Fallinggggggg ….
He was trying to implement the unusual circumstances and events process with a watch of seriously mute controllers and an air traffic monitor that was completely blank. Through the window, the aerodrome was operating without any control. Kenny stared at him from the left-hand seat and—
Bee-beep, bee-beep. Thirty minutes had passed in an instant. The phone’s alarm dragged him awake. His eyelids fluttered and he began to swim through the final flickering images of the Stansted control tower.
He listened to the piercing, unrelenting alarm, giving himself time to orientate, to feel secure, waiting to welcome the approaching clean feeling of being awake and alert from the miracle midday-sleep fix. Slowly, he swung his legs around so he could sit on the edge of the bed, bee-beep, bee-beep, reaching for his phone, bee-beep, and taking three attempts to drag along the arrow that would clear the alarm.
He blinked in the daylight. Rubbed his eyes, his mouth, ran his fingers through his hair.
Finally, he pushed himself upright and headed for the bathroom. By the time he’d taken his second white pill of the day, brushed his teeth and washed with cold water, he was in gear. He could hear Ethan downstairs, indulging in the joys of yelling, and remembered his promise. Walking a lively three-year-old to the swings behind the village hall would be an OK thing to do on an autumn afternoon, until he got busy with real life again.
But first, he woke up his iPad, clicked on the contact us tab on the Port Manor Hotel website and took the number for Isabel Jones: finance and premises. Picked up his phone and moved into phase two of his life: getting Isabel Jones’s direct line, introducing himself and pitching straight in. ‘I’d like to speak to you about the lease that Nicolas Notten currently holds on The Stables Treatment Centre. I’m interested in taking it over.’ He knew from earlier internet research that Isabel Jones, having worked for the hotel for years, had married one of the two Pattinson brothers who owned Port Manor. He liked the fact that she still used her maiden name. It suggested that she wished to be seen as an independent force.
‘I see.’ A note of surprise in her pleasant, assured voice. A pause for thought. ‘Do you have some reason to feel Mr Notten might be agreeable to that?’
‘I’ve approached him and he’s prepared to talk. But my interest depends upon whether the hotel will consider leasing or renting me the land on that side of the park, too – from the treatment centre down to the lake, that whole area.’
Now she did sound surprised. ‘The big slope? It’s not an area we have plans for … would you like to come in and tell us yours?’
Chapter Ten
Liza’s thoughts had whirled for days. And the more they whirled, the more her new idea – her new, new one; not her old, new one – filled her imagination with bursts of bright-future colours: if Imogen and Fenella didn’t want to go into partnership with her then she would take over the centre’s lease herself. Fen and Immi would pay their rent to her, she would be rid of the Nicolas encumbrance and she could run The Stables exactly as she wanted.
After wakeful nights and distracted days, she’d confided in Cleo and Justin, who were not only happy to help her create a back-of-an-envelope business plan but gratifyingly confident in her ability to force the centre into profitability. ‘Without Nicolas to hold you back, the centre will take on your personality,’ Cleo enthused.
‘Dippy?’ grinned Justin.
‘Innovative.’ Cleo had frowned him down. ‘Sparky. Different. Fun.’
With her self-image as a whacky young entrepreneur enshrined, Liza fairly skipped into work on Friday morning. Nicolas’s office door was shut. She frowned at it. It had been shut all day yesterday, too. Until recently, Nicolas had generally been visible, listening through his half-open door to what went on in the centre’s daily business, trundling forth occasionally to chat with the clients, though Liza doubted that a rotund sweaty guy being a phoney was an effective way to encourage repeat business.
Her hand hovered to knock.
But, ‘Liza, phone!’ Pippa called, and she had to backtrack to the front desk to explain reflexology to a prospective client.
Call over, Liza glanced down her client list for the day. And halted. ‘Dominic Christy’s made another appointment.’
‘He rang and booked your last slot.’ Pippa didn’t pause in clicking her computer mouse, but gave a little smile. ‘He’s nice, isn’t he?’
‘Mm.’ Liza was non-committal. ‘I hadn’t picked up a returning-client vibe from him.’ Though, on examining the idea, she had no objection to seeing him again … ‘I need to do some reading before he arrives. I’ll do it at lunch time.’
