The Medium

“I am getting a name. Michael. Does that make sense to you?”

The air in the dark room is rich with incense, taking me back to my student halls, where we lit Nag Champa religiously to cover the scent of weed, mould, overflowing bins. I rack my brain. Michael?

“I know a Michaela,” I offer.

“Is she on the Other Side?”

“The other side of London,” I say, cringing at myself.

The Medium side-eyes me and, seeing me blush, continues: “Don’t worry dear, sometimes spirits unrelated to you will come in. If you came here on public transport, you might have brought in a stray.”

Before I can make sense of this, she announces, “I am picking up on a young man.”

I sit up straighter.

“He’s showing me something about an accident.”

I feel the temperature rise around my neck. I try to stay still, not give anything away.

“I am getting a J name.”

“Jake,” I say quickly, unable to feign indifference any longer.

“Jake,” she nods. “He died very young.”

“Yes.”

She is quiet for a moment, her eyes closed, the lids flickering, as if playing a movie out under the hood.

“It feels sudden. Like boom! and he was gone.”

She shouts the word. I jump, my pulse pounding.

“He’s a gentle soul,” she says, her voice quiet again, her eyes still shut.

I nod, even though she can’t see me.

“He loved to wear blue. He’s sending me images of blue.”

I nod again, unable to speak, willing him to say what I need him to say.

A silence swells between us, bubbles with morbid possibility. I stare at her. Please, please, I beg, searching around for signs that my dead fiancé is in the room somewhere. I feel my nails pressing into my palm. It hurts. I clench my fist harder.

“He is showing me a set of keys, jangling them. Does that mean anything?”

I deflate. Why would he talk about keys? I search my mind with the desperation of someone rifling through the rubbish to find a discarded lottery ticket. Nothing.

“The keys are important,” she says with a confidence that makes me feel I should know what this means.

Another silence.

“He is asking me to tell you that he is at peace now,” she pivots. “He says there is nothing you could have done.”

I nod. Keys? Why would he talk about keys?

I tune out of the reading, like I’m turning the dial on a radio, sliding the carefully placed needle away from Radio 4 only to find a mixture of white noise and silence. I am watching the Medium’s face as she placates me with vague statements: Jake is fine, he loves me, it wasn’t my fault. I can barely hear her. I feign comfort. The reading comes to an end. I hand over two crisp twenty-pound notes, walk out of the door.

The cold air of January shocks me back into my body. I pull my coat up and around me tightly, covering my neck, the place that I hate to feel a breeze. Don’t forget your scarf, Jake would always say, so he didn’t have to part with his. Now I always have a cold neck. I stuff my hands into my pockets, my knuckles graze the sharp edge of my Oyster card, leaving a jagged scratch across them. I barely notice. My heart feels raw, like it’s been ripped out, pumping, in an act of ancient sacrifice before a crowd of delirious onlookers. He did love blue, he was a gentle soul. But could they just be good guesses? My fingers close around the Oyster card, willing myself to understand.

As I walk, London moves around me, like a camera zooming in and out of focus. Crisp-suited businesspeople with a warped sense of purpose weave through crowds of tourists, their lives too busy to meander. I find my way to the café where I am meeting Grace. She loved Jake, too; maybe she’ll know what he was trying to say. If that was Jake and not just the made-up words of a charlatan, gleaning forty quid off the grief of a partner left behind with no idea of how she is supposed to move on. I order a coffee, extra shot, and soya milk, Jake’s favourite. I have taken to eating and drinking his favourite things these days. It stops the inevitable for a moment.

“How did it go?” Grace wastes no time with niceties. We are both aware that life is too short for that. She hugs me and then shuffles into the seat opposite, cradling her coffee in her freshly de-gloved hands, her fingers pink from cold. The beret she’s wearing matches her eyes. Jake would have noticed that, made a comment, caused her to smile. Back then we had time for those moments.

“How did it go?” she repeats and I realise I haven’t answered.

“I don’t know,” I say, peering into my coffee.

I could tell her that the Medium picked up on someone called Michael, that it was probably all bullshit, that she said a J name and I filled in the blank, but I don’t.

“He was talking about keys,” I say instead.

“Keys? What?” she says, a finger now working through one of her curls. “Who was talking about keys?”

“Jake,” I say, my voice faltering. “Well, the Medium said he was jangling keys in front of her.”

Grace is silent for a moment and I know she, too, is trying to find the answer, the answer that proves we don’t need to let Jake go forever. The desperation seeps from her and I see my own reflected. I look away, concentrate on my coffee. I hate soya milk.

“What else did she say? Did you feel him there?”

I am surprised by the second question, although why should I be?

“I don’t know.”

I realise now that we should have gone together. Maybe I am not sensitive enough to feel his presence; maybe Grace would have. I can see that she is disappointed but trying not to show me. I have become good at reading hidden emotions on the faces of those before me. Happy, smothered by “I mustn’t seem too cheerful because her fiancé just died.” Compassion suffocated by “it’s been nine months—shouldn’t she be doing better?”

