At this show of compassion from a stranger, Julian felt tears rising up his throat. He swallowed them back down with the last of his drink. “She’s not the only one who’s gone missing either. There’ve been other girls. Three for sure. Maybe more.”
Nikki leaned closer, intrigued. “So what do you think’s happening? Do you think someone’s abducting them?”
“I don’t know, maybe.” Even drunk as he was, Julian wasn’t about to get into all of that, not there, not with a stranger.
“Well what do the police think?”
Julian’s lips curled into a sneer. “I don’t think they think at all.” He removed his hand from under Nikki’s. “Look, all I know is a girl like you shouldn’t hang around here. You should move on as fast as you can.”
“Well I’m not going to be moving on anywhere tonight. I don’t have a car.”
“I do. I’ll give you a lift anywhere you want to go.”
“Thanks for the offer, but I don’t think you’re in any condition to be driving.” A mischievous glint came into Nikki’s eyes. “Besides, how do I know it’s not you doing the abducting? How do I know you won’t take me out into the woods and have your wicked way with me?”
“Because I was only four or five years old when the first girl went missing. And anyway, you’re not really my type.”
“Oh, so what is your type?” When Julian shrugged, squinting at him as if trying to weigh him up, Nikki added, “I’ll bet you like blondes. Cute little things with dimples and good-girl smiles. I’m right, aren’t I?” Julian made no reply, but his eyes dropped away from hers. “Ah, he’s gone all shy,” she teased.
“You want a lift or what?” Julian asked a touch brusquely.
“Tell you what, let’s have another drink, and I’ll think about it.” Nikki stood. “What you drinking?”
“Coke.”
“Vodka and Coke.”
“Just Coke.”
When Nikki returned with the drinks, she said, “So tell me about yourself.”
“There’s nothing much to tell. I grew up around here, and nothing much happens around here.”
“Except all those girls going missing.”
“Except that.” Julian swallowed half his drink in one, spilling dark trickles out of the corners of his mouth. “What about you?”
“I guess I’m trying to work out what I want to do with my life.”
“Where you from?”
“All over. My parents were travellers, not Gypsies, but Hippy types.”
“You’re lucky. Growing up in a town like this, it makes you small. Small and afraid.”
“Of what?”
Julian jerked his chin at the window. “Of the world out there — the big, bad world.”
“From what you say, sounds like there’s more to be afraid of around here than out there.”
Julian’s mouth turned up in a sour smile. Nikki threw back her drink, and stood. “Where you going?” asked Julian.
“You convinced me, I’m getting the fuck out of this town. Come on, drink up and let’s go.”
Julian finished his drink. As he pushed back his chair, he felt a strange sensation, like his feet were sinking into the floor. He staggered and Nikki hooked her arm through his, steadying him. “I’ll be alright,” he assured her. “I just need some air.”
Nikki guided Julian through the crowded bar. Something occurred to him. “Haven’t you got any bags?” he asked.
“I travel light.”
As they made their way to Julian’s car, he sucked in lungfuls of the evening air, but rather than clearing his head, it made him even groggier. His legs felt loose and wobbly, barely able to support him. There was a bitter taste in the back of his throat. “Fuck,” he slurred, vainly trying to insert his key in the lock. “I must be drunker than I thought.”
Nikki took the key off Julian and opened the door. He collapsed into the driver’s seat. “So whe…where do you wa…wa…” He struggled to shape the words, as if his tongue and brain were out of synch.
“Where do you want to go, Julian?” Nikki’s voice was different, neither hostile nor friendly, it had a flat, uninterested tone.
Julian rolled his head to look at her. Through the fog of his mind a thought reached him. “Ho…how do you kn…know my na…na…”
Nikki finished Julian’s question for him. “Name.”
He nodded so slightly it was barely perceptible.
“You must’ve told me.”
No I didn’t, thought Julian. But the words wouldn’t form in sound. Something was happening to Nikki, something that caused his mouth to hang open and a guttural sound to tremble in his throat. She was inflating, ballooning to a giant size — either that or the car was shrinking to the proportions of a dollhouse. She leant over him, big enough to crush him. Her lips opened and closed, but all that came through them was a mushy, incomprehensible drawl. Now her facial features were blurring at the edges, losing their shape — or rather, taking on a new shape. And then she was no longer Nikki, she was Mia — Mia as she’d looked the last time he’d seen her. And they were no longer in the car, they were in Mia’s bedroom, lying on her bed. “Kiss me,” she said, moving closer.
“No.” Julian tried to hold her off, but his arms were as weak as a baby’s. Her lips touched his, and, as they did so, the bed floated to the ceiling and began to spin around. The room flashed by, colours blurred towards white. Faster, faster, whirling, faster, faster, faster, like a fairground waltzer. A black blur appeared within the white blur, seeping outward like ink on blotting-paper. And then the last of the light was gone, and Julian was gone too.
Chapter 21
Julian’s eyelids seemed to be glued together. Slowly, painfully, he forced them open, and found himself looking blurrily at his own naked image in a mirrored ceiling. He was lying on a bed — not Mia’s bed, but a vast double bed. His legs were covered by a white sheet patterned with intense red flowers, some small, others large. For an instant he wondered if he was still hallucinating, then he felt the pain in his ankle, and knew he wasn’t. He blinked and his vision cleared. His breath came in a gasp. The flowers weren’t flowers at all, they were stains. And they weren’t only on the sheets, they were on him too, streaking his stomach, chest and face, discolouring his hands. He tried to sit up, but his arms collapsed under him as if they were broken. Panting like a panicked child, he brought his hands up in front of his eyes. Blood! The word screamed in his mind. He ran his hands over his head and body, checking for injuries. There were no new ones, and the bandage was still on his ankle. If the blood wasn’t his, whose was it? A face rose into his mind. A name hissed between his teeth. “Nikki.”
Once more, Julian attempted to sit up, and this time he managed it. He saw his reflection again in a mirror at the end of the bed. It was a big mirror that covered almost the entire wall. Its reflection seemed slightly off, stretching his features a fraction, making him look thinner, older. Head reeling, blood throbbing in his temples, he scanned the room. It was large and windowless with a plush wine-red carpet that wouldn’t show bloodstains. There was no furniture other than the bed. His clothes were nowhere to be seen. “What the fuck’s going on?” he said to himself, his voice shaking so much it was barely audible. The bitter taste was still in his throat, and it occurred to him that maybe Nikki had spiked his drink. Recalling suddenly how she’d known his name although he hadn’t told her it, his suspicion turned into certainty. But why, he wondered, would she do such a thing? He could think of only one reason — Mr X. Yes, that had to be it. Mr X had had him drugged and brought to…to wherever this place was.
But that still left the question of the blood. Whose was it? Whose could it be? Surely not Nikki’s if she was in on whatever was going on. Like a ghost, another face materialised from the blackness at the back of his skull — a pale, intense face with eyes like blue porcelain. A churning ball of nausea pushed up his throat. He choked on it.
