The room was becoming icily cold. Sam could see steam from the woman’s breath, thick vapour that hung in the air. She felt goose-pimples running down her arms, down her back and a churning feeling in her stomach.
There was a strange rumbling sound, like a distant tube train, except it seemed to be coming from above them, not below. As she listened to it, she felt the coldness in the room seeping through her, turning everything inside her to ice.
There was a sharp ping above them.
The light went out.
Sam snapped her neck back, staring up, trying to see the bulb, then looked around wildly in the sudden pitch-black darkness.
The clairvoyant continued to pant and whimper. Then her grip began to slacken, and Sam felt the temperature in the room warming.
‘I think we’d better stop,’ Mrs Wolf said. ‘I think we’d better stop.’ She was still breathing heavily.
‘Please tell me . . . please tell me what’s going on,’ Sam whispered.
‘There’s . . . I—’ She heard the rustle of the woman’s clothes in the darkness. ‘They won’t show me anything. Nothing.’
‘Why? I don’t understand.’
‘It’s better if you don’t.’
‘I want to know.’
‘There’ll be no charge. I can’t give it to you. I can’t give you what you want.’ The woman’s chair scraped back.
‘Why not? Please explain—’
‘You want to know what’s going on? The future? I can’t see. I can’t show you.’
‘Why can’t you?’
‘I can’t. Open the door. We must open the door!’
‘Why can’t you?’ Sam’s voice was rising.
‘Because there’s nothing there,’ the woman said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘There’s nothing there.’
‘You mean you can’t see anything?’
‘Nothing.’
‘What . . . what does that mean?’
The clairvoyant’s voice was trembling. ‘No more future. It means – that you don’t have any future.’
Sam felt her hand released; heard the woman move; the sound of the door opening and dim light from the corridor filled the room.
‘There’s no charge,’ said the woman. ‘Just go. Get out!’
‘Please—’ Sam said. ‘Please just explain. Tell me—’
‘Out, get out! Get out!’ the woman cried. ‘Get out! No charge, just get out!’ She was screaming now. ‘What have you brought with you? Take it away. We don’t want it here. Take it, get out, get out!’
Sam stared up at the bulb. It was intact, but blackened. She stood up, stunned, her mind numbed.
‘Get out of here!’ the woman hissed again. ‘Take it away. Take it with you.’
Sam backed away out of the room and down the corridor, past the man with the pigtail who glared malevolently. She climbed the stairs and saw the woman with the pulled-back red hair still skewering the cash register, glance up and follow her with her eyes.
Sam stumbled through the shop and out into the street, her brain a vortex of confusion. It was a cold, sharp afternoon, the sky a watery blue, with the sun already setting. Four o’clock. A waiter came out of a Greek restaurant across the road and locked the door behind him. Two men strode past chatting, one rubbing his hands against the cold.
She began to walk as fast as she could away from the shop, from Mrs Wolf, away from the woman with the pulled-back face, blinded by the raging confusion in her mind. She kept bumping into people, then saw an object in front blocking her path and stepped around it, off the pavement, onto the road.
There was a howl of brakes and she looked up, startled, at the taxi that was stopped inches from her.
The driver’s head came out of his window, a cloth cap
with clumps of hair either side. ‘Woz wiv you then? Woz your fuckin’ game? Trying to get yourself bloody killed?’
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’
Through the blur of her tears she saw a small park across the road; she went into it and sat down on a bench.
She lowered her head into her arms, and thought for a moment she was going to be sick. She could feel the world turning like a huge fairground wheel, accelerating, spinning her round, making her giddy, then rising up and trying to tip her onto the grass. She held onto the seat, held on tightly; held on because she knew she was tilted so far over now that if she let go she would fall out into space.
No more future . . . you don’t have any future
.
OK. I want to wake up now. Dream over.
Two barristers walked down the path in front of her, in their gowns and wigs; she watched them, hoping they might turn into frogs or giraffes, or take their clothes off and leap in the air so she would know it was a dream for sure, but they simply carried on walking, talking.
She stared up at an advertising hoarding on the side of a high-rise office. Huge bold letters, already illuminated for the falling darkness. Huge bold letters that beamed at her as if they were taunting her.
SAFEGUARD YOUR FUTURE WITH THE GUARDIAN ROYAL.
