Dream Guy (11 page)

“What about Mr. Speckles?”

“I’ve still got Mr. Speckles. He sits on one of the shelves in the bookcase. Turn around. You’ll see him there.”

Joe opened his eyes and found that Nell was right. There was Mr. Speckles, her old stuffed Dalmatian, his head drooping and slightly awry. Everything else was as Nell had described it.

“Where do you keep your clothes?”

“There’s a cupboard on the landing.”

“It’s like being in a fish tank. It’s like being on the bottom of the seabed. When did that happen?”

“About a year ago. Maybe more,” Nell explained.

“Why did I dream about you?”

Nell stood up and went to sit at the chair by her computer. “You have to answer that one for yourself. Now how are you going to get home?”

“I’ll be out of your way in a second or two.” He lay down again and thought about his own room.

He seemed to explode back into it, as though he’d been cartwheeled or spun like a top, coming to an uneven stop tangled around the trestles holding his drawing board.

Somehow, he’d left the carpet behind in Nell’s room, where it had clashed with everything. He wished he could go back there. He remained curled on his floor, thinking about her, thinking about the calm of her blue space and aching.

A knock on the door… Joe slowly unwound himself and stood. “Yeah?”

“It’s me. I heard a whole load of thumps. Are you okay?”

Joe went to the door and opened it. Ben was standing there, his hair on end. He looked Joe up and down. “You look gutted. Is everything all right?”

“Yeah. Yeah. I… It was stupid. I was spinning on my chair and I just fell off. Really dumbass.” He forced his mouth into a wavery grin.

“You’re sure you’re okay, then?” Ben couldn’t conceal his doubts.

“Yes. I’m fine.”

They both heard their mother’s key in the lock. Ben turned away. “Right.”

Joe nodded and shut the door again. He picked up his book bag from the floor and began to unpack it. Homework was like taxes, inevitable and all the more painful if you tried to avoid it.

Chapter Nine

Miles High

The engine noise and the constant vibration roused Joe.

He was sitting in a beige leather seat surrounded by a symphony of cream, tan, buff, ecru and fawn. He gazed out at the clouds below then he peered down the aisle. He was only two seats from the cockpit. He could see the shoulders of a pilot and a copilot and limitless sky beyond. He twisted round to check out the back of the plane. Across the aisle and two seats behind was Smokey, his face as smug as a politician’s after a landslide.

There was a feminine hand on his knee. He raised his glass to Joe. It was a champagne flute. It looked a little incongruous, a gangly teenager in hoodie and jeans, his puppy-huge feet in trainers, lounging in this luxurious steel cocoon.

A woman came forward and leaned over Joe. She was not tall, but conformed in every other respect to a standard blueprint for beauty—blue eyes, whose vividness was, Joe suspected, enhanced by contact lenses, long eyelashes, a trim nose, a full mouth, symmetrical face and shoulder-length black hair, slim as the stem of a wineglass and apparently as fragile.

“Can I get you anything from the galley, sir?” Her voice was huskily mid-Atlantic. Her breath was minty.

“Just some water, please. Sparkling, if you have it.”

Her look of astonishment mixed with a little contempt vanished almost before Joe had time to register it. Perhaps she’d been expecting him to order more champagne or some extravagant treat like caviar and blinis. It was true that he felt peckish.

She came back in seconds so he asked what there was to eat, then listened to a list of gourmet delicacies that would have graced the delicatessen back home. A smoked salmon sandwich seemed a safe and swift option. When she brought it, he gestured to the banquette opposite. She sat down.

“Can you tell me where we’re going?”

“Your friends said we should head for somewhere warm. Mediterranean. They suggested Sardinia, so we’re taking you to Sardinia.”

“Sardinia?”

“Yes. It won’t be hot, but it will certainly be a lot more pleasant than the UK at this time of year. We should be landing in another ninety minutes.”

“How long have I been asleep? How did I get onboard?”

“Don’t worry about any of that, sir. Your friend took care of everything. Smokey, yes? Such a charming young man.”

