If Frank had any suspicions, he did not show it and reported to Robert every time he used one of the network talents. Then, out of the blue, Frank asked to meet him.
“First of all, nobody is to be neutralised or killed. Those you feel may become a threat, I’d like to meet so as to evaluate them myself…”
“You must be joking! We are talking about people who could kill you with just a thought! Not only is it dangerous and foolish to be in their presence, but even worse to allow them to know who heads our network. Even if they do not attack you when you are knowingly close to them, they are likely to watch for an opportunity when your defences are down, because you are at home or relaxing with friends. You would truly place your wife and yourself in such a perilous position without reason?”
“I agree that it may be more prudent they do not know who we are, but I do need to evaluate them and Cherine is far more capable at doing so than I am. Once we have sensed what kind of people they are, on an individual basis, we will make our decisions. Is there any way it could be arranged for us to see and sense them without them being able to identify us?”
Frank replied with a sting of acid in his voice, “Only if you are willing to underestimate them. Many of them are not capable of identifying the presence of another gifted person in the vicinity, but then they are not the dangerous ones and there is no need for you to make decisions about them. Those who are dangerous may have the ability to see through any camouflage and if we don’t have a clear picture of what their powers are we may not be able to provide an adequate defence for your wife and yourself.”
Robert glanced at Cherine who had sat throughout the conversation without making comments and without leaking strong emotions to guide him. She gave him an almost imperceptible nod.
“We’ll take the risk Frank, we do not have a choice. If we cannot neutralise them, then we must know who we can trust and who may become a threat so that we prepare for the worst. To do otherwise would be placing everyone of the network in danger - and that includes you.”
It was considered highly unlikely that new Talents would have found other powerful Talents and formed groups. The fear had been that the newly proposed member for the network could have others hiding in the background, ready to boost his powers when he attacks. Robert thanked Themi for the idea and suggested at least two of them stay in the background while monitoring the emoting of Cherine (her emoting is the strongest). They practised and discovered that the boosting of their powers was not just doubled or tripled. Themi was excited and made everyone promise to let him experiment once the danger is over.
The first two new Talents that Frank claimed he thought could grow to become a danger, seemed fairly innocuous and Cherine felt they have the potential for empathy. It was close to Cherine’s birthday when Frank mentioned his team have reported the awakening of two new Talents. It was rare for two or more awakenings within the same city, but in this case the two are friends and live in Manchester. They had been observed buying tickets for the Manchester-Chelsea match which is to be played at the Chelsea stadium. Frank thought it was a good opportunity for them to sense the two as they would be concentrating on their team and be buoyed by the excitement of the crowds - plus the large quantities of alcohol they will have drunk on the train.
The emoting from the crowds, as they entered the stadium, overwhelmed them. Cherine could barely identify the emoting of Frank despite his proximity as he stood by them. Nicko and Alki were the boosters, but Cherine could not sense them. She turned to Robert to catch his attention and then spoke mentally, *Robert, I won’t be able to sense any individual more than five feet away, they all blur into a sickening wavy roll of emoting, spiking high because of the excitement of the crowd. Can we cancel?*
Robert felt that she needed to get away from the crowds so he reached for Frank, to tell him they are leaving. Frank turned to look at them and Robert was surprised to see hate and glee in his eyes. Two men drew in, to either side, and Robert knew they are about to attack. In a panic he threw himself before Cherine, shouting for her to leave, to jump home. Cherine suddenly materialised behind Frank and Robert only had time to notice that she was wearing a red skirt, not the jeans she’d come in. A shaft of energy speared through his brain, blinding him. As his mind was shattered, his dying mind cried out in protest, for he could sense Cherine’s signature in the attack. A Cherine whose mind was filled to overflowing with raw hate for him.
Some time later her mother led her out of the hospital. As they drew close to her car, she repeated the accusation she’d made earlier, blaming Cherine. This time Cherine heard her and out of her grief and feeling of the unfairness of it all, a wave of black rage coursed through her. She sent everything that was tearing at her to her mother. Marian collapsed with a scream. For a minute or two, Cherine stood over her, just staring. Then she sat on the cold tarmac by the side of her mother’s body. No tears fell, her face a frozen mask.
