In Your Dreams (4 page)

‘Sure,' Paul repeated. He reached into his inside pocket and produced the cardboard tube in which the Portable Door lived. What with one thing and another, he hadn't used it for months, hadn't even given it a thought. Even so, he felt curiously reluctant to let go of it, and when Ricky Wurmtoter practically snatched it from him, he felt a tiny flicker of anger, a minuscule urge to fight—

‘Thanks,' said Ricky