The heavy traffic streaming north was gradually thinning the further away they got from London. They could have been on another planet or travelling through
space, Sam thought, staring out through the windscreen. Just blackness peppered with drifting red lights and occasional orange blinking lights and the rushing of wind, and bridges that passed overhead and seemed to suspend time for a fraction of a second, and signs that came out of the dark then flipped away again past the windscreen.
NORTHAMPTON. COVENTRY. LEICESTER. LOUGHBOROUGH 10. SERVICES 15.
Lightning forked across the sky and a few blobs of water hit the windscreen. The interior of the Bentley was dark, just the weak glow of the dials on the dashboard and the radio which was on but was turned down too low to hear. Ken had been quiet, uncharacteristically quiet; they had both been quiet.
‘It was Claire who suggested her?’ he asked suddenly.
‘Yes.’
‘She’s been to her?’
‘I think she goes quite often; she swears by her.’
‘Did you tell Claire what she said?’
‘No. I don’t find her very easy to talk to.’
‘You don’t like her very much, do you?’
‘I think she’s a bit weird.’
‘She’s quite efficient.’
‘How much do you know about Claire, Ken?’
‘Not a lot. Lives in Ealing. Used to live in South Africa. Worked for a small commercials company there for eight years.’
‘Do you know what she was doing for them?’
‘Same as what she’s doing now.’
‘I don’t think she knows very much about the business.’
‘She had good references.’
‘Did you check them?’
‘No. She said the company had gone bust. It was at
the same time she split up with a boyfriend, which is why she decided to come back to England. You don’t think the references are false, surely?’
‘No, I’m sure they’re fine. I think I’m just very . . . I guess freaked out by everything that’s been happening.’
‘You need to get away, Sam. Can’t you and Richard go off somewhere for a few days?’
‘He doesn’t seem to like going away these days.’
‘I’d like to go round there and give that cow a bloody thrashing. The Whole Mind and Body Centre,’ he said contemptuously. ‘Load of sodding con artists, that’s all. Loonies. Dream groups, clairvoyants, shrinks—’ He glanced in his mirror and moved across into the nearside lane. ‘Perhaps we ought to try to find a witch doctor. Maybe they’ve got one in Leeds.’
She smiled.
‘What are we going to do with you, Sam?’
‘You needn’t worry. I don’t have any future.’
‘Of course you have a sodding future.’ He took his hand off the wheel and touched her arm lightly. ‘I want you to have a future. It’s crap, Sam. Look, none of us has any future. In the long run we’ll all be dead – so what’s she saying? You’re going to be dead in a hundred years? Was she any more specific than that?’
‘Why do you think she said what she did? I thought these people – if they saw something bad – weren’t supposed to tell you.’
He shrugged. ‘There are some very weird people in the world, Sam. Maybe she just didn’t like you . . . was envious that you are young and pretty and thought she’d scare the hell out of you for fun.’
She saw another fork of lightning streak through the sky, then vanish. Like a light bulb going out.
Pop.
Ping.
Light bulbs.
Light bulbs went all the time, didn’t they? If you had something sticky on them, like paint, then they could explode. Couldn’t they?
The woman with the pulled-back face.
Mrs Wolf.
Weirdos. Ken was right. They conned Claire. But they hadn’t conned her. Oh no. Great trick that, the light bulb trick. Works a treat, hey? Every one a winner.
Another sign drifted out of the darkness towards them.
LEEDS
Another sign followed it, black and white this time.
163 DEAD IN BULGARIA AIR DISASTER.
Then another swirled out of the darkness, bending, curling, like a sheet of newsprint.
RAPED AND MURDERED ON THE UNDERGROUND.
It was coming straight at them, hit the windscreen and flattened out like the wing of a giant insect. Ken switched the wipers on and the blades smoothed it out like a poster on a billboard, so that she could see it clearly, read it clearly, see Tanya Jacobson’s face staring through the glass at her, smiling, winking.
Are you resonating, Sam?
Sam shrieked.
‘Sam? You OK?’
Ken’s voice. She blinked hard and stared ahead. Nothing. No newspaper. Just the blackness and the tail lights and the wipers clearing the spots of rain, and a new light now, a tiny winking light on the dash. They were turning off.
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I was dozing.’
The hotel was only a short distance from the motorway, and there was a battery of signs so no one could miss it.
