I hesitated. I was duly impressed. I thought of Robbie and his good job and my comfortable life; I thought of Doxies and sexual pleasure and Juves and freedom of expression, of Ritalin and its fitful acuity, of Red Beard’s bearish hug, of Cynara and her thriving gallery, of the twins’ river-view apartment, and I understood that what I said would change everything for everyone. ‘They’ had pushed open the doors of perception a crack, and Ted had slipped through and that now Ted had found the way others would follow; the dead would be upon us. Did I want this? Did I really want my lost, dead loved ones about me – my sweet mother, perhaps, but my murderous father, Ted’s parents, my drony adopted father…? Never. ‘If the doors of perception were cleansed,’ William Blake had said, ‘every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.” And just as well, I thought, we were safer in our cavern.

  I spoke up.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘The thing you need to understand about the paranormal is that everything it touches becomes second-rate, useless. I train an eraser to jump into my hand and all it does is rub out the map I’m working on: the spoons that Uri Geller bends can no longer be used to eat your soup or pudding; the keys he twists no longer fit the lock; his stopped watches no longer tell the time. So much for bending the laws of physics. Even if you can, where’s the point? When a clairvoyant channels Mozart or Beethoven from the Other Side the music they compose is poor pastiche. Mediums end up with shapeless bodies and bad breath. Occult energy degrades all it passes through. If the dead tell you something they’re bound to be lying: information becomes disinformation. Open the doors of perception and God knows what will come through. Go where the laws of nature no longer apply, and water flows upwards, trees grow upside down, and yesterday becomes tomorrow. The abyss stares back at you. My advice to you is slam the bloody doors of perception shut, if it’s not too late, and keep them fucking closed.’

  It was quite a speech but it didn’t go down at all well. I shouldn’t have sworn, but it wasn’t just that. The spotlight left me. Faces all around had fallen. I was the wet blanket of wet blankets. Phyllis Whitman, medium, now public enemy number one, telling a truth no-one present wanted to hear.

  The Chairman’s voice was tremulous. One can get one’s vocal chords tightened like guitar strings so one speaks with a younger voice. Maybe he hadn’t got round to it yet.

  ‘Thank you, Phyllis, you may stand down. Your remarks have been noted.’

  I stood down. I was escorted out.

  I was shivery. Red Beard lent me his leather jacket. We left the building in quite a hurry. I suggested to Robbie before we left that we take as many Doxies and Juves home as possible while we could, and perhaps some Ritalin, but Robbie said Security were already in the pharmacy cleaning up the place. Two of the Portal Inc pharmacists had been taken away in handcuffs. It was alleged that they’d been trading illicitly.

  ‘But you two weren’t trading?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Robbie, indignantly. He and Red Beard had been acting under instruction; their attempts to break through to the other side had been properly sanctioned, but political power was shifting at the top. Hence the arrest of the pharmacists that morning. The Ethics Committee would be disappointed by my testimony but would report it back at the AGM that evening when the vote was taken.

  They asked a little anxiously whether anything had ‘happened’ during my stint with the MRI machine, and I said no, and I think they were relieved. I didn’t mention Ted’s stepping out of the apparatus over the sill. Some residual loyalty to him remained, like a mother’s to a son, but thank God without the tormented agitation of sexual jealousy and possessiveness which had overlaid our earlier relationship. If his was to be the casting vote I thought he would vote to keep the doors of perception closed: to bar more investigation of the other side, other alternative universes. He would be like so many immigrants; he had got through but would not want others to follow and queer his pitch.

  I stayed quiet and Robbie said I was not to reproach myself. There’d been no time to prepare or brief me, and I was only a five. Nevertheless the dissolution of Portal Inc was possible if the vote went against the ADF tonight and funding was withdrawn. Robbie and Red Beard might well find themselves made redundant. They did not seem unduly distressed. There were other jobs waiting, though in places where access to the new generation pharms could be difficult.

