Ken looked hard at her. ‘It seems that it’s more likely a bad dream connected with the disaster and your fall. You’re bound to keep thinking about it.’
‘I can accept that, I suppose. I can accept that much more easily than—’ She turned the glass around in her hands.
They sat in silence. ‘OK. So what are we going to do with you now? Wrap you up in cotton wool until the dreams all go away? Putting you in a padded cell would seem the safest for everyone.’ He grinned, then saw she was not smiling, not smiling at all, but nodding in agreement. He touched her cheek with his knuckles. ‘You’re going to be OK, Sam, you’re one of life’s survivors.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘Look—’ He lit another cigarette. ‘I think you may have made a mistake dashing off up to Hull so soon after your fall.’
‘Why?’
‘This may sound hard, and it’s not meant to: I think you are panicking. You’ve got yourself into a state, and you’ve got to let yourself come down out of it. I think you need to go away. As I said last week, have a holiday. Try to forget about it all. Really relax.’
‘I’m going on Saturday. Skiing for a week with Richard. I’ve sorted everything out in the office. Is that OK?’
‘Of course. But you’ve got to relax, OK? Take a hard look at everything and see if it still looks the same afterwards – I think you’ll find it won’t.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ she said.
‘So do I. Come on, I’ll buy you some dinner – I bet you haven’t eaten. Are you hungry?’
‘Not really.’
‘You should eat something.’
‘I’ll take you. I’ll treat you.’
‘It’s a deal.’ He stood up and drained his glass. ‘Be a great Scrabble word that.’
‘What word?’
‘Aroleid. Makes a lot of words. I thought of another: Redial.’
‘That’s not using all the letters.’
‘Did your hooded motorcyclist tell you you had to?’
Sam looked at him anxiously. ‘Please, Ken. Be careful.’
They went out into the hallway and he slipped up the visor of one of the suits of armour. ‘It’s OK, Sam. I’ve got my own hooded men with slits for eyes. They’ll kick yours to pieces if he tries messing around here.’
He let go of the visor and it shut with a loud clang.
36
GATWICK AIRPORT.
The blue and white motorway sign with its symbol of an aeroplane flashed past.
‘Out of the way, you prick!’ Richard pressed the horn, flashed his lights, then accelerated hard as the car in front finally moved over. Sam watched the BMW’s wipers shovelling the cold February rain off the windscreen. There was a loud slap and spray from a lorry blinded them for a moment.
The same dream. Thursday night, and again last night. The fan on the ceiling, rotating, getting faster, faster. The fan she had dreamed of in the laboratory. The fan that was like a propeller. Then she would wake, shivering, in a sweat. That was all. Just that. It had stayed with her all yesterday and all of today.
She’d sent flowers to Colin Hare’s funeral. She thought about writing a note, but in the end she’d asked them to put her name on the card and nothing else.
There was a deafening roar and a Jumbo sank down towards them. Flaps and undercarriage lowered, it passed slowly overhead and down out of sight behind some warehouses. She waited for an explosion, for a dull boom and sheeting flame; but there was nothing.
Richard braked, then accelerated again.
‘You’re driving fast,’ she said.
‘We’re late.’ He pressed the horn, angrily blasting at a car that pulled out in front of them. ‘I got a couple of bucket seats. I couldn’t get us on a schedule as everything to Geneva was booked. The whole world’s going skiing these days. ’S all right – it’s a good airline.’
‘Which one?’
‘Chartair . . . Come on, you arsehole, move over.’
Chartair.
Chartair.
She stared through the windscreen at the black blades of the wipers scything backwards and forwards.
Like propellers.
‘Do airliners have propellers?’ she asked.
‘Only small planes do.’
‘So the sort of plane we’re going on wouldn’t have any?’
‘They haven’t for about thirty years.’
‘I thought they had tiny little propellers, inside the engines.’
‘They have fan blades. To compress the air.’
Fan blades.
She heard the clicking of the indicator, and saw the turn-off ahead.