She turned and gave Smokey a hundred-and-ten-watt smile. He raised his glass to her. Joe noticed that the female hand he had seen before had reached the top of Smokey’s thigh. Smokey nodded at her, and she leaned around to say hello to Joe. It was Nell.

Her hair was pulled away from her face in a chignon, highlighting features that she usually concealed under a curtain of light-brown locks. Kohl made her eyes huge and exotic. The rouge dusted along her cheekbones emphasized the stunning structure of her face, and her lips were full and gleaming with raspberry gloss. Her face had become a mask and it was impossible to read any thought into her normally expressive eyes. Joe felt a hollowness in his stomach that was a prelude to nausea. He closed his eyes and opened them again in the hope that it would be some other girl sitting there. But it was still Nell, still impassive.

“Join us, Joe.” Smokey aped the manner of a sophisticate, swigging champagne and nodding casually toward the pair of seats across the aisle, behind Joe’s seat. “Bit of a surprise finding Nell here.”

Joe unsnapped his seatbelt and changed seats. He wanted both Smokey and Nell where he could see them. Nell was sitting back in her seat, toying with her glass. She was wearing a black dress—simple, sleeveless and short. Her legs were long and slim. Her sleek shoes had kitten heels. She was polished, groomed, buffed and gleaming, as unattainable as a Vogue model.

“Just like old times.”

Joe and Nell exchanged glances.

Smokey talking drivel again.

The flight attendant came up and unfolded tables for them. Their walnut veneer matched the trim running down the cabin. She brought them food, but only Smokey helped himself, shoveling in sandwiches and chicken and lemongrass wraps as though he wouldn’t eat again for years.

“Was it you who decided on Sardinia?” asked Joe. Nell nodded. He might have known. He’d have been astonished if Smokey had even heard of Sardinia.

“Are we staying in a villa or a hotel? I’d prefer a hotel. Room service and that, unless the villa has servants. Does the villa have servants, Joe?” Smokey’s mouth was full.

“I’ve got no idea where we’re staying unless Nell has fixed something up for us.”

“I didn’t have time. I just found myself on the plane as it was taxiing for takeoff. Don’t you remember, Joe?” Irritation and anxiety infected her voice in equal measure.

“Not a lot.”

“Maybe the pilot can radio ahead and find something and check if there’s a car waiting for us. It’s weird how you don’t seem to know what’s going on, Joe.”

Since this is your dream…
She’d left the words hanging unspoken. Smokey was blithely unaware of the tension between his companions.

“You’ve been a bit standoffish, Nell. It’s nice to see you back in circulation.”

“I’m not in circulation, Smokey, I’m here because Joe must have wanted me here. And what he thought he was doing, I have no idea.”

Joe looked out of the window, which began to expand, allowing more and more daylight into the cabin, warping the window, spreading to the next porthole. He wanted to vanish into the sky and leave the jet to go its own way, just so long as he could be back in his bed and far away from Smokey’s ramblings and Nell’s suspicions. But Nell stood up and grabbed him by the shoulders, giving him a ferocious shake.

“Stop it, Joe! Stop that right now. We are in an exceptionally small plane. If you start any of your little tricks, we’ll all buy the farm. Do you get me?” She stood over him until he made the window gradually shrink back to the same size as the others in the fuselage. Then she sat down opposite him. She was clearly not going to leave him in peace now. “Why don’t you just wake up? If you don’t want to be here, just wake up.”

Smokey looked from one to the other in perplexity. “Not want to be here? In a Learjet on his way to the Med with bucketloads of champagne? What’s he on?”

“You’re the one who’s on stuff, Smokey. And you’re the one who set this up, aren’t you? God knows how or why Joe decided he needed me along for this ride, but probably it was to stop him from getting both of you killed.”

“Here we go, Little Miss Righteous.” Smokey folded his arms in a huff.

“What’s going to happen to us once we get to Sardinia, Joe? Can you make arrangements just like that? Do you think anything will be set up?”

“I don’t know.” He didn’t want to be pushed any more. Nell chewed her lips, holding back a torrent of questions and abuse. But she did not badger him further, and each time Smokey tried to speak, she cut him off.

