I had my first prophetic dream at just seven years old, when I was as tight with my cousin Luke as it was possible to be. Born only three days apart, we spent every spare moment together. Computer games, bike rides, roaming wild with the dogs.
One night, I dreamed that as Luke took his usual shortcut across the playing field to school, a black dog charged at him from out of nowhere. I woke at three a.m., just as the dog was clamping its jaws around Luke’s face. Thumping through my mind like a migraine was the date when this was all going to go down.
I had just hours to stop it.
Over an untouched breakfast, I told Mum everything, begged her to call Dad’s sister, Luke’s mother. She quietly refused, projected calm, assured me it was just a bad dream. Promised I’d find Luke waiting for me at school, totally fine.
But Luke wasn’t at school, totally fine. So I ran to his house, hard enough to taste blood at the back of my throat. A man I didn’t recognize answered the door.He’s in hospital, he told me gruffly.Got attacked by a dog this morning over the playing field.
Mum rang my aunt that evening, and all the details came out. A black dog had attacked Luke on his way to school. He needed plastic surgery on his face, left arm, and throat. He was lucky to be alive.
After putting down the phone, Mum took me into the living room, where we sat quite still on the sofa together. Dad hadn’t come home yet. I can still remember the scent of the chicken noodle soup she’d made me. The weirdly comforting sound of my siblings bickering upstairs.
“It’s just coincidence, Joel,” Mum kept saying. (I wonder, now, if she was trying to convince herself.) “You know what that is, don’t you? That’s when something happens by chance.”
Mum worked in Dad’s accountancy firm back then. She earned herliving like he did, from dealing in logic, looking at facts. And the fact was, people were not psychic.
“Iknewit would happen,” I sobbed, inconsolable. “I could have stopped it.”
“I know it seems that way, Joel,” she whispered, “but it was just coincidence. You need to remember that.”
•••
We never told anyone. Dad would have dismissed me as delusional, and my siblings were still too young to understand or possibly care.Let’s just keep it between us, Mum said. So we did.
Even today, the rest of my family still doesn’t know the truth. They think I’m anxious and paranoid. That my garbled warnings and manic interventions are down to unresolved grief over Mum. Doug thinks I should take a pill for it, because Doug thinks there’s a pill for everything. (Spoiler: there isn’t.)
Does Tamsin, my sister, suspect there’s more to it? Possibly. But I deliberately keep the details vague, and she doesn’t ask.
I can’t say I’ve never been tempted to tell them everything. But if the urge ever comes, I only have to think back to the one time I was naive enough to consult a professional. The derision in his eyes and the sneer on his lips were enough to make me vow I would never confide in anyone again.
5.
Callie
A Friday night in mid-September brings with it a typically dispiriting call from my letting agent.
“Bad news, I’m afraid, Miss Cooper.”
I frown, remind Ian he can call me Callie—we’ve had enough dealings, over the years.
He repeats my first name slowly, like he’s writing it down for the first time ever. “All right, then. Now, Mr. Wright has just informed us he’s selling his property.”
“Which property? What?”
“Your flat. Ninety-two B. No, wait—C.”
“It’s okay, I know my address. You’re really evicting me?”
“We prefer to say you’re being given notice. You get a month.”
“But why? Why’s he selling?”
“No longer commercially viable.”
“I’m a person. I’m viable. I pay my rent.”
“Now, don’t get upset.”
