Dream Paris (35 page)

The man seemed to notice me for the first time, and suddenly his manner changed.

“Don’t be so rude, Sue.” He smoothed his hair and smiled at me. “So, we’re following this wire back to London. Do you know about the wire?”

“No,” said Francis “We were just wondering what it was. Can you tell us about it?”

Dave looked from Francis to me. I could tell what he was thinking. So could Sue and Val.

“So, I think you’ll find that it’s the route back home. Follow it and we can walk out of the West Gate of Dream Paris.”

“Where did it come from?” I asked, innocently.

“So, the British government have sent a team of people here to rescue us.”

“The three of you?” said Francis, all innocence.

“No,” he said, patiently. “All the people brought here from Dream London. The rescue team are unrolling a wire as they come, marking the way back.”

“A wire?” I said. “That seems a little unlikely, doesn’t it?”

“So, it’s all to do with the way that the Dream World operates. Distance means something different here. If you’d been in Dream London, you’d have understood that.”

“I was in Dream London.”

Val and Sue grinned. Dave pretended not to notice.

“Well, there you are. It’s all to do with the numbers here. Have you tried counting? Actually, maybe it’s better if you don’t. I’m a programmer. Think too hard about numbers in this world and it can send you mad.”

“A programmer?” said Francis. “They have programmers here?”

“After a fashion,” said Val, speaking up for the first time. “They’ve had us working on something more like mechanical adding machines.”

“They were more complicated than that,” said Dave. He flushed with prided. “We were sent to work for the
Laboratoires Garnier
.”

“What’s that?” asked Francis.

“Only the top scientific research institute in the Dream World.”

“That’s what they said, anyway,” said Val, clearly unimpressed by all this. “All we ever seemed to do was reverse engineer machinery they’d got from Dream Prussia.”

“It was a little more complicated than that,” said Dave, haughtily.

“I don’t think so,” said Val. “They got us to examine this super weapon they’d managed to steal. It was nothing more than a very accurate measuring device.”

“That doesn’t sound very dangerous,” said Francis.

“Oh, it was,” said Val. “Lethal, if you understood the way the Dream World works.”

“There were a lot of programmers working for
Laboratoires Garnier
,” said Sue. “The Dream World likes the way we think.”

“You were all programmers?”

“Val and Dave used to work for me back in London.”

Dave didn’t like that.

“So, we’re heading to the West Gate. Do you want to come with us?”

“We’re looking for the Public Records Office.”

“It’s down there,” said Val. “Only about fifteen minutes walk. We passed it earlier.”

“Twice,” said Sue.

“Anyone can make a mistake,” said Dave, sulkily.

W
E WISHED THE
three of them luck as they headed to England, and made our way up to the roundabout on which the Public Records Office sat.

“How do we get across?” I wondered.

“Let’s just walk,” said Francis. “I can’t see there being a problem. I think everyone wants us to get to your mother.”

He was right. We strolled over the wide space, cars and scooters swerving and honking around us, missing by centimetres. It was scary, but we got across and made our way inside the building.

A woman was waiting for us.

“Anna Sinfield?” she said.

I looked at Francis.

“No, I’m Gill Marcello.”

“Of course you are. Your mother said you would be coming. Follow me.”

MARGARET SINFIELD

M
Y MOTHER HAD
a well-appointed office near the top of the building. She sat behind an elegant wooden desk, equally elegant in an ivory blouse and pearls. She didn’t seem too surprised to see us. She didn’t seem too happy, either,

“Well?” I said. “Aren’t you going to say something?”

She rose from her seat and crossed the room and gave me a sudden, fierce hug.

“Don’t think that I’m not pleased to see you, darling,” she whispered. “Don’t think I’m not proud of you.”

I burst into tears. Don’t ask me where it came from. I thought I didn’t care that much for my mother. I’d almost convinced myself of the fact. Something deeper inside me knew better.

We hung on to each other, I don’t know for how long. The smell of her skin, the feel of her arms around me… I couldn’t stop crying, floods of tears, soaking her blouse. Me and my mummy, stood in an office in a grandiose building that stood on a roundabout in the middle of a strange city, connected to our home by a long, long wire.

It seemed like forever before we broke apart. She touched the corners of her eyes with her little fingers. I was a mess, a snotty, slobbering mess. Francis handed me something. A handkerchief.

“You must be Francis.”

“Hello, Mrs Sinfield.”

“Call me Margaret.”

She touched her hair, smoothed down her jacket and skirt, smartened herself up. My mother always liked looking good. Our moment was over, she was retreating back into her glamorous shell. She sat back down behind her desk.

“I knew you’d find me.”

“I got your message on the data cards.
Use your common sense.
”

She shook her head.

“No! Couldn’t you see I was telling you not to find me?”

I felt something sink inside me. I’d thought that the card was a clue to her location: my reward, that last piece of help after overcoming all the obstacles. It wasn’t, it was her last warning not to look for her. She’d provided all the personal information about me to prove the card’s provenance, and then the final warning. And I’d thought myself so clever…

“What about the dolls? Did none of them get through to warn you?”

I thought about the dolls frozen in place on the path from Dream London, of the doll that had almost woken me in Dream Calais before its intelligence was repossessed. I thought of poor old Bone…

“Well, yes…”

“So they made it! Why didn’t you listen to them?”

“How did I know whether to trust them?”

She folded her hands together and looked up, her emotion pushed to one side. “The
Banca di Primavera
will have tracked you all the way here. You realise you’ve given away my location, don’t you?”

“I know! I’m sorry! But what was I supposed to have done? Leave you trapped and alone in Dream Paris? Besides, they brought me a fortune scroll back in London. It said that we were going to meet.”

