Logging Off

by Spalding, Nick

  Grace had the best of intentions bringing us here, and I don’t want her to think she was in the wrong.

  I wrap an arm around her. ‘Come on, it’s OK. Let’s see what rides they have. Maybe we’ll find one we like.’ I am surprised by the enthusiasm I manage to inject into my voice. When I get home, I might contact a few talent agents. I obviously have a career on the stage ahead of me.

  Grace offers me a rather dubious smile, but allows me to guide her towards a large map that stands in the centre of the plaza.

  Everything on it looks awful.

  I very much doubt the Mega Rapids are – and Mount Terror should probably be renamed Mount Mild Heat Exhaustion. Star Warriors sounds like the kind of Star Wars rip-off that they had to spend months working on to make sure it didn’t break any copyright laws, and I’m not going anywhere near that thing called The Blitzer. It looks enormous, dreadful and the kind of ride that would have me yakking up over an entire nursery school of four-year-olds.

  In one corner of the enormous sign is a splash panel that reads ‘Don’t forget to include the hashtag #ThornManorIsOpen in your social media posts!’

  I roll my eyes. Because you can’t enjoy a day out at a theme park unless you tell all of your friends on social media about it, can you?

  I know I sound like a moany old bastard, but it’s approaching thirty degrees on this unseasonably hot summer’s day, and I am surrounded by sticky things.

  And their parents.

  I look at Grace, who is clearly as distressed as I am.

  ‘Shall we get out of here?’ I venture.

  Grace nods. ‘Oh yes. I think that would be a lovely idea.’ Then her face falls. ‘But I don’t think I can face that car park again. Not yet.’

  I shudder again. The traffic jam is probably still hideous out there. She’s absolutely right.

  ‘I tell you what, how about we go find a cold drink, have a sit down and decide whether we want to stay here any longer or not?’ I suggest. ‘If nothing else, it should give the car park a chance to thin out a bit.’

  Grace nods. ‘I am very thirsty. That sounds like a good idea, Andy.’

  With that decision made, we take ourselves off in the direction of a small concession called Quench, which sits close to the ridiculous-looking monstrosity that is The Blitzer. Quench sounds like the kind of place you can pick up a very large cold drink, and that would be just about perfect right at this moment.

  I pick us each up a Coca-Cola slushy and we sit down on a bench overlooking The Blitzer, which has a track that loops high over our heads in stomach-clenching fashion.

  The ride has a very obvious arctic theme. The entrance is covered in a lot of large, pointy ice crystals and snow. It all looks vaguely ridiculous under this hot summer sun, it has to be said.

  The Blitzer logo is horrible, as well. All silly jagged points and snowflakes. About as subtle as a half brick. They should have had me in to do it. I would have done a much more aesthetically pleasing job.

  ‘Looks like they’re gearing up for something,’ Grace remarks as she unconsciously unbuttons the top of her shirt, letting it fall open almost to the top of her bra.

  I would find this unbearably sexy in other circumstances, but my penis is far too sweaty and anxious right now to properly appreciate it.

  The Coke slushy is rather glorious, though, and is managing to take the edge off my overheated internal workings.

  I look over at where Grace is indicating and see that a section of the area in front of The Blitzer’s entrance has been roped off, and a large queue is forming. ‘Looks like it,’ I agree, and continue to suck on my slushy as we watch proceedings unfold.

  A young woman in a business suit emerges from the entrance to The Blitzer, with two old, rich-looking men standing either side of her. The woman begins to speak to the crowd in front of her, and while I can’t hear every word she says because we’re not quite close enough, I do pick up the gist of what she’s saying.

  ‘Looks like they’re opening the Blitzer ride now,’ I say to Grace as I take another grateful suck on the straw buried in my slushy. ‘Those people have exclusive tickets for the first go on it. Lucky them.’

  ‘I’d rather have angry hornets inserted into me sideways,’ Grace remarks, also taking a gulp of cold, refreshing slush.

  I nod in agreement.

