One Hundred Names (Special Edition)

again.
    He shook his head. ‘No one knows.’
    ‘So I’ve the exclusive.’
    ‘Ah, there she is, the old hack is back.’
    Kitty laughed. ‘Are you in contact with your family?’
    ‘No,’ he said softly. ‘Well, they’re in contact with me but … I’ve a brother in Mayo. Frank. He’s fifty years old and he’s getting married, can you believe that?’
    ‘There’s no age limit on love.’ Kitty tried not to sound sarcastic but failed.
    ‘You don’t believe in love?’
    ‘This week I don’t believe in very much at all.’
    ‘And you’re telling me you’ll believe in me?’
    ‘You’ve been very open so far. Plus, my future depends on you.’
    He smiled. ‘What do you think about God?’
    ‘I don’t believe in God,’ she replied honestly.
    He accepted that. ‘Do you know what I think about love? I think love can change us beyond recognition, we become love-sick, soft-eyed jelly-bellied fools.’
    ‘You were never that,’ Kitty teased.
    ‘I was too. When I met my wife. Gorgeous, she was. I was a right eejit at the time too. Love can soften people, I believe that. But in me, now, love riles up an anger, a red-hot rage that crawls on my skin, seeps into my blood and brings out the worst in me. That’s why everyone I love is better off loving me from afar. From Mayo. From Manchester. Wherever.’
    Kitty pushed him to talk about it more.
    ‘My love for people takes on negative forms,’ he explained. ‘Shadowy, threatening, it’s far from the soppy crap you read in cards or the sweet nothings that people whisper in each other’s ears. Love makes most people soar. For me it pulls me down. I’m a demon ready to defend, to protect, to do anything for the people that I love.’
    ‘That’s understandable considering what you’ve been through.’
    ‘Is it?’ He looked at her, surprised.
    ‘Of course it is.’
    ‘For the past seven years, I’ve felt like a monster that doesn’t know how to love in the right way. And I know that, and yet …’ he disappeared into his mind. She could see him building his barriers again, the tension was returning, the tough guy was coming back.
    Kitty had to talk before she lost the loose-tongued Archie completely. ‘Archie, tell me what it is.’
    He studied the blackboard for a long time and then he turned round to check on the woman in the café again. He sighed, conflicted.
    ‘Tell me,’ Kitty said firmly.
    ‘Sometimes,’ he paused, ‘I hear people’s prayers.’
    Kitty raised her eyebrows and waited for him to laugh, to tell her he was joking, but his expression didn’t change. She analysed it all in the seconds she had to win or lose this story. The woman stood up and left the café and Archie’s eyes followed her. Then he turned back to Kitty, probably waiting for her to do the same. She took a gamble.
    ‘And what do you hear her pray about?’
    For the second time he seemed surprised that her first question hadn’t been anything more negative, that she’d got straight to the point.
    ‘“Please”,’ he said, settling back down. ‘She sits here for twenty minutes every morning and says “please” over and over again.’
    Kitty massaged her temples as she sat on the bus to her next destination. A man who hears people’s prayers? What on earth was she supposed to think of that? She could drop it right now, move on from Archie and speak to somebody else on the list. Someone normal. With such a tight deadline and Pete breathing down her neck, it was probably what she should have done, but it wasn’t her list to play with, it was Constance’s. Kitty remembered her old self, who used to crave meeting people like Archie and stories like his. She thought about Constance’s teachings and realised this was exactly the kind of story Constance believed in covering. This was the kind of story that twenty-three-year-old Kitty, just out of college, would have brought to her job interview, and one that Constance would have been intrigued by. Anything unusual and non-traditional would be the first thing she would want to investigate. Her heart raced as she thought about the possibilities. Perhaps Archie had heard Mary-Rose’s, Birdie’s, Eva’s or Ambrose’s prayers, perhaps he had a link to everybody on the list. She desperately needed to find out more.
    She stared at the words she had written on her notepad.
    Name Number Sixty-seven: Archie Hamilton
    Story Title: Man of Pray
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from the hunted to the haunted, to the hallowed

CHAPTER