She looked directly into my eyes.

“Who brought you the scroll?”

“A man named Adolphus Twelvetrees.”

She held my gaze for a moment longer. Was there the faintest edge of a frown there? Was I being paranoid, or was she really disappointed with me?

Then she smiled.

“Would you like something to drink? I feel as if I need some coffee. Although I would much prefer a proper cup of tea.”

“Me too,” said Francis, with feeling.

She looked at him, eyes twinkling. She pressed a button.

“
Pourriez-vous apporter un peu de café,
Claudette?”

“
D’accord
!”

Silence descended. It filled the large room, a room where it seemed the decorations and furniture weren’t quite big enough to fill it. The gold-patterned wallpaper was separated by stripes of wood, the carpet didn’t meet the walls, the desk seemed too small for the little rectangle of carpet on which it sat.

“Are you okay, darling? Have you somewhere to stay?”

“I’m perfectly fine, mother. We’re staying with the Revolution.”

“The Revolution? I suppose they’re fighting for the good of the people of Dream Paris?”

“And what’s wrong with that? I once heard, Mother, that if the cause is the right one, people will rally behind the banner.”

“As you get older, Anna, you’ll find that people just rally behind any banner, irrespective of the cause. Especially pretty banners. Most of the time they don’t even bother to read what’s on it.”

“I’m not going to argue with you. We’ve just linked up with them. They helped me to find you.”

“Anna, you’re very naive.
Everyone
has been helping you find me.”

I knew that. I still felt foolish. I stumbled on.

“And you’ll never guess who’s helping them out…”

“Don’t tell me. Mr Monagan?”

That floored me.

“But… well yes! But… how did you know?”

“Oh, come on, Anna. Haven’t you figured out that Mr Monagan is a spy? He always turns up at the right place and time. Innocent, wide-eyed Mr Monagan. He just happened to bump into Captain Wedderburn. He just happened to turn up at our house. I bet he was there just at the right time at the end of Dream London, too. Pity I wasn’t around to see it. Come on, Anna! You should know better!” She turned to Francis and something in her whole demeanour changed. Her smile widened, she adopted a different posture.

“What do you think, Francis? Is Mr Monagan a spy?”

“Maybe,” admitted Francis.

“Definitely.” My mother turned back to me. “Anna, you really don’t want to know what’s going on here! You’re my daughter, trust me! You’ve found me. We’ll have a cup of coffee and a chat, and then I want you to turn round and head straight back to London. There should be quite a crowd of people doing the same right now, following that line of Francis’s. Lose yourself among them. The sooner you’re back in London, the happier I’ll be.”

“And you’re not coming with me?”

“No. I’m staying here.”

I’d suspected it all along, of course. I’d known it deep inside. But even so it cut deep to hear it.

“Oh. Okay.”

“Anna! Don’t look at me like that! Think about it. Why should I go back to London? What is there waiting there for me now?”

“There’s me.”

“Really? For how long? You’ll be heading off to university this year, won’t you?”

I didn’t answer.

“There. And I wouldn’t want to keep you from that. And what else is there for me in London? No job, no friends. They all let me be marched off to the workhouse. No one stood up for me then. Do you think that I want to see any of them again?”

And then it hit me. You might wonder why I hadn’t thought of it sooner, but you must understand that I was confused, I was reeling.But it took that long for me to ask the question.

“And Dad. Where’s Dad?”

She looked down at the desk once more.

“I don’t know.”

“Is he dead?”

“I don’t know! Do you know what it was like, being taken away to the workhouse?”

“No, I don’t. I was dealing with one or two problems of my own at the time.”

We’d only been together for a few minutes and already I was being sarcastic. Soon we’d be arguing. She wasn’t listening. Margaret Sinfield was always primarily concerned about herself.

“They separated the sexes. Your father and I were marched off in different directions. I never saw him again.”

“You make it sound like he’s dead,” said Francis. I raised a hand to silence him.

“So how did you end up here? This seems a step up from the workhouse.”

She smiled at that.

“The good thing about Dream Paris is that there is no sexism here, no racism or old boys’ network. Here they recognise talent.”

“Come on, Mother. You need to add more than that.”

“The books in the workhouse were a mess. I was an accountant, remember? I sorted out the finances, put that place on a better footing. Got myself transferred into Dream Paris itself. Ended up working for the
Banca di Primavera
.”

That made sense. My mother could always spot an opportunity.

“So what went wrong?”

“Nothing. I was working with the dolls. I saw how unfair the deal the
Banca
had negotiated with them was. I helped them out.”

“How?”

“Cooked the books. Moved the numbers around so that some of the dolls had a little more intelligence, a little more freedom. By then the Committee for Public Safety found out about me. They wanted me on their side, they arranged for me to escape. I ended up here.”

It rang hollow. My mother helping out other people. Really?

“That’s a pretty impressive few months’ work.”

“It is, isn’t it?”

She smiled, disingenuously.

The coffee arrived. A
Louis Quinze
porcelain coffee pot, little cups, a plate of petit fours.

“I see the Committee for Public Safety doesn’t stint itself within its own offices,” I observed. “I thought everyone was equal in Dream Paris.”

“Please don’t tell me this surprises you, Anna. Please don’t tell me you’re really that naive.”

Francis poured the coffee. It smelt strong. It smelt good.

We sipped our coffee and I felt so flat. All this way for a cup of coffee. Was that to be it?

No. Francis was acting oddly, looking at me, looking at Margaret. There was clearly something on his mind.

“What’s the matter, Francis?” I asked.

“This,” he said. He felt in his pocket and pulled out an envelope.