in the room…
She lowered it to her lap and slid it back inside her case.
The second envelope – the much smaller one containing a letter ‘inviting’ her to begin her journey – had arrived by post the previous week, addressed in an unfamiliar hand to Miss Ariel Bliss. It remained tucked away where she’d hidden it, in the inside pocket of her canvas shoulder bag.
Remained, as it turned out, an enigma, even after reading.
The bathroom, Mags had told her, could only be accessed by walking through the bedroom. (‘Cracks me up,’ she’d called as she headed out the door. ‘Whenever I want to blow people’s minds, I tell them my shitty rental has an underground en suite!’)
Ariel pushed open the bedroom door and switched on the light. Immediately to her right was a desk weighed down by a large pile of books on art and design. Alongside them were a couple of well-thumbed Ursula Le Guin novels. Half a dozen by Stephen King. She reached out her hand and touched the woody texture of their spines with her fingertips. Home, she mused, with an unexpected smile.
The bathroom itself, tucked away in the far corner of the room, was narrow, windowless, white; surely, she thought later, the least likely location on earth for what was to happen next. And yet it was right here, as she was bending over the sink – one hand drawing her hair back from her face, the other holding her toothbrush – that she suddenly felt a pair of hands brush against her shoulders from behind.
Ariel dropped her toothbrush into the basin and spun round. Every cheesy horror movie she’d ever seen flashed before her eyes. Slowly, she turned once more to face the mirror. The reflection staring back at her was her own, the backdrop nothing more than a plain, ceramic tile.
‘Holy shit,’ she said in a horrified voice. ‘Get a grip! Idiot.’
A shiver of recognition rippled along her spine. Ariel gasped, her eyes open wide. What she’d felt had been cold, fragile, and something else – something she almost didn’t dare articulate – something familiar. The invisible hands had lain on her body for the briefest of seconds, but they had been there, she was certain of it.
Just before dawn, a pair of car headlights sliced through the living room darkness with two exploratory beams of light. Ariel stirred and raised her head from the sofa. She listened for the sound of Mags’s key scraping against the door, the drunken rapping of knuckles on the window pane, but none came.
A shadow flitted briefly past the window. Bollocks. She hated being scared!
She stared up at the ceiling, her heart thundering in her chest, then reached her hand to the floor and fumbled for her phone. At her touch, the screen sprang to life, illuminating her face with a bright, neon glow. She tapped on the email icon and opened a new message. LONDON CALLING, she wrote in the subject line, then backed up and changed it to LONDON, WIDE AWAKE!
Hey Tee, it’s me. I’m at Mags’s place and I can’t sleep.
Confession 1: I’ve been thinking about Estelle and wondering if she can see me. If she thinks I’m doing a good job. If I said the right thing when I told Isaac she left us to become a star in heaven and light up the sky over Oystermouth Bay. He started looking for her every single night, and when he couldn’t see any stars he asked if she’d forgotten to shine for us. I panicked and told him Estelle’s star was so beautiful and bright, she was probably needed somewhere else…
Confession 2: My head’s been full of demons again. It’s kind of intense. There’s just so much pressure to be a fully formed person, straight out the gate. Maybe I’m losing it. Maybe it’s just me?
Confession 3: A secret scares the crap out of me. Do you think my promise to Estelle will make everything come right?
Ariel lifted her thumbs from the keypad. She entered Tumbleweed’s name in the To box. Scanned over what she’d written. Faltered.
Tapped Delete.
In the distance a car alarm began to wail.
She slid her legs from her sleeping bag and carried her phone to the woodchip wall of artwork. Shivering in the half-light, she ran her eyes over the shadowy rows of pictures until she settled upon a sketch of a woman, her arms loosely folded over her small, bare chest. The woman’s face was in profile, her expression hard to read. Ariel leaned her head to one side. From one angle, she thought she saw rapture; from another, grief.
‘What are you looking at?’ she whispered.
A thin wedge of light from the window shimmied across the floorboards. London was lonely at night, she decided. It wasn’t the great big adventure she’d been expecting.
‘Loneliness is nothing more than an illusion,’ she reminded herself. ‘Just like Frank said.’
She accessed the camera function on her phone and held it up in front of her. ‘Anyway, I’m not here for an adventure,’ she added in a purposeful voice. ‘I’m here because of a promise.’
Ariel stared at the wall ahead. Then again, what if her cross-country mission brought her closer, somehow, to Estelle?
She snapped a photo of the woman in the picture and sent it to Tumbleweed.
Somewhere nearby, in the city of shadows, a clock struck five.
Her train to Edinburgh was at eight…
She made her way back to the sofa, zipped herself inside her sleeping bag and dropped her gaze to her canvas bag lying nearby. The person who’d sent her the letter – summoning her to Scotland in such a polite, cryptic way – had no idea Ariel would be arriving early. And that was just the way she liked it.
In fact, it was about the only part of this entire weird undertaking that was perfectly fine with her.
The Tower
BLACKPOOL, FEBRUARY 1948
Henry
Henry’s jaw drops. The moment he steps inside, he can smell it: something raw; and electric; and alive.
The entrance hall at street level is bigger, grander than he’d imagined; high-ceilinged, ablaze with light, fizzing with expectation. He joins the queue behind a man in a flamboyant silk tie and gazes overhead, cap raked at an angle, hands resting casually in the trouser pockets of his uniform. The new year is six weeks old. He’s back in Britain at last. He is almost, but not quite, home.
Henry roots his feet to the floor, his grey eyes drinking in the wonderment of it all. Lined up ahead is a medley of earnest faces, young men and women like himself, each more dedicated than the next to the business of having a good time. His thoughts flit impatiently to the music, to the chance to finally kick back and relax. He sucks in his cheeks and whistles, long and low. This is it, he thinks. This is something marvellous indeed!
In the shelter of the foyer it’s warm, too. Outside, a blistering wind tears along the promenade, snapping at the skirts of a group of girls who bustle through the open doorway behind him, giggling, a saucy glint in their eyes, their cheeks rouged raw by the chill. He reaches inside his jacket for a cigarette and pulls his hand out empty. Damn it. He gave his last one to Davy Hardcastle. ‘Good luck!’ they’d called out to him. ‘See you back at the billet! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’
Henry smiles to himself. The Tower Ballroom. It had been his idea to come here all along, but the others had their