It’s almost eleven when they get to the Travelodge. Luke’s been reading his book since the service station. He’s seen pictures of elephants that can live to more than seventy years old, beautiful birds that fly in intricate formations, and cats with no tails.
‘We’re here,’ Julie says to him.
The van stops and Julie reverses into a parking space.
Luke puts down his book and looks over Julie’s shoulder out of the window. He has to stretch to see properly. There are little trees everywhere in the carpark. Luke had never seen trees before yesterday. Now there are so many of them all at once. Everything outside seems so green and beautiful, shining in a hazy glow. Beyond the carpark and the trees is a big building – bigger than Luke’s house, anyway. It looks like a palace. There are amazing lights all around it – the source of the glow on the trees. This place is beautiful.
‘Is Wei in there?’ Luke asks Julie.
‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘If this is the right place.’ She sort of laughs.
Luke panics. ‘It is, isn’t it?’ he says. ‘This is the right place. It has to be.’
‘It is,’ Charlotte says. ‘It’s the one Wei said, Jules. It was on the map.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ she says. ‘I just thought we got lost at one point.’
‘No. This is definitely the place,’ Charlotte says.
‘God,’ says Luke excitedly. ‘He’s in there. Wei is in there.’
‘OK,’ says Charlotte sensibly. ‘How are we going to do this?’
‘Do what?’ Luke says.
‘Get you out of the van, check in . . .’
‘Let’s just do it,’ Luke says. ‘I feel OK. This place seems magical. I know I’ll be fine.’
Julie gives him a funny look, but says nothing.
‘What about when we get in there?’ Charlotte says.
‘Oh, shit,’ Julie says, looking back at Charlotte. ‘The receptionists. Luke’s dressed like a spaceman.’
‘Won’t they let me in?’ Luke says. ‘They have to let me in. We’ve come all this way . . .’
‘Calm down,’ Julie says. ‘It’ll be fine.’
‘We’ll tell them it’s a dare,’ says Charlotte. ‘Or a stag night or something.’
‘Some more of my tin foil’s coming off,’ Luke says.
Charlotte and Julie both give him a hand threading new bits through the loops Leanne made. Luke can’t stop looking at this mesmerising place and the huge white tower he’s about to enter.
Inside, there is a vast green carpet leading to a desk. The carpet has sparkling flecks in it like jewels. There are plants everywhere. It seems like outside, inside. Everything’s green. Everything sparkles. This is a magical place, all right.
Julie and Charlotte walk towards the desk, where there’s a male receptionist smiling at them oddly. Luke stands by a plant, looking at it. It has big leaves that look thick like plastic. Luke wants to touch them but he can’t with his gloves on. He puts his hands behind his back and looks down at the floor.
‘Where’ve you lot been, then?’ the guy behind the desk asks. ‘Fancy-dress party or something?’
‘Yeah,’ says Charlotte quickly. ‘We changed. He didn’t want to.’
‘He likes being a spaceman,’ Julie adds.
The receptionist laughs. ‘OK. What can I do for you?’
‘A smoking room for one night?’ Charlotte says.
The receptionist taps some keys on his computer system. ‘Yup,’ he says. ‘I think we can manage that.’ He taps again. ‘One room.’ More taps. ‘For one night. Smoking.’ He taps some more and something starts to print out. ‘Are you all sharing?’
‘Yes,’ says Julie. ‘Is that allowed?’
‘That’s fine. Maximum of three adults, so long as you haven’t got any other spacemen hanging around . . .?’ He laughs. ‘Right, so that’s one smoking family room with en suite. Maximum occupancy three adults and one child under twelve. You’ve got one double bed, one sofa and one pullout. All OK for you? OK, here is your bill. Please pay now.’
Julie takes the A4 sheet of paper. ‘Is that all?’ she says. ‘God.’
‘Is it cheap?’ Charlotte asks her.
‘We don’t say cheap,’ says the receptionist. ‘We say good value.’
Julie hands over her credit card. ‘Do you do food?’ she asks.
‘No. But we have a Häagen-Dazs machine right over there and also a newsagent kiosk which will open again in the morning. Alternatively, we can call out for pizza to be delivered to reception. But if you want pizza you should say so now because they shut at midnight.’
Charlotte looks at Julie. ‘Shall we get pizza?’ she asks.
Julie shrugs. ‘Yeah, OK.’
As far as Luke knows she hasn’t eaten pizza for months.
‘Luke?’ says Charlotte.
He nods. He’s wishing he could touch the plant and he’s wishing he could talk to the receptionist and interact with people like everyone else does. He feels less like a TV character the longer he’s out in the world. If this scene was on TV he probably wouldn’t be in it. Well, why would he be? He hasn’t even got a speaking part. They’d just cut the stupid spaceman and focus on Julie and Charlotte. Then again, if this was a TV show it would be about him and he’d have to be in it. So why isn’t he cracking jokes and having fun like everyone on TV does?
