‘Nothing, Alice. He wouldn’t tell
me.
That’d be like, I dunno, breaking an oath of confidentiality. But he came over to my place and begged me to talk to
you.’
‘When?’
‘First thing Sunday morning. He’d tried to get to see you at the hospital, but your parents wouldn’t let him near you. They threatened to call the police. He was in a bloody
awful state, Alice. To start off with, I couldn’t even make sense of what he was saying. I thought there’d been some kind of car accident.’
‘Was he hurt?’
Cara frowns. ‘No. Well, he was coughing and he smelled like a bonfire, but he certainly looked in better shape than you do now.’
I realise something. ‘You already knew about the lab. Even though you just pretended you didn’t.’
She looks away. ‘For your sake. You’ve not exactly been telling me the whole truth and nothing but the truth about your life just lately, have you?’
She’s right: I’ve been lying to her since I found the Beach. I say nothing.
‘I needed to be sure I was doing the right thing, Alice. That putting you back in touch with Lewis wasn’t going to do even more damage.’
For the first time since I came round in hospital, I feel the tiniest glow of hope. Though if he’s desperate to see me, it could just be to tell me I need the kind of help Olav offers.
‘Did he hint at whether it was good news?’
‘No. Only that he thought you should know. And soon.’
‘If Mum and Dad are that determined to keep him away, we’ll need your help,’ I tell her.
Cara nods. ‘If it’s what you really want. Personally, I just want you to be safe, but it’s not like I ever take anyone else’s advice.’
‘It’s what I really want.’
‘OK. How soon do you think your parents will let you out of the house?’
The idea of leaving these four walls makes me shaky, but I need to know. ‘Tomorrow, maybe? But there’s no way they’ll let me go anywhere that Lewis might be.’
She shrugs. ‘They don’t need to know. I can sneak him in while Mum’s doing one of her bloody meditations. As far as our parents are concerned, you’re just coming over for
a sleepover. And what could be safer than that?’
Mum is tougher to crack than I thought; she doesn’t let me leave the house for two more days. I complain, but secretly I’m relieved. My lungs still hurt and the
swelling in my eyes hasn’t gone down as fast as I’d hoped.
With my sight still hazy, I focus on what I hear. Like Mum and Dad whispering about how soon Olav can get back to work on me, and whether they should talk to the doctor about some kind of
medication
when I visit for my check-up.
I try not to get my hopes up about Lewis, but what else is there to focus on? Saying goodbye to Danny? Sahara’s attempt on my life?
Finally, Mum relents and lets me go over to Cara’s for the afternoon – she’s not ready to let me sleep over and I guess, given my best mate’s reputation, that’s not
surprising. Even my afternoon ‘get out of jail free’ pass has only been granted after a phone call to Cara’s mum to guarantee she’ll be on hand in case I need emergency
treatment. If she hadn’t been a GP, I doubt it’d have happened for ages.
Mum almost changes her mind on the doorstep, but Cara jollies her along and then drives me over to her place, a huge glass-walled apartment overlooking the river. Her father’s loaded and
her mum had a mid-life crisis after her divorce, so the two of them are more like flatmates than mother and daughter. The living space is strewn with drying tights and Magnum wrappers. Somewhere in
the middle of the mess is a tabby cat who lives mainly on takeaways.
‘Alice, you poor lamb!’ Cara’s mother says when she sees me, eyeing me suspiciously to make sure I’m not about to collapse. ‘My darling, are you all
right?’
‘A lot better, thanks.’
‘What an awful thing to go through. Your poor parents, it’s the last thing that should have happened. Compared to Cara, you and Meggie were so well-behaved.’
‘Mother!’
Cara says. ‘I can’t believe they haven’t struck you off yet for tactlessness.’
But it
is
strange. Cara should be the one causing her parents sleepless nights.
‘Sorry,’ her mum says. ‘I’m always saying the wrong thing. I mean, I didn’t mean to— Anyway, I’ll be in my office if you feel unwell. Enjoy your
afternoon!’
I smile back as Cara leads the way to ‘her’ wing of the flat. You notice the difference as soon as you step into the corridor. It smells of candles and the pictures on the walls
aren’t wonky and the wood floor is clear of shoes and abandoned magazines. Cara likes everything just so.