‘I wish we were taking Nicky,’ she said, ‘He’s old enough to start skiing now.’
‘Next year,’ Richard said.
Next year. Would there be a next year? ‘I feel lousy leaving him alone again. All I ever seem to do is leave him.’
‘He’ll be OK. Fine. He’s an independent little chap.’
Independent. That was what her uncle and aunt used to say about her. Their way of justifying ignoring her. Oh you needn’t worry about Samantha. She’s an independent little girl.
She thought of the plane taking off in the teeming rain, taking off into the swirling grey sky. The vortex. You swirled through the vortex into the void. You stayed in the void for ever.
The car slowed, then accelerated up the ramp. ‘We’re fucking late. I’ll drop you. Grab a porter or a trolley and get checked in while I park.’
She wheeled the trolley through the jam-packed departure concourse, steered it through lines of people who were queuing in every direction, so many queues they all seemed to meet together somewhere in the middle in a solid wedge of baggage and anoraks and fraying tempers. An old man was driven through them in a buggy, leaning back under his panama hat, looking around with a bewildered expression as if he thought he was in a rickshaw in another century.
Please don’t fly, she wanted to shout. Not today. You’ll be dead. Some of you. It’s dangerous today. She bit her lip. Relax, for Christ’s sake. Millions of planes, every day. Everyone flies. Like a bus; only safer.
Beng-bong. ‘Will Mr Gordon Camping please go to the Airport Information Desk.’
She saw the row of Chartair check-in counters, saw signs on the wall saying GENEVA, MALAGA, VENICE, and joined the shortest queue. Come on, come on. She looked at her watch. The queue moved forward a fraction and a man with a face like a nodding dog rammed her legs from behind. She turned round to glare, but he hadn’t noticed and a moment later he did it again. She spun round, angrily, wincing in pain.
‘Why don’t you have a driving lesson?’ she said.
‘Can I have your tickets please, Madam? Madam? Madam?’
Sam fumbled in her bag and pulled out the small folder. She put it down on the desk top.
The girl pulled the tickets out and frowned. ‘You’re late for that flight. It closed twenty minutes ago.’
‘I – the – traffic—’ she said lamely.
The girl reached under her desk and pulled out a phone. ‘I’ll have to ring through.’
Sam stood, waiting, looking around to see if Richard had arrived yet. No sign of him.
‘All right,’ said the girl. ‘You’re lucky. How many pieces are you checking through?’
‘Two.’ Sam heaved the bags onto the conveyor and the girl glanced at the weight on her dial. She peeled two numbers off the chart in front of her, stuck them onto two orange and white boarding cards, and handed them to Sam.
Sam glanced down and saw the number on the top one.
35A.
No.
Joke.
The check-in desk came towards her, banged her knees. She stumbled backwards, tripped over the nodding dog’s trolley, grabbed his shoulder and sent his cases flying.
The check-in girl was watching her strangely, oddly, hostile.
Sam’s face was burning hot. ‘I’m sorry . . . is it possible . . . different seats?’
‘Absolutely
not,’ said the girl. ‘The flight is completely full.’
Sam saw the bags beginning to move along the conveyor, and she lunged forward and grabbed them, pulling them back onto the floor.
‘They’re checked through, Madam,’ said the girl.
Her mouth tasted as if she had bitten into a lemon, and she screwed up her eyes, feeling spikes shooting into her brain like splinters of glass, and held onto the desk top for support.
The girl was looking at her as if she was mad.
Don’t you realise? You stupid dumb check-in girl? Your plane’s going to crash? They’re all going to be . . . ‘You can have these back,’ Sam said. ‘I’m afraid – you see – we can’t go.’
‘We can’t resell the tickets for you, and they are not transferable.’
‘Fine, that’s fine.’ Sam dumped the boarding cards on the desk top, heaved the cases back onto her trolley, and started to battle her way back across the concourse.
She saw Richard, sprinting, dodging through the crowds, dressed as if he was off for a day’s shooting, in his sleeveless puffa, striped shirt and green cords, his face sweating.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘What’s up?’