For two years, Cherine buried the memories. Philip and Jenny Martin were her new parents and they did everything they could to make her love them. Unfortunately for them, Cherine could sense their emoting and she soon learnt what it meant. Philip was having an affair and Jenny had turned to adoption out of desperation, hoping that having a daughter, as Philip had claimed he wanted, would save their marriage. Cherine was astute enough to understand that Philip does not really want to leave, but that he is not staying out of love, only staying because he is a coward and cannot face the thought of having to be responsible for his life. Jenny had made a point of always handling their problems and she made certain that she left enough out of his wages for him to have his drinks at the pub with his friends (which was where he also spent time with his mistress).
Both Philip and Jenny had the extreme bad luck that most people think is extraordinary good luck - and in a sense it was thanks to Cherine. One day, while Philip waited for afternoon tea, he sat with the newspaper, marking and noting which football teams he thought would win or draw even. As he was about to transfer those notes into the Littlewoods form, Cherine glanced at his notes and told him that Everton would not win, even though the other team was not anywhere as good. Philip, with a smile, asked her how she knew and she told him, “I got the feeling they would lose when I saw the paper.” Since he never won anything worth more than a couple of quid, he laughed and told her he would go along with her hunch and he placed his mark according to her prediction. Due to his ignorance of the strategies the clubs use, he also made an important wrong choice of his own which turned out to be the right choice, the team that should have won scoring only one goal and that was an own-goal. With his ignorance and Cherine’s psychic gift working for him, Philip won thirty eight thousand pounds.
For those first few minutes after realisation struck him, he praised Cherine. For ever after, he only spoke of his having an uncanny nose for the results. It did not matter, the damage was done, Jenny knew that he’d won because of Cherine. The reason it mattered was because of Philip packing a small valise with a few mementoes and telling Jenny he is leaving to live with his big love; he walked out on both of them, not even leaving a few hundred quid to see them through the difficult times coming to them thanks to him leaving.
Jenny knew nothing of the history of Cherine’s life and she had not worked out that Cherine is a freak and has psychic powers. Even if she had known all the aforementioned, it is highly unlikely she would have contained her rage or directed it at herself or at Philip. Cherine was far too convenient a target. Coldly she attacked Cherine, blaming her for the loss of her husband.
Cherine blanked out and when she became aware of her surroundings once more, she saw Jenny lying on the floor, her body unnaturally twisted from the agony of all she’d been forced to experience.
Mary tended to be slightly slovenly and casual in her ways, making it easier for Cherine to tolerate her presence. Mary saw that Cherine did not grieve for Jenny, so she presumed she had not loved her, therefore she did not feel threatened by her. She had feared that Cherine might compare them to her own detriment. If Cherine had not developed a slightly superior attitude with her when Philip was not around, Mary was convinced that she and Cherine could have become friends.
The years seemed to pass without any further major crisis but, as the faces of children from the not so well off areas show, it is the erosion of dreams and hopes by tiny steps that damage the heart. Cherine never did anything to stand out as a mutant and was never tempted to use her gifts to help her friends. She was fourteen years old on the night she went with her friends to a party. They drank too much and took the underground back to their area. One of the boys, a nineteen year old, continually tried to kiss her and slide his hand into her jeans. He had succeeded in opening the top button so that his hand could slide in (he was convinced that once she felt his fingers rub her clit and plumb the depths of her vagina, she would not be capable of resisting him), when the train pulled into their station. The others called for them to get out with them, but Cherine was too drunk to listen and the boy was not going to waste the effort he’d made and his prick was already close to erupting as he imagined ‘doing her’ right there in the train.
Despite her befuddled state, the feel of his fingers against her skin was a shock. She opened her eyes and stared at his face. For a second she was tempted to let it happen so that she would not stick out as the odd one among the girls. Her eyes seemed to focus on an inflamed pimple, the yellow head seeming to be only an inch from her eyes. Repulsed she made an effort to push him off. Her sudden show of resistance only served to excite the boy further and he used his weight to pin her down. Fury boiled up in Cherine, the feeling of being physically trapped adding a trace of panic. She lashed out with her mind and the boy jerked back, his pelvis thrusting towards her so that he erupted within his jeans while a vein in his brain burst. When Cherine got off at the next station, he was not dead yet, but was already dying, his brain shutting down from a cerebral aneurysm. Cherine barely recalled him, most of her attention spent on staying on her feet and upright as the ground swayed beneath her.
