Mercy Read online

  I’m going to have to watch my step.

  Once I have the mechanics of someone’s life under my control, the thought always returns — that maybe someone is doing this to me. That I am some kind of cosmic, one-off experiment. Maybe it is the so-called

  ‘Eight’? But then I wonder, are They even real? Is Luc?

  Perhaps all this is in the nature of a lesson. But one so obscure I still don’t know what I’m supposed to be learning.

  The unpalatable alternative is that maybe I’m somehow doing this to myself, that I’m some sort of mentally ill freak with a subconscious predilection for self-delusion, impermanence and risk. If that is the case, the real truth — and I pray that it isn’t — there would be nothing left to stop me from topping myself, I swear to God. I almost don’t want to know the answer.

  And you need to ask why I call myself ‘Mercy’?

  32

  Chapter 5

  I have barely closed my eyes when he is with me again.

  My own personal demon.

  But tonight there are to be no perfumed midnight gardens, no bleak rocky outcrops of strange and savage beauty or shifting desert landscapes beneath unbroken moonlight — scenes engineered to enchant and caress the senses; some kind of reward for past injustices meted out. It is just a swirling, buzzing dark with us two at its heart. I sense Luc is angry and I feel a stirring of faintly remembered … fear?

  Even so, his golden presence sings through my nerves, makes me feel more alive than any substitute life ever could. I want to touch him as badly as I wanted to touch Ryan Daley, but he holds me apart from him 33

  effortlessly, without even moving.

  ‘Of course I’m real,’ he retorts, as if we are continuing a conversation that started long ago. ‘Do not doubt that. And you know who’s caused this. You’ve never been stupid, so don’t start now. The knowledge is in you despite everything that’s been done to you.’

  I know now that I have always been quick-tempered, and his words bring forth an answering fury as he continues to hold me away when all I want him to do is wrap me in his arms.

  ‘You think I don’t know that?’ I spit. ‘That somehow I’ve misplaced my life, my self, somewhere? What more do you expect me to do, the circumstances being what they are?’

  I do not like the whining note in my voice. It is unbecoming. I’ve always preferred to think of us as equals, even if he is a longstanding figment of my diseased imagination.

  He laughs, the darkness ringing with genuine amusement, and his anger banks, though he moves no closer. He still holds us apart as if he were a being of pure energy.

  ‘I expect you to do nothing as it concerns your …

  hosts,’ he smiles, ‘and yet everything to do with finding 34

  me. So far, you’ve failed. You’ve got everything the wrong way around.’

  I frown. That may be, but how else am I supposed to survive the Lucys, the Susannahs, even the Carmens?

  Some of their existences are like little hells and yet I am supposed to endure them as they are?

  ‘But that’s just it,’ I snap, and in the cold dark my left hand aches again with that inexplicable pain. ‘I don’t know how to find me, so I sure as hell don’t know how to find you. And anyway, I’m not even certain you’re worth it any more.’ This last said to wound.

  His beautiful mouth curves up in a half-smile. My hand aches harder. I’m lying, of course — he’s the very core, the heart, of my floating world, my floating life

  — but it still feels good saying it. I was not always this defiant with him and I sense surprise, displeasure, beneath the diverted expression.

  ‘ Do nothing,’ he says again, ‘and in doing so, find me.’

  There is a loud crack, like thunder, and I wake alone in Lauren’s pristine bed. The fierce dawn winds blow great sheets of grit through the parched streets and gardens of Paradise like a parody of rain, like the feeling in my borrowed heart.

  35

  ‘So how was it?’ says the rat-faced blonde from the bus in her hard-as-nails voice.

  We’re at the first collective Monday morning choir rehearsal of our fortnight’s ‘cultural exchange’ with Paradise High. It’s supposed to culminate in massed, youthful voices belting out Part 1 of Mahler’s Symphony No 8 in E flat major to an appreciative audience of local farmhands, fishermen, small-business owners and parents. I only know this because I spent an hour last night after a tense dinner with the Daleys senior

  — Ryan’s absence itself a presence — flicking through Carmen’s belongings for clues as to what she was meant to be doing here. The piece is a pretty big ask, given that most of the students seem to be here under some form of duress and a good number of them are likely to be tone deaf. Plus, we seem to have misplaced an entire, uh, symphony orchestra somewhere.

