5

When the conversation broke off, Jenny was lying in her bed, in the dark. From downstairs, she heard a cacophony of voices: not her parents but the television. It was just after midnight, and she could see the sky over Melbourne outside her bedroom window. Cloudless, clear, a dark blanket embellished with tiny points of light. From that angle, the moon was invisible to her. But Orion’s Belt was clearly visible, with its distinctive line of three stars.

‘The biggest star is called Betelgeuse,’ her father had told her many years ago. ‘And it’s enormous. Its diameter is a thousand times bigger than the sun’s!’

‘What does that mean?’ she’d asked, ever curious.

‘Well, if we were to put Betelgeuse where the sun is now … the edge of the star would go past Jupiter!’

‘Daddy … when we’re gone, like Grandpa and Grandma … will we go into the universe?’

‘Well, in a sense, yes. When you look up at the stars, you can think of Grandpa and Grandma looking down at you from up there.’

‘But what if they were still alive?’

Roger had caressed her face. ‘That’s not possible, sweetheart.’

‘If you ask me, it’s possible, somewhere far away.’

Jenny slid a scrunchie off her wrist, sat up, and gathered her hair into a ponytail. It wasn’t hot out, but she liked sleeping in light clothing. Wearing only a sleeveless T-shirt with Surf-Mania written on it and underpants, she had left her athletic legs uncovered, her skin golden and smooth. Around her neck, as usual, she wore her favourite necklace, a fine metal chain at the end of which dangled a triskelion, a Celtic symbol composed of three interlocking spirals that formed a vortex. At the centre of the pendant, the letter V merged into the nucleus of the spirals. It had been a gift from her grandmother.

‘It will protect you,’ she’d said when she’d given Jenny the necklace. The triskelion glowed on the soft surface of her palm.

‘What does the V mean?’ Jenny had asked.

‘Your grandfather gave it to me the day he asked me to marry him. It’s an amulet, and it contains our history. Your history.’

‘Why mine?’

In response, her grandmother had simply given her a smile and a shrug.

Jenny shook her head, as if to chase away that sweet memory. Her grandparents were gone now, but they hadn’t left her entirely alone. That symbol still remained, a relic of her family’s Gaelic origins, on her father’s side. She often held it in her hands when she was afraid, or when she needed strength and courage to face some challenge, whether it was a swimming meet or an exam at school.

Soon, her mind wandered back to Alex. The attack hadn’t come while she was asleep, in spite of how late it was. Jenny had been wide awake, stretched out in bed looking into empty air, her mind focused on the meet that awaited her this coming Saturday, a meet for which she hadn’t trained adequately, because she’d had too much schoolwork. When the shudder swept through her, Jenny had been enveloped by a sensation of heat unlike anything she’d felt before. She felt safe. She understood that her body couldn’t respond to the commands that her brain was issuing, but she also experienced the delightful sensation of floating in a sort of limbo, protected and serene. She’d closed her eyes and abandoned herself to the encounter. As if it were a dream — but both she and Alex knew very well by now that this was no dream.

For the first time, Jenny was convinced. She’d always worried that all the voices she heard and images she glimpsed were the result of some psychological disturbance, some strange form of schizophrenia. All the research she’d done on the internet — trawling through forums and blogs, hunting for a story that even remotely resembled her own — had been in vain. In the end, she’d given up. She’d secretly suspected for four long years that Alex was nothing more than a mental projection, and she’d been afraid that there was nothing on the other side. Now, even though she had no scientific evidence that he really existed, the encounter that she’d just experienced banished all doubt. Alex had asked her a specific question, clearly in an effort to determine whether she was a real person. And she had answered him.

‘You’re there,’ she whispered. ‘I know that you’re there.’

Jenny stayed awake for a long time, with just one recurring thought to keep her company. Whatever might happen out there in the world meant nothing in comparison with the supernatural event she and Alex had become a part of. A miracle beyond one’s wildest imagination.

In the silence of that late-October night, Jenny couldn’t even begin to guess that the whole planet was hurtling towards a terrible fate, and that the key to everything was concealed deep inside their heads.