She felt her face redden, then a tear roll down her cheek.
‘Oh, shit. We’ve missed it?’
Sam nodded.
He looked at his watch. ‘Forty minutes. It doesn’t take off for another forty minutes. This is fucking ridiculous. I’ll get the manager. I’ve met the fucking guy who owns this airline. Tom Chartwell – he’s a friend of Archie’s. I’ll sort them out.’
‘No.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘Want to what?’
‘I don’t want to get on the plane.’
‘What do you mean?’
She lowered her head, and pulled out her handkerchief. She squeezed her eyes shut against her tears, against her hopeless feeling of foolishness. ‘I can’t do it.’ She waited for his explosion. Instead, she felt his arms around her, warm and gentle.
‘You really are in a bad way, aren’t you? I thought that – the two of us going away together, y’know?’ He sighed.
Someone barged into them, and apologised. She scarcely noticed. ‘I want to,’ she said. ‘I do want to. But I can’t get on that plane. Something’s going to happen to it.’
There was a loud pop and the sound of splintering glass, right behind her.
She shrieked and spun round. Then she closed her eyes and breathed in, as she saw a man kneel down and stare ruefully at the golden brown liquid gushing from his dropped duty-free bag.
‘Are you going to tell them?’
‘Tell them?’
‘Yes,’ Richard said, almost shouting. ‘Tell them.’
She dabbed her eyes.
‘Are you, Bugs?’ he said harshly. ‘Are you going to bloody tell them? Why don’t you go and announce it over the tannoy? Tell them. Chartair flight CA29 is going to fucking crash?
She tried to think it through. Tried to imagine walking up to Airport Information. ‘Excuse me. I’ve had a dream a couple of times . . . well, actually about your plane that crashed – the one in Bulgaria. Well, you won’t believe it, but I think this one’s a-goner too. You see, Slider, this hooded bogeyman has turned up twice, in two dreams, with this boarding card. 35A. Well, you see – that’s the card I was given for this flight, so it’s obvious, isn’t it?’
‘We could drive, Richard,’ she said. ‘I don’t mind, if you’re tired, doing the driving.’
‘Have you dreamed this plane’s going to crash?’ he asked.
‘I can’t get on it.’
‘Is it going to crash?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Are you going to tell someone?’
‘Something’s going to happen, but I don’t know what. I don’t know if it’s going to crash – or—’
‘Bugs, I’ve got to get to Switzerland. I have to be there Monday morning. Things are getting—’ He looked around nervously at a policeman who was standing near them, and lowered his voice. ‘I could end up with everything bloody frozen; I’ve got to move quickly now. If you don’t want to come, I’ll go on my own.’
‘I do want to come . . . it’s twenty to three now. We could be in Dover in a couple of hours, take the ferry or the Hovercraft, drive through the night and we could be in Geneva by two or three in the morning. It’s Sunday tomorrow, and you haven’t got to be there until Monday.’
‘Montreux,’ he said.
‘It’s only a short way further.’
‘I was looking forward to a nice day tomorrow. I was hoping we could take a boat out on the lake.’
‘We can,’ she said.
‘Are we all right to drive?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘No weird dreams about driving?’
She wiped her eyes again. ‘No.’
She waited whilst he went to fetch the BMW and watched the cars and taxis that pulled up, emptying out people who put their arms up against the sheeting rain and sprinted for trolleys. There was a mocking laugh right behind her.
Slider’s laugh.
She turned around. A man’s suitcase had burst open, spilling its contents over the floor. He knelt down to scoop them up, and his companion laughed again. An unpleasant gloating laugh that went on and on, getting louder, until it was so loud it was deafening her and she couldn’t stand it any longer. She pushed her trolley away through the crowds, pushed it along the pavement, until she was past the shelter of the awning and on her own, a solitary figure drenched in the torrenting rain and in her fear.
37
The bed felt strange. Huge. Soft. Too soft. She moved slightly, heard the clank of a spring and felt a slight reverberation somewhere beneath her.