  I hope I showed proper sympathy. It seemed Red Beard was already planning a sideways step into Godix Inc, sister institution to Portal Inc, where work was being done on the ergodic nature of the multiverse: the mathematical approach. Robbie hoped to join him there. Psycho-pharms had been fun, but fun must have a stop. We were all grownups again now.

  And Ted is walking amongst us, I thought, but did not say.

  8

  Robbie and I went to bed that night with my best Chinese rug from the living room covering up the carpet where the perchlorate sapling had rooted. We slept holding each other with great affection but without feeling the need for sex. So much for life without Doxies. It wasn’t heaven but it would do.

  That night I dreamt of the forest again. Sunlight streamed into the clearing. There was birdsong. Trails of white clematis hung from high trees. Even the net of saplings underfoot looked benign.

  And Ted was not to be seen. Of course not. I had set him free. I hadn’t prayed for his release from Purgatory but I’d done the next best thing. I had forgiven him and not forgotten him. Ted was satisfied. I suspected that it was the last Ted dream I’d ever have. I was right. My third eye, after its final excitation, had been irretrievably dimmed, and just as well. I was no longer the heroine of the metadata, no goddess, no medium, just an ordinary working wife and mother of twins.

  I had made my bed with Robbie and now must lie upon it, with as much content as it provided. It was hardly Robbie’s fault that he had acted as he had. He was a six, and like many a six was Aspergery: but what he lacked in empathy he made up for in a generalised goodwill. Ted would be around to divert Cynara’s attention from him. The twins had grown up, left home and had each other and the NSA. Working in the world of Security would suit them very well. They were judgemental by nature, and if they joined some LFL harem it was none of my business. One could only hope 3D computer-printed spare body parts were properly rewarding.

  For myself I resolved to rebuild the Q&A&Co business and keep myself busy. I would keep off pills of all kinds. We might be living in a pharmocracy, but it was up to individuals to resist. I might even start a movement.

  In the morning the phone rang. It was the Ethics Committee chairman. He thanked me for my contribution to yesterday’s proceedings and said that as a result of last night’s vote Portal Inc was being wound down: the project ‘had not shown sufficient intelligence benefit or financial dividend to justify its continuance’. It had been a close vote, carried by one. He personally regretted the decision but could see it was prudent. Then, he asked, and I knew he was angling for confirmation of some kind:

  ‘I hope you had a quiet night, Phyllis? You must have had quite an exhausting day yesterday.’

  ‘Perfectly quiet, thank you. Poor Ted was still there in his forest,’ I lied, ‘stumbling round as ever. He’s in some kind of mental loop, I suppose. But as a dream it no longer bothers me.’

  ‘Well, we could keep in touch, Phyllis,’ he said, as he rang off. ‘We must have lunch one day. Such a pleasure to meet you.’

  I thought he sounded rather relieved. As indeed was I – to find that the Juves had finally worn off and I could tell lies so easily. When Robbie asked me the same question as the chairman I replied in the same way: no change in the Ted dreams, and with any luck, I said, if Robbie refrained from taking Doxies, no doubt the dreams would taper off.

  I had no wish to set more hares running. The future would have to look after itself. Ted was not likely to bother me again, though he might well have found a path others could still follow, shaking little sapling seeds or even more malignant things from their clothing as they went. I could see that Ted might well have unfinished business with Jill Woodward – she had murdered him, if only inadvertently. But if he haunted anyone, it would be Cynara, whom he had screwed and – I could finally admit it – loved. Well, she’d have to deal with it. Perhaps even now he was sitting in her gallery telling her what to do and how to do it.

  A couple of days later an envelope turned up in the post. It contained a lottery ticket – although I never play the lottery – and when Robbie checked on the Internet he told me I was one of three winners: I had all six numbers, plus the bonus. He reckoned we had won something in the region of four million dollars, for it was just over two and a half million pounds. Robbie clasped me to him. The illuminati of the Ethics Committee had been true to their word and seen me right. Even with house prices as they were, we could afford to move out of Dinton Close and leave Ted behind us for ever. It was just as well; I had tried to vacuum really thoroughly that morning, only to find tiny green saplings growing all over the place and the dust bag clogged with little leaves.

