by Kevin Brooks
‘Is that how it was with you and Curtis?’
Eddi went quiet again, and I thought for a moment she wasn’t going to answer me, but finally I felt her stir and she let out a sigh. ‘He was all right at first,’ she told me, ‘but then he started getting a bit weird… you know, wanting to do all this kinky stuff, then getting mad at me when I wouldn’t do it…’ She sighed again. ‘The first time he beat me up, I thought he was going to die of shame afterwards. He was crying and sobbing, begging me to forgive him, promising me he’d never do it again…’
‘But he did?’
‘Yeah, it just got worse and worse. Even when I did do what he wanted me to, he’d still find an excuse to hit me. And the worst thing was, I just put up with it. Probably like his mother used to put up with his father. I just kidded myself that somehow it was all OK – he didn’t mean it, he loved me really… all that kind of shit.’
‘Is that why you grassed him up?’
‘Yeah… it was the only way I could think of to get him out of my life. I just couldn’t put up with it any more. He was killing me. Every day, he was slowly killing me. So I set him up, ratted him out… and I made sure the police had everything they needed to send him down. And they did. If he hadn’t got himself killed in some dumb prison fight, he’d still have another five years to serve.’
Neither of us said anything for a while. We were both still lying with our backs to each other, both still alone in the darkness. I wondered if I ought to do anything, or if Eddi might want me to do anything – say something, comfort her, ask her how she felt about things. But the silence seemed to be enough. It didn’t feel awkward or empty. It felt OK.
So I just left it there.
After a while, Eddi’s breathing gradually slowed into the steady rhythm of sleep, and I closed my eyes and tried to join her. I emptied my head. I tried to forget everything. I tried to sink down into the darkness. But, whatever I tried, it just didn’t work.
I couldn’t sleep.
I couldn’t stop thinking.
As Eddi lay sleeping beside me and the night traffic murmured on the road outside, my thoughts kept flashing on and off – black and white, red and silver, this and that…
This?
Or that?
Normal/abnormal?
Human/unhuman?
Animate/inanimate?
Conscious/unconscious?
Living/dead?
Fleshmetalplasticcarbonelectricchemical…?
Heartmachine?
Brainmachine?
Truthliestruthliestruthliestruth…?
Some time in the early hours of the morning, Eddi started twitching and whimpering in her sleep. I lay there listening to her, but as the whimpering became louder and her head started flinching from side to side, I sat up and looked down at her. She was all scrunched up – her eyes clamped shut, her limbs drawn tightly to her body – and she kept making strange little movements with her hands, kind of pawing at her face, as if she was trying to get rid of something.
I watched her, wondering what she was dreaming about. Terrible things? Terrible places? Morris? Curtis? Me?
I knew I ought to wake her up, but I didn’t have the courage. So I just sat there watching her, waiting for her to kill the dream, and gradually she began to calm down. The twitching eased off, her body relaxed and her whimpers slowly faded away. It took a while, but eventually she was quiet again.
I looked at the clock on the bedside table.
It was four o’clock in the morning.
There was no point in going to sleep now.
I sat there and waited for the alarm to go off.
19
The roads were quiet when we left the hotel in the morning, and we got to the airport with plenty of time to spare. Eddi parked the BMW in the long-stay car park, paying for thirty days, and we caught the courtesy bus to the terminal. As the bus drove out of the car park, I saw Eddi glance back at her car. I could tell by the look in her eyes that she didn’t think she was going to see it again.
It was still only five forty-five when we got to the terminal, but it was already surprisingly busy. Lots of people, lots of noise, lots of movement. There were queues all over the place, people milling around, policemen with guns, announcements blaring out every few seconds…
I said to Eddi, ‘I’ve never been in an airport before.’
She looked at me. ‘What – never?’
I shook my head. ‘I’ve never been on a plane. Never been abroad. I was supposed to be going on holiday next year with Bridget and Pete –’
‘Don’t say anything,’ she said, cutting me off.
