Soul Fire (21 page)

I’m falling.

The street below is brutally shiny with cobbles. No, not cobbles.

Flames. They glow blood-red, lapping hungrily at my clothes, my skin, my hair.

I wait for the impact, for the end. But the fire pit has no floor. The flames are coming from the centre of the earth and I’m falling, falling, FALLING . . .

‘. . . wake up, please, Alice! Stop screaming. You’re here. You’re safe. You’re with me. With Cara.’

‘Cara?’

She’s so close I can smell her breath, and
that
’s what brings me back to reality: stale cocktails, cigarettes, garlic.
Last night, in a single, rancid breath.

I move my head to the side. ‘I need air.’

As I straighten up, I bash my head on a metal bar above me.

‘Watch yourself, honey!’ She helps me off my bunk. I’m dizzy, though
I
hardly drank any alcohol last night, while Cara’s daisy fresh – except for the
death-breath. There’s no justice.

I realise the room is empty. ‘Where are the others?’

She pulls a nasty face. ‘Sahara dragged Ade out for a romantic walk on the beach.
Yuk
. So it’s just you and me. Oh, and a mysterious guy called Danny, apparently.’

‘Danny?’

‘You’ve been calling out for him for the last five minutes. I was trying to wake you up, but you were all “DANNY! DANEEEEEEE!”’ She manages to sound just like a
pathetically needy version of me. ‘No wonder you haven’t been playing tongue tennis with Lewis, if you’re dreaming of another guy.’

‘I don’t know a Danny. I must have been shouting something else.’

She looks into my eyes, searching for the truth. ‘What? Danone, maybe? I like yoghurt too, but not
that
much. Come on, spill the beans.’

I close my eyes. ‘Leave the Spanish Inquisition, Cara. It was just a bad dream.’

She sighs, then goes to the window and holds her hand up to shield her eyes from the sun. ‘You don’t have to shut me out.’

‘I’m not.’ I hate myself for lying. Cara keeps trying, even though most people would have given up. I don’t deserve her.

‘Do you get them a lot, Al? The nightmares?’

I walk towards the window, standing close to her. ‘Not as often as I used to.’

‘Well, something’s brought it all back. And I don’t believe you about this
Danny
, but I can’t force you to tell me.’ She bumps my arm with her fist, to show
I’m forgiven, despite my disloyalty. ‘Let’s get breakfast, yeah?’

‘What time is it?’

‘Past ten already, lazybones. And my stomach thinks my throat’s been cut.’

‘Better?’

I nod, because I’m still chewing the best chocolate croissant I’ve ever tasted. We’re lying ten metres from the water, and the towel under us is damp from sea spray. I swallow.
‘How did you know about that bakery?’

‘Don’t you remember that guy in the Mexican bar last night? The one who kept pestering me for my number?’

I don’t remember
any
strangers, not because I was pissed, but because I was too busy watching everyone else for danger signs: how many times Cara found an excuse to stroke one of
Ade’s limbs, and how many times Sahara noticed. What Lewis said to Zoe, what Zoe said to Lewis, and all the pauses in between.

‘I half expected to find him waiting for me outside the bakery,’ Cara continues, sounding disappointed. ‘You can’t rely on men. Lucky you can rely on croissants.’
She takes a huge bite and flakes of pastry stick to her lips. ‘Bliss. So what’s the plan for today, Miss Forster?’

I wish I could say,
Let’s go shopping or take the cable car, or just hang out on the shore, watching the boys go by.

But it’s no good. No matter how beautiful Barcelona is, this isn’t a holiday. When I’m not searching for Meggie’s killer, I should be finding out why Javier is stuck on
Soul Beach, so when I have the briefest moments of normality, like now, I feel guilty.

‘Let’s meet for lunch later,’ I say.

I see the disappointment in Cara’s face, and I hate myself.

‘
Lunch?
’ she says.

‘Sorry. It’s just that . . .’ I try to find a good reason to abandon my best friend, ‘well, at home, I’m always being watched. By my folks, or teachers. Here, I
guess I just fancied a little bit of time on my own.’

I hate how easily I lie now, especially to those I love.

