David’s on his third South Mimms story and the van smells like skunk weed.
‘So this fucking amazing girl, right, the one I just told you about who kissed me by the arcade in South Mimms, she’d said she was going to this rave she knew was being organised the following week, right, somewhere off the M25, and that was the only way I reckoned I was ever going to see her again, even though it was a complete fucking long-shot, because how many raves are there that are “somewhere off the M25”? But I was obsessed, what can I say? So on the Saturday afternoon we’re in this pub in north London, and no one knows where the rave’s supposed to be. The pirate radio-station’s suddenly gone dead, and there’s this phone number but we try to phone it and there’s just nothing. It was like fucking dead ends everywhere. So we all decide to just fucking bomb it up the A10 and on to the M25 to South Mimms, because we reckoned everyone else in the same boat would just go up there. And we were so fucking right. As soon as we got to the roundabout there were Old Bill everywhere, and they weren’t letting anyone anywhere near the services, because by then – it must have been ’91 or something – they’d been stung so many times with semi-riots and looting at South Mimms that they weren’t taking any chances. So everyone congregated by the BP garage instead, and there were so many ravers there it was total chaos. So everyone’s stealing stuff from the garage, and no one can do fuck all about it, and . . .’
‘You were stealing?’ Chantel interrupts, moving and making rustling sounds.
‘Oh – is that the spliff? Cheers, mate – yeah, well, we were just kids really. Everyone used to do it. Anyway, we caned a load of packs of Juicy Fruit and mineral water and loads of packets of biscuits for some reason, and the poor guy’s just standing behind the counter watching us, almost smiling really because we’re all being so cheeky, and then, suddenly, I saw the girl, and then she’s gone, but I overheard someone saying something about the A1, so we’ve legged it out of the garage and back into the car and I’ve decided to go for a spin up the A1, see what’s going on there. So there I am, bombing it up the A1, and this guy in the car goes “Dave, look behind you,” so I look in the mirror, and there’s about fifty cars following us, because obviously they think I know where I’m going, and then suddenly I realise that the Old Bill think that as well, because I can see a load of blue lights flashing up behind us, so I’ve just thought to myself, fuck this, and spun the car around across the central reservation – it’s just a grass verge on the A1 – and headed back the other way. But sure enough, because that’s what I’ve done, all the other cars in the convoy have gone and done the same thing. What a mental fucking sight.’
‘Why were they following you?’ Chantel asks.
‘Rave culture, innit?’ David says. ‘You see a bunch of ravers in a car, and if you’re lost you follow them. Then you’ve got two cars with ravers in them, and someone else sees you and thinks – convoy! – so they follow you, and before you know it you are a convoy, but everyone’s as lost as everyone else.’
‘I missed out on all that,’ Chantel says. ‘I would have been about seven in ’88.’
‘How old were you, David?’ Charlotte asks.
‘In ’88 I was fifteen,’ he says. ‘But when all this shit was going down I was eighteen or nineteen or something. I’d just passed my driving test the year before.’
‘My dad does that,’ Julie suddenly says.
‘What?’ Charlotte asks.
‘He follows cars for no reason. If he’s stuck in traffic and someone turns off, he thinks they know a short cut so he follows them. It’s insane, because they could be going anywhere but he assumes they’re going to the same place as he is, and he just follows them.’
‘Your dad’s weird,’ says Chantel.
‘So, did you ever find this rave?’ Charlotte asks David.
‘Yeah, of course. We went back to South Mimms, followed someone else, and eventually found where we were supposed to be. That’s the thing. Somehow – whether it was through luck, judgement, coincidence, chance, God . . . I dunno, whatever – we always ended up in the right place. It’s mental when you think about it, but suddenly, at the right moment, we’d be listening to the right pirate station that had the instructions, or we’d follow the right car, or we’d bump into someone who knew the organiser, or we’d work something out by logic, which is pretty fucked up considering how many pills we used to be on at the time, and we’d get where we wanted to go. Every single time. Or we’d find somewhere better, using the same methods.’
‘There’s a moral to that story,’ says Charlotte. ‘But I’m fucked if I know what it is. Give us that spliff, Dave.’
Luke’s still under the blanket. He thought he’d come out when Sophie went but it didn’t feel right. He’s too comfortable and sleepy and outside still sounds too terrifying. If he stays where he is, he can pretend he’s in bed at home; that’s the plan. Luke’s problem: when you see something on TV – because, of course, Luke’s seen roads and vans and journeys and everything on TV, so these things aren’t alien to him – it’s not real. When you see something on the screen, you’re in your room. This experience feels like actually being inside the television, which isn’t what Luke wanted. Luke wanted to go into the world – the real world that everyone else experiences – but to him it just feels like the inside of a TV, like the glass has sucked him in and now he’s banging around in this box, trying to get out. Or – worse – he’s escaped from the TV into the outside world like some intrepid neon ray, and now he can’t find the way back in. Either way, this is bad. Either way, he wants to go back to where he started. But as long as he stays under the blanket, he can try to ignore it. He’s been trying to think about Wei, and being healed, but his imagination won’t work any more. He’s having trouble thinking about anything apart from being lost and scared.