The morning slid by. After her last client, Liza took out her sandwich, opened her laptop and typed ‘Narcolepsy’ into the search engine, selecting a nationally recognised site from the page of suggestions. Her eyes flicked down the information, skimming neurological disorder … chronic sleep disorder, until she reached a succinct explanation. Narcolepsy is characterised by Excessive Daytime Sleepiness (EDS), whether or not night-time sleep is adequate. A person with narcolepsy is likely to be drowsy or fall asleep or suffer fatigue throughout the day, including at times and in places that might be inappropriate and inconvenient. EDS may occur several times a day, with almost no warning, and be irresistible. Typically, naps refresh the sufferer for a few hours. Sudden involuntary sleep and microsleeps are common. Drowsiness may persist for prolonged periods.
Night-time sleep may be fragmented, with frequent awakenings … Much about narcolepsy is yet to be understood … Narcolepsy is a spectrum disorder … Narcolepsy cannot, presently, be cured … Other sites repeated similar clinical yet superficial information and several linked her to a message board called PWNsleep – PWN standing for ‘people with narcolepsy’ – which obviously told it as it really was.
Tenzeds: I hate the cataplexy. It’s OK if I laugh and take a light hit, everything just goes a bit sparkly and maybe I slur my words. But I had one really bad episode and hit the floor in front of unsympathetic spectators. Made me feel vulnerable.
Sleepingmatt: Yeah, you might need new meds. Or stay away from unsympathetic people …
And:
Nightjack: N much worse, at the moment. Falling asleep in meetings.
Tenzeds: I didn’t know it could get worse!!! Depressing.
Then:
Brainwave: Terrifying dream about a monster on my chest. Couldn’t make myself move so I could wake up and breathe. Hate this shit.
Inthebatcave: Always right on top of you, aren’t they? I think—
‘Liza, your two o’clock appointment.’
Liza jumped, jolted back into her workaday world. She managed a smile for the client, lovely old Jeanie Rose, who lived in Port-le-bain and had reflexology whenever she fancied a treat. ‘Hello, Jeanie, come in.’ She shut her computer, brain jangling with what she’d read. Information, speculation, but few absolutes. ‘Take a seat. How are you?’ She listened, automatically making notes. Dominic’s life must be a battle against the soup of daytime sleep attacks, night-time wakefulness and terrifyingly lucid dreams.
He didn’t really show it, much. How hard was that?
Liza had a break before Dominic’s appointment and found herself gazing at Nicolas’s closed door with a growing need for action. Nicolas was lurking in there. She’d heard the rise and fall of his voice on the telephone. The door was an obstacle between her and her goal of making the treatment centre a wowie place that attracted flocks of clients.
She crossed the corridor and knocked.
‘What?’
Not encouraging, but, obeying her impulse to act, she entered anyway. Nicolas was at his computer, documents scattered as if they’d been flung on the desk around him.
Slowly, he transferred his gaze to her. ‘Can this wait?’ he asked, tonelessly. ‘I’ve got a lot on.’
She hesitated. He looked hollowed out with fatigue, his hair hanging, shirt collar wilting, and her instinct was to apologise a
nd withdraw. But what if the reason he’d hidden himself away was that he was staring bankruptcy in the face? Her wanting to buy the lease might avert disaster. She would be the cavalry, galloping to the rescue! Pinning in place her most winning smile, she sat down. ‘Can we talk about the centre?’
A twist of the lips. ‘What is it that’s going to make our fortunes this time? Pet pampers? Moon therapy for werewolves?’
Liza abandoned the winning smile. ‘I’ve come up with a solution that will mean I can do my thing and you can do yours.’
Interest warred with distrust in his eyes. ‘Go on.’
She breathed in through her nose and allowed it out very slowly, to combat a nervy suspicion that what had seemed so sensible moments before would sound ridiculous, now. She lifted her chin. ‘As things don’t seem to be going well for you, I was wondering whether you’d like me to take over the lease? I think that with only therapists here and a few new ideas I could make it work—’
And then Nicolas was on his feet, hank of hair quivering over his forehead and spittle gathering unattractively at the corners of his mouth. ‘You! Buy my lease? Buy. Don’t say “take over”, as if it has no value! What with?’
