While Luke sleeps he can’t help but hear the day outside. He has, at most, two clear hours of uninterrupted sleep each night, then, inevitably, when the world starts without him, he finds himself half-dreaming of birds, doorbells, vacuum cleaners, pneumatic drills and cars. He almost wakes when he hears the little bleep from his computer each time an e-mail comes through or the tone that tells him he’s been disconnected from the Internet. Each time this happens, he opens his eyes and through his thick, hot, nylon head he wants to get up and check out what’s going on but he can’t because he’s nocturnal, because although he probably wouldn’t instantly fry if he got up in the morning, it just wouldn’t feel right.
On Monday morning Luke’s semi-unconscious dreams are enhanced by a new group of sounds that he hasn’t heard very often in his life – the sounds of someone moving into the street. At what must have been about eight o’clock something very large with a deep, growling engine pulled into Windy Close. Since then there has been a lot of banging and male voices and counting to three – and the rain, of course, which hasn’t really stopped since Friday night.
Usually, Luke plans his day around what’s on TV, filling the rest of the time until Julie turns up with Internet chats, keeping up with his newsgroups and checking his e-mail in between the times it automatically checks itself, which is once every five minutes. Today Luke has no plans. After breakfast, he reads a bit more of his incomprehensible book while he waits for Wei to phone. He didn’t give a time, and Luke forgot to ask for one. Luke barely manages to go to the toilet all day, thinking the call will come the minute he does. He doesn’t get dressed, either. Frustratingly, he also can’t connect to the Internet, or his phone will be engaged when Wei calls.
The next chapter of the book, after the one with the factory setting (tiled floors, broken fans, sewing machines, women with babies on their hips, tyrannical supervisors, men with guns, mosquitoes), features a woman wearing something called a ‘sarong’. Luke can’t look this up on the Internet, so he spends the whole chapter thinking it’s a hat, until she rips it off to have sex with some guy whose name makes Luke think of fishing and wasps.
The call eventually comes at about 6.00, during a trailer for a TV documentary about the Big Brother contestants and what they’re doing now. One of the reasons Luke became so obsessed with Big Brother over the summer was because it was the first piece of TV he could actually relate to, and because it was so easy for him to follow. He knew what it was like to be trapped in one house, not really knowing what was going on outside, waiting for experiences to be presented to him. He used to hope that something would happen and the last housemates would never leave the house, because then there would always be some people like Luke out there, and it would be like a special soap opera just for him, and he wouldn’t feel like such a freak.
When Luke’s phone rings, it does so through some software on his computer. He can set it to make animal noises instead of simply ringing, so when Wei calls, the phone roars like a lion, three times.
‘Hello?’ says Wei, when Luke picks up.
‘Hi,’ says Luke. ‘Wei. Thanks for calling.’
‘Have you had a good day?’
‘OK. I’ve been reading.’
‘Anything good?’
‘Just a novel. It’s OK. Hard to follow.’
‘Why hard to follow?’
‘It has all these places I don’t recognise. Also, the story is a bit . . .’
‘A bit what?’
‘It doesn’t seem to flow properly.’
‘A non-linear narrative?’
‘Something like that. It keeps going into the past, then the future.’
‘You should stop reading it.’
‘I don’t have anything else to do. Well, apart from watching TV – but I’m feeling a bit sick of TV at the moment.’
‘You could think, surely?’
‘What, and do nothing? I’d go mad.’
Wei laughs. ‘I can see how it may seem like that but it may be worth remembering that weaker men than you have endured lifetimes in solitary contemplation with no TV and no friends . . . Just their thoughts. It is possible.’
Luke can’t imagine that. ‘But surely they go mad?’ he says.
‘On the contrary. These men – and women – have done the greatest thinking in the world. They consume little – not much food, no entertainment, no sex – but they produce great truths.’ Wei laughs softly. ‘But you need to go out and experience life before you can learn and think to that extent. You have to see the world you are thinking about. And anyway, maybe you don’t want to spend your life learning. Maybe you want to climb mountains. The world also needs mountain climbers. There’s that saying: If everyone was a thinker, who would fetch the goats? I think it’s Swedish. Anyway, I take it you’d rather be a mountain climber?’
‘Yes,’ Luke says instantly. ‘I’d love that. I’d give anything to climb just one mountain. Or even just to look at a mountain . . . That would be enough for me, more than enough.’
‘You have friends?’ Wei asks.
‘One. Julie. And another girl who lives nearby, but . . .’
‘Many girls.’ Wei laughs again.
‘No! Not like that. Well, one of them, Leanne, she and I . . .’
‘You have sex?’
‘Yes . . . But we’re not very compatible. It’s a mistake.’
‘And Julie?’
‘She’s my closest friend in the whole world.’ Luke pauses. ‘I used to have some other friends, not quite so close but, you know . . . Anyway, one died, and one moved away. Now it’s just me and Julie.’
‘And she helps you?’
‘Yes. She comes here every day. I don’t know what I’d do without her.’
‘OK. And she is normal?’
‘Normal? Julie?’ Luke laughs. ‘No. She’s . . .’
‘She goes outside?’
‘Oh yes. But she’d rather live like me, I think. Outside is too much for her.’
‘Perhaps she is the thinker and you are the mountain climber.’
Luke thinks. ‘Perhaps. But . . .’
‘But?’
‘I’m so worried about her. She probably needs healing more than I do. She is a thinker but she never went to university. She ended up staying here. She won’t eat anything natural. She’s scared of nature, and dirt and anything organic. She virtually lives on Pot Noodles and soup, which she supplements with sweets and Lucozade and Ribena, because even though she’s scared of eating, she’s more scared of fainting or wasting away. It’s hard to explain . . .’
‘She is afraid of the earth?’
‘Yes. Dirt and earth and . . .’
‘And you are allergic to fire. Interesting.’ There is a tapping sound and then Wei’s voice comes again. ‘Can you fax me some details about Julie? I have to go now but we can speak again tomorrow evening. OK?’
‘Yes. Great. Oh – before you go, could you tell me what time you’ll get in touch tomorrow evening? I don’t mean to try to pin you down or anything, it’s just . . .’
‘No, not at all. What is a good time for you?’
‘Um . . . Eleven? I know it’s a bit late but Julie will definitely be here then and . . .’
‘Yes, it would be useful for me to speak with Julie as well. OK. Eleven it is.’