‘Lewis is here?’ I whisper to Cara.
‘Yup. Mum was so deep in her yogic trance that I could have snuck in the entire Manchester United football team and she wouldn’t have noticed.’ She smiles. ‘Don’t
worry, though. It’s just you, me and the dangerous Professor Lewis.’
Dangerous?
I hesitate before pushing open the door, suddenly nervous. This could be the time when I finally have to face the truth: that I am ill.
Cara gives me a little push. ‘Don’t keep him waiting, Alice.’
He’s sitting at her dressing table, in an ornately carved chair. He has his back to me and the sunlight is shining through the floor-to-ceiling window, so his hair is golden.
But when he turns, I catch my breath.
Despite my blurred vision, I can see he looks wrecked. Eyes as red as mine, washed-out skin and a dark shadow of stubble that makes him look much, much older.
‘Lewis?’
He jumps up from the chair and holds out his arms. I fall into them.
For a very long time, I can’t speak. My hands grip his back, tracing the solidness of him: shoulders wider and more muscled than you’d ever guess from the loose t-shirts he wears,
strong arms keeping me close.
This is the first time I’ve felt safe since the fire. Which I know makes no sense, but still . . . I close my eyes.
Lewis smells so familiar, but not of his posh aftershave. He’s a cocktail of coffee and green leaves and a hint of fire. I know I must smell worse; even now, almost six days after the
fire, I can still detect the scent of charred plastic on my skin.
‘You’re OK, you’re OK, you’re OK,’ he whispers.
In my head, I repeat,
so are you.
Then I remember Cara’s here and I wriggle free, though Lewis doesn’t seem to want to let go.
When we’re at arm’s length, he studies me, scrutinising me from head to toe.
‘It’s all right. Nothing’s missing,’ I say, trying to lighten the mood.
Lewis sighs so deeply it’s as though he’s been holding his breath since Sunday. ‘I am so,
so
sorry, Ali.’
‘What for? You were trying to help me. I begged you to.’
‘You could have died. It would have been my fault.’
‘No, not yours.’
‘I’ll leave you two to it,’ says Cara. ‘Gooseberry green isn’t my colour. I’ll take the fire escape to the residents’ gym downstairs. I’ll be back
in half an hour, ready to deliver you home, Alice.’
‘Make it an hour,’ Lewis says, his eyes not leaving my face.
‘Ooh, don’t you just love it when he gets all masterful, Alice?’
I say nothing. Cara grabs her gym bag, then goes onto the balcony and scrambles across to the steel ladder. It’s not the first time she’s used this as her escape route when
she’s meant to be grounded.
But I’m more worried about what Lewis has planned. Why does he need an hour with me? I try to prepare myself for what he’s about to tell me. I wasn’t in the scanner for
anything like an hour, so why does he need so much time to explain what he’s found out?
‘So Professor—’
‘Sit down, Ali—’
We speak at the same moment.
I sit on the bed, opposite him.
‘You first,’ I say. ‘I need to know, Lewis. Am I mad or is Soul Beach for real?’
‘It’s
real,’
he whispers. ‘Or at the very least, you’re definitely not mad.’
I blink. My vision seems to clear and everything shines with certainty. Lewis’s face – half smiling, half frowning – is full of kindness.
‘I still don’t understand what’s going on,’ Lewis continues. ‘But I am as certain as I can be that you’re not imagining the Beach. That it exists somewhere,
somehow.’
I feel . . . reborn.
‘I can’t believe it,’ I murmur. Except that’s not quite true: the Beach has always
felt
real. It’s just I haven’t dared to believe it till now.
Part of me wants to hug Lewis for making this happen, but before I can, he sits back down at Cara’s dressing table. ‘It’s the news you were hoping for, isn’t
it?’
I nod. ‘God, yes. I didn’t know what to expect, but – wow, Lewis, Soul Beach exists.’ The words I never thought I’d be able to say out loud. ‘Tell me how you
know! I want all the details.’
‘OK. Well, I’m no neuroscientist, but luckily, Ian is. He does games research now, but his PhD involved working on a team looking at delusions suffered by people with mental illness,
comparing them to people who didn’t. The people with delusions all showed what they called neuronal hyperactivity when they were seeing things. But the way your brain responds when
you’re on the Beach is completely normal. No signs whatsoever that you’re seeing things that aren’t there or imagining it. Ian was adamant.’
