Eventually I summoned the balls to step up and insert the crowbar in the rubber joint that separated the two heavy glass doors.
They came apart quite easily; they must have been on some sort of ball bearings because once I opened a gap big enough to slip my fingers in the doors slid apart with only a small amount of effort on my part. Steeling myself I took my first tentative steps outside of the hotel.
I don’t know whether it was my overdeveloped senses playing up but the air seemed thicker on the street; impossible of course as it was exactly the same air as I had been breathing inside.
There was a heady scent to it, like all the plants on the island had decided to exhale at the same time, a cloying scent of aloe vera and tarmac and hotness. It was pleasant, but a little foreboding at the same time.
Unsurprisingly the street was deserted. It was long and straight, probably half a mile long, and the hotel was bang in the middle so looking both left and right I wasn’t presented with any concrete ideas about which way to turn.
Directly opposite the entrance to the hotel was a collection of whitewashed apartments, but then nothing but open scrubland for what I guessed was about two or three miles until the skyline was broken by a range of mountains, brown and resolute in the morning sun. Due east of those in the direction of north I could assume a coastline, so I turned right towards the sea not really knowing what I was looking for but instinctively heading towards water instead of inland.
The pavement was made up of oblong white ceramic tiles to minimise heat absorption, but my bare feet were still getting pretty warm in the sun. I was still wearing only my beach shorts and now my tool belt. I walked slowly, listening for sounds and desperately trying to detect movement both in front of me and in my peripheral vision, half-hopeful and half-terrified in case I actually spied something.
A few hundred yards on there was another set of apartments within a block, all whitewashed and almost identical to those in the THB Sun Royal. This was Sun Park, billed as a ‘Summer’s village for the over 50s.’ The front doors were glass as well, and I squinted through. The reception area was as dead as I expected. Not a single movement within. I pried at the doors with my crowbar and again the doors came apart easily. I stepped inside and instantly the air was cooler. There was no glass pyramid making up the roof of this entrance area and the sun had no way of penetrating. The reception desk stood unmanned. I tried the computer in the corner but was presented with nothing but a blank screen with various Excel spreadsheets and no internet connectivity. The panoramic doors to the rest of the resort were shut tight and I felt absolutely no need to start exploring this hotel so simply turned and exited back onto what I now knew to be Calle Janubio from the street sign up ahead.
Why I felt a twinge of disappointment at the emptiness of Sun Park I don’t know. It was hardly as if I expected gaggle of mature, white-teethed pensioners sauntering by the poolside nursing cocktails and discussing politics, but that was what the poster board at the entrance advertised and I felt slightly short-changed that it hadn’t delivered.
I smoked a Lucky Strike as I walked, savouring the taste of the tobacco in the late morning heat. There were rows of cars parked all the way down Calle Janubio, all empty, and I tried random doors to see if any were open. A few were, but there seemed little use in getting in them as there were no keys in sight. I wondered if any would start if there were.
I realised I was woefully unprepared for the end of the world. I didn’t even know how to hotwire a car. They may have been sat there for years, unused and roasting in the heat of the sun, day in, day out. I wondered how long it took for fuel to go stale and lose the properties of combustion. I remembered a lawnmower I used to have which I had tried to start up after a year or so of being stuck in my garage, which only finally got going after I emptied the tank of the stale fuel and put a gallon of fresh petrol in. If I could perhaps get one of these cars to start it would give an indication that they hadn’t been unused for that long. Now wasn’t the time though.
I came to the end of Calle Janubio and to a crossroads which intersected with Avenue Papagayo. Opposite me stood two imposing hotels, the Princess Yaiza on one side and a much less impressive brown concrete construction called the Hotel Hesperia on the other. I was able to see the sea now, crystal blue and hazy in the heat, lying between the two constructions. I crossed Papagayo and walked through the car park of the Hesperia. The silence was total; the only sound was a slight breeze rustling the leaves of the palm trees that formed the border around the hotel grounds.
Something led me up to the entrance of the hotel. The double doors were wide open, and the breeze had blown an ice cream wrapper inside where it was caught in a rotational spin at the mercy of a through-draught. There must have been another door open inside somewhere to have been creating it.
The reception area was darker and cooler again than the over 50s village. A small fountain gurgled in the corner and I knelt beside it, splashing my face with the tepid water that collected inside. The walls were adorned with juttings-out of black volcanic rock in an attempt to break the monotony of the concrete. Someone had clearly had the idea to make the whole reception appear like some kind of underground bunker, probably trying to make the most of the drabness, but the rocks only looked like growths and put me in mind of Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man.
I passed through to the dining area. Again, there was a buffet laid out, stainless steel trays of meatballs and pasta, a soup terrine, huge unwobbling mounds of blancmange and bowls of fresh fruit and yet more pickled chilies. All untouched, all seemingly only a few days old. The meatballs were cold but there was a gas heater under the soup. I managed to locate some matches behind the counter and lit the burner. The smell of bottled gas permeated in my nostrils for a split second before the flame ignited and started to heat the terrine. I waited five or six minutes just staring at the flame while it worked, then the soup started bubbling and the aroma of mushrooms and cream filled the room. I grabbed a bread roll, only slightly stale, and dunked it in the soup. It was delicious.
Suddenly I wept. I don’t know where the tears came from or what they signified, but I stood on the empty canteen with the soup boiling and salty drops running down my face. What was happening to me? My whole world had been snatched from me, my family, my house, my job, and here I was, alone on the island of Lanzarote, eating week old soup and balling my eyes out.
And that’s when I heard the phone ringing.
My first thought was I must have been imagining it. I stopped breathing as if I had been thumped in the chest with a whacker plate. It was definitely there, the shrill double burst of the ringer, followed by a second’s silence, then repeated. It was clearly audible even over the bubbling soup. Instinctively I jolted into action, dropping my bread roll and darting towards the canteen exit in the direction of the sound. The sound got louder and more shrill as I reached the reception area but I couldn’t at first locate it. I had to stand stock still for a precious second before I could accurately pinpoint its origin. It seemed to be coming from through a door behind the reception desk, similar to the one at my hotel. I leapt over the desk and into the back room, where I saw a desk littered with paper and in the corner the phone itself, a red light blinking in time to the rings. My hands were shaking so badly I struggled to grab the receiver but I managed to get it out of its cradle and up to my ear.