  One thing I’m sure of: Mahler is definitely not for sightseers. Carmen’s score is dense with her own handwritten notes and symbols I don’t even recognise.

  I’d way lost interest in it long before I’d even figured out where the choir’s supposed to come in. Proposed course of action? Just pretend to sing for the next two weeks and hope no one notices. I figure it can’t be too 36

  hard to lose yourself in a crowd.

  And it is a crowd. It’s eight in the morning and there are more people gathered in the assembly hall than I would have expected. Paradise doesn’t look like it could possess fifty reasonably musical offspring, let alone the roughly two hundred teenagers I see here, checking each other out brazenly. It’s like a meat market, and Carmen’s group is giving as good as it gets. The air is practically sizzling.

  ‘Are you having another mental attack?’ says Rat-face suspiciously when I don’t answer her right away.

  I dart a look at the cover of her score, which bears the name Tiffany Lazer in a cloud of hearts and flowers.

  It suits her. It’s fluffy and deadly, at the same time.

  ‘Nope,’ I reply casually. ‘Just scoping for, um …

  hotties, uh, Tiff.’

  It’s the right thing to say because Tiffany relaxes immediately. ‘Speaking of which, so how was it? I hear Ryan Daley looks all male-modelly super-gorgeous but is pretty much a psycho, nut-job disaster waiting to happen. I was soooo jealous at first when I found out who you’d got, but now I’m so glad it’s not me!

  You’re practically in the middle of an ongoing murder investigation — how twisted is that?’

  37

  Silently, I thank Carmen for her diary, which lays out the equal parts longing, equal parts hatred she feels for Tiffany Lazer and her snobby circle of friends. From what I can tell, everything between Carmen and Tiffany is some kind of weird contest for supremacy, though they seem to have nothing in common but the singing thing.

  I notice a few of the other St Joseph’s girls hanging off every word Tiffany says, giving me the once-over while they’re doing it. I feel a stab of pity for Carmen —

  why does she care so much about what the others think?

  And they say girls don’t like blood sports. My noncommittal, ‘Oh?’ is a little more antagonistic than I intended.

  But Tiffany only hears what she wants to hear, and it’s enough to prompt her to spill her guts about how Ryan Daley is this far away from being locked up in a mental institution for turning vigilante and stalking people he thinks might be responsible for his sister’s abduction.

  ‘She was taken right out of her bedroom,’ Tiffany says as Paradise High’s music director, a tired-looking little man with wild hair and eyeglasses called Mr Masson, taps the podium microphone with his stubby 38

  fingers. People wince at the vicious feedback he triggers but they keep right on talking. Two spots of hectic colour appear on his cheekbones.

  ‘No signs of forced entry or anything,’ Tiffany continues airily.

  Which would explain the invisible force-field that seemed to surround Mr Daley in the car park the other day. To most of the citizens of Paradise, it probably looks lik
e an inside job. It also goes some way to explaining why Louisa Daley resembles a walking corpse and is on the brink of implosion, like a dying sun. Such a corrosive thing, doubt.

  ‘Lauren was a soprano, just like we are,’ Tiffany adds. ‘Blonde, incredibly bright, beautiful, too. The whole package.’ She looks me up and down as if to say, everything you’re not, baby.

  I wonder again why Carmen wants this bitch to like her so badly.

  ‘ Everyone at Paradise High gives Ryan a wide berth,’

  Tiffany says as Mr Masson tries and fails to get our attention once again. ‘He’s a weirdo loner with a hair-trigger temper and a gun. People have seen him pull one.

  They say there was blood everywhere.’

  The two statements are complete non sequiturs 39

  unless you draw an unsavoury line between them.

  Carmen wrinkles her brow, me doing it. ‘So people think Ryan might be in on it, too?’ I say. ‘The father did it? Maybe the son? Both involved. Some weird psycho-sexual thing? Maybe the mother knows something?’