  The woman concludes her speech, and the crowd start to file into the ride’s entrance. As they do this, I spot a guy who seems very nervous, walking alongside a pretty blonde girl. He looks like he’d probably rather have hornets inserted into him sideways as well, but his girlfriend looks very enthusiastic about the whole thing, so he’s got no choice but to brave The Blitzer and hope to come out of the other side unscathed.

  I give Grace a grateful look.

  I’m very happy the lady I’m with today doesn’t have that same kind of enthusiasm for such an awful-looking contraption. I’m not sure I could stand it. I’d probably let her go on it on her own, and stay down here, sucking on my slushy like the big coward that I am, to be honest.

  The small crowd of lucky first riders have now disappeared into The Blitzer’s bowels, leaving the plaza we’re sitting in a little less crowded. From off to the left, close to where the ride lets its victims out after they’ve been hurled around for three minutes, I see a group of four men appear, all of them holding musical instruments and dressed in lederhosen.

  ‘What on earth?’ I remark, as they start to set up on a small stage just off to one side of the exit.

  ‘That’s not something you see every day,’ Grace says, with a grin on her face.

  ‘Absolutely,’ I agree, also smiling. It’s the first time either of us have smiled since we got in the car this morning.

  This is a very odd turn of events, and no mistake.

  Grace and I sit back on our bench a bit, to await developments.

  Developments occur a few minutes later – as The Blitzer hurtles through the first of what will no doubt be millions of loops around its incredibly high track – when we see the woman in the business suit signal to the strange-looking band, who pick up their instruments. They are all of the brass variety and include a tuba, two trumpets and a trombone.

  ‘Good grief. What kind of racket are they going to make with that lot?!’ Grace exclaims.

  ‘Not a bloody clue,’ I reply – wishing I could ask Siri what she thinks. Siri would know. Siri knows all.

  The band play a few warm-up notes on their instruments, and as they do, a crowd starts to instantly coalesce outside The Blitzer’s entrance. No wonder – it’s a little hard to ignore a tuba. A tuba is not a thing that can ever pass unnoticed when it is played in public.

  Curiosity overcomes me. ‘Come on, let’s go and see what’s going on.’

  Grace nods excitedly and gets up from the bench with me.

  We hurry over to where the crowd is really starting to get thick with people, most of whom are now holding up their phones and getting pictures of the band.

  Usually I’d be extremely bothered by being in such close proximity to so many strangers, but I have to know what this business with the strange-looking Germanic band is all about.

  Grace and I are jostled somewhat by the growing throng but are close enough to the front of it to see the nervous young man I noticed earlier emerge from The Blitzer’s exit with his blonde girlfriend in tow. He’s shielding his eyes from the sun, and still looks very nervous.

  Funny. The ride’s over. He should be a lot more relaxed.

  He’s not, though. If anything he looks more petrified than he was when he went in. Must have been a horrible experience. I’m glad I’m not doing it.

  One of the trumpet players spots the nervous man and his girlfriend, and looks over at the woman in the suit. Now she’s a lot closer, I can see that she wears a Thorn Manor name tag that tells me her name is Amy. Obviously one of the park’s senior staff, from the looks of her.

  Amy nods feverishly and points at the nervous man.

>   The large, red-faced trumpet player smiles, nods and draws in a deep breath. ‘Eins! Zwei! Drei! Vier! ’ he screams, and the band start to play what I can only describe as the sound of a large brass band falling down a flight of stairs.

  Large stairs. Many, many large, hard stairs.

  It’s awful.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Grace cries and puts her hands over her ears.

  The crowd around us thickens even more as people come over to see what all the fuss is about.

  The fuss is a cacophony the likes of which could cause severe mental distress if experienced for too long. If anyone ever has the desire to waterboard me, they can just play this hideousness on a loop instead.

  I see the nervous man hurry over to the band and start pleading with them to stop. They eventually do, and he asks them who the hell they are.

  There follows a brief conversation with the nervous man – whose name is Oliver, I think – wherein we discover that this is clearly not the band he wanted to see here today. He looks deeply distressed now, the poor bugger.