‘I think I’d better get him up to the room,’ Julie says. ‘Can you stay here and sort out the pizza?’
‘Sure, babe. What do you both want?’
‘I’ll just have a plain one. Cheese and tomato, I suppose, or Margherita or whatever they’d call it . . . And Luke always has a Hawaiian – that’s ham and pineapple – from The Edge, so get him one of those.’
Luke shakes his head at her.
‘Oh, no – wait,’ she says. ‘He went vegetarian recently. Get him whatever their equivalent of a Vegetarian Feast is. And you’d better get a bottle of Coke or Pepsi if they do them; it’ll be cheaper than using the machines here.’
‘Do pizza places do that?’ Charlotte asks.
‘Yeah,’ Julie says. ‘We did a take-away deal at The Edge – two medium pizzas, a garlic bread with cheese and a one-litre bottle of Pepsi for £9.99. They all do some sort of deal like that, therefore they all sell bottles of Pepsi, or Coke. Here’s some money.’
Julie gives Charlotte the last of the cash from her purse.
‘Can I borrow your phone?’ Charlotte asks. ‘I need to make a call while I’m waiting.’
When Luke steps into the lift, he may as well be stepping into some sort of time-travel machine, or a space-pod. Sure, he’s seen lifts on TV all the time but he never ever thought he’d actually go in one. In a way, he wasn’t sure if they actually existed or whether they were just the invention of TV companies, as if every drama or sitcom he watched was always set a few years in the future, with improbable inventions that only exist in TV-land, because no one’s invented them in the real world yet.
‘Are you OK?’ Julie asks.
Luke nods. ‘I think so. Is this actually a lift?’
‘Yeah. We can take the stairs if you want,’ she says, sounding slightly hopeful.
Luke thinks of Escher’s stairs and they don’t seem more weird than the lift. ‘What’s the difference?’ he asks.
‘Well, the stairs will take longer, and we might meet people on them, and there’ll be dust and stuff. The lift will take about a minute. But I don’t mind taking the stairs. I’m not all that keen on lifts anyway.’
‘The lift’s fine. Unless . . .?’
‘What?’
‘If you’re scared . . .’
‘I’m trying not to be. Come on.’
Luke steps into the lift with Julie and waits. This really is like being in space. Julie presses a number on a panel and then the doors close. Luke hadn’t been sure what to expect – maybe something like the movement of the van – but as the lift starts to go upwards, he feels dizzy, then sick, then terrified.
‘Oh, God. Stop it doing that,’ he says to Julie.
‘Luke? What’s wrong?’
‘Stop it doing . . . Oh, Jesus . . .’
The lift stops and the doors open. Julie steps out. Luke means to follow her but somehow his legs don’t work. By the time she looks around, presumably to see where he is, the doors are closing again.
‘Help,’ he calls to her.
‘Press the button for opening the doors,’ she says.
He has no idea what she means. He looks at the panel, wondering what the numbers mean, and then the lift feels like it’s gone into freefall, and it’s going down. Luke feels like his body’s going down too but all his insides are going up and this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to him. He’s lost, in this moving cube, and he has no idea how to find Julie again. Gasping for breath, he looks at the numbers. The sensation of moving is starting to feel less horrible now but Luke’s still lost. He tries pressing ‘1’, thinking that might take him back to the place he stared this horrible up-and-down journey, but when the lift stops and the doors open, it looks exactly like the place he last saw Julie standing but she isn’t there. Luke tries some other numbers randomly, hoping that one of them is going to be the lucky-prize door and Julie’s going to be there behind it. But each number seems to take him to the same place and Julie is never there. Paralysed with frustration, Luke gives up pressing the numbers. They’re obviously not the key. The next time the lift stops, at the same floor again, he stumbles out, hardly able to breathe. Is he having an allergic reaction? Oh, God. He must keep moving.
There’s a sign saying ‘Stairs’. Luke remembers that Julie said you could get where they were going by the stairs. There’s an arrow pointing out of a door. Luke remembers teaching himself what arrows mean and proudly walks in the direction of the pointed bit rather than the thick end. So here are the stairs. There’s some going up, and some going down. This is fucked up. Which way should he go? Panicking, he goes down, running, and for a few moments this is amazing because he’s never had a space like this to run in before. But then the terror comes back; this is like that videogame he tried to play and he just wants to be back at the starting point. In desperation he calls, ‘Julie?’ and his voice sounds weird in this space, and there’s no reply.