As she unsteadily made her way downstairs to the platform for the trains travelling back towards her station, she suddenly bent over and vomited. She managed to climb down more steps before she collapsed, leaning over to vomit again. By the time her stomach was empty and she was fighting dry heaves, a man, about twenty nine years old, paused to look at her, not put off by the signs of vomit.
“Your first time?” Cherine managed to glance at him and saw he was swaying and she guessed he was also drunk. “Always a bitch the first time - don’t worry, it doesn’t get any better with time.” He laughed at his own joke. She managed to work her way down a few steps and leant against the wall, wishing some kind of magic could make things right for her. She had forgotten about the man and jerked wildly from shock when his hand took hold of her right arm.
“Gently does it, I don’t mean you any harm. You can’t stay here and you are in danger of being raped if you fall asleep on these steps. I’ll make you a coffee and get you home - once I can also walk straight.” He grinned at her, amused by his own humour. Maybe it was his grin, but Cherine did not resist him and she let him lead her back up the steps and out of the station. They walked a block, Cherine was starting to think again and was beginning to have second thoughts about entering his home when the man stopped, unlocked a door and led her inside. “My name is Robert, what is yours?”
“Cherine.”
“Cherine, we’ll have to drink the coffee black. It works better that way but, anyway, my milk has gone sour so we don’t have a choice. We only have to go up these few steps and then you can sit or lie down, come on girl, put your foot on the first step.” He cajoled her until they arrived at his door and as soon as they were inside, he pointed out the bathroom to her and went to the kitchen.
Cherine woke up with a hangover and a splitting headache, pins stabbing at the back of her eyes. She saw that she lay on a bed and the bed was partitioned from the rest of the room by a sheet hanging to the side. She heard noises and realised Robert was moving about. He must have heard her soft moan, for he called out, keeping his voice gentle, “Good morning Cherine, I have exactly what you need for your hangover.” He stood on the other side of the sheet and his arm snaked through, offering her a glass of red liquid. She took it and morosely stared at it.
“It’s mostly tomato juice and Worcestershire sauce, who knows, you might even like it.”
She smelt it and mumbled, “Not likely” but took a sip.
“What about your parents Cherine, will they have called the coppers?” She shook her head and though he was on the other side of the sheet, he did not ask again.
When she got up she saw he had slept on the couch. As she made her way to the bathroom, she was surprised to see a bedroom door. She turned to look at him and entered the bathroom, thinking to herself that there is something weird about him.
When she came out, the bedroom door was open and he was standing just inside, waiting to show her. She looked and frowned. He chuckled. “I am an artist Cherine. I cannot afford to rent a separate studio and I do not like having my work mixed with my sleeping and eating areas. I never have guests so placing the bed in the front room made a lot of sense.”
“What do you paint? Are you any good?”
“I’m not going to show you yet. You must first get to know and like me or else I’ll freak you out.”
She grinned. “Freak me out.”
“Give me a day or two Cherine.”
She widened her eyes, “I can’t stay here that long, Philip really will call the coppers if I do.”
He chuckled, realising she was teasing him. “I hope you are not expecting me to walk you home and meet them?”
“Are you afraid to?”
“Cherine, I most definitely am! Any sane man would be.”
“And you are sane?” She dramatically looked around and continued, “Are you really sane? How can you bear it?”
“Oh God, an existentialist teenager! Now I’ve seen everything!” He laughed at the look on her face and then turned serious, staring at her for a moment without saying what was bothering him.
She could not resist insisting he enters her home as she was enjoying sensing his emoting. She knew Philip would not be there and Mary was not likely to try and act as a mother. She called out, as she rushed upstairs to her bedroom so as to quickly change her clothes, “Mary, I’m home and I have a nice man with me, he saved me from getting raped.” Robert cringed and probably would have rushed out the door if Mary had not appeared.