“It’s OK,” Grace says now, taking my hand and rubbing it, aggravating the scratch on my knuckles. I don’t pull away. The dull pain feels welcome. “Maybe you need some time to process it all?”

I nod.

“Keys, though. Why would he mention keys?”

We talk some more, finishing our coffees. Grace is kind but she was more Jake’s friend than mine, making his absence pulse more noticeably in the space. She offers suggestions about the keys (he did have interesting keyrings, did they find his keys among the wreckage of the train?) but our grasping is ripe in the air. I need to be alone now. We say our goodbyes and promise to see each other soon. There will come a day when I no longer see Grace, the tendrils of Jake becoming thinner every time we meet: an extension of loss, the disappearance of friends that were never really yours.

Outside the sun is getting low. The orange reflection shines off the buildings, belying the sharp teeth of the chill in the air. I pass Oxford Circus tube station, avert my eyes. I wish you had taken the bus that day. Why didn’t you just take the bus?

I flag down the double-decker, walk up to the top deck and take the front seat, Jake’s favourite spot. London moves by slowly as we churn through the traffic. I watch shoppers buckling under the weight of their sales purchases. I remember shopping with Jake for our first flat, broke as anything, drowning happily in student debt that had yet to become a monthly purge on our salaries. Naivety informed our purchases: extra cushions, kitchen utensils, the novelty Jesus-shaped waffle-maker that we would use once, proclaiming it a miracle before stuffing it into the back of the cupboard in our poky kitchen. I wish I could taste things the way I tasted those waffles that day. They tasted of frivolity; they tasted of all the time in the world.

When I next look out the window, I am surprised that we are out of Central London, back in the real world of local newsagents, charity shops, high street supermarkets. A man wearing a blue tracksuit rings the bell and jingles his keys in his pocket, preparing himself to get home. He is in blue; he has keys, my mind grasps. I stare at him. Is this what the message meant? Should I follow him? He catches me looking, clicks his teeth. I look away. I forget people are real these days. I live mostly in my mind with Jake.

The man alights and I watch him walk slowly in the direction of his house. Straining my neck, I see him enter through a gate and pull his keys out to open his door. Before he is inside the house we have moved on. I reluctantly pull my head back to face the front. A dead fly on the window eyes me.

I think again of the Medium. Could I feel Jake there? Maybe? Her voice had seemed to soften and lilt like his when she spoke of him. Hadn’t it? A gentle Mancunian hint in her accent, maybe? No. I stop myself. If Jake was really there, he would have mentioned my engagement ring. He always made a comment when I didn’t wear it. There was not one time when he didn’t notice. Why didn’t he notice this time? Because he wasn’t there, because he is dead, because no part of him exists anymore, not in this world, not beyond. I finger the space where the ring normally sits. I’m surprised when no tears come.

My stop is close. I consider staying aboard, travelling around London until we run out of stops, avoid going back to the house where Jake no longer lives and yet impregnates every surface. But I’m tired. I press the bell.

I search for my keys in my bag. I always prepare early, avoid dawdling, dodge the inevitable conversations with kindly neighbours, their heads tilted on their necks, soothing tones that serve to remind me of that which I can never forget. A new neighbour arrived last week. Someone who won’t know what happened. A sad relief.

I’m still looking for my keys when I step off the bus, one hand deep in the abyss of my bag. I walk quickly, eyes down, willing the metal to find my palm before I reach my door. They don’t. My ribs contract.

“Hi there,” a voice comes over the hedge. “I’m your new neighbour.”

I pretend not to have heard, keep on searching.

“Hey, you left your keys in the door. I noticed when I walked past earlier. I rang the doorbell but you weren’t in, so I took them out to keep your house safe.”

I turn, stare at him, trying to make sense of what he is telling me, my hands still groping in my bag for the keys he is jangling before me.

“Are you OK?” His face has a look of concern. He tugs gently at his navy polo shirt with his other hand.

“Yes, sorry. I must have been distracted when I left.”

He chuckles easily. The sound is so unusual to me that it takes a moment to register.

“We’ve all done it.”

“Thank you,” I say, unpractised now in normal conversation. The words screech like a rusted cog that’s not moved for a season.

The smile on his face is so genuine I find myself smiling back. My coat has blown open, letting the icy air brush my neck.

“I’m Michael, by the way,” he says.

He passes me the keys, his finger slightly grazing mine, sending an almost imperceptible pulse of life through my dormant bones.

SUSANNAH RIGG

Originally from London, Susannah Rigg has lived in Mexico for fourteen years. After a decade as a travel writer, she now devotes herself to fiction and working as a writing mentor. Her stories have been published by Inkfish Magazine and South 85. She lives in the magical mountain town of Tepoztlán, where stories seep from the stones.