equal balance. It was down to me to tip it.
‘I’m always happy to listen, Sue,’ I told her quietly. ‘Professional or personal, it doesn’t matter. And sometimes it helps to talk, it really does.’
Sue shrugged. There was a pause.
Then, still looking down, she whispered: ‘Rachel, I’m so scared.’
Whatever I’d been expecting, it wasn’t quite that. Domestic problems, perhaps, or money worries – but not fear. I leaned forward, frowning: concerned. ‘Suzy. Scared of what?’
A few suggestions skittered through my head even as she paused again. Unplanned pregnancy. Positive smear test. Even unprotected sex with a stranger. I didn’t much fancy coping with any of those.
She swallowed. ‘I have to tell someone, Rachel. I have to. And … maybe you’ll understand … Being religious and all …’ When she glanced up at me again, she looked on the verge of tears.
I waited.
‘We were just fooling around,’ Sue continued, her voice still low. ‘Me and a few of the girls on my corridor. We’d been to see a show, we got back late … we were talking. Just sat around in the top-floor common room, talking. About ghosts and things like that, at one in the morning. And then … just for a giggle … Gill suggests we have a seance.’
She paused again, uncomfortably: watching for my reaction. I just nodded her on.
‘Well … we’d had a bit to drink, and we thought, why not? Safety in numbers, and all that. So: we laid out one of those ouija board things, with a glass and all, and … Have you ever tried one of those, Rachel?’
I shook my head quickly.
‘No, well, you’re lucky. Anyway, we all put a finger on the glass, like you do, and we started …’
Something cold had started creeping up my back, towards the nape of my neck; but I managed to keep my expression neutral – like a good Samaritan. I knew Sue lived in one of the old residential blocks annexed to the hospital; I could almost see the scene before me. Everyone sitting round the table in that upstairs room, the empty mugs and cigarette-stubbed saucers cleared away. Just the circle of makeshift letters in their midst, now – and the upturned glass.
‘It moves, you know. By itself. It really does.’ She was suddenly insistent – as though pre-empting any show of scepticism. She needn’t have bothered, though; and I think my face told her so, as much as my nod did. I believed her right enough.
‘So anyway … we were asking questions, and it was spelling out answers – really slowly. And then, while we were thinking what to ask next, it started to spell a word of its own.’
She stopped.
‘Which was?’ I ventured, against my better judgement.
Sue hesitated a moment longer. Then: ‘Wampir.’
I blinked. ‘Spelled … ?’
She spelt it out almost cautiously, as though afraid someone would hear her through the door. Or the wall. And I leaned back, still frowning – but beginning to see a glimmer of light now. A glimmer of hope.
‘Listen, Sue … You’re sure it wasn’t one of your mates winding you up?’
She shook her head – quite calmly. ‘Oh, I’m sure, Rachel. Because as soon as it had finished, it started again. Only harder.’
The glimmer began guttering.
‘And then again, and again, just the same word. Wampir. More and more violently, as if something was coming closer all the time.
‘And then the glass just shattered.’
I was so absorbed by this point I actually winced.
‘And that really freaked me out, Rachel,’ Sue finished quietly. ‘Well, all of us, actually. And now … I just keep thinking, what did we really do? And what might happen next?’ She’d managed to keep the threatening tears in check through all of this, but the catch in her voice now showed how close the dam was to bursting.
‘Oh, Sue, Sue …’ I reached out for her hand, and took it tightly in my own. ‘How long have you been bottling this up for, then?’
She sniffed. ‘About … a week.’
‘Well listen … The best thing you could have done was tell me about it: not just let it fester inside you. We can look at it together, now.’
I could feel her returning my grip: it’s a good job nurses have short nails. She moistened her lips, looking like a girl fifteen years younger than me, rather than just five. ‘Do you … believe what they say about … evil spirits and things getting out during seances?’
‘Um …’
Yes.
‘… I think it might have happened sometimes,’ I said carefully. ‘But I don’t believe anything like that can really hurt you, Sue: not unless you let them. And the very fact that you’re worried means you don’t want that.’
She gave her head a miserable little shake.
‘You’re right to think it’s dangerous,’ I went on. ‘But I think you’ve been lucky. I’d tell your friend Gill the same thing, if I were you.’ She had let her eyes drop, and I freed one of my hands to lift her chin up and meet them again. ‘It’s all right, Sue. Really. I’m glad you told me – and you’ll feel better for it. You wait.’
She smiled damply back; and I felt a moment’s inner satisfaction at the sight. Hardly your average appraisal session – but it had achieved its objectives nonetheless.
I tried to ignore the lingering discomfort between my shoulder blades. Damp patch. Cold spot. An awareness of what might have happened, when Sue and her friends had started to unpick the edge of darkness …
‘Do you … think it could have been a real vampire?’ she asked after a moment; a bit more objective now. Interested, even.
I smiled faintly. ‘No, I don’t. I don’t believe at all in vampires, Sue. Whatever it was you picked up was just trying to scare you, that’s all.’
‘Well, it bloody well succeeded.’ She gave a final little shudder, and settled back. Some of the weight had lifted already, I could tell. ‘Thanks ever so much, Rachel. I really needed to talk.’
‘No trouble.’ I gave her hand another squeeze before letting go.
We tied up the interview’s last loose ends; already preparing to get back to the hands-on business. But at the door she paused, with her hand on the handle, and glanced back once again.
‘Rachel … Could you give us a thought tonight?’
I nodded once. ‘I will.’ And she went on out.
A shabby Victorian nurses’ home; a high winter night. She’d need to know she wasn’t alone: that someone else’s thoughts were with her in the silence.
I knew it was the closest she’d go to asking for a prayer.
Time for me to re-emerge, too. Back into the fray. But not quite yet. I sat looking down at the word that I’d doodled, and imagined – though I struggled not to – a voice without a throat, speaking out of the darkness. Slurred and distorted by the distance and dead air.
Wampir. Wampir. Wampir.
In the crisp afternoon sunlight, even the grey streets behind King’s Cross had a certain glamour about them. Patches of melting slush flashed bright reflections; the tarmac glistened. The drab pavements looked as if they’d been gilded.
Fool’s gold, and we knew it. Both