It takes me almost an hour to find anywhere to go online. Eventually, in a backstreet, I find The Mobile Phone Shop That Time Forgot, which has a faded CAFE sign in the window,
and two yellowing computers right at the back. Luckily the one that’s working faces the wall, so no one will see what I’m doing.

The owner brings me a glass of coffee that looks like a tiny pint of Guinness – black beneath, with a head of milk. As he puts it down, I notice red scars all over his gnarled fingers.

I wait for him to return to the front of the shop, then I go straight onto Burning Truths. The connection is slow and stuttering and the computer’s an antique, so while I wait for it to
load, I wonder if Zoe’s done anything to the site since last night. If it
is
Zoe . . .

But who else could it be? She necked four more absinthes, then disappeared without telling anyone she was leaving.

The page begins to load. There’s a blank where a picture should be, and at first I think it’s the horrible one of Meggie’s hand. I scroll down and there’s another
photo-shaped gap. When the cursor hovers over the space, it tells me the photo is called
MeganForster_hand.jpg
–
which must be the old picture. So what does the new one
show?

I try refreshing the page, but nothing happens. The connection seems too slow. The only clue is the photo name:
MeganForster_lips.jpg

Did the killer photograph her mouth, too? Perhaps even as she took her last breath? The idea makes me nauseous, but I have to fight the emotional stuff and concentrate on clues. I refresh a
third time, but it’s too much for this old computer. I take my phone out, try to call Lewis, but I get some message in Spanish and it refuses to connect. So I text him instead, telling him to
look at the site, but he doesn’t reply.

Now, time to try Soul Beach. I don’t suppose I’ll get very far on this rubbish PC. I follow my usual routine – plug in my Mp3 headphones, find the original email invitation
from Meggie, and wait . . .

Nothing happens. I check my mobile. No text from Lewis.

This is never going to work. If the stupid computer won’t even display a photo or two, it’s hardly going to give me a dazzling beach with animation so real I think I’m actually
there. I might as well give up – but I’ve paid for an hour’s surfing and I’ve run out of other options to pursue.

The golf-ball sized webcam on top of the monitor lights up. I hold my breath. But the screen stays white and the light on the hard drive flickers desperately as the computer tries to keep
up.

‘Alice?’ Javier’s voice is clear through the headphones.

I lean in to the mic underneath the camera. ‘You can see me? I can’t see you.’

‘You are. . . hazy. One moment you’re there, the next you’re more like a mirage, or a ghost. My ghostly
human
friend, Alice.’ I hear him laugh.

‘Hold on. It might just be loading.’

But nothing changes on the monitor. The white screen makes my eyes sting and I can’t pick out any shapes. I
can
hear waves, though, and I know they’re not Barcelona ones. Soul
Beach waves sound different.

‘You’re not moving, Alice. And you have a really miserable look on your face.’

‘I am feeling a bit down, Javier.’ Or should it be
J
?

‘Down, in Barcelona? Surely that’s not possible.’

‘It’s a great city, but . . . the circumstances could be better.’ I’m wary of volunteering anything until he asks directly.

‘You’ve been to Dulce, haven’t you, Alice?’

I nod, but still say nothing. Not just because I’m nervous about breaking the rules, but also because I don’t know how to tell him I was thrown out.

‘Was he there?’

‘I met a waiter called Gabe.’

I hear a sharp intake of breath. ‘
Gabe
. How was he?’

‘He was . . .’ How am I supposed to describe him? ‘. . . low. Beautiful, but very low.’

‘Because of me?’ Javier’s voice cracks.

‘He thinks you deserted him, Javier. That you left him . . .’ I struggle to find the words, ‘. . . on purpose.’

‘On purpose? He thinks I
killed
myself? That I jumped?’

I nod. ‘I tried to tell him that I couldn’t believe you’d do that, but he wouldn’t listen to me. Not that surprising, I guess. I turn up out of the blue with stories
about a guy he was close to. He . . . seemed afraid.’

‘Gabe? He’s the most fearless guy I ever met.’

‘He was afraid that I’d confirm his worst fears, I think. That you took the easy way out because life wasn’t worth living.’

‘No! I’d never have done that.’

‘I said that. Told him you weren’t the kind of person to leave without saying goodbye. Tried to tell him it was an accident. But he was angry.’

‘You told him it was an
accident
?’

‘
Wasn’t
it?’