I know I won’t remember the scientific term, but I don’t care: it’s proof that
I’m not crazy.
‘When you were on the Beach, Ian said that every part of your brain was active exactly as though you were moving through a
real
place: as though you were
there,
Alice. In
two places at once. Ian went through it all with me: the way the occipital lobe was processing what you were seeing, the way your temporal lobe was responding to what you were hearing, plus your
orbitofrontal circuit was lighting up like crazy – that’s the part that deals with empathy, with understanding other human beings.’
Was that while I was trying to make sense of what poor Danny was going through? I wonder. The moment when I realised I still loved him and knew I had to forgive him?
‘That’s all definite proof that I’m not delusional?’ I ask.
‘Ian couldn’t see any signs at all that you were delusional. Though he did also say he’d love to study you some more.’
I frown. ‘I’m never going anywhere near one of those scanners again. Why would he want to make me do that?’
‘Apparently you have a very developed . . . let me get this right, paracingulate sulcus. It’s a fold in the brain that helps people tell the difference between truth and reality.
Anyway, it confirms what I’ve always thought – you, Alice Forster, are a very special person. No wonder I love spending time with you.’
The compliment makes me blush slightly. ‘I . . . don’t know what to say, except, well, thank you. For doing this, for taking such a huge risk, for everything.’
He looks away. ‘Even though it could have got you killed?’
‘What actually happened, Lewis? In the fire? I don’t remember very much.’
Lewis sighs. ‘It was so sudden. We were watching your face and your brain scans. That was pretty uncomfortable, like voyeurism. Some of the things you were saying, this
conversation
you were having with a figure we couldn’t see or hear. I turned down the volume to protect you.’ He laughs, but it sounds sad. ‘Which is ironic when you
think what comes next.’
I remember the emotional things I was saying to Danny towards the end and I hope Lewis didn’t hear any of that. ‘Tell me.’
‘When the siren first went off, Ian said it was a false alarm – that the systems were incredibly sensitive because the owners are so paranoid about break-ins and the sensors were
being triggered all the time, so he reset everything.
‘But then the camera on your face went out of focus. Ali, it was weird. And horrible. I couldn’t tell why, but I knew you were in danger. I raced into the lab, even though Ian was
telling me that it was fine, the lab was fireproof.
‘But it wasn’t
smoke
-proof. The room was dark with this
fug
of chemicals and plastic and—’ His eyes are wide.
I think about how convinced everyone else is that the fire was an accident. Surely Lewis is suspicious too? ‘So it wasn’t an ordinary rubbish fire?’
Lewis blinks hard, as though he’s trying to get rid of the memory. ‘Of course it was. Rubbish is the worst. There were plastic containers, aerosols, carpet from one of the other
units on the trading estate. And you know how hot the night was. A cigarette can smoulder for hours and then . . . It was just seriously unlucky for you that the fire started right by the air-con
system that serves the labs.’
Seriously unlucky?
Meggie, Tim, Zoe.
Statistically that’s way too much bad luck for one small group of people. Lewis must see that too. So why is he sticking to this ‘whoopsadaisy’
theory?
Unless . . .
No. Of course he’s not involved. He didn’t even
know
Meggie. Plus he’s done so much for me.
And anyway, if I lose faith in the one person I can trust, then the world really will feel like the darkest place.
‘The police talked to you?’
He nods and begins to fiddle with the perfume bottles on Cara’s dressing table, placing them in height order. ‘Yup. Second police interview since I started hanging out with you, Ali.
You’re a dangerous person to know. Worse for Ian, though. He’s been suspended. He’ll be lucky not to get the sack.’
‘Oh, no! I feel awful.’
‘He’ll find something else. He’s too smart to be doing this commercial stuff. He wants to get back to medical research. Find a way to help people. The way you do, too, I
guess.’ When he smiles at me, there’s a strange sadness there too.
‘Lewis. Is everything OK? I mean, I feel better for knowing this, but you don’t seem so thrilled.’
He sighs. ‘It’s hard for me to accept. I’m Professor Rational, right? I don’t believe that raindrops are falling on my head unless my iPhone weather app confirms it. Yet
suddenly this place is real. Not only that, but –
I
saw it, remember. How?’