“Who wanted to rape her - a cup of tea love? It will make it easier for you to tell me the story she’s thought up.”
Robert chuckled. “Actually, there is no story, just some not so nice truths.” He paused. “Is she good at making up stories?”
Mary laughed, deciding she likes him. “A real professional. Sit down and start off by telling me your name.” By the time Cherine came down she was miffed when she sensed the two of them like each other.
Cherine did not know whether she should be angry with him when he asked Mary for permission to visit that afternoon for taking her out for a couple of hours, but she rather liked the idea of being seen with a man so much older than her. The girls at school would definitely be bitchy about it, which would mean they envy her - and she’d never been envied before. She could not help thinking that it was a pity he is not tall and handsome, but at least she could tell them he is an artist and they would consider it romantic.
“This is a place where would-be poets come to read their latest poems. The audience will politely clap and then they’ll tear the poem to bits - just as our hypothetical would-be poet will also do to them.”
“Are you also a poet?”
He laughed, “Not really, but I am forced to write a few lines now and then so that I can join in on the fun of insulting everyone.” He grinned as he ordered a concoction she was certain she would hate, a mixture of a red fruit juice he told her is from a guava fruit that grows in semi-tropical areas, ice cream and a stick of Flaky chocolate. She ended up loving it. Cherine didn’t know what to make of his comment when he told her, “I keep my little poems pointless and unfinished deliberately, it makes it more fun listening to them trying to tear it apart.”
She thought the poems were terrible, perhaps one of the worst was from a fat and pimply girl of about twenty two years, her poem a crude diatribe against love, but without saying anything new or painting any vivid imagery. When Robert took his place at the front of the room she cringed at the thought of what she would hear, certain she would be embarrassed for him.
I dare not act and yet, dare act not
so here I vegetate between worlds
lost to dreams that magnetise eyes
and worlds sail by without a plot,
chaos repeating its recipes inside pies,
flat, collapsed; I know not where to evolve.
Cherine enthused over his poem to such an extent that he handed the paper over to her, telling her she can have it. She told him she is going to name it ‘Dreams that magnetise eyes’ because she likes that the best. Robert was puzzled by her reaction which was only natural, since he did not know she had sensed the magic of his emoting as he imagined the images his words described. His emoting combined with his voice that expressed emotions (other poets tended to read their poems in a flat voice, only stressing certain words, as if they were afraid to expose their emotions to public ridicule), Cherine felt as if he’d caught and held up for her to see something from her own soul. Afterwards, in the following days, she teased him about using ‘pies’ for his poem but that was because one of the girls she let read the poem made a joke about it, claiming he should have used ‘pizza’ since it was flat.
Not only because of her age, but also because of the neighbourhood she’d grown up in, Cherine found being with Robert strange. The constant posturing she was used to he never indulged in and he showed he enjoyed it when she teased - as long as she was not nasty. She quickly learnt that he appreciates wit, not the ability to hurt with words. She could not understand why he loves playing with the meaning of words, but she tried it for the sake of earning his praise-emoting.
Cherine enjoyed going out with Robert, the cafés and bistros he took her to were a different experience for her. She enjoyed that he would let her sip at his wine - even though she disliked the taste. The fact that he drank a little but never enough to get drunk made her wonder why he had been drunk the first time they’d met. Still, she admitted to herself, it was nice knowing she does not have to worry about him doing anything to hurt her because of getting drunk, as most girls have to with the other lads. His manner of speaking, his reactions, they were alien to her, but she felt that being with him made her look more mature and that was something she was young enough to treasure. What did annoy her was the fact that they had been out four times and he still had not kissed her. She hated having to pretend for her friends that she is fighting him off.
Robert pretended not to notice her surly attitude and took her to his home. Her heart sped up as she entered, for she could feel his nervousness and guessed it was because he wanted to try and have sex with her. She missed out on the fact that he was not emoting any heightened sexual arousal. He brought her a coke in the bottle and sat opposite her, not next to her as she’d expected. She tensed up, but then he spoke and she forgot everything else, staring at him as if he’d gone crazy.
