Exactly where we’re standing in the Spanish City was – till very recently – a restaurant, although I never went inside it. Years before that it was a ballroom, then a discotheque, with cafes and amusement arcades; outdoors there was a permanent funfair dominated by a huge white dome, and the whole thing was called the Spanish City.
Granda, who grew up here before he moved to Scotland with Gran, says he remembers an ancient, rattling roller coaster made of wood and iron called the Big Dipper. By the 1990s, though, the Spanish City was almost a ruin, and it stayed like that for years, apparently.
It was all refurbished a few years ago, and there’s no funfair now, and no Big Dipper. But there are still ice-cream shops and cafes in another section – swanky, expensive ones like the Polly Donkin Tea Rooms that make Granda suck his teeth and go, ‘You’re kidding! That much for a pot of tea! I tell you, when I was a kid …’ and so on.
The king visited the Spanish City once, before he was the king. I was a baby, and there’s a picture of me and Mum, and the king looks like he’s smiling at me, although that’s just the angle of the picture. He was smiling at something else. It’s in a frame in our hallway.
Anyway, last winter the restaurant under the dome closed down. No one knew why. Saskia Hennessey’s mum worked as a waitress there and one day she was called in and told she no longer had a job. But … she was given a shedload of money, the family all went to Florida and had brand-new laptops when they came back, and Mrs Hennessey got a job at the Polly Donkin Tea Rooms, anyway.
It was the same for everyone who worked there, according to Sass.
One day: busy restaurant. Next day: removal vans being loaded with tables and chairs. Week after: builders moving in with sledgehammers and skips.
It all still looks the same from the outside. But no one knows what’s going on inside. Well, no one knew – till Ramzy and I met Dr Pretorius.
One day, before the October half-term, Ramzy and I were walking home from school and I was talking to him about all this, and about me meeting the king, wondering out loud what on earth was happening, when he just marched up to a bloke in an orange jacket and a hard hat who was pushing a wheelbarrow full of bricks and broken wood by the big back doors of the Spanish City building.
‘Excuse me, sir – what’s happening in there?’ Ramzy asked him, while I cringed with embarrassment. (‘Sir’!) Mr Springham, our teacher, says Ramzy has ‘no social filter’: he’ll talk to anyone.
The man seemed glad of the chance to rest his load.
‘Haven’t a clue, son. Perfec’ly good restaurant, aal ripped oot! Big shame if y’ask me. Looka that …’ He pointed at a large slab of shiny stone in his barrow. ‘Nice big piece of Italian marble, tharriz. Come to think of it, I’ll have that for meself, like. It’ll make a canny garden table!’
‘So … what’s going in instead?’ says Ramzy. The man took off his hard hat and wiped his brow with his forearm. He looked up at the dome.
‘Dunno, son. Some sort of music or film studio, I reckon. There’s a load of fancy equipment goin’ in next week. Y’know: lights an’ projectors, an’ computers an’ that.’ He nodded to an elderly-looking lady in a hard hat who was crouching and checking the labels on a stack of silver canisters like fire extinguishers. She turned and stared at us, fiercely. I didn’t recognise her, not at first.
‘Aye, aye. Cannit stay here gabbin’ wi’ yous. Ol’ Dr Wotsit over there’ll be on to us.’ He picked up his barrow and resumed his work.
Ramzy turned to me. ‘See? You’ve only got to ask!’
As we walked away, I looked back and the old lady had stood up and was still staring at us. She was tall and thin, and I looked away. A few metres further on, I dared to glance back again, and she was still looking at us, and I felt as though I’d been caught doing something wrong.
I recognised her: I had seen her sometimes down on the beach, swimming. Even in the winter.
Whatever she was building was huge as well. The silver canisters I recognised as Liquid Weld: Dad uses it in his car workshop, but he only has one of them. The old lady must have had about twenty.
I looked back again, and something happened. A look? A connection? I don’t know, but I had the definite feeling that she was watching us both for a reason. I think she even smiled to herself, satisfied with something, or perhaps I was imagining it.
Back in the dead-dark Dome, without warning, the curved metal band above my eyes glows a dazzling blue-white – a light that is so sharp it almost hurts. I squint and, as the brilliance fades away, shapes begin to form in front of me. Within seconds, long, thin poles become palm trees, and the dark floor turns white as it’s transformed before my eyes into a tropical beach.
And I mean a real beach: not some corny yellow virtual-reality beach, with clunky graphics, viewed through a heavy headset. This is much, much more realistic than anything I’ve ever seen in any VR device.
I let go of Ramzy’s hand and he says, ‘Whoaaaaa!’ – a long sigh of amazement.
In front of us is the deckchair, and now, to either side of it, stretches a wide crescent of creamy-white sand, fringed with palm trees, leading down to a rippling turquoise ocean a few metres in front of us.
I turn round 360 degrees. The illusion is perfect. I look up, and the blue sky has little clouds in it, and there’s a darker grey cloud on the horizon.
Then I notice the sounds: the breeze; the scratching noise that palm leaves make in the wind; the breaking of the little waves; an old moped going past on a distant road. From behind me is the sound of tinny music. I turn, and there’s a shack selling drinks where the music is coming from. Behind the counter stands a grinning barman. I smile and lift my hand in greeting.
He waves back. His movements are not at all jerky, although his arm becomes a little pixelated, and there’s a slightly dark outline around him.
OK, I’m thinking. This is pretty good – no, it’s more than pretty good, it’s excellent but, you know …
I don’t want to sound cynical and spoiled, but I mean, I have played virtual-reality games before. This is good, and definitely better than the one at Disney World, but … well, why the big secrecy?
‘It’s pretty good!’ I say out loud, looking around again.
‘Pretty good?’ shouts Dr Pretorius through the earpiece and it makes me jump. In just a few seconds, I’d almost forgotten that I was actually inside a large dark dome in Whitley Bay. ‘Pretty good? Is that the best you can do? Pretty good?’ Her normally deep voice has become a squeak.
‘I … I’m sorry. I mean, it’s excellent. It’s …’
‘Touch the sand! Go on – it won’t bite you! Touch the sand!’
I hunker down, stretch my hand down into the sand and give a little squeal of amazement. You see, I know that under my feet is a half-metre-thick layer of tiny metal balls. But that’s not what I touch. Instead, I touch …
Sand. At least, that is what it feels like.
The grains trickle between my fingers. I gasp and hear Dr Pretorius’s throaty chuckle. ‘It’s