A couple of flights of stairs later, there’s a sign saying ‘Lifts’. Julie was standing by the lifts, so Luke follows the arrow, again, still pleased he knows how. And there are the lifts he’s just come from. How can that be? This hotel must be circular, or something. Julie’s not there, of course, because she wasn’t there when Luke was just here, so that makes sense. The only thing that changes is the number on the wall. It said ‘3’ before. Now it says ‘2’. Maybe it changes depending on the amount of times he comes here, counting down, or something. Luke turns around and again sees the same ‘Stairs’ sign and the same arrow and again he follows it. This time he decides to go up. Again, when he follows the next sign for ‘Lifts’, he seems to be back where he started, except this time the number on the wall is ‘3’.
OK, Luke, think. He thinks. There must be a knack to this. This time he keeps going up. Maybe it’s better to stay constant and not change direction. At the next sign for the lifts, he almost goes down again, doubting his strategy, because he knows he’s going to end up again at the same horrible dead end. But instead, he follows the arrow and Julie’s there smiling.
‘Where did you go?’ she asks.
He runs towards her and embraces her. ‘Oh, God,’ he says. ‘That was horrible.’
All he can manage as Julie walks him to the room are words like: maze, lost, circle and Escher. He doesn’t think she understands what happened to him, but then maybe she’s never made that mistake and got lost in one of these weird places before. The card-key she’s holding has a number on it, which is obviously what Luke should have punched into the lift. If he’d had the card-key, he’d have known that.
Inside the room, Julie pulls the curtains and puts a blanket over the windows.
‘Why don’t you take off your helmet?’ she suggests.
While he does that, she fiddles around with things in the room, and pulls out something that doesn’t look like a bed, until suddenly it does look like a bed. That must be what a ‘pullout bed’ is. Luke takes off the whole space-suit and then lies on it. Julie takes off her trainers and sits cross-legged on the big double bed.
‘You poor thing,’ she says. ‘So what happened, exactly?’
Luke explains.
‘Oh, God, sorry,’ she says, laughing. ‘I know it’s not funny.’ Then she explains to him how hotels are laid out, and why every floor looks the same, and that Luke was in a different place every time – it just looked as if he wasn’t.
‘If you get lost again,’ she says. ‘I’ll always be at the number 0. OK?’
‘OK.’
‘That’ll always be our emergency plan.’
‘OK.’ Luke’s still worried.
‘It won’t happen again, Luke, honestly.’
‘I feel like an idiot now,’ he says. ‘I was terrified.’
‘I would have been too,’ Julie says. ‘If I didn’t know how hotels worked.’
Luke looks down at his feet. ‘I want to get better. I want to get better so much.’ He knows he sounds like he’s about to cry but he doesn’t care.
‘I know,’ Julie says, frowning. ‘Oh.’ She smiles suddenly. ‘I just remembered – when I was a kid I went to a department store for the first time, with my mother, and got lost. It’s so easy to do in those places. One minute my mother was looking at some skirts and it was boring, then I walked off somewhere, looking for the toys. All I could see were massive skirts and trousers like a forest around me and before I got to the toys it became clear that I was lost and had to get back, but whichever way I went, it was impossible to find my mother. Every time I thought I was going one way, I was actually going another way. I remember going on two escalators before one of the women who worked there asked if I was lost, and I cried and said yes. Then they gave me a lollipop and put out a special announcement for my mother to come and collect me.’
‘Why were the skirts so big?’ Luke asks.
‘They weren’t, silly. I was just really small at the time.’
‘Oh,’ Luke says. ‘Of course.’ Although he can’t really see it in his mind.
‘You just learn how to find your way around places, how the codes work. You’ll work it out, too, when you’re better.’
‘Do you think I’ll get better?’
‘Of course you will. Well, I hope you will.’ She doesn’t sound very sure. Maybe she’s just trying not to get his hopes up too much.
‘Jules?’ Luke says.
She looks at him. ‘Yeah?’
‘What do you think Wei will do?’
Luke’s been thinking about this for a while. He can see a room with a lot of white light and a shiny white examination table with a lamp. He can see himself lying on the table, covered with electrodes, and a man with goggles is looking at him, maybe adjusting something on his computer monitor, and there’s something in the room – some specialist equipment – making a low-pitched humming sound. The door to the room has a glass window. A nurse with a mask comes in and whispers something to the doctor, while Luke lies there being cured by the electrodes.
‘I don’t know,’ Julie says. ‘But I suppose you’ll find out soon.’
There’s a TV in the room, and Luke’s been aching for TV, but he doesn’t ask for it to be switched on. He has a funny feeling that he’s going to be upset if the TV here looks the same as his TV at home, but just as upset if it doesn’t. What is TV now anyway? Will it even make sense any more?
He lies down on the bed and closes his eyes. About five minutes later someone knocks on the door and he jumps. It’s Charlotte with the pizzas.
‘I’ve got some news,’ she says.