From thinking he was crazy, she went to wondering whether she had flipped. She could not deny what her eyes saw and she did not need to know much about painting for her to realise that he could not have created them since he first met her. The room and walls were littered with paintings and sketches of her from eight years old to her present age. She blushed when she saw his sketches and paintings of her in the nude, recognising that he had seen and painted her exactly as she is and was.
He spoke softly, but she felt the residue of pain it represented. “Can you understand why I thought I was going crazy?”
“How?” She vaguely waved at the paintings. “Were you spying on me?”
“Not on you, on another Robert and Cherine. Before I explain I must tell you first something else about me so that you can make an informed decision about everything I tell you. Let’s go back to the sitting room.”
As she sat, he spoke, “I’ve only been seeing you on the days I know it is safe for you to be with me.” She kept quiet, his deep sadness as he lit a cigarette affecting her own emotions. “Cherine, I do not know the why or even the when, but I guess it all started at about the same time I first started seeing visions and dreams of a little girl called Cherine. You do know what epileptic fits are? I’m told that my fits are nothing like that and the doctors have not found a reason for it happening. Cherine, when I have a fit, I do not fall down unconscious, I become a raving maniac and attack anyone within sight. Luckily I can feel the attacks growing within me before they occur and I have been given tablets I must take immediately. If I’m in time, I sleep through the worst of the attack.”
“How do you know when it is safe to be with me?”
“Straight after an attack. They never come every day so I know you’ll be safe. I have something to tell you and for me it is so sad I feel like crying, but you’ll probably just think I’m ridiculous or a perv. Cherine, though I love you, have loved you forever it seems, I can never have a relationship with you. I dare not even steal a kiss, for then I may not be able to prevent myself from trying to make you love me. That must not happen, you must not love me Cherine.”
His emoting was battering her so she did not give a flippant reply as another girl of her age might have, nor did she melt at the romantic drama she found herself a part of. “When you say you love me, you mean the Cherine of your dreams?”
“Whatever I may have felt for her, your presence soon dissipated those feelings. Cherine, she has her Robert and I must admit I did not enjoy watching her love him instead of me. Now I feel I have the chance of having the real you to love me, but it must not happen.”
“I know you showed me the paintings and I don’t understand how else it could happen, but I can’t believe there is another you and me.”
“How else can I convince you? Cherine, I know that the other Cherine has psychic gifts and her strongest gift is empathy - she can feel and affect the emoting of others…oh god! You too?” His face lit up. “You’ve been sensing my feelings all along? Jesus!” He gave a wild laugh. “Don’t you see, it proves that everything is real!”
For the first time she felt him emote terror and she thought it was because he was afraid of her freak powers. His eye pupils became pinpricks that gave him a weird look. Suddenly he shouted, “Get out, get out, go, get out…” and she realised he was about to have a fit. She felt invulnerable because of her power, but she realised that her presence is making him suffer, so she quickly went to the door. As she turned to close the door behind her, she felt a spear strike like lightning, shattering his mind. A sort of morbid fascination made her stay by the door, sharing his emoting and trying to identify what it all meant. She heard things being smashed and then a white hot rage hit her from his mind and her knees buckled and she barely succeeded in preventing herself from falling down the stairs. Now terrified of him, she stumbled down the stairs, keeping as quiet as she could. When she finally arrived home, she rushed upstairs and locked herself in her bedroom. Curled up on her bed, it took her a long time to stop shivering.
Since Cherine had few facts and mostly relied on her imagination, she became obsessed with seeing Robert. She skipped school and avoiding the areas she knew her friends might be, she took the underground to Robert's home. The door downstairs was open so she knocked directly on his door. She sensed his fuzziness and realised she’d woken him up.
He had a duvet wrapped around him and he stood without moving for a moment as he stared at her, his face pale and sad. “So, you came. Why Cherine, I could have hurt you badly.”
She shrugged and pushed her way past him. “I want you to tell me about the other Robert and Cherine.” She looked down at his bare feet. “You’ve got ugly feet, can’t you afford proper shoes?”