  We hope you enjoyed this novella.

  The Ted Dreams is part of the forthcoming Mischief collection. In Mischief, Fay Weldon selects and introduces her favourite short stories from across her career as one of Britain’s foremost contemporary novelists. Waspish, wise and wickedly witty, this is a collection to treasure forever.

  Mischief will be released in February 2015

  For an exclusive preview of Fay Weldon’s classic Growing Rich, read on or click here.

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  Carmen is sixteen when she catches Bernard Bellamy’s eye. Unfortunately for Carmen, Bernard has just made a deal with the devil: his mortal soul in exchange for the fulfilment of all his desires. And he wants Carmen to be his wife. Carmen is not so easily swayed, but can she resist all the obstacles – and temptations – the devil can throw at her?

  Annie, Laura and Carmen, in the week before their exams began, bunked off school and went down to sit on the banks of Sealord Brook – the very same stream which ran through the grounds of Bellamy House Hotel where it was being widened to provide a jet-ski pond – to lick their wounds, lament their fate, and wonder why they were all so suddenly thus afflicted. Down here the great hairy willowherb – Epilobium hirsutium – grows, and marsh valerian, and milk parsley, and sometimes – in the month of May — swallowtail butterflies hover and dance. It was a bright, bright afternoon and it was difficult to feel miserable, but they tried.

  ‘We’re not going to pass,’ said Laura.

  ‘We’re going to let Mrs Baker down,’ said Annie.

  ‘We’ll never get out of here,’ said Carmen. ‘We’ll have to take local jobs and marry local boys.’

  ‘That’s if we’re lucky. Who’s ever going to marry me?’ said Annie, and it was true that in those days, when other girls are at their prettiest, a kind of unbearable plainness suffused her, a muddiness of complexion, a puffiness of skin, a lankness of hair. Or perhaps it was just depression. Carmen and Annie stared at their friend and could see that she was indeed a worry.

  ‘There’s always someone for everyone,’ said Laura comfortingly.

  ‘You’re okay,’ said Annie. ‘You’ve got Woodie.’

  And so it seemed Laura had, one way or another. Woodie had returned not as suitor but as family friend, to be supportive in the bad times which followed her parents’ separation. He was kind to Audrey, in the lordly charitable way of very young men who cannot understand what all the fuss is about, and brotherly to Laura. He even once persuaded Audrey to go to the cinema with him in spite of the stomach pains which made her think she’d just rather sit at home and suffer. Her doctor, Dr Grafton, the one who sees illness as God’s punishment for lack of serenity, told her the pains were due to stress and she should pull herself together, eat more and cheer up.

  ‘All I’ve got,’ said Annie, ‘is Count Capinski saying come here my little milkmaid and chasing me round the kitchen.’

  ‘You’re making it up,’ said Carmen.

  ‘He did it once,’ said Annie. ‘He did.’

  ‘Your mother ought to see a counsellor,’ said Carmen.

  ‘She is the counsellor,’ said Annie, and laughed, and looked better at once.

  ‘We’ll all get jobs and save up so you can have a nose job,’ said Carmen.

  ‘It’s not how you look that matters in the world,’ said Laura primly, ‘it’s your personality,’ but they all knew it wasn’t so: that was just the kind of thing people told them. Would Prince Charles have married Lady Di if she hadn’t been pretty?

  Annie said, ‘The only good thing that happened all last week was that while Count Capinski was having yet another bath – he’s the only one allowed to use all the hot water he wants, because of the dungeon – he had this kind of flash from heaven that a horse called Yellowhammer was going to win the three o’clock at Newmarket. So Mum leapt out of the bath and went to find Dad – she didn’t even wrap herself in a towel – and told him to put a ten-pound bet to win. Dad doesn’t believe in gambling, so I had to go all the way to the betting shop. And Yellowhammer won. And then I had to go all the way back again to pick up the winnings. Two hundred and twenty pounds. They only gave me two. The rest went to the Temple of Healing Light. That’s the Wednesday afternoon do; it’s half-price when the rich pay for the poor. Dad says no one should benefit from gambling.’