“If you could just fasten your seatbelts, we’ll be coming in to land in about twelve minutes,” said the flight girl. She took her own seat and belted herself in.

They landed, and there was a car waiting for them at the foot of the air stairs. There were no formalities, no passport control. Once their bags had been unloaded, they were simply driven away from the airstrip without ever setting foot in the airport.

“Do you think this is how rock stars really live?” asked Smokey in wonder.

“You are sooo trivial.” Nell sat curled in her corner of the car, vulnerable, despite her slick getup. Joe sat silently, wondering how the driver knew where to go—or even how he himself had known where to go. Since he’d never visited Sardinia, it was a bit weird how this whole excursion seemed so organized. He’d have to go to the real Sardinia one day to see if it was the same as his dream version. It must be, he supposed. It was dusk, and the hills were bathed in a rich apricot and crushed berry glow as the sun dipped into the sea to their right, which meant that they were driving south along the western coast of the island. After what seemed like an hour, they turned onto a rough drive and rolled down toward a house that was in darkness until a door opened and light spilled from it.

Instead of entering the villa, Joe found himself walking alone toward a pool teetering on a cliff edge above a rock-strewn beach about a hundred feet below. Sunlight bounced and wavered off the chemically lurid water. In the distance a turquoise sea shimmered and hissed at the sand and rocks on the shore.

He realized that he was in trunks. He was alone. Beneath his bare feet, the wooden decking around the pool was warm but not burning. In each corner of the deck were huge potted plants, their fronds waving in a slight breeze. Three wooden sun loungers lay under a canvas canopy at the far side of the pool. Joe turned to look back at the villa. A light curtain billowed out of an open French window, perhaps one leading from his room. He stood, soaking in the warmth of the sun and savoring the silence. He walked to the edge of the pool and launched himself into the water. He swam along the bottom, surfacing at the far end with a great surge, releasing the breath he had held then taking in a great gulp of air. He floated, his eyes closed, conscious only of the heat of the sun and the warmth of the water. When he opened them, he saw a man standing at the shallow end of the pool, his back to the villa. The man wore a cream linen suit with a dark-red shirt, open-necked. Sunglasses concealed his eyes, but there was something about him that seemed familiar. The man stood, legs apart, hands behind his back, dark hair gelled back, face inclined toward the sun’s rays. Joe pulled himself out of the pool and sat at the edge, the precipitous drop down to the beach only a few feet away.

The man took off his sunglasses. Joe recognized him now—the thief from the nightclub. The guy folded up his shades, eased them into the breast pocket of his jacket and stood watching him. Joe did not move. He simply met the stranger’s gaze. The man shrugged, smiled and turned his back on Joe. He took two steps away then dissolved. The last thing Joe saw of him was a sort of X-ray image of his bones, fading in the bright sunlight. When he opened his eyes again, he hastily hoisted himself out of the pool, for it had become clouded and he could distinguish the silhouettes of frogs—what looked like hundreds of frogs—propelling themselves through the water. His skin quivered in reaction, as though he were still in the water, but sharing it with the jewel-like creatures, all neon reds and yellows and lime greens.

Next he saw Nell, standing in the same position as the nightclub guy, wearing the most unlikely clothes—a leopard-print skirt and crocodile-print halter top, her midriff bare and tanned. She looked as though she’d just been filming a pop video, bling dripping from her neck and wrists, her fingernails long, gilded talons. Smokey’s fantasy babe. Joe stood up. She came around the side of the pool, apparently oblivious to its inhabitants.

“You’ve got to do something about Smokey. He’s getting totally out of hand. He’s wasted all the time. Where does he get the money for the gear, Joe? Where does the money for any of this come from?”

“I’ve got no idea.”

“Joe, you’ve got to wake up. There’s going to be serious trouble. Smokey’s bringing weird people here. Please, try to wake up and get us back home.”

“Wake up?”

“We’re in your dream, Joe. We’re living your dream. Get us out of here before something goes seriously wrong.”