Cherine pulled a face as she sipped her tea, but she listened as he talked without interrupting. She was concentrating on his emoting also and she had not sensed him slip up even once, his emoting appropriate to his spoken words. She did work out that some of his emoting was due to thoughts and yearnings he was keeping to himself, but she had learnt from early on that everybody does that.
“I think you are making it up. I would never share a man with other girls!”
“I also found that strange, but I did come to…”
“Anyway, I’m sure you are making it up, pretending that if I love you we will get much stronger, just so that you can get into my knickers. Why don’t you just tell me you want to fuck me?” She saw and felt his reaction and knew she’d made a mistake. “I only said that to see if it was what you want.” Something he’d told her gave her an idea. “If that Robert found he had a healer and then everybody did, we could find ours and then you could be made better.”
“I’m trapped in a chicken and egg situation Cherine. Until either of us has a healer, I remain a danger. Last time it came on without warning me…perhaps being emotional caused it.”
It seems his years of dreaming of another Cherine had not taught him that he would not win the argument. She persisted until he capitulated, agreeing to spending a couple of hours with her every Saturday and Sunday. However, even while she argued, she used her abilities to enhance his emoting positively with regard to herself and continued doing so whenever they met. Cherine had never had a reason to learn how to make others love her without influencing her own emotions so, as she made Robert love her deeper and truer than he had before, so did she grow to love him. As his heart opened to her, so did his mind and the same happened to Cherine - succeeding only in holding back all she had done that she knew he would dislike. Robert was not experienced and thought she had opened to him totally and this enslaved his heart all the way to the core of his being. Within a few weekends, neither could bear to be apart from the other.
“I can knock you out if you try to attack me, I’m not in danger.”
“Perhaps you can love, but that is not the only problem we have. I have to wait until you are at least sixteen or else I’ll be in trouble with the law. Mary is okay, but you know that Philip doesn’t like me - and I don’t want to hand him a loaded pistol.”
“You’re just making excuses because you don’t want me living with you. I think you are only pretending you love me.”
He chuckled. “Me! Pretend with you, the goddess of psychic powers?” He grinned. “In most ways you are the adult and I’m the child, but in this, I have to be the adult and watch out for both of us. I don’t think you have any idea how nasty the world can be if we’re not cautious.”
Cherine did not take the steps down into the underground; she felt rotten because she had been unfair and just as she’d drawn away from his home she’d felt something was wrong with him. She turned and quickly retraced her footsteps to the street door. She felt him inside, halfway up the steps, and to her it felt exactly as it had felt when she’d sensed her father dying. She screamed and ran in.
Cherine was lucky. When she screamed, amongst all the British men walking by, there was one Italian. He pushed the door open, saw Cherine by a prostrate Robert, trying to pull him up and into his home. Quickly he went to them and picking up Robert he carried him in, depositing him on a couch. He asked whether he should phone for an ambulance, but Cherine ignored him and lying by Robert's side she left her body. She went to the dark place, but did not sense him there. In a panic she returned, going directly to his mind. She felt him, but did not understand what was happening, why or how he could be in his mind and yet not there. She obeyed her instincts and found herself travelling for what seemed to be a great distance. Her feelings of his presence grew stronger until she sensed she was by him. As if she was opening her eyes, she saw herself under a stormy sky with Robert lying on rocks before her.
A part of Cherine was freaking out, screaming gibberish in terror, but the heart of her concentrated on the fact that her Robert was in desperate need of her help - if she could only work out how to help him. She sat by him and pulling his head on to her lap she spoke soothingly while her fingers softly caressed his face. He yawned and opened his eyes. She was surprised by how calm they were. He smiled and she felt herself smiling back at him.
“Where are we? Did we teleport here?”
When she explained, she sensed him worry about her. She grinned. “I’m not the crazy one, you are. Now, tell me how we’re going to get out of here.”
“Maybe we should stay here? There are no laws about making love in our minds.” The tip of his finger pressed against her nipple and she gasped with surprise when she felt her body react.
“No Robert, please, I want the first time to be real.”