‘What?’
‘When we’re checking in… don’t say anything. Just keep your mouth shut and leave everything to me. If anything goes wrong, we just turn round and walk away. We don’t run, we don’t panic. We just casually walk back the way we came. All right?’
‘Yeah…’
‘And keep your eyes open. I don’t think anyone’s going to be looking for us here, but it’s best not to take any chances. Have you got your passport ready?’
‘It’s in my pocket.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Robin Ames. What’s yours?’
‘Jennifer Nelson. And if anyone asks, when we get to Malaga we’re hiring a car and driving to Fuengirola. A friend of ours owns a villa there. We’re staying for two weeks. Our friend’s name is Elizabeth Hunt.’
‘And she’s got a brother called Isaac.’
Eddi gave me a look. ‘Like I said, just keep your mouth shut and leave everything to me.’
Nothing went wrong at the check-in desk. We showed our passports, the check-in girl looked at them and asked us where we were going. Eddi told her. She tapped her keyboard, checked our bookings, asked us how many bags we had. Eddi gave her the holdall. She weighed it, put some stickers on it, asked a few questions. And that was about it. She gave us our boarding passes, told us which gate to go to and wished us a pleasant flight.
Easy.
The next bit wasn’t so easy.
I followed Eddi across the airport and we joined the queue to get through the security gates. As the queue shuffled forward, I looked around at the other passengers, trying to work out what was going on… and after a while I got it. And that’s when I started worrying. There was an archway at the end of the queue where a man was checking everyone’s boarding passes, and beyond the archway there was another short queue, and at the end of that queue…
‘Is that a metal detector?’ I whispered to Eddi.
She nodded. ‘You have to take off your jacket and remove any metal items from your pockets – keys, phones, stuff like that. You put them in a tray and they go through the X-ray machine with your bag, then you walk through the metal detector.’
Shit, I thought. How am I going to get through a metal detector with what’s inside me? Filaments, wires, living metal. The shadows of silver bones…
‘What’s the matter?’ Eddi asked me.
I leaned in close to her and spoke quietly. ‘What if I’ve got another microchip inside me? It might set off the metal detector.’
She looked at me, then whispered back, ‘You said there wasn’t another one.’
‘No, I said I didn’t see another one. That doesn’t mean it’s not there. For all I know, there could be dozens of them.’
The queue shuffled forward again, and as we shuffled with it, I looked up and saw that we were almost at the archway now.
‘What am I going to do?’ I whispered to Eddi.
‘I don’t know… we can’t leave the queue now. It’ll look too suspicious. They’ve already seen us whispering. You’ll just have to carry on and hope for the best.’
‘Hope for the best?’
‘If they’re only computer chips, there won’t be much metal in them anyway, so they probably won’t set off the detector.’
‘Yeah, but what if they do?’
‘Tell them you broke your arm and it had to be set with a m
etal plate.’
‘They might want to check it –’
‘Boarding pass,’ she hissed. ‘Give him your boarding pass.’
I smiled at the man in the archway and gave him my boarding pass. He studied it, stared at me, then passed it back and ushered me through. I waited for Eddi, then we joined the queue for the X-ray machine and started shuffling forward again. There were only a few people ahead of us, so there wasn’t time to do anything now. Not that I knew what to do anyway. What could I do? I couldn’t run. I couldn’t hide. I couldn’t change anything.
‘Take off your jacket,’ Eddi told me.
I removed my jacket and searched through my pockets, but I didn’t have anything in them. I watched the people in front of us putting piles of stuff in a plastic tray – keys, phones, coins, jewellery – and I watched the security guard place the tray on a conveyor belt and slide it into the X-ray machine, then I watched the people walk through the metal detector. Nothing happened. Nothing beeped. They started collecting their bags and stuff from the conveyor belt.
And then it was our turn.