Liza scrambled up, feeling safer if she wasn’t being yelled down at. She swallowed, heart hammering. ‘A loan, I expect. I’d need to know what the costs would be so I could talk to my bank manager.’ She had no idea who her bank manager was, but was sure she must have one. She had bank accounts, ergo she must have a bank manager.
He sneered. ‘Suddenly you’re the big business woman, are you? What the fuck do you know about running a business?’
She blinked. ‘I already run—’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t call being a self-employed reflexologist “running a business”. How the fuck do you think you could make a success of this place, when I can’t?’
Fury flamed through her. ‘Because you’re the problem! You’re deadwood, Nicolas – you put nothing in but you want to take plenty out! A child could see what’s wrong.’
‘A child?’ he spat. ‘So you do qualify. Fluffy, airheaded, pie-in-the-sky, too-big-for-her-boots little blonde with big ideas. An overactive imagination doesn’t pay the bills, Liza.’
‘Evidently,’ she returned, sweetly, ‘neither does the total lack of one.’
Dominic sat in Miranda’s passenger seat, trying not to feel like a spare part as she drove him to The Stables, Ethan singing gustily from his red child seat in the back. ‘Freddy frog, Freddy frog, what on earf you finkin’ of?’
Dominic grinned in admiration. ‘Great song, Ethan.’ Then, to his cousin. ‘Thanks, yet again, Miranda. I’ll walk back.’ Miranda never complained but he hated having to inconvenience her, hated having to plan ahead rather than hop into his car and drive wherever whim took him. The loss of his driving licence was a steaming frustration.
‘Will you be in for dinner?’ She turned the car in the stable yard.
‘Freddy Frog, Freddy Frog,’ yelled Ethan.
‘I think I might leave you guys to have a family evening together and call in at the pub for a steak.’
‘Time for a meat fix?’ She rolled her eyes, but grinned.
‘Something like that.’ He hopped out, ‘Bye, Ethan!’ He shut the door on another less-than-tuneful request to know what on earf Freddy Frog was finkin’ of, and headed for the black door in the corner of the yard.
This time, when Pippa showed him into Liza’s treatment room, Liza was already in it, her back to the door as she arranged the contents of her small, square, white trolley. Her hair was twisted up at the back, only the finest of blonde strands lying softly against her neck. Although she’d decreed the dark green uniform ‘gross’, he’d developed quite a fondness for it, not just because it had featured in a better-than-usual dream, but because it followed her particularly neat little hourglass figure so well. ‘Hello, Dominic,’ she said, without looking around. ‘Take a seat. We’ll talk about your last treatment.’
He hesitated. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing.’ She was rubbing sanitising gel into her hands, over and over, until every germ must surely be lying on its back with its feet in the air.
Slowly, he sat. ‘Either you’ve got hay fever, a cold, or you’re crying.’
‘I’m not crying.’ She turned slowly, eyes and nose pink. ‘I’ve been crying. But now I’m fine and we can begin your treatment. Did you have any effects after I saw you last time?’
‘Why have you been crying?’
‘I had a row with Nicolas.’ She took her seat and picked up a pen. ‘But I can recover while I give the treatment – women can multitask.’ Her smile was watery. ‘Did you notice anything at all after your last treatment?’
Blotches showed through her make-up, but she obviously wanted to ignore little things like that, so he went along with it. ‘I had a good night, after my treatment, which always helps me the next day.’ He knew it was what she wanted to hear and, coincidentally, it had the added bonus of being true.
Her smile flickered into warmth. ‘Really? Is that what’s made you decide to proceed with further treatments?’
He shrugged. ‘You recommended a course of at least six treatments so assessing the benefits after only one would be irrational.’ He hoped and your hands + my feet = incredible didn’t show on his face.
‘Great. I’ve done some reading on narcolepsy.’ Then she paused, uncertainly.
‘It’s pretty crap,’ he supplied. ‘But I don’t let it beat me. Or even beat me up.’ No need to go back over how it had felt to know that he, a brilliant, decisive controller, might not be able to process simultaneous inputs. How the impossibility of rotating through morning, afternoon and night shifts filled him with despair. His anxiety that his life was happening without him.
