Soul Storm (11 page)

He loosens the embrace, looks down at me. ‘What things?’

‘I want to tell you, but I daren’t take the risk.’

‘It’s happening finally, isn’t it?’ His voice is sad, but almost resigned. ‘You’re moving away from this . . . from
us
?’

‘No. No, that’s not true. It’s about Meggie, not the two of us. Putting things right. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

But I can tell from his eyes he doesn’t believe me. ‘Whatever happens, you should know I’ve never felt like this about anyone, Alice.’

As he holds me tight again, I whisper back, ‘I love you too, Danny. So much.’

We stay like that, for as long as I dare. Time loses meaning on the Beach, but I know I can’t stay much longer. Just one more second . . .

‘Alice, something’s wrong.’

I force myself to pull back, then look up. ‘What the hell?’

The sky’s gone dark. One second it was bright blue, now it’s the purple-black of a new bruise.

Danny looks up too. Light slashes across the whole sky, as though it’s tearing it in half. Lightning. Not just one fork, but five . . . no, ten, or more. I’m losing count. Dark.
Light. Dark. Light. It’s like someone’s playing with a floodlight.

The noise starts. Thunder so brutal and loud it makes my eardrums pulsate.

There’s alarm on Danny’s face. Some of the Guests are screaming. Many are running towards the bar to shelter. A few head for the jetty, instead, for a better view.

And one girl has crouched down on the sand, her hands covering her ears. Her eyes are wide with horror.

I feel something cold on my skin.

Rain.

It’s
never
rained on the Beach before.

Danny is staring at me, his eyes blood red. I don’t see love. I see terror.

His arm grips mine. Except . . . it can’t be Danny touching me, because he’s backing away.

I look down. There is a hand on my arm but it’s not Danny’s . . .

‘Lewis?’

He’s here. Next to me. Not on the Beach, but in his flat, his hand on my arm as he looks over my shoulder . . .

‘NO!’ I scream. I wrench my arm away, shut down the Beach as fast as I can.

But I already know it’s too late.

He stares at me as though I’m speaking a foreign language.

‘Lewis. Tell me. Did you see the Beach?’

His eyes are half closed, as though he’s trying to hide something. ‘No. I saw nothing. I’ve only come in because the alarm was ringing and I needed to turn it off. I was
calling across the room for ages but you didn’t hear that either. So I came over. But I didn’t look.’

I don’t believe him.

The phone alarm is sounding, shrill and insistent. I didn’t hear it at all while I was in Danny’s arms.

I try to make sense of what just happened, to guess how many seconds the thunder and lightning lasted before I realised Lewis was there. Ten. Maybe fifteen? ‘How long have you been next to
me?’

‘Not
that
long.’

‘It only takes a split second to see something you shouldn’t, Lewis. And I warned you how dangerous it might be.’

He sits down on the sofa. ‘Look, maybe I did see . . . I need some time. To . . . process it. To make sense of what it was.’

‘You promised you wouldn’t look.’

‘I didn’t mean to. It wasn’t
planned.
But you seemed to be in a trance. I had to try to wake you somehow, so I touched your arm and then—’

‘Then you couldn’t resist a peek, right? And because of that, I might have lost
everything
that matters to me.’

Hurt crosses his face, but I’m too furious to care.

‘I almost lost the Beach before when I asked questions I shouldn’t have. I can’t imagine what the penalty is for showing someone
else
.’

Lewis is running his hand through his hair, and it sticks up like he’s a cartoon character who’s seen a ghost. ‘Alice, we don’t even know this place exists, so how can we
have broken the rules?’

‘Doesn’t exist? So all that stuff about researching the Beach, helping me discover the truth? You were only fobbing me off. You think I’m mad too!’

‘No, I didn’t meant that, but surely it can’t have changed in a split second—’

‘Shall I tell you what changed? Why I turned round? It was because . . .’ I remember screams, sudden darkness. My refuge transformed into a place of terror.

Lewis stands up again. ‘Ali. Ali, you’re right. I’m sorry.’ He reaches out for my hand but I back away. ‘I promise I didn’t do it on purpose. I was afraid for
you.’