  When his girlfriend comes over, Oliver tries to put a brave face on.

  ‘Oh no. I think I know what’s going on here,’ Grace says, her hand going to her mouth.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s going to propose.’

  ‘Is he? How the hell do you know that?’

  ‘The band. The set-up. All of it. He said it should have been a different lot of musicians. A jazz band. That’s why he looks so upset. He was going to propose to his girlfriend.’ Grace has gone a bit watery-eyed at this revelation. I would give her a hug were it not for the fact that we’re packed into a tight crowd of people.

  Then the trumpeter in the lederhosen hands Oliver a small ring box, and I know that Grace is 100 per cent right.

  My heart starts to beat a little faster as I put myself in this chap’s shoes.

  To ask someone to marry you in such a public place is a thing I could never do. I absolutely admire his courage.

  I’m truly hoping his girlfriend says yes.

  He then drops to both knees – which is a bit weird. He must still be very nervous. And then he does indeed pop the question to the girl, whose name is apparently Samantha.

  I hear the crowd around me all take an audible deep breath in. I do the same.

  ‘No,’ Samantha replies, in a deeply distressed voice, and we all let out a collective ooooooh noise as the shock of it hits us.

  ‘Oh no,’ Grace says, hand going to her mouth again.

  My heart sinks.

  Poor, poor chap.

  I see his jaw go slack with absolute horror.

  When Oliver eventually manages to speak, it’s just a few nonsense syllables.

  Samantha repeats that she doesn’t want to marry him, and starts to back away quickly.

  As she does, Oliver continues to make strange, unintelligible noises. His brain has clearly shut itself down.

  I can sympathise. This happens to me a lot too.

  Though never in circumstances quite as awful as this, I’m pleased to say.

  Oh Christ . . . now Samantha is telling him that she thinks they should split up!

  ‘Bloody hell,’ remarks Grace, who looks absolutely horrified.

  Samantha continues to back away from Oliver, and now I can see that she’s more or less headed towards where Grace and I are standing.

  The crowd around us, sensing that it’s the right thing to do, start to part, forcing Grace and I to do the same. I hate been jostled like this, but I’m so wrapped up in this disastrous marriage proposal, I don’t have time to think about it.

  Samantha walks right past me and Grace, and starts to hurry away from the plaza as fast as she can. We watch her go, still gobsmacked by what’s just happened.

  And then, we all slowly look back at Oliver, who remains on his knees in front of us, looking like his world has just collapsed. Which, of course, it just has.

  ‘Oh my, that poor man,’ Grace says in a distraught tone.

  I see her hand go to her locket – as per usual at times when she’s feeling stressed or worried.

  Her eyes widen in horror when there’s no locket to be found.

  ‘Andy! Andy! My locket!’ she hisses at me as she starts to pat around her neck feverishly.

  I instantly forget all about Oliver and his problems.

  I have my own to worry about now.

  ‘Where is it?’ I cry, grabbing Grace’s blouse collar and peering down her back. She frantically continues to pat around her midriff. To no avail, though. She’s only wearing a thin white shirt and a bra. There’s nothing else for the locket to have got caught in.

  A high, forlorn trombone note plays across the plaza from one of the members of the strange German band as Grace and I start to frantically search around on the ground.

  I begin to push other members of the crowd away, earning me a few dark looks and cries of outrage.

  ‘My girlfriend’s lost her locket!’ I tell them. ‘Has anybody seen it?’

  I get a lot of head shakes, and my panic starts to rise.

  We have to find the locket.

  I’ve known Grace long enough to know that it’s the most precious thing in her life. Losing it will be too much for her to bear.

  ‘Andy! Where is it? Please find it!’ she pleads with me as she continues to scan the paving slabs below our feet for signs of her heirloom.

  The crowd thankfully start to spread out a little as we do this.

  I look up to see that Oliver has disappeared as well. The show appears to be over.

  That show, anyway.

