‘I’ve had to force it out of her – what happened, how you accused her.’
‘
Force?
Come on, Ade, Sahara never needs to be forced to make up stories.’
I hear a whimper in the background and realise I must be on speakerphone. Anger makes me feel hotter. Will she never leave me alone? ‘What is it, Sahara? Is it not enough to stalk me
– now you want to deprive me of sleep too? Or something worse?’
‘Stop lying, Alice!’ she shrieks. ‘I’ve never stalked anyone. I’d never do anything to harm you. Or Meggie.’
Her voice is so loud that I pull the duvet back over my head so my parents won’t wake up. I’ve gone too far. She isn’t supposed to know I suspect her directly. But the fear and
the stress, it’s pushed me to the edge. I have to ring off before I say something else I regret. ‘I can’t see the point in this phone call. Goodnight, Sahara.’
‘No. Don’t!’ she calls out. ‘I need to see you! Talk to you—’
Then I hear rustling.
‘Alice, I’ve switched off the speakerphone because Sahara is finding it so painful to hear your voice. But I have to ask – why did you accuse her of being involved in your
sister’s death, after all we’ve—’
‘I never said that.’
Even though it is what I think.
‘You must understand how devastated she is,’ Ade sounds calmer now, but there’s still an edge to his words.
‘I haven’t spoken to her in days, Ade. Perhaps she’s got confused.’ Though I bet she’s
seen
me, before moving the mirrors on my car or letting the tyres
down.
‘I think you’re the one who is confused, Alice. Look, we know you’re getting psychological help now. That’s why we’re not going to say anything to your parents, but
as Sahara’s boyfriend, I need to ask you to be more considerate in future. She’s on the edge.’
Something’s wrong about this conversation. Something doesn’t add up.
My parents only staged their intervention
after
I’d visited Sahara in Greenwich.
So how could Ade and Sahara possibly know I’m getting help?
‘What do you mean, “help”?’
He sighs. ‘Alice, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Sahara mentioned it but of course it won’t go any further. You can trust us completely.’
His words echo in my head, because trusting them is the last thing I can afford to do. The only way Sahara could know about Olav is if she’s been following me, surely? Mum and Dad would
never tell, and the only other people who know are Cara and Lewis and they both loathe Ade and Sahara.
‘You woke me up for
that
?’
There’s a long pause, then Ade says, ‘Maybe I made a mistake. Since she’s been living with me, I’ve realised how much Meggie’s death, and all that’s happened
since, is still affecting Sahara. Things were getting a bit fraught just now and I guess I wanted to warn you—’ He stops abruptly.
‘
Warn
me? About what, Ade?’
‘Forget it. It’s nothing.’
‘Tell me. Please.’
‘Seriously, it’s
nothing.
I over-reacted. Things always look bleaker in the dark, don’t they, Alice?’
I say nothing, hoping he might change his mind and tell me what he meant. But I can hear Sahara breathing by the mouthpiece and I sense the moment’s passed. I wonder how often things get
‘fraught’ with Sahara, and if he has any idea what he’s dealing with. Surely if he did, they wouldn’t be together.
‘I’m going to ring off, now, Alice, I’m sorry. I guess everything will look better in the morning. Goodnight.’
After the call ends, night lingers, darker and deeper than before. What was that phone call really about? A warning – or a threat? I try to remember the exact words he used.
Fraught.
Painful. Devastated.
Is Ade afraid of Sahara himself?
The only comfort I can take from the call is barely a comfort at all – my suspicions about being followed
are
right. Sahara must be hanging out in the shadows most of the time,
tailing me from home to Olav’s to Lewis’s.
And then she goes home to Ade and he has to listen to her lies and hysteria. It must be suffocating.
I shiver as I realise something else: the conversation felt incomplete, as though he were trying hard to tell me something else, or warn me, even. My thoughts circle endlessly around his words
and his unfinished sentences. Perhaps I should have been sympathetic, listened more.
What the hell was it that Ade
didn’t
say?
Hot.
Suffocatingly
hot.
When I wake up again, I’m sweating, the duvet twisted round me like a straitjacket.