Eddi was behind me, so I went first. I gave the security man my bag and my jacket. He put them on to the conveyor belt and asked me if I had a mobile phone. I shook my head and he waved me towards the metal detector. And I knew I couldn’t hesitate now. The security guard on the other side was looking at me, nodding at me to come through. I couldn’t hesitate. I couldn’t think about what I was, what I was made of, what was going to happen to me when the alarms went off. I couldn’t think about anything. I just had to take a deep breath, compose myself and walk straight through…
So that’s what I did.
Holding my breath, trying to look normal, trying to ignore the sickening fear in my belly… I just walked straight through.
And nothing happened.
No beeps. No alarms. No nothing.
I’ve thought about it since, trying to work out how I got through without setting off any alarms, but I still don’t really know. One possible explanation is that whatever’s inside me simply wasn’t recognized by the metal detector. There are all kinds of metal and they don’t all show up on a metal detector. Calcium, for example, the stuff of human bones. Calcium is a metal. And human bones don’t show up on a metal detector. Another possibility is that I was protected by the shield inside me – that hard pliable shell that Casing had noticed when he cut me open… the seal beneath my skin, the flexible hinge… the thing that made my X-rays look normal.
Unless, of course, I am normal.
Physically normal.
But mentally abnormal.
But I know that I’m not.
I’ve seen what’s inside me. I’ve touched it. Sniffed it. Tasted it. I still don’t know what it is, but I know it’s there, and that’s all I can know.
Once I’d got through the metal detector, everything suddenly caught up with me – the lack of sleep, the fear, the panic, the momentary belief that everything was coming to an end – and my consciousness seemed to switch off. It was as if I’d been holding everything in, holding myself together, and now that I didn’t have to any more, there was no longer any need to think.
No need to be aware of anything.
No need to be anything.
I vaguely remember following Eddi down a series of corridors, showing my passport to someone, then sitting down in some kind of waiting area… but it all seems clouded in a haze of numbness. I was there, but I wasn’t really there. I don’t recall anything about getting on the plane, and all I can remember after we’d boarded was sitting down and asking Eddi how to put the safety belt on, and then I closed my eyes and went to sleep.
20
I was still fast asleep when the plane landed at Malaga, so I have no recollection of the flight at all. One minute I was sitting on a plane in Leeds… the next thing I knew, Eddi was nudging me and telling me to wake up and I was opening my eyes to a whole new world. The plane had just stopped in the parking area, so there wasn’t a lot to see, but I could still feel the difference. Different skies, different light, different air. Everything felt different. And new.
It felt good.
‘All right?’ Eddi asked me.
‘Yeah…’ I said sleepily. ‘I think so.’
‘You were dreaming,’ she said.
‘Was I?’
She smiled. ‘Twitching like a puppy dog.’
‘I didn’t embarrass myself, did I?’
‘In what way?’
‘I don’t know… sometimes you do embarrassing things when you’re asleep, don’t you?’
‘What, you mean like drooling and farting, mumbling to yourself, saying things you shouldn’t say… that kind of thing?’
‘Yeah, that kind of thing.’
‘No,’ she said, smiling again, ‘you didn’t embarrass yourself.’
Although I’d already started feeling good about being in a different place, it wasn’t until we’d stepped off the plane and were walking along the airport tarmac that the full effect of it really hit me. The smells, the sights, the sounds. The people. The feel of the place. The warmth. The dryness. The clarity.
It was amazing. I felt like a bright-eyed kid in a toy shop, gazing around in wonder at everything.
There was a mountain in the distance.
I’d never seen a mountain before.
There were clear blue skies.
White buildings.
Winter sunshine.
I didn’t feel tired any more.
We didn’t have any trouble getting out of the airport. After we’d collected Eddi’s holdall from the baggage claim, there was a quick passport check, and that was it. No problems at all. We found the exit and went outside and Eddi lit a cigarette.
