“I might be wrong,” he says then. “Maybe Grace would have preferred a few months’ notice. Maybe she’d have made even more of her life, if she’d known.”
I smile. “I don’t see how that’s possible.”
“Yeah, me either.”
60.
Joel
Diana’s invited me to meet her at the university where she’s based. It’s mid-September, just before the students return. I try to see that as a good omen. A fresh term, a new page. The chance to begin again.
“Take a seat.”
The office we’re in is cramped and airless, with breeze blocks for walls and not enough light. The whole place feels distinctly correctional, so I angle my chair toward the door. Just in case.
She introduces herself, asks how she can help. Though not unfriendly, her tone’s brisk and she speaks at a clip. She must be midfifties, yet she doesn’t seem nearly eccentric enough to be a professor. She has an ergonomic chair, for one thing. And with those Buddy Holly glasses, black skinny jeans, and canvas high-tops, she could easily have just clocked off from brainstorming straplines at an ad agency.
“Steve said he spoke to you. About my... condition.”
Unnerving: she’s scribbling on a notepad already, not looking at me. “You say you’re psychic?”
“Well, I don’t ‘say’ I am. I am.”
She nods just once. Doesn’t comment.
I shift awkwardly in my very un-ergonomic chair. “Is this... anything you’ve come across before?”
“Not personally. Can you tell me a bit about what you experience?”
In my mind again, a cliff edge. That doctor at uni, a sneer on his flakylips. But I’m here now. So I take a breath, remind myself Steve’s already told Diana everything. And still she agreed to meet me.
I start with something simple. My dream last night. Tamsin, Neil, and Amber on a half-term trip to the local safari park in six weeks’ time. (Lions and tigers no credible threat, though monkeys cause minor damage to Tamsin’s car. I guess I’ll use YouTube to help forewarn them nearer the time.)
I keep talking, move on to Luke and my mother. To Poppy and the car accident, my sister’s pregnancy. I tell her about the not-sleeping and the tortured nights. About my dad. And then I tell her about Callie, about what I know will happen a few short years from now. Unless Diana can help me. Unless she can do something.
“I only dream about the people I love,” I reiterate.
The scientist in her flinches.
“Steve mentioned something about...” I look down at my notebook. It’s open in my lap, for prompts. “... my temporal and frontal lobes. And my right hemisphere?”
“Have you ever had a head injury, or a serious illness?”
“Never.”
“Does anything ever slip through the net? I mean, do significant things happen that youhaven’tdreamed about?”
“Yes. All the time. I can’t see everything. There’s so much I don’t know.”
“Have you ever dreamed anything that hasn’t... come true?”
“Only if I take some sort of action. Do something to stop it happening.”
She doesn’t delve into what that might entail, asks instead about my medical history.
“Well.” Eventually she looks down at her notes and circles something (I’d kill to know what). “I’ll make some inquiries with my colleagues. We could potentially explore funding to carry out some research, subject to ethical approvals.”
“How long would all that take?”