  Tiffany nods enthusiastically. ‘Better watch your step. Sleep with one eye open.’

  She grins at the girl sitting on her other side as if I’m not right there. Like anyone would want to jump your

  bones. It’s clear to me what they’re thinking.

  ‘Well, thanks for the info,’ I reply coolly, staring down the other girl who looks away uncomfortably.

  Bet Carmen’s never given her the evil eye before. It feels good doing it. I stare down a few more of the others for good measure and the St Joseph’s sopranos suddenly look everywhere but at me, their eyes scattering like birds.

  ‘Consider it a community service,’ Tiffany laughs, oblivious to Carmen’s odd steeliness or its weird effect on her posse. Well, she wouldn’t.

  ‘And can you believe they roped in extra students from Little Falls and Port Marie for this musical

  “soirée”?’ she adds. ‘It’s still going to sound like shit.’

  Mr Masson makes us all jump by abruptly turning 40

  on the assembly hall’s ancient sound system loud enough to split our heads open. The vast swell of a massive pipe organ is followed by the sounds of a giant, pre-recorded orchestra and it’s suddenly a mad, page-turning scramble to get to the opening bars of … uh, oh, yes, Hymnus: Veni, creator spiritus. Know it? I’m right with you. The score looks as unfathomable this morning as it did last night. And where did the choir come in again?

  I glance sideways at Tiffany and she’s looking straight ahead at Mr Masson, poised to sing. Always ready, always pulled together. Something Carmen wishes she was every minute of her waking life. People want funny things.

  I follow Tiffany’s flying finger to the point where her manicured nail leaves off the page and her voice takes over and suddenly, my eyes narrow in shocked recognition. I have seen what I should have seen last night: Part 1 of Mahler’s Symphony No 8 is not in French, or German, or Italian. Languages that casually litter the margins of the score, with which I have little affinity, knowledge or patience.

  I should have focused on the title of the opening hymn.

  Like the title, the hymn is in Latin. Untranslated 41

  Latin.

  As the girls of St Joseph’s Chamber Choir begin to blow away the competition with their incredible singing, I realise that I understand every single word they are saying as if it is the language in which I think, in which I dream.

  They sing:

  Veni, creator spiritus

  mentes tuorum visita

  Come, Creator Spirit

  visit the minds of your people

  Creator Spirit. The words send a lick of lightning down my spine, the repeating crash of the organ causing little aftershocks in my system.

  And the music? It’s like there are seraphim in the room with us. Forget about the hair spray, the injudicious use of mascara, face whitener, concealer, eyeshadow, pout-enhancing lip venom. Shut my eyes and I could be sitting amongst angels. The sound is tearing at my soul. It’s so joyous, so sublime, so incredibly fast, loud, complex.

  Beautiful. If I’d ever heard this music before in my entire 42

  benighted existence, I’m sure I would have remembered it.

  The girls of St Joseph’s have long since split into two distinct bodies of voices, two choirs, clear, bright and pure, but, stunned by my new comprehension, I do not open my mouth or attempt to keep up. Neither does most of the room. A few brave souls do their own interesting jazz interpretations of Mahler beneath the main action but these are largely lost in the maelstrom of organ, orchestra and Tiffany, whose voice soars, higher, louder, purer than all of them. Heads are craning to get a look at the source.

  ‘She’s incredible!’ someone shouts behind me.

  I see the music teachers of four schools single out Tiffany approvingly with their eyes as she preens a little and amps up the volume even more.

  Poor Carmen. If this is some kind of contest, we are losing it together. I don’t remember how to sing, or even if I can. Silently, I turn the pages with trembling fingers and wonder what else I’ve forgotten about myself.

  Mr Masson continues doggedly beating time, while the local girls telegraph clearly that we’re all dead meat and the boys place lively bets among themselves about which of us will get laid the fastest. I shrink down further 43

  in my chair and keep turning the pages of my score a microsecond after Tiffany does.