  ‘If the Count can predict the future,’ said Carmen, ‘and if you asked him nicely, would he give us our exam questions? Then at least we’d know what to revise.’

  ‘I expect he’d want to steal a kiss,’ said Annie. ‘I hate the way he puts things. I’m really glad I didn’t live in the past, if that was what it was all like.’

  ‘A kiss is a small price to pay,’ said Carmen, ‘for our key to a successful future. Look at it as a mother’s kiss.’ Annie just stared at her, so Carmen said, ‘Well, we’ll all go then, or at any rate we’ll think about it.’

  And they put their plan on ice for a whole twenty-four hours.

  Now I had checked various Count Capinskis out with the help of the Fenedge Mobile Library, soon to be demobilised, and had indeed traced a fairly nasty specimen of Capinski back to fourteenth-century Cracow. This one seemed to be some kind of early Polish Rasputin, a man alleged to be both a practitioner in the black arts and the Queen’s lover; he had led a general uprising against the King, burned alive a church full of people, and been thrown into a bottle dungeon and left there to languish, since the general belief was that to put a magician to death would merely increase his powers. It is perfectly possible – though not likely – that Mavis had read the same book — Bad Men in History — and absorbed its contents unconsciously, as those people are said to do who are regressed by hypnosis into remembering the lives they believe they lived before death. The history books and chronicles used to check out their stories turn out to be the very ones which initiated the fantasy in the first place: what is occurring is a kind of living plagiarism. I do not believe Mavis consciously deceived her family and clients when she spoke with the Count’s voice; nor do I believe he was really in there with her; she just thought and acted as if he was. She and he had been over on occasion to try to heal my legs; she would lay on hands and I would feel the familiar healer’s tingle, and the Count would invoke the Powers of Light in his guttural broken English, but nothing of a healing nature ever actually happened. But Mavis did it out of the goodness of her heart: she came over with the Count several times and didn’t charge a penny for it. And at the time I for one, in spite of the Count’s historic past, had quite grown to trust him. Mavis said he was company for her while Alan was away; Alan said he added class to the Temple of Light; and as for Annie’s allegations, well, girls as plain as Annie are prone to sexual fantasy. And something had to be done. Matters were going from bad to worse. Mrs Baker summoned Annie, Carmen and Laura to her office. Their essays on Lady Macbeth were in front of her.

  ‘What is the matter with you three?’ Mrs Baker demanded. ‘You use family trouble as an excuse for idleness. It’s disgraceful. If you do that now, what chance have you got later on in life, when you have husbands and children? The brightest girls I have, and their heads emptied out of all sense, all information! You are on the road to self-destruction. If you do not get to college you will be dependent on a man forever, for the wage of an untrained female is never enough to keep her in dignity or comfort. So you will marry, and what is marriage, as George Bernard Shaw said, but legalised slavery? Unpaid work in return for your keep, attended by daily humiliations. Who gets the best piece of steak, the only egg in the fridge? He does! He’s bigger than you and more powerful than you, and he allows you to wheedle and charm a little pleasure from him now and then, and the law offers you a little protection, it’s true, but not much. All you have to bind him with are chains of love and duty, and they’re pretty flimsy, believe you me.

  ‘And don’t tell me,’ added Mrs Baker, ‘that the world has changed since I was young, for it hasn’t.’

  The three girls stared at her, unconvinced. And Mrs Baker looked from one to another of them and picked at the layers of dusty black fabric she wore and said, ‘I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking if you pass exams you’ll end up like me. I tell you this, you pass exams and end up like me if you’re lucky.’

  Still they stared.

  ‘Life is short,’ said Mrs Baker, ‘and life is shit,’ and stalked out of the room.

  And that clinched it. The next day Annie, Carmen and Laura sat in Mavis’s hall on the row of chairs kept for patients, and waited. On the door handle of the front room hung a notice which said ‘TEMPLE OF HEALING – DO NOT DISTURB’.