It isn’t long before I find the place I’m searching for. The pathway in South London where Callum Baird was murdered. I’ve used Google Street View and clips from old news reports uploaded to YouTube to find the exact location. In the footage, the path is bustling. Police officers come and go from behind blue tape before a body bag is removed from inside a white tent. All these years later, though, it’s as if nothing ever happened.
I’m most of the way along the paved pathway when a coughing fit makes me so light-headed, I can barely continue. It’s only when I stop to steady myself against a tree and try to control my breathing that I realise my heart is beating twenty to the dozen. Melissa keeps reminding me of the toll three resuscitations in nine weeks must be having on my body and how I should be at home resting. And that’s where she thinks I am now. She’d go mad if I told her the truth. I wait until my heart rate levels before I continue.
A sixth sense tells me that a few metres ahead is the place where I found Callum dying. I half expect to find the hallucinatory version of him here now, awaiting my arrival. Contorting his faceor screaming to scare the hell out of me. But he’s conspicuous by his absence.
In my death three days ago, he was lying on his back on the ground, partially obscured by bushes and trees. His arms were at his sides, his legs slightly bent. I stared at his chest, waiting for it to rise and fall, but it was motionless. ‘Callum?’ I whispered, but there was no response. ‘Callum?’ I repeated, and then crouched over him, about to gently shake his shoulder. His sudden intake of breath scared the hell out of me, and I fell over as I scrambled to my feet.
‘Help me, Damon,’ he gasped. He looked so frightened.
I looked up and down the adjacent pathway for an adult. But we were alone. And that’s when the memory comes to an abrupt halt. I can only assume I ran to raise the alarm at the actual event, but by the time I returned to him, it was too late. Now, I find myself wishing I could have done more. Ran faster, found someone to help more quickly, or at least held his hand so he wasn’t alone when he died. Poor kid.
Back in the present and amongst the many other emotions I’m feeling, there’s also relief. That I didn’t hurt Callum. That he wasn’t lying there injured because of something I did to him.
A metre-wide semicircle of ground catches my eye. Amongst the weeds and flowers with long-faded blooms lies a silver plaque with the name ‘Callum Baird’ embossed in capital letters, followed by the dates of his birth and death, and, in a handwritten font next to two cherubs: ‘The angels will look after you now’. The neglect suggests no one has visited this spot for some time. I wonder why. A death or illness in the family, perhaps? Or maybe his relatives moved away, unable to bear living close to where they’d lost their son or brother.
Out of habit I reach for my phone to call Melissa and explain what I’ve found, but stop myself. I need to give her space. I see I’ve received a text from Adrienne though, reminding me I have anotherappointment at the clinic later this week. This time, they’re testing my fertility. She’s ended the message with an aubergine emoji and a splash of water, followed by a winking smiley. I try to extend the illusion that all is well with me by screengrabbing an image of a volcano erupting and sending it to her. She responds with a GIF of a solitary, tiny drip coming from a tap. Under ordinary circumstances this might have continued, but not today.
I hang around for a few more minutes, wondering if anything else might jog my memory. But for now, the well is dry. Perhaps Melissa is right and it’s time to leave Callum here and move on with a life he doesn’t have.
I continue along through the treelined pathway, keeping an eye out for a road with a bus stop that will return me to the Tube. A tower block of flats becomes visible, hidden until now by tree canopies. There’s something familiar about it. I stop when I reach the car park below it and stare up at the eight floors above me. Each one has a landing framed by bright blue railings. That’s when it hits me: it wasn’t a terraced house I saw my mum and Callum walking towards in my last death. It was a series of flats. These flats.
And I think I used to live here.
Chapter 32
Damon
There is something about this place that’s both familiar and unfamiliar, if that makes any kind of sense. The colours of the rendering and front doors are different, but I know I’ve been here before. I direct my line of vision towards the fifth floor. That’s where I need to be.
The lift stops outside number twenty-three. I saw my mum walking towards this flat with Callum Baird in my last recall. It has a red-painted door and chrome letterbox, and there’s a cream-coloured net curtain draped across the windows. Several porcelain wolf figurines stand on the windowsill, glaring at me as if on guard. I press my face against the glass to peer inside, but the netting is too thick to see anything that might nudge free more memories.
This building must have played a large part in my childhood. So why can’t I recall it? I review my memories of Mum and realise that most are set inside the flat, not outside it. I try to recall playing with other friends out here or in the park below, but draw a blank. There are more empty spaces from this period than I realised.
‘Can I help you?’ comes a voice to my side, all but ejecting me out of my skin. Only four days ago a man held me over the side of a car park railing and threatened to drop me to my death. You’d think I’d need no reminder to remain on guard at all times.
My paroxysm of terror triggers another coughing fit, so the elderly man who set this all off has to wait for my reply. He’s wearing a navy-blue flat cap and pushing along a silver walking frame. His stern expression is to be expected. He has no idea I’m searching for a trigger, not a flat to burgle.
‘I think I used to live here,’ I offer when at last I’m able. I take a step back and give him a disarming smile that most decidedly does not land.
‘Did you indeed?’ he says doubtfully. I detect a faint trace of stale alcohol on his breath. ‘And what, you can’t remember?’
‘It was a long time ago, when I was a kid.’
‘Well, you don’t live there now, so I suggest you move along.’
He clocks me spotting the cordless landline telephone in his cardigan pocket and raises it up to his shoulder to ensure I know he is ready to use it.
‘It’s okay, I’ll be off.’
When my second smile proves no more effective than the first, I start walking. Then I stop midway towards the lifts and look back at him.
‘I’m sorry, but could you tell me how long you’ve lived here?’
‘A good long time,’ he snaps. When that bit of ferocity doesn’t send me scurrying, he sighs. ‘Since the place was built,’ he offers up grudgingly. ‘In the mid-seventies.’
‘Then you must remember a boy called Callum Baird.’
His puffed-out chest deflates a little. ‘Course I do, we all do. Terrible business. Lovely kid. He lived in that flat you were paying so much attention to.’ His wrinkled brow knots further. ‘You a reporter or something?’