TROPICANA GOLF & COUNTRY CLUB.
TROPICANA INDOOR POOL AND GRILL
BAR – OPEN TO NON RESIDENTS.
PARADISE ISLAND CREOLE RESTAURANT.
PARADISE DISCO.
The palm tree emblem was emblazoned on the two entrance columns and bedecked in fairy lights shining out through the rain, which was falling harder now. It was emblazoned again, forty foot high, on the wall above the entrance porch. Country club, Sam thought. You’d never get permission to build a twenty-storey hotel in the middle of the countryside, but a country club: that was a different matter. Image. Packaging. Labels. You could do anything you wanted if you knew the right label to stick on it.
RESIDENTIAL GUESTS ENTRANCE.
GOLF CLUB.
PARKING.
They followed the arrows that were in the shape of palm fronds down an avenue lined with trees and bushes to the main entrance. As they pulled up outside the door, Sam stared around uneasily at the darkness, feeling a sudden frisson of fear.
‘Looks a bit naff,’ Ken said.
She gazed at the copper palm tree above the porch, then around again at the darkness.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing.’ She smiled. ‘It’s fine.’
The entrance lobby was festooned with tropical plants, bright lights, rattan furniture, and painted a lush tropical green. A girl in a matching tropical green dress, with a small gold palm tree engraved with the name ‘Mandy’ pinned to her chest, tilted a mouthful of gleaming white teeth at them.
‘Good evening, Madam, good evening, Sir. Do you have a reservation?’
‘Yes, we’re in the Grand Spey Foods party.’
‘Ah.’ She looked down and rummaged through a sheaf of paper. ‘Mr and Mrs—?’
‘Mr Shepperd and Mrs Curtis.’
‘There’s a message for you from a Mr Edmunds. They have been delayed in London and won’t be here until late. If they don’t see you tonight, they’ll meet you in the foyer at eight-fifteen in the morning.’
‘Thanks,’ said Ken. He turned to Sam. ‘Let’s dump our stuff in our rooms then have some dinner.’
A cocky teenage porter with bum-fluff on his upper lip, and ‘Bill’ pinned to his chest, showed Sam to her room first and Ken went with them. Sam was on the nineteenth floor. ‘Get a lovely view of the motorway,’ Bill snickered, unlocking the door.
It was a small fresh bedroom with bamboo furniture and bright green drapes and bedspread, a carpet with a rush matting pattern and on the wall was a print of a Gauguin painting she vaguely recognised of a black man and beautiful black woman sitting on the floor of an art gallery.
‘Quarter of an hour?’ said Ken.
‘Fine.’
They went out and closed the door, and she pushed the brass buttons on her suitcase; the locks opened with sharp clicks.
Shit. Did she really bring all this stuff? For one night? She untied the straps and sifted through the layers of flattened clothing. Thick sweater. Had she really packed that? And another? Three different outfits? Nuts, nuts, nuts. It was hot and stuffy in the room. She went over to the window, pulled back the curtain and saw a balcony. She unlocked the door and stepped out onto it.
She felt the cool air, refreshing, could hear the rain falling through the darkness, and see the motorway stretching away into the distance like a never-ending neon sign. She looked down and saw the roof of the swimming pool directly beneath her, a huge octagonal-shaped glass dome over a pool set in a brightly lit indoor tropical garden. There was a thin haze of condensation on the glass making everything slightly fuzzy. She watched a fair-haired woman with a fine figure slowly stretch out on a deck chair under a sun lamp, and toss her hair back. To the side of the pool was a wooden bar with a coconut matting roof, where several people sat wearing nothing but swimming costumes. She wondered what the temperature was in there.
She leaned against the balcony rail trying to get a better view and it seemed to move a fraction under her weight. She stepped back nervously, stretched out her hand and tested it. It was fine, rigid. Standing at arm’s length, she pushed harder against it. It was still fine. Had she imagined it? Come on, Sam, pull yourself together. Nervous of everything. Relax. She went back to the rail and put her full weight on it, defiantly. She even gave it a shove with her bum, just to see.
‘Island In The Sun’ came round for the third time on the Paradise Island Restaurant muzak. It was suffocatingly hot, as if the hotel was determined to spare no detail in maintaining the illusion of the Indian Ocean on this damp green strip of countryside sandwiched between the motorways.