His voice is so contrite that it takes the heat out of my anger.

‘What if it’s too late?’ I say.

‘I did see something,’ he murmurs, as though he can’t believe what he’s saying.

Those words change everything. ‘Say that again.’

‘I
did
see something, Ali. A beach. At least, I think I did. Unless all this talk has put ideas in my head . . .’

‘Don’t backtrack, Lewis. You might doubt yourself but I believe it. I have to.’ Despite the horror of my last moments on the Beach, my heart hums with excitement. If he saw it,
then
it exists.
‘Were there people?’

He shakes his head. ‘Just landscape. Colours. Blue and gold. But it did feel . . . very real.’

Part of me is desperate to try going online again right now – but I’m scared of what I might find. ‘So does that change things? Do you believe me now?’

‘Ali, I always have. But I’m rattled. That’s an understatement, by the way. I don’t know what to think. But it’s made me even more determined to set up this
experiment as soon as I can.’

I nod. ‘It wouldn’t do any harm for me to go online again now, though, would it? Because if I’ve been banned, it’s not even worth getting access to a lab.’

Banned?
Saying it out loud makes it real. My future without the Beach will be one of unfinished business, not knowing what’s become of my sister or Tim or Danny.

He frowns. ‘Please. Stick to what we agreed, Alice. I want to get to the bottom of this more than anyone, especially now. But you’ve had your chance to tell your friends that you
need some time offline. Please do what we agreed. Enjoy normal life, time with your folks, while I work on it. You keep your side of the bargain and I will keep mine.’

I leave a few minutes later; Lewis is distracted and so am I. Plus, Mum’s already texted me, suggesting we go out for a ‘girly’ lunch.

The engine turns over, I pull on my seatbelt, take a breath, check my mirrors.

They’ve moved.

Not the rear-view one in here, but the ones at each side. Not by
that
much. And wing mirrors are always being smashed or clipped, even on a quiet road like Lewis’s.

But
both
mirrors?

The air inside the car could melt plastic, but my skin prickles with cold fear.

I adjust the mirrors, so almost every angle of the street is covered. Of course, there’s always a blind spot, so I check that, twisting in my seat.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

No Sahara. No Lewis. No one at all behind me.

But someone must have been here. It’s a reminder – like I need one – that life offline isn’t without its dangers.

I try to enjoy my ‘normal’ life, really I do.

But every minute I’m checking my mobile for a call or a message from Lewis. It never comes.

Doubts begin to creep in about whether he
ever
believed me, and then fears about the consequences of what damage he may have done by glimpsing Soul Beach. I even drive round to his
place, but he doesn’t answer the door. Either he’s out, or he’s hiding.

Meanwhile, Mum keeps coming up with
activities
to keep me busy. It feels like the stuff they give psychiatric patients to do to take their mind off their insanity. One day we go to a
bloody pottery, the next to a pasta-making class.

I try to smile as I stuff floppy envelopes of dough with hot spinach. I hate spinach. None of it distracts me from the black despair I’m feeling as I contemplate being without the Beach
forever.

‘Fun, isn’t it?’ Mum says.

More fun than family therapy, I’ll give her that. That was Tuesday: the day after Lewis took hold of my life without telling me when he planned to let go.

It was hard to know which of us least wanted to be at therapy: me or Dad. All Tuesday I’d felt I was being followed again, so when Olav took us to a different room – the
pastel-painted
Family Space –
and I realised one chair had a view onto the street, I asked to sit there.

Which led to a full twenty-minute discussion about where my feelings of paranoia and control-freakery might stem from. It was the perfect chance to play my silly game with Olav, to twist and
turn his words and make him doubt his own sanity. I tried – suggested a game of musical chairs, and then said I could only talk if everyone else sat on a beanbag – but my heart
wasn’t in it.

All the way through, I could imagine Lewis sitting behind me, whispering sarcastic comments in my ear:
just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re NOT out to get you,
Ali.
Or,
do you think Olav would be drummed out of the shrink’s club if he shaved off his goatee beard or dared to wear socks with his sandals?

But Lewis doesn’t even seem to be speaking to me any more.

