been absent for a very long time. When news of your return came, we – some of us – came to see you, to welcome you back. But you didn’t remember, Will.’
‘You didn’t think maybe you’d got it wrong?’ I ask. I’m getting that drowning feeling again. Sinking. Falling. I resist it. I’m not going under. I look at the man stonily. ‘What do you mean by “return
”
anyway? Where from? How?’
The man’s face crumples slightly. He looks at the girl from the mall and she leans forward.
‘We return, Will. We live, we die, we return.’
I won’t go back.
Back where?
I raise an eyebrow. ‘You mean you believe in reincarnation?’ I say dismissively. ‘Right, well, not my bag.’ I pull myself up but I feel a hand on my arm; it’s hers. I feel an electrical current shoot through me; I sit down again and she lets go.
‘Not reincarnation. Not like other people think of it,’ she says. Her voice is soft but insistent. ‘We
actually
come back, Will. We’ve existed throughout time. We experience the worst that humankind is capable of; we absorb the pain, contain the horrors. We remember, Will. We are humanity’s conscience.’
‘Horrors? What horrors?’ Still the sullen tone; they’re not getting me without a fight.
‘Horrors, Will. You know what I’m talking about.’ She looks at me, into my eyes. I can see it. I know. I look away.
‘No, I don’t know,’ I say.
‘What about your dreams, Will?’ Her hand returns to my wrist. I flinch.
‘Everyone dreams.’
‘Returners’ dreams are different.’ She smiles sadly. ‘We dream humankind’s history,’ she says, her voice almost a whisper. ‘All the pain, all the suffering, all the brutality. You have those dreams too, don’t you, Will?’
I’m going under. I can feel the water in my lungs.
‘I dream about History lessons. Dad watches the History Channel.’ I cringe at myself as I speak. I have to keep fighting.
‘It’s not easy remembering,’ the girl continues. Her voice is soporific; it could send me to sleep. No, that’s what they want. They want me to sleep, to slip under the water without knowing it, to let them pull me under.
‘I don’t remember. OK?’ My dreams. Chunks of time I can’t account for. Details I remember but shouldn’t. I force these thoughts from my head and notice that my left hand is screwed into a tight fist.
‘It’s a burden that we carry,’ she soothes me. ‘We need each other, Will. We help each other. You must let us help you.’
‘I don’t need your help. I don’t remember anything. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
I’m seeing death, I am amongst it, I hear tormented cries. Are they mine?
No! No, they were dreams. Only dreams.
‘You’ve been alone for a long time, Will. You’ve been off the earth with no one around you. You were missing for nearly fifty years.’
‘Missing? What are you talking about?’
I know what they’re talking about. I don’t want to remember. I am afraid of remembering. I won’t go back. Let me stay. I won’t be a part of it any more. I can’t be.
‘We die, Will, and we come back. Often straight away. Sometimes we come back after a short period. Perhaps our souls need to rest, to recuperate. Six months, a year. You were gone for a very long time, Will.’
I turn to look at her. I need to focus. Need to ground myself in reality. ‘You’re saying that you think I’m a Returner, that I live and come back, right?’
She nods.
‘And the last time I – the person you think I am – was alive was fifty years ago?’
‘Longer than that. It took nearly fifty years for you to come back, Will. You’ve been back a while now.’
I shake my head. ‘No,’ I say firmly. ‘No. This is stupid. Ridiculous. Whatever you’re trying to do to me, I’m not having it. OK? I don’t want anything to do with you. I don’t want –’
‘Do you remember, Will? Do you remember where you were?’
I bury my face in my hands.
‘Do you dream about it, Will? Do you smell the ash? Do you see the horror?’
The smoke. Spiralling up into the sky. The queues of desperate people. The stench of death.
‘No.’ I clamp my hands over my ears.
‘The bodies piled up. You remember them, Will. You remember.’
Bones on one pile, possessions on another – gold teeth, jewellery, a walking stick.
I won’t go back. Can’t go back. I am not ready. Still not ready.
‘I don’t remember!’ I push the table back, my voice a roar. ‘I don’t remember.’