‘It’s no wonder you want to take control of things.’ Liza glanced at her notes, but added nothing to them. ‘If you’d like to take your shoes and socks off and make yourself comfortable on the couch, I’ll begin your treatment.’ And, finally, they were where he wanted to be, with her cool smooth hands on his feet as he watched her through slitted lids. Her blotches were fading and her eyes bore only a hint of pink, but he felt a wave of anger at Nicolas.
Then the side of her palm smoothing his instep melted him into a pool of bliss and the pads of her fingers along the base of his toes etched a beatific smile across his face. He closed his eyes. How many treatments had she suggested? Six? He could manage six thousand.
At the end of the treatment, Liza had to give Dominic a little shake, the bones of his shoulder hard beneath her fingers. She kept herself busy for several moments, while he widened his eyes and rubbed his face, before giving him a tall drink of cold water and relating the reflexes she’d picked up – pretty much the same as last time. He listened as he sipped, dark blond hair tumbling above his eyes.
Then he put down the glass and moved off the couch and went to the chair to slide back into his shoes and socks. ‘I’m your last appointment, aren’t I?’
‘Yes, I’m not working this evening.’
He tied his laces and propped his elbows on his knees. ‘I’m going to The Three Fishes for a steak. Why don’t you come along, and tell me what happened to make you cry?’
She darted him a glance. His grey eyes gleamed and she felt a lick of heat. ‘I’m fine now. And you shouldn’t drink alcohol after a treatment.’
He smiled. ‘I won’t, if you’ll be there to keep an eye on me. Thing is, I think I’ve dropped you in it, with Nicolas. If I did, then I need to understand what happened so that I can put it right.’
‘How could you drop me in it?’ But then she glanced at the treatment room door, close enough to Nicolas’s office that conversation might be overheard. ‘OK, let’s talk in the pub. But I have things to do, first.’
‘I can wait.’
It took her only half an hour to prepare her treatment room for the morning – she and Fenella were working this Saturday. Dominic did stuff on h
is phone as she moved towels from the washer to the dryer and put more in to wash, wiped her dispensers, laid out fresh towels on the couch, folded the rest into her cupboard and fetched her coat, ready to drive him back to Middledip.
Outside, he shoehorned himself into her Smart car with exaggerated difficulty. ‘Nice golf buggy.’
She sighed as she strapped herself in. ‘When I can pop into spaces other cars can’t, the smartarse remarks tend to stop.’
He grinned. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to hit a nerve. It’s, um, compact. But don’t let Ethan see it or he might put it in his toy box.’
Even if she’d been driving a stretch limousine, space in the car park beside The Three Fishes wasn’t an issue so early in the evening. The bar was more than half-empty and Dominic led the way through it, under the arch of rust-coloured stone to the dining area, where it was even quieter. Just one other couple looked up from their menus to say hello. Liza noticed the woman’s eyes on Dominic as he shrugged off his jacket and hung it on the back of his seat.
Tubb, whose mouth turned down at the corners when he smiled, not that he smiled much, brought the menus and took their order, and Liza waited until he’d delivered tall glasses of water to the table before demanding, ‘How do you think you’ve dropped me in it?’
Dominic’s eyebrow curled in a frown. ‘A sleep attack was trying to get me and I somehow repeated what you’d said about him needing new ideas. He pounced on it, and said that I’d obviously been talking to you. Which was true. I didn’t come up with a way to deny it and he … vented a little.’
‘Oh.’ She absorbed the information. ‘He did seem unjustifiably angry today.’
‘Sorry. Again.’ He smiled. ‘I seem to have the knack for making things awkward for you. Would it help if I talked to him?’
Sinking down in her seat, Liza made a face. ‘Relations between Nicolas and I have been deteriorating. I think he’s a stickin-the-mud, he thinks I’m ridiculous. And, today, I thought he was a sweaty, annoying little tit and he thought I was a fluffy, airheaded, pie-in-the-sky, too-big-for-her-boots little blonde with big ideas.’
Dream a Little Dream Page 9