At least Mum was happier by the end of the session. ‘It’s the start of a journey, Alice.’

A journey that involves eating home-made pasta off hand-painted plates and wanting to smash both onto the floor.

The only thing that’s keeping me going is knowing that Cara’s back from holiday tomorrow. I’ve never needed my best friend more than I do right now.

Even jet-lagged, Cara has the look of a reality TV-show star.

Like my sister.

Her hair is braided, her skin is golden and her gel nails are so sharp I’m surprised security allowed her to board the plane home.

‘Honey.’ She hugs me tightly on my doorstep, and I don’t want to let go.

I’d texted her to say I wanted to talk to her urgently, so she’s come to my place straight from the airport, leaving her mum to go home in a cab with the luggage.

We walk to the pub by the lock and she orders a cranberry juice.

‘Cara! Have you gone teetotal on holiday?’

‘I’ve become a fruitarian. No toxins will ever enter my body again.’

I stare at her.

She giggles. ‘Had you going! Actually we got upgraded on the plane home and I had so much champagne that I don’t fancy any more booze right now.’

‘Ah. That makes more sense. Life would never be the same if you decided you’d had enough of partying!’

Cara frowns. ‘Plus I need a clear head. Your text made no bloody sense. What’s all this about
flowers
?’

I look away. I don’t want to see her judging me when I tell her. ‘Well, I passed my driving test—’

‘Yeah! I got your text! Big hug!’ She squeezes me tight, then lets go. ‘And?’

‘And I got this huge bouquet delivered.’

‘Ooh, Lewis. Bound to be.’

A short, sharp pain hits me somewhere in my chest. ‘Not Lewis, no. Or my parents. It . . . turns out they were ordered on my mum’s credit card. Cara, they think
I
sent
them.’

She laughs. ‘But why would you send flowers to yourself?’

‘I didn’t. Obviously.’ I sip my water. ‘But someone did and it’s persuaded everyone that Meggie’s death has driven me mad. Literally, mad. Mad enough to send
flowers to myself to make it look like I have some . . . I don’t know, secret admirer.’

Cara closes her eyes. ‘Maybe it’s the jet lag but I’m struggling. You’ve got a secret admirer?’

‘No! Of course not. Though sometimes it
does
feel like I’m being followed.’ I want to see how she reacts before I tell her the other stuff: the mirrors, the flat tyre
and the rest.

‘But who’d do that, hon?’ she asks. ‘I love you to pieces but you’re a seventeen-year-old sixth-former, not a spy or a master criminal. What would be the point of
tailing you?’

I shrug. ‘I suppose you’re right. I’m too boring to be followed.’

Cara blushes. ‘Sorry. Jet lag is making me sound like a right cow, but I’m back now. We’re going to have so much fun that no one following you will have a hope of keeping up,
right?’

I nod.

‘I want to hear a
yes
from you.’

‘OK,’ I say.

‘It’s time, Alice. Time to move on with your life.’

I’m dead to the world when my phone’s ring wakes me, urgent and insistent.

I scrabble round for it in the dark.

Dark? It must be very late – or very early. The weather’s stifling this week, it’s impossible to tell what time it is from the temperature alone.

Lewis?
Please let it be Lewis.

But the name on the display reads
Ade.

I almost don’t answer, but it must be serious for him to call at . . . I squint at the time . . . three-forty a.m.

‘Ade? Is that you? What’s going on?’

In the moment before anyone speaks, violent scenarios fill my head: Ade under attack from Sahara. A stranger discovering their bodies and picking up Ade’s phone, scrolling through the
frequently dialled numbers.

Sahara calling to confess.

There’s been no direct contact from her since the day I visited her in Greenwich – the day Mum and Dad confronted me about the flowers.

‘Sorry to call so late.’ Ade’s voice is urgent, but he doesn’t sound sorry at all. He sounds angry. ‘Sahara is very upset. Well, hysterical is probably a more
accurate description.’

‘Why?’

He tuts. ‘I think you
know
why, Alice.’

‘If she’s got a problem with me, surely she’s big enough to sort it out herself.’ I don’t care if I sound fed up. ‘Preferably not in the middle of the
night.’