I stand up, looking at the faces around the table, seeing the pain in their eyes. The girl behind the counter glances at me then looks away. I am crying. I sink back into my chair. My head falls on to the table; my arms cover it. ‘I don’t remember,’ I sob. ‘I don’t remember.’
A hand on my shoulder, another on my head – friendship, understanding, I feel it all, like osmosis through my skin.
‘You will,’ the girl says. ‘And when you do, we’ll be here, Will. We’ll always be here.’
I sit like that for a long time. I don’t know how long – it feels like hours but it could be just minutes.
‘I have the same eyes as you.’
These are the first words I say when I finally sit up again. It’s the first time I have admitted it. I have seen them in the mirror, a warning I have chosen to ignore until now.
‘Eyes that have seen things,’ the man says.
‘I still don’t remember,’ I say flatly. I am defeated. ‘I have the dreams. But I don’t . . .’
‘No,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘No, you don’t remember. I can see that.’
‘So why?’ I ask. ‘Why don’t I?’ I am still wary, still want to run. But I know I can’t. I know I won’t.
He looks bewildered. ‘As I’ve said, Will, it is unprecedented. But perhaps . . . perhaps it was too much for you. Perhaps you are trying to escape from your fate.’
‘You think I’m running away? You think I’m pretending?’ My anger flares up.
‘No.’ Again, a hand on mine. Soothing. Calming. ‘No, Will. It’s not you. It is your subconscious, your inner Returner. It’s not running away. Perhaps you still need time, that is all.’
I digest this for a few minutes.
‘So you’re all like normal people? When you’re not doing this Returner stuff.’
‘Doing this Returner stuff?’ The man looks perplexed.
The girl from the shopping centre smiles. ‘It’s not
Doctor Who
,’ she says. There’s a twinkle in her eye. It looks strange. Strange but in a good way. ‘We don’t “do Returner stuff”. We just live. And . . .’
She looks around the table.
‘And what?’ I demand.
‘And absorb,’ one of the other women offers. She’s older. Fifty or so. Speaks with a foreign accent.
‘Absorb the horrors. Yeah, you said that.’
The girl swallows awkwardly; the woman looks away. I stare at the man. The man who brought me here. ‘I still don’t know what you’re on about.’
He looks at me gravely. ‘Where there is distress, where there is cruelty and desperation, there are Returners, to absorb it, to remember it, to protect humanity from itself.’
I don’t say anything for a few minutes. ‘You mean I’m here to suffer? You mean I’m
going
to suffer? That’s what I’m here for? That’s why I exist?’
I notice bruises on the girl’s hand all of a sudden. Why didn’t I see them before? I pull up her sleeve – more bruises. Burns.
The woman with the accent. She hasn’t got a hand. She’s missing one.
My eyes move from one to the other, jumping, afraid to see,
needing
to see. The man leans forward.
‘Suffering is relative,’ he says. ‘Some of us suffer the pain of a thousand small cuts, others . . .’ He smiles sadly. ‘We cannot know when or how . . .’
I see my dream again. The last one. The one Claire couldn’t place.
Screaming, shouting. A loud bang. Something falling against me; a woman. A woman with long hair, she looks like my mother. No, not like her. Just the hair. She is looking at me, she is bleeding, clutching at me, her face full of shock, of fear. ‘This must end.’ She is sinking down to the floor. I can’t help her. I am hot. I am sweating. I am screaming. No. No! NO!
Is this my fate? Is this where I’m headed?
I bang my fists on the table. I stand up again, boxing the dream, the emotion, the fear. ‘Well, thanks for this.’ Cocky. Sarcastic. It feels good, like I’m wresting control. I’m myself again. Me, Will. Outsider, freak maybe, but not one of them. I’m my own person. ‘Really enlightening. So glad to have met you all. But to be honest, I’m not interested. I don’t want to be a Returner. Doesn’t really fit with my life plan, if you know what I mean. So thanks for the water and for the . . .’ I glance at the girl and flinch slightly. ‘The information,’ I say. ‘But I think I’ll be going now.’
‘You can go, Will, but you can’t change what you are. You can’t change your destiny.’