She was used to being recognised but maybe I wasn’t the usual type.
‘My name is Grace. Grace Winters. I knew your mother, briefly, years ago.’
The sadness now had thorns in it. It was clear she didn’t want to talk to me. I wished I hadn’t approached her. But I was here now. So I said what I had to say, as quickly as I could say it.
‘I was left your mother’s house and I feel awkward about it. You know. It feels wrong. When she had family. That she left it to me. So I am just saying, if you ever need it, or want to stay in it, it is there. Or if you want to talk about it—’
‘We didn’t get on,’ she interrupted, as she touched the thick, robustly perfect leaf of a jade plant. ‘And I have my own place now. In the hills. It is fine. You don’t have to feel guilty.’
Her accent was strange. Somewhere in the Venn diagram overlap between American and English and Dutch and Spanish and nowhere at all.
I saw her house in the hills. I could access her thought of it as she said the words. I saw her swimming in the pool, her boyfriend watching her from a hammock.
That should have been where I left it. It is certainly where the old me would have left it. But this new me suddenly cared intensely about everything. And with this new spirit of enquiry, I asked: ‘Why didn’t you get on?’
It was a rude and personal question, but I needed to know, and there were too many cluttered thoughts to access. If you want to get somewhere, you sometimes have to take the straightest road.
‘She was hard to be around.’
‘She had strong beliefs?’
‘It wasn’t just beliefs. It wasn’t just all the Moroccan she smoked. It was fucking real. She was taken over.’
‘Taken over?’
She sighed. It was a stuttered breath. Like a beat. And then it all came, in a flood.
‘She had an experience. In the ocean. And after that, she was consumed. She couldn’t function like a normal human being any more. I couldn’t speak to her without her telling me something about my future. And it was always something right and correct, which made it worse. I mean, fuck, how can you live a life if you know everything that is going to happen? But I didn’t want to know. I told her to stop. I told her to live like a normal fucking human being.’
‘Normal human beings are hard to find,’ I told her. ‘But I’m sorry. It must have been hard.’
‘Our relationship had always been difficult. She was a shit mother. I paid a therapist ten thousand fucking euros to come to that conclusion. But I could cope with her shitness. The thing I couldn’t cope with was her trying to tell me what to do all the fucking time because she knew the future, you know?
‘It was like having God as a mother. And no one wants God as a mother, right?
‘If you have God as a mother, then you have no choice but to be the fallen angel. It became impossible. It wasn’t just her telling me she didn’t like my music, or what I did for a living, or my boyfriend, it was her stealing the thing that makes life life. You know, the unpredictability. And when she told me she was giving the house to you I said that was fine. I told her I didn’t want her shitty little house and she didn’t like that at all. She told me she was helping organise a protest against some development in Es Vedrà and she was cross with me for not caring…’ Her voice stayed steady but regret swelled inside her. ‘It ended badly…’
Her thoughts had a red heat, despite her impassive face. I wondered, for an indulgent moment, if she could have wanted to harm her own mother. I entered her mind and all I saw was Christina slapping her at the end of the argument. It was a hard thing to imagine. Christina. Peaceful, musical Christina.
‘That’s hard. Was that the last time you two spoke?’
‘Nope.’
‘Do you think she was murdered?’
‘She predicted it. But she said she had a plan. She always had a fucking plan. That was the last thing she said. She was going to disappear to a better world, and she didn’t really care who she left behind. She never really worried about me. So, you know, I tried to reciprocate.’
‘Did she mean heaven? The better world, I mean.’
She shook her head. ‘No. She meant another planet. She reckoned she could access another planet.’ She made a wide-eyed face, and I felt the thought behind it. It was a simple thought: I know all of this is crazy.
She turned away from me. Put a plant in her trolley. She wanted me to leave.
‘I’m sorry for disturbing you.’
She softened then. It was like the sun through leaves. ‘It’s okay.’
And I had a solid piece of knowledge in my mind, firm as a pebble, that I knew was true. I needed to share it. ‘Your mother loved you.’
‘Yes. I know. And she loved you too.’
I laughed at the ridiculousness of that. ‘She didn’t really know me.’
‘She spoke about you a lot. When I was little. She said you saved her life.’
I shook my head. ‘I just gave her some company.’
Lieke smiled a smile of infinite complexity. ‘That is sometimes all it takes.’
‘Right. Yes. Goodbye.’
As I walked out, she spoke again. ‘She didn’t give you the house for nothing. She was recruiting you. It was a trap. You are her replacement. Just don’t become her, okay?’
‘I will try my best.’
‘And I don’t know if techno DJs are your thing, but if you fancy it, I can put you on the Amnesia guest list for tomorrow.’ I liked the way she spoke to me as if I wasn’t defined by my age and appearance. She was the rarest of things. A human devoid of prejudice. ‘Carl Cox, Amelie Lens, Adam Beyer, Paco Osuna…They’re great DJs. It will be the night of the summer. I’ll give you a couple of guest spaces too. Grace Winters plus two.’
I thought of dancing. It wasn’t an entirely unpleasant thought. I had no idea what people wore to Amnesia. I wondered if my M&S slacks and embroidered blouse would be okay.