‘Are we there yet?’ Chantel fake-whines.
‘Yeah, yeah, nearly,’ David says. ‘Stop moaning.’
‘Where now?’ Julie asks.
‘Next left.’
‘Are you sure? That looks like a motorway up ahead.’
‘Yeah, that’s the A1. Don’t worry, we’re not going on it.’
Charlotte’s found some country-and-western station on the radio.
‘I love this,’ she says. ‘It’s so crap.’ She starts singing along.
‘Hurry up, Julie,’ Chantel says. ‘This is excruciating.’
‘Bitch,’ says Charlotte.
‘Slag,’ says Chantel.
‘Ladies,’ says David. ‘Settle down.’
‘We’re only joking,’ says Chantel. ‘Are we there yet?’
‘No,’ David says.
About ten seconds pass.
‘Are we there yet?’ she asks again.
‘No, shut up.’
‘Is this it?’ Julie asks.
‘Oh, yeah. We are there. Nice one.’
Luke can feel the van slowing and turning, then turning again. Eventually it goes backwards and forwards a couple of times, then stops. The engine cuts out but Luke’s body is still vibrating as if the van’s still going. There’s the sound of people shifting around, and a door slamming, then a door opening and a blast of cold from outside.
‘Luke?’ says Julie. She pokes her head under the blanket. ‘Hi.’
‘Hi. Where are we?’
‘South Mimms. We’re going to get some sandwiches and stuff.’
‘OK. I’ll just stay here.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yeah. Well, I can’t exactly come in with you, can I?’
‘I suppose not. Are you sure you’ll be OK?’
‘Yeah. Julie?’
‘Yeah?’
‘What am I going to do if I need to piss?’
She looks alarmed. ‘Do you?’
‘No, not yet.’
‘Oh. Well, we’ll stop somewhere when you do.’
‘Will I have to get out of the van?’
She frowns. ‘Maybe. I don’t know.’
‘I could use a bottle or something.’
‘Don’t worry. We’ll work something out.’
It’s quiet when Julie and the others have gone. The world could have just ended, and Luke wouldn’t know. If the world ended and Luke was the only survivor, would his life even change? If Luke and Julie were the only survivors, would he even notice?
As he sits up, he feels dizzy, and sick. Inside the van it’s bright with all the light coming in from outside. In fact – what are those lights? What is this place? Luke thinks of his bedroom, and of outer space. Is this place the gateway between them? Could this be like a place he’s seen on TV, a no-man’s land between reality and fiction; between his bedroom and the moon? Or is it just the outside world, a place where everyone else goes all the time and Luke’s been trying to escape into all his life?
Once, Luke cut one of his left fingers on a knife. As soon as he felt pain, and saw blood, he tightened his right hand around the hurt finger and squeezed, not wanting to look and see how badly he’d cut it. But, after a few moments, he couldn’t not look any more. And it’s the same now. Luke can’t not look any more. He needs to see how bad it is, and he’s hoping that something about it will be comforting, and that he’ll be able to come out from under his blanket for a while at least, and act normal, even if he does have to wear a space-suit, and even if he might just expire any second. He opens the door to the van and looks out. Fuck it; big mistake – this is outer space.
In Luke’s imagination, the outside world is basically a field with a tree in it and a mountain in the background; maybe a water-feature as well – a stream, river or lake. This isn’t that. Luke’s head spins. Maybe it’s the helmet, or the rain – which has made everything that’s not orange look black and wet. Maybe this is a joke. All he can see are cars, lights and concrete, and because Luke has no sense of space or landscape, to him the cars and lights and concrete go on forever. He’d intended to get out of the van and walk around, but now he can’t move. This is the kind of place in which you’d find aliens, big men with guns and children dressed in oily rags hanging around in the rain, excluded from the shiny concrete-and-mercury-vapour paradise in the distance.
If Luke had to find his way home, what would he do? He wouldn’t be able to do anything, because his house isn’t in this world, or, if it is, it may as well be as far away as the moon is from the earth. If you wanted to get to the moon, how would you do it? If you were a person, you might dream of building a rocket. If you were a moth you’d fly into a lightbulb. Luke wants the others to come back, because he feels like he’d die out here on his own. But what if they never came back? What then? Luke instinctively knows that left alone in this harsh environment with no computer and no telephone, there’d be only one thing he could do. He’d strip off his space-suit and run towards the nearest bright light, and hope that it would be like the sun and kill him quickly. That would be better than facing death at the tentacled hands of whatever lurks in places like this, or collapsing on some dusty highway, hungry and miles from anywhere, knowing your address but not how to read a map.
Luke puts his head back under the blanket.
He wonders: maybe moths don’t think lightbulbs are the moon. Maybe they found out how far away the moon is, and simply chose suicide instead of failure. Wouldn’t you?