He half raised himself and softly kissed her. He then came to his feet and looked around them with a quizzical look in his eyes. He concentrated and Cherine gasped as the sky cleared and turned blue and the ground under and all around her softened with green grass. A stream cut across the land and she saw flowers grow at super speed, pushing their way out of the ground until they swayed as the buds blossomed. As far as she could see the land was covered in green and many hued flowers and suddenly a multi-coloured cloud passed by them and the world of Robert was filled with exotic butterflies.
Robert took her hand in his and she came to her feet. They walked for a short while, both lost in the beauty, and then Robert gave a slight tug and rose into the air. Cherine was drawn by him and as the world they’d stood on faded away she found herself swiftly returning to the familiar part of his mind.
As Robert opened his eyes a stranger crossed himself. “You live! The girl, she will also live? Did she save you?”
“What is your name? How did you get into my home?”
“Alessio. You collapsed on the stairs and I helped carry you in here. She lay down by you and I thought she had died.” He paused as Cherine opened her eyes. She smiled and he felt as if she had shared something of extraordinary beauty with him.
“Alessio, you are Italian? Good, then you will appreciate what I have to say. This is not a time for tea. I do not have money for champagne but coffee would do just as well.” He pulled a note out of his pocket. “Could you buy us some coffee, fresh cream and brown sugar crystals? The two of us would be very pleased if you then joined us for a cup of coffee.”
As soon as Alessio was out of the door, Robert grabbed Cherine and kissed her passionately. He took a breath and said, “I had to get rid of him quickly, I needed that kiss. I hope you like coffee.” She laughed at his wry grin and pulled at him for another kiss.
Robert said, “We are not certain how we can thank you for your kindness.” Alessio shrugged. “You must be filled with questions, we’ll answer those we can.”
“No questions, you decide what you trust me with. I can tell you a little of what I understood. My family have lived for many generations in a small village in the mountains. We grow grapes and the olive trees we have are for our use. In these generations there comes a child now and then that can warn of danger or feel the thoughts of our animals. Our grandparents thought of them as being cursed by Satan while we say they are the result of inbreeding. Now that I have met you, I am thinking that neither is the full truth.”
“Facing something so different does not frighten you?”
“I have been to the toilet twice since I first came through that door.” Robert gave a surprised bark of laughter and even Cherine grinned. “Fear must never stop the mind from working, but I may need some help from you.”
Cherine had spent her entire life keeping her gifts a secret so it felt wrong to her as they explained to Alessio. They did not expand into explanations and descriptions about the dark place, the void as Robert called it, nor did they talk about the beginnings of telepathy and their ability to visit each other’s minds. They concentrated on Cherine’s gift of empathy (the Italian word is close enough, empatia, for him to understand the full meaning) and even that was a source of awe and wonder for him. Both Cherine and Robert sensed him and his emoting was such a delight for them that Cherine reached out to colour his emoting with their joy. They felt his mind burst open like a ripe pomegranate thrown to the floor and translucent red seeds scattering throughout the space of their three minds. It was as if their three minds hugged each other for a moment.
Alessio sat with tears streaming down his cheeks so Robert thought to bring a sense of normalcy to them by initiating a prosaic discussion, not knowing that Alessio would be incapable of hiding the full truth at this moment. “What kind of work do you do Alessio, what is your profession?”
“I am…I was what you would call a mobster, a gangster, like in the movies.” With a look of reverence he impulsively turned to Cherine. “After your gift, I have no job. If you will forgive me, I can see that the two of you do not have much money. I have a wish to care for you like my son and daughter. Will you honour me by allowing it?”
They did not spend too much time discussing the ethics of it as they felt that whatever Alessio had done in the past, however he had earned his fortune, he was now a man governed by his sense of empathy. They did not realise he was in a kind of ecstasy and was not in control of himself and thought that to refuse his offer would only hurt him. Cherine told Mary that she is leaving to live with Robert and Mary promised to deal with Philip so that he does not cause her troubles.
“Cherine love, I’ve tried not to interfere too much as I am not your mother. You will not mind if I give you a word of advice as a friend? Be good to Robert, there are not many men like him and he is worth holding onto. I think you will have to be the strong one for both of you.” She smiled. “Give him a hug from me and tell him I’ll miss his strange chats as he sat in the kitchen with me while he waited for you to decide what to wear.”