Silence. Have I broken the Beach rules by asking that question directly?

‘There are no such things as accidents, Alice. That is what I have learned. But it is unbearable that he thinks I abandoned him.
Unbearable
.’

I’m almost glad I can’t see his face, because the pain in his voice is bad enough. ‘I could try again, Javier, but I don’t think he’d listen to me a second
time.’

‘You could
make
him listen, Alice, with my help. You could tell him things only I know.’ He pauses and for a moment I wonder whether the computer has finally broken the
connection. But then I hear him again, speaking softly now, ‘You could tell him how I died . . .’

‘You’re saying you
know
how you died, Javier? That you
remember
? I thought no one on the Beach could remember their last moments.’

‘Most Guests don’t. Perhaps it is a . . . safeguard. To stop them torturing themselves with what could have been. But in my case, there is no mystery. I know exactly how I met my
death, Alice, and who was to blame.’

I stare at the blank screen, willing it to show me Javier. ‘But you wouldn’t be on Soul Beach if it was straightforward. You’d be . . .’ I pause, ‘ . . . at peace,
I suppose. Or in heaven.’

‘Heaven. Of course. Why did I not think of that?’ He laughs bitterly. ‘Tell me, Alice, where
exactly
are you right now?’

‘Um . . . in some ancient internet place not far from the sea. In the old fishing district.’

‘In my
barrio
, then. My neighbourhood. It is very respectable, right? Very
neighbourly
and, where the tourists don’t go, peaceful too. Appearances matter. So my father
was the gentleman outside the house. And inside it, a pig. A bully. A
bastard
.’

I lean closer into the screen. I want to show Javier that I am listening to every word.

‘From an early age, I understood this was not normal. And I saw something in my mother’s face that was not there in the faces of my friends’ mothers, who always seemed so
smiling and bright. Later, I realised that what I was seeing in her face was fear.

‘Papa was big on
respect
. If my youngest sister cried, that was lack of respect, never mind that Rosa was a baby, only a few months old. If my middle sister, Karina, wet the bed
– and she did, very often – then that was an insult to him personally, an act of disobedience. So he lashed out – usually at my mother, to punish her for what
her
children
did. We were
his
children, too, of course, but he forgot that when he was raging.’

‘Oh, Javier.’ I don’t know what else to say.

‘A little while after Rosa was born, I suddenly understood that
physical
pain hurt me less than it hurt my mother or my sisters. I don’t know why. Maybe they turned the pain
in on themselves, while I could pretend it wasn’t happening and store it up for the day when I was big enough to fight back. So, I began to incite him. Find ways to redirect his anger. It was
very easy. My father seemed to prefer to take his rages out on me. Perhaps it made him feel more
manly
to beat another male, even though I was only eight years old.’

I try not to think about the little boy in the photograph that illustrated the newspaper story of Javier’s death.

‘My mother coped by closing down. Karina talked mainly to her toy cat, even taking the scruffy animal to school with her. Ah, until she was six and Dad cut it into pieces to teach her to
grow up. Rosa and I were the closest. She would save supper for me if I was sent to bed early, or sing to me if I was sore. Since Gretchen went, sometimes I think I can hear Rosa’s voice,
here. At night. When everyone is asleep.’

He sounds wistful. It reminds me of the way Gretchen talked of her song thrushes.

‘Did no one know what was going on?’ I ask.

‘We made sure they didn’t. My mother kept the lie going out of shame, and we children learned to do the same. We learned that it was better people did not realise we were wicked
enough to deserve this. We lived on the top floor, so we were less likely to be heard. And I tried not to cry out. Dad helped in his own way; he knew where to strike me so it wouldn’t show,
and how far he could go so I wouldn’t need a doctor. The funny thing was, I wasn’t scared of him, Alice. I could always see in his eyes that part of him was under control.’

Somehow that’s the most shocking of all the things he’s said. ‘He knew what he was doing?’

‘Until that last night, yes. That night, as he shouted and screamed and pushed and goaded, he was an
animal
. I had decided to stand up to him, you see. To leave college. To take a
job to support my mother and the girls. We would not need him anymore. And I told him so.’

‘What happened?’

‘It was a festival night. The
Merce
. The festival of Barcelona. There is always an energy in the air in that week – but also something wild.’