I wrestle it off. Light is streaming through my windows, the room fuggy with stale, hot air.
Eleven o’clock.
My alarm didn’t go off and my parents have left me to sleep. They know as well as I do that I have nothing to get up for.
I change my sweaty t-shirt, pull on some tracksuit bottoms and go downstairs. Dad’s reading the paper in the living room, Mum’s trimming something in the garden. They wave, but
don’t try to talk to me. Maybe that’s Olav’s latest strategy: wait for me to spill the beans of my own accord. Well, I’m not playing.
I pour out a bowl of cereal and catch my reflection in the glass in the oven door. No one would mistake me for Meggie right now. For a short while, I started to resemble her, but maybe my brief
moment of prettiness has been and gone.
Or maybe I should stop feeling sorry for myself and have a bloody shower!
I take my bowl upstairs and am about to hit the bathroom to wash away the pointless self-pity and wake myself up, when I notice the light on my phone is flashing.
Missed call: Lewis.
That’s
woken me up.
He’s left no voicemail but there is a text, sent a minute later:
I’ve got access to a lab. If you’re still sure it’s what you
want.
I don’t hesitate. There’s no
if
about it. Maybe the truth is going to hurt, but it’s all I have left.
I dial his number.
‘Lewis! How are you?’
My mother greets him at the front door.
‘Very well, thanks, Mrs Forster. Are you going out? You’re looking very glamorous.’
Mum laughs. ‘I’ve told you before, call me Bea. Glamorous! Hardly, we’re just having some old friends round for supper. So where are you taking my daughter tonight? She seems
very excited.’
‘Ah, well, it’s a surprise, you see.’
I catch sight of Lewis as she lets him in. There’s something different about him. What? He’s dressed in his normal working-from-home uniform of designer jeans and crumpled shirt. His
hair’s slightly more dishevelled than usual, but he might just have overdone it with the gel.
It’s his face that’s different. His eyes.
They’re blazing.
When he looks at me, it feels like he can see right through me: my doubts, fears, wishes. Though he knows all of those already, or at least more than anyone else does. Even Danny doesn’t
know me so well.
‘Ready, Ali?’
My throat is so dry that my ‘Yes’ comes out more like a croak.
‘Drive safely,’ Mum says, ruffling my hair on the way out as though I’m five and heading off to school.
‘I’ll have her back before the clock strikes twelve and she turns into a pumpkin,’ Lewis says.
Outside, he’s left the engine running. There’s not a moment to waste.
Just before Mum shuts the door, I turn back. She looks so small standing there, waving me off. How hard must it be for her to let me go, after what happened to Meggie?
I run back up the path and give her a hug. Her bones feel fragile.
‘What was that for?’ she says, when I let go.
‘Just . . . well, if I can’t hug my mum, who
can
I hug?’ I say, trying to make a joke of something that, a few seconds ago, didn’t feel like a joke at all.
‘Hug me any time you like, Alice. Any time,’ she says, blowing me a kiss as I climb into Lewis’s car and he puts his foot down.
The evening air smells of barbecues and summer idleness.
But Lewis is anything but chilled. He’s driving way too fast. OK, he
always
drives too fast, but usually I still feel safe. Tonight, not so much.
‘Are we in a hurry?’
‘Whatever gave you that impression, Ali?’
The car almost flies off the roundabout and straight into the fast lane of the motorway. Luckily the entire population of London must be at a barbecue; the road is so empty you’d think
there’d been an apocalypse.
He accelerates so hard that I’m pushed back in my seat. The Lewis I’m seeing tonight isn’t the person I know. Has that glimpse of the Beach affected him, too?
‘Where
are
we going, Lewis?’
‘It’s better if you don’t know too many details.’
‘Why?’
‘You’re safer if you know as little as possible about the lab.’
His speech is much faster than usual, and his words more alarming.
Lab. Safer?
‘You’re sure this isn’t dangerous?’
‘Yes. I told you before: it’s completely non-invasive. But it isn’t exactly mainstream either. The lab’s private and the technology is cutting-edge.’
Cutting-edge?
Nerves knot my stomach and make my head throb. ‘But it should tell us whether the Beach is real or not?’ I ask.