It was hard to believe it was the end of November. The skies were cloudless, the air was warm, people were dressed in T-shirts and shorts.
I felt a bit overdressed in my plain black suit – uncomfortable and hot. I looked over at Eddi. She’d put some of her studs and rings back in, and she was wearing strappy leather sandals and a sheer white cotton dress. As she stood there smoking her cigarette, the hazy winter sunlight cut straight through the dress, revealing the pale silhouette of her body. She didn’t look overdressed. Hot, maybe… but not overdressed.
‘Am I all right like this?’ I asked her.
‘Like what?’
‘The suit… it doesn’t look too out of place, does it?’
She looked me up and down. ‘No… it looks good. You look fine. We’ll get you some new clothes in Nerja.’
‘Where?’
‘Nerja… it’s the nearest town to Tejeda.’ She put out her cigarette and picked up her bags. ‘Come on, we’d better get going.’
We walked from the airport to a car-hire place and half an hour later we were racing along a pale dusty road in a little black open-top Jeep. The road ran alongside the sea, and as the warm air rushed through our hair I could smell the scents of the ocean – salt, sand, freshly cooked fish. The sea was bluer than anything I’d ever seen before – a smooth blue sparkle, shining in the sun, like a silver-rimmed slice of perfect blue sky. There were mountains in the distance, unfamiliar plants and trees, flowers and birds. There were white stone houses clinging to the flanks of earth-coloured hills.
We didn’t speak for a while. There was no need to say anything. We just drove on in contented silence – past small towns and villages, past beaches and tourist resorts, over stone bridges, through long dark tunnels that cut through the hills. And the further we went, the more I liked it. The dusty brown earth, the greys and the greens, the hillside orchards, the cooling blue sea. The quiet simplicity of whiteness.
It was fine. Everything was fine. Even the traffic was enjoyable. The sound of the passing cars, the kids on their scooters and motorbikes, smiling and laughing and beeping their horns.
It was all right.
For the first time in ages, I felt OK.
‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ said Eddi.
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She was right. It was beautiful.
It was almost beautiful enough to make me forget everything.
We got to Nerja around midday. It’s a small coastal town, about thirty miles east of Malaga, wedged between the Mediterranean and the Sierra de Tejeda mountains.
‘It gets a bit touristy during the summer,’ Eddi told me, ‘but it’s not too bad. There aren’t too many pubs and fish-and- chip shops yet.’
We dropped the Jeep off at a car-hire office, then walked into town and found a taxi rank.
‘Al Tejeda, por favor,’ Eddi told the driver as we got in the back.
He glanced at us in the rear-view mirror, then nodded his head and pulled away.
It wasn’t far to Tejeda.
A few miles out of Nerja, we turned off a roundabout and started heading up a steep winding lane into the hills. It was a treacherous road – tight bends, no markings, no barriers – but the taxi driver didn’t seem to notice. He just kept his foot down and drove. I didn’t like looking down at the steep rocky drop below us, so I kept my eyes on the hills. Although the rocky slopes were mostly dusty and barren, they were dotted here and there with little oases of colour – whitewashed houses with flowered gardens, holiday villas, bright-blue swimming pools glinting in the light. There were cacti too – broad-leaved giants with vicious-looking spines – and orchards of leafless fruit trees. I breathed in. The windows of the taxi were open and I could smell the hillside air. It smelled sweet and earthy, ancient and dry.
After twenty minutes or so, the taxi veered off the road and headed down into a shallow valley. Up ahead, I could see a quiet little village nestling in the foothills of the mountains, overlooking the sea.
‘Is that it?’ I asked Eddi. ‘Is that Tejeda?’
She nodded.
I gazed around as we entered the village. It had steep cobbled streets, little shops, pretty white houses, a small stone church.
It had a silence.
An emptiness.
A feeling of home.
‘¿A dónde?’ the taxi driver asked Eddi.
She told him where to go, and a few moments later he pulled up at the side of the road and we both got out.