  The music changes as I listen intently. I hear bells, flutes, horns, falls of plucked strings. There is a quiet sense of urgency, of building.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ mouths one of our teachers on the sidelines as Tiffany shoots me a surprised look before glancing sharply down at her own music then back at me.

  A shaky tenor seated somewhere in the chilly hall launches into a quavery solo and there is a smattering of laughter, like a reluctant studio audience being warmed up by the second-rate comedy guy. Moments later, Tiffany lifts her bell-like voice in counterpoint and I marvel afresh. When she sings, she sounds the opposite of the way she usually comes across, and that has to be a good thing.

  On opposite sides of our row, two St Joseph’s girls frown at me fiercely before hurriedly joining their voices to Tiffany’s. Two more male voices wobble gamely into the fray. Together, they sing:

  Imple superna gratia

  quae tu creasti pectora.

  44

  Fill with grace from on high

  the hearts which Thou didst create.

  The words fill me with an abrupt sadness I cannot name.

  It is several pages before I realise that the grey-haired, hatchet-faced teacher from the bus, who is pacing the sidelines and waggling her fists furiously, is trying to catch my eye. People all over the room have begun to notice her jerky, spider-like movements and they crane their necks to look. Chatter begins to build below the surface of the incredible music.

  ‘Carmen!’ the woman roars suddenly over the backing tape, unable to hold back her fury any longer.

  I realise with horror that I have missed some kind of cue, and that it can’t have been the first.

  I shake my head at the woman — Miss Fellows, I think her name is — and raise my hands in confusion.

  She responds like a cartoon character, jumping up and down on the spot and tearing at her short, grey hair so that it stands on end like the quills of some deadly animal.

  Mr Masson silences the pre-recorded orchestra. ‘Is there a problem?’ he says with raised eyebrows.

  The teachers from the other schools — a grim-faced, 45

  white-haired elderly man in a dusty black suit and a lean, handsome young man who doesn’t look old enough to be teaching yet — look my way interestedly. All the St Joseph’s girls are staring at me, too, and talking out of the sides of their mouths. It’s nothing new for Carmen, I suppose. Others in the room point and whisper. There she is, there’s the problem.

  I am once more the still point at the centre of a spinning wor
ld and Carmen’s face grows hot with sudden blood. I can’t help that. I hate making mistakes.

  ‘No, no problem,’ Miss Fellows barks. ‘Tiffany, you take Carmen’s part. Rachel, step in for Tiffany. Carmen!

  Sit this one out for now. Take it from the top of Figure 7.’

  Tiffany shoots me a look of immense satisfaction and takes flight after Mr Masson reanimates the orchestra.

  Frantically reading left to right from Figure 7, I realise belatedly that Tiffany must be one of the soloists.

  Shit, I think suddenly. I suppose Carmen must be, too.

  The freakin’ lead soloist. When she’s at home.

  46

  Chapter 6

  I sit there mutely for what feels like forever before the bell rings for first period and students stampede gratefully for the doors. The other St Joseph’s girls are borne away on a wave of male admirers, which has to be something new for most of them. Miss Fellows and the other St Joseph’s teacher, Miss Dustin, steam over in righteous convoy and prevent me from leaving, from even rising out of my chair.

  ‘Not only did you embarrass yourself,’ spits Miss Fellows without preamble, ‘but you completely ruined it for everyone else! Delia looks to you for cues and what do you do?’

  If Miss Fellows suddenly went up in a puffball of sulphurous smoke I’d hardly be surprised, but I’m only 47

  listening to her rant with half an ear. Something that Tiffany said before is bothering me and I’m chasing it down the unreliable pathways of Carmen’s brain. Hey, I have to work with what I’ve got.

  Miss Dustin puts a steadying hand on Miss Fellows’

  arm and cuts her off midstream. I’m seeing classic Good Cop, Bad Cop 101 being played out right here. No prizes for working out who’s who.

  ‘Is anything … the matter, Carmen?’ Miss Dustin says gravely from under her ridiculous bob. ‘You’ve been quite … out of sorts lately. I can help.’