‘There are no guarantees, but it’s the best chance we have.’
‘Lewis, if we get there and I . . . change my mind, that’ll be OK, won’t it?’
He turns to look at me. ‘Of course. Right up till the last moment, or even while it’s underway. You just say the word.’ His voice is softer now, more like the old Lewis.
‘The only thing is, I’ve had to call in some pretty big favours for this. There will be no second chances.’
After forty minutes, we turn off the motorway and take a twisty route via back roads to a little trading estate. I strain to hear cars or life, but there’s no sound at
all. The place is dead.
Lewis slows right down and the car crawls past a tile warehouse, a pine workshop, a tool-hire depot. As he drives, Lewis checks his mirror, his blind spot, his watch. In the yellow street lamps,
the whites of his eyes look jaundiced.
I want to make the usual silly jokes, but I don’t know how he’ll react tonight.
Right at the far end of the estate there’s a long, squat building backing onto an embankment. There are four shuttered windows along the front plus a glazed door, but no light shows at
all. Lewis parks next to a white van with no number plates. When he turns off the engine, I hear rumbling and feel a slight tremor. What are they
doing
in there?
Then I spot the railway line running along the top of the embankment.
‘Ready, Ali?’ Lewis asks.
‘I guess.’
Outside, the air is still, but now it smells of diesel instead of barbecues. Once the train’s gone past, the only other sound is a regular hum coming from the building.
I notice a white unit attached to the far wall. Air-conditioning. Otherwise there’s nothing. No birdsong at dusk, no laughter from distant parties.
Lewis doesn’t go to the front door, but walks towards the other end of the building. There’s a metal door but no bell and no signs, except one that reads ANTI-CLIMB PAINT: KEEP
OFF.
He sends a text.
Moments later, the metal door opens. Inside looks even darker than outside and the man who opened the door says nothing, but lets us in, locks up behind us, then leads us through a maze of
corridors. There is very low-level emergency lighting that gives the space a green glow, but he helps guide us using the torch beam from his mobile. He’s slim, not that tall, and I can just
make out the silhouette of his square glasses. But I can’t see anything else, not even enough to guess his age.
You’re safer if you know as little as possible.
As we shuffle along, I lose any sense of where the back and front of the building might be. In the gloom, my hearing becomes more acute. What
is
this place? I listen out for the squeaks
of lab rats or the cries of human guinea pigs.
I tut to myself. Ridiculous. I’m safer in here than I am in the outside world, surely. At least Sahara can’t get inside.
Finally, there’s a brighter strip of light ahead of us, shining from the gap at the bottom of a door, plus a smaller dot of red light at waist level.
‘Ladies first,’ the man says after he waves a swipe card and the dot of light turns green. His voice is young, nervy.
Nerdy
, too, maybe, or am I just playing to the
stereotype of mad scientist?
My head pounds. If I could remember the way, I have a feeling my body might take over and race back out. But I need to do this, however much it scares me.
And I’ve missed the Beach so much – despite the fear, part of me is desperate to see Meggie and Danny again, no matter what it takes.
Inside the secure area, it’s a little brighter, thanks to the glow from endless high-tech equipment. I guess this is what you’d call a control room and, to the left, there’s a
door marked SERVERS. Through the reinforced glass of the door I can see banks of computers lined up like library shelving.
An electronic hum fills the space and makes my head throb.
To our right, there’s a long desk, with keyboards and controls built in, and flat-screens mounted above, ten or more. And beyond that, a pane of glass that reflects our own faces back at
us.
Lewis’s eyes look wild in the reflection. But the lab guy has a beard below his glasses, covering the bottom half of his face. It looks like a joke-shop disguise.
Finally my own face is reflected back at me. In the dark mirror, I resemble my sister again. A reminder of why I’m here – and why I have to stay put, however scary it gets.
‘OK, Alice. This is what’s going to happen. This set-up allows us to monitor your brain responses while you complete an activity.’ The man sounds almost bored, as though
it’s a script he’s read over and over again. ‘What we usually do is monitor what you’re seeing on one screen, your responses via camera on a second screen, and then your
brain scans on a third.’ He points at the bank of screens.