Alessio collected them from Robert's home and drove to Ovington Square, parking at the northern tip. Tucked in a corner with the front windows facing trees was their new home. Robert frowned. “Alessio, this must be very expensive! How much is the rent?”
“Rent?” He looked puzzled and then smiled. He opened his briefcase and handed over a large envelope filled with documents. “Cherine is not old enough to sign so I had to buy the house, freehold, in your name. You do so in trust for Cherine?” Every time he spoke her name it was as if he spoke the name of a goddess and Cherine cringed, but a hidden growing vanity also made her feel she was at last being acknowledged as being the special person she truly is. “You go to my attorneys in the morning to sign?”
“This is worth a fortune, you can’t spend that kind of money on us!”
Alessio decided he did not trust Robert to drive Cherine, so he made available one of his limousines with a chauffeur. He had the two of them open a joint account and placed a standing order for ten thousand pounds per month to be transferred into their account. “This is not for special things. You want something special, you tell me please?”
For the first time ever, Cherine felt overwhelmed, but also that it was not right that she or they accept this much from him. She tried to protest, but she felt how she hurt him so she stopped. That night, when they were alone, she confided to Robert that she felt Alessio has placed her too high on a pedestal and that if he sees her as she is he could end up hating her. Robert told her that it is not possible, not for Alessio and not for him.
The next day, Alessio asked for permission to bring his wife and son to meet them. His wife, an English woman named Eloise, was not what Robert expected of a gangster’s wife. She must have grown up in a middle class home and he could see she had influenced Alessio, gentling and civilising him. The son, Lionisio, had not inherited any of the swarthy looks of his father. He was almost blonde with green eyes and a slim build. Cherine and Robert could feel his emoting when Alessio looked at his wife and son so they did not need him to tell them how much he loves them. They could also feel that he is loved by both and Robert suspected that Lionisio does not know what his father does. As it turned out, Alessio has a number of legitimate businesses that make good profits as a front and his son thinks they are the only business interests his father has.
Alessio was hoping that Cherine would sense what good people his wife and son are and that she would do to them whatever she had done to open his mind. Shyly, he did not ask and they departed with only an invitation for Robert and Cherine to spend the next weekend at their country mansion.
Robert was amused but waited until they were gone before wryly telling her, “Do you know what is probably already happening? The police don’t know that Alessio wants to lead a good life from now onwards and they are bound to be watching him. The gift of this home and the money he is paying us every month means they will also be watching us. We’ll drive them crazy as they’ll expect us to do something to earn all we’re getting, but they’ll never catch us.” He was surprised when he sensed that Cherine was not amused. She fretted over something for a while and he knew better than to ask, she’d tell him once she is ready.
“Why do you like him if he was so bad?”
“Sometimes people do bad things because circumstances conspired against them. If he was not basically a good person, why would he have rushed to help when I collapsed? Even if we accept that act as being a spur of the moment thing, why did he stay and why did he do my bidding and go to buy us coffee? I might be wrong, but I think that something inside him was hurting, that he needed to be good for three reasons.”
“Three?”
“He brought the two with him today. The other one he can’t show us, we can only infer it.”
“Robert Teller, stop teasing. What can you infer?”
“He has told us he comes from a village cut off from the mainstream. People in such villages are usually practical and seemingly hard, but they also are religious and have a strict code of ethics. I inferred that he still carries within him the child he was - and that explains why he adores you just like a child would.”
She teased, “I thought he loves me because I’m beautiful.” Even as he laughed and teased her, Robert wondered at her ability to switch moods instantly.
Within days of Robert setting up his studio in their new home, art gallery owners or their managers called on him for viewing his work with the declared intention of displaying his paintings. An embarrassed Robert was forced to pay Alessio a visit. Although he called on him at his legitimate office, he sensed Alessio was anxious. Robert explained that he appreciates the thought, but that he has no paintings for displaying as he has spent the last years mostly painting the face of Cherine. He then explained that they are not of the Cherine Alessio knows, that she is of another dimension. To Alessio he sounded crazy, but Alessio promised not to put pressure on any more gallery owners. Robert did not leave, sensing that Alessio needed to talk to him.