  Now there’s a new one for everyone to enjoy.

  The Disappearing Locket Show, featuring Andy Bellows and his highly stressed-out girlfriend.

  ‘Has anybody seen a locket?’ I call out again to the people around us. ‘A locket? A gold locket? Quite small?’

  Again, nobody answers me with anything remotely positive.

  Oh God. Has someone stolen it?

  Did somebody lift it off Grace in the crowd while we all witnessed Oliver’s downfall?

  That would be even worse than it just falling off! It means it’s gone forever!

  I look up at Grace’s face and see tears in her eyes.

  My panic levels spike higher.

  ‘Excuse me! Has anyone seen a gold locket?!’ I cry again. The stress in my voice has made it rise at least two octaves.

  Nobody is helping!

  Nobody has it!

  Nobody can tell me what happened to the damn thing!

  I start to move away from where Grace is searching, back in the direction of the bench we were sitting on. Perhaps it fell off earlier? Maybe when we were sitting down?

  I go over and check around the bottom of the bench.

  No dice.

  No locket.

  I comb the ground around me as I make my way back to where Grace is still searching. As I get back to her, I can see that her face is now stained with tears.

  ‘Oh, Andy! I can’t find it! I can’t find it!’ she cries in anguish.

  ‘We will! I promise!’ I reply, but with a sinking heart. We’re surrounded by people. Any one of whom could have stolen the locket. Or picked it up and carried it away with them, not knowing whose it was.

  But I can’t tell Grace that. I can’t let her think she won’t see it again!

  And so I start to search the ground once more, desperately hoping that the locket will appear and put an end to this horrible turn of events.

  An hour later, and there’s still no sign of the locket.

  We’ve been back over all of our steps today. Right out to the car and back. We hadn’t been in the park long enough to move around much, but we still covered enough ground for the locket to have fallen off somewhere I might not have scanned.

  I went to the Thorn Manor lost property office, of course. The theme park is still so new, there was nothing in it whatsoever – including Grace’s locket.

  I asked at the nearby concess
ion stands as well. Still nothing.

  Everything I’ve tried has come up empty.

  Grace has now gone from panicked and distraught to grey-faced and listless. She’s sitting on the bench we first came to, staring at her feet.

  I am sitting next to her, feeling absolutely useless.

  We should never have come here!

  Never have come to this stupid theme park, full of these stupid people!

  I slam my hand down on the arm of the bench, making Grace start.

  ‘We’re never going to find it. It’s gone,’ she says in a defeated tone.

  I open my mouth to argue – but it’s been over an hour, and I’m terrified she’s right.

  Without responding, I look out at the milling crowds in front of us and curse them all.

  This is entirely irrational.

  It’s not their fault this has happened. It’s nobody’s fault, in fact.

  But I feel the need to blame someone – blame something. And the crowd are best placed to be the subject of my rage.

  Look at them. Enjoying themselves. Having a lovely day. Moving around like the fucking sheep that they are, from one ride to another. Taking selfies of each other and tweeting all about what a fantastic day out they are hav—

  Tweeting.

  Selfies.

  They have phones.

  All of them having fucking phones!

  And then I remember that splash panel on the sign in the theme park’s main forecourt.

  #ThornManorIsOpen, the hashtag said.

  And I bet a lot of people are using it . . .

  I stand bolt upright, making Grace start again. ‘I need a phone!’ I exclaim.

  ‘Why?’ she replies. ‘Who the hell can we call? We’ve already spoken to the people who run the park and they don’t know where it is.’

  ‘No. I don’t mean I need to make a call,’ I say, scanning the crowd in front of me for a likely looking person.

  Off to my right is a family consisting of two parents and a girl of about eight or nine years old. They are eating hot dogs and shading themselves from the hot sun under a large tree. The father is playing with his mobile phone – which looks exactly the same as the one I put in a box over two months ago, an iPhone XS.

  Perfect.

  I hurry over to them and attempt an ingratiating smile. This isn’t easy, considering what a stressful day I’m having.