There was a warmth and brightness in the light that flooded into the room soaking up her waking fears. Headlights strobing past. Stiff policemen at the border. Non! You are the woman who dreams. You are not welcome in Switzerland. Why are you coming here? Please go away. Take your dreams away with you.
We are coming to ski.
You are not coming to ski. You are coming to fiddle with the great Swiss banking system.
Sunlight streamed in through the gap in the curtains and lit up a section of the wall to her right. There was a faint whirring sound above her and a gentle draught of air. She looked up and saw the blades of a fan turning slowly.
She pulled herself up in bed a fraction, watching the fan warily, then fumbled on her bedside table for her watch. She felt the base of a lamp, then the leather strap, and picked up the Rolex, holding it dangling in front of her face, staring at the twin dials. It took her a moment to work it out. Eleven-forty. She had a slight headache, she realised, heaving herself further up and taking a sip of water, the same ache she seemed to have had for weeks, a dull pain that sometimes got turned up and was sharper, but never stopped. Her back was aching too, from the soft mattress, far too soft. It felt as if the bed had half collapsed under her.
The noise of the fan altered slightly, became a fraction louder, and she looked up at it again. It seemed to be wobbling as if it were loose.
She wondered where Richard was. The door to the bathroom was ajar but she could not hear any sounds from in there. She sipped some more water and looked around the room. A huge elegant room, grand and comfortably old-fashioned. Louis XIV furniture. A frieze of a bas-relief moulding around the ceiling. Soft pastel colours. A glass chandelier over the dressing table.
The noise above her became louder still, and she was nervous suddenly that the fan was going to fall down on top of her. Great. Terrific. Get killed by a ceiling fan that falls on you. She watched it, feeling increasingly uncomfortable. It was spinning faster; the draught was turning into a bitter howling blast. Her top sheet began to flap.
Christ.
It was wobbling more now and it still seemed to be accelerating. Lines began to appear in the ceiling all around it, like veins in an old woman?
??s hands. They got thicker, wider, and the ceiling began to sag, to swell. It looked like a huge cracked eggshell. Bits of the plaster fell away, crashing down around her, spraying fine white powder all around. The fan lurched drunkenly, and dropped several feet.
She screamed.
It hung at a weird angle, the blades only inches above her head now. Wiring spewed out all around it, the ceiling sagging, more chunks of white plaster tumbling all around her, the icy wind from the blades whipping her hair against her face, making her eyes smart and her lips hurt; the blades sagged more, lowering every second, lowering down towards her.
She threw herself sideways, rolling in terror to get away, but the sheets wrapped around her like nets, winding tighter as she rolled. She flung her weight against the side of the bed, feeling the chunks of plaster dropping around her, damp, icy cold, striking her head, her neck; she pulled, twisted wildly and flung herself sideways again; she felt the bedclothes give, and then she was free, falling. She tried too late to put her arms out, and hit the carpet hard with her face, painfully, rolled across and kept rolling until she crashed into the skirting board.
Then there was complete silence.
She lay back, gulping down air, feeling the perspiration trickling down her face and her body. There was a jangle of keys, and the sound of a door opening. A deep woman’s voice, embarrassed, said ‘Excusez-moi.’ and the door was shut hastily.
A spring clanked, and she felt a slight reverberation somewhere beneath her. Something felt odd, strange, not quite right.
Bed? Was she still in bed? The fan was still clattering, but it was quieter now. She opened her eyes and stared fearfully around. The room was filled with soft warm light, diffused through the heavy curtains. Everything was normal, calm. There was no wreckage. Nothing damaged. She glanced warily up at the ceiling, frowned, blinked. There was no fan. No cracked plaster. Just a crystal chandelier and elegant moulding. But she could still hear a fan.
Puzzled, she tried to put her hand out to the light switch, but could not move it. It was caught up in the sheet. Her whole body seemed caught up in it, as if it had been tied around her like a straitjacket. She sat up with a start, panicking, then realised it was just trapped underneath her, and she pulled it free.