Ruth walked on, oblivious.
She sat in the pub for half an hour waiting for her friend to arrive, nursing a vodka and Coke. Though the men in the bar attempted to chat up any single woman who entered, they all left her alone. Ruth knew they could sense something off-putting about her beyond her beaten-down appearance.
Vicky finally put in an appearance at ten-past nine, forty-five minutes later than she had promised. She made no apology. Vicky was a co-worker at the care home, a hard-faced single mother. She had little in common with Ruth, but the two of them had no other friends of note, and sometimes their shifts aligned so they could spend a night together getting miserably drunk.
After an hour and a half and several vodkas, Ruth said, ‘Do you ever get a feeling you’re living a life that isn’t really yours?’
Vicky laughed bitterly. ‘All the time, darlin’. My real life is at the side of a pool in Florida. I’m just doing this for a joke.’
‘No, I mean it. I just don’t feel right.’ Ruth looked around at the other drinkers. ‘I wonder how many other people feel the same way. Putting up with what they’ve got instead of doing what they should be doing. Except they don’t know what they should be doing.’
Vicky snorted derisively. ‘You’re always going on like this. Can’t you just shut up and be happy with what you’ve got? Lots of people would kill for your job.’
Ruth drained her glass and stood up. I’m going to the toilet.’
‘No need to tell the world.’
In the cubicle, Ruth put the toilet lid down and sat on it before letting her head drop into her hands. Vicky was right — she should just accept the way things were. At least that way she might find some kind of peace. When she looked up, her attention was caught by a piece of graffiti on the back of the door, partially obscured by messages of cheap sex and anatomically incorrect drawings: a pentacle.
Ruth was transfixed by it for a long moment as her heart beat faster and faster until she thought it would burst. Leaning forward, she reached out. When her fingers were barely an inch from the scrawled design a blue spark leaped from the tips in a flash and a smell of ozone filled the cubicle. A scorch mark obscured one of the arms of the pentacle.
She returned to the bar in a daze. On the bar stood five glasses, four empty, the fifth being filled with Coke by the barman. Ruth saw it and froze. Blue sparks fizzed across her mind.
One of five, she thought.
Feeling excited and not knowing why, she hurried back to the table to find a man sitting in her place talking animatedly to Vicky. He looked about Ruth’s age, his hair black, his looks dark and handsome. He wore an expensive suit and had an air of success about him, but not ostentatiously so.
‘Oi, look who it is!’ Vicky waved, clearly taken with the new arrival.
‘She won’t know me,’ the man said with a self-deprecating grin. I just moved into the flat next to yours. Saw you leaving this morning. It’s a real coincidence I bumped into you here.’ He shrugged, looked around. ‘I wouldn’t normally come into a dive like this, but … I’m glad I did.’
Vicky winked at Ruth over his shoulder. Despite herself, Ruth’s cheeks flushed.
‘I know you’re Ruth. My name’s Rourke,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Nobody bothers with my first name. Too embarrassing, to be honest.’
Ruth took his hand. ‘Pleased to meet you.’ After so long feeling lonely, the charming Mr Rourke gave her a tingle of excitement.
Is it all right if I have a drink with you?’ Rourke asked.
His dark eyes were deep and soothing and made Ruth feel as if she wasn’t alone any more.
‘Don’t mind me,’ Vicky said sniffily.
‘Yeah, have a drink,’ Ruth said. Make us both laugh. We bloody well need it.’
Rourke smiled, and suddenly the pentacle, the blue spark and the five glasses on the bar were forgotten.
9
In complete confusion, Church found himself retreating through the white nothing-world, despite his consuming desire to keep watching. He didn’t want to lose Ruth so soon. The disorientation left him reeling, for the world he had been viewing had felt as real to him as the one in which his body stood. As he tried to make sense of the whirl of emotions and sensations, a wave of joy crashed against him. Seeing Ruth again reignited everything he felt for her so powerfully it was almost painful. If he allowed himself, he could entertain the fantasy that it would have taken no effort to touch her skin, or smell her hair, or even to talk to her.
Yet if he were truthful, he also felt a twinge of jealousy. He saw the way she had looked at Rourke. Had she already forgotten him?
He snapped back into the sunlit chamber, staggering so that Jerzy had to support him.
‘You saw her?’ Jerzy asked.
Church nodded as he reacclimatised himself. He had felt as if he was in a dream, but now he was back other details began to surface. ‘She was a Sister of Dragons,’ he said with a certainty that came from somewhere deeper than the information he had observed, but she didn’t seem to know it. I don’t get it.’
‘But she was safe?’
‘She looked as if she was, but there was something not quite right about the whole scenario … I don’t know.’ He silently cursed his broken memory. ‘At least I can keep coming here to check on her. Even if I can’t do anything about it.’
Church made to walk away from the Wish-Post, but it pulled at the back of his head. He had looked into it, and it into him, and it was not yet prepared to let him go. He decided he would stay there for as long as it took, drinking in every detail, every scene it was offering him.
As he swam in the white, another scene coalesced: a run-down fast-food joint, and leaning over the grill a young woman with rough-cut white-blonde hair, eyes heavy with mascara. Her skin had a vaguely unhealthy tinge, which may have been a result of the strip lights that turned the place into an oasis of artificiality. The woman had a hard face made even harder by the contempt she exuded as she pushed a thin, grey burger around the hotplate.
Who are you? Church thought.
10
‘Why do people eat this shit?’ Laura DuSantiago could barely stop herself from gagging. She’d decided she was very definitely a vegetarian, but the work was regular and, really, what else could she do?
‘I told you, you daft cow — not where the customers can hear.’ The owner was overweight, short and balding, his arms covered with tattoos.
‘Don’t worry. They’re all too thick to understand plain English.’ Laura scooped up the burger and flicked it into the warming cabinet. ‘They shuffle up here every day, following the same routine that’s been programmed into them, and stare at me with their fat, stupid faces. And they knowingly risk growing extra breasts thanks to all the hormones stuffed into the shit you serve. You think they have the sense to listen to me?’
‘You’re well on the way to the sack.’
‘No, I’m not, because you couldn’t get anyone else to do this crappy job on the wage you pay, and you know it.’
The owner looked ready to punch Laura, but she pushed past him and stripped off her plastic apron. ‘Ten o’clock and all’s hell. That’s my shift over.’
‘This is your first warning!’ the owner bellowed after her as she marched out of the cafe and into the dingy side street not far from Northampton’s main shopping area.
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ she mumbled bitterly, battling down the self-loathing that threatened to break through every minute of every day.
The sodium glare of the street lamps made her feel worse. She wanted to be in a cool, dark wood looking up through the branches to glimpse a clear night sky. She wanted the scents of cooling vegetation, but all she could smell was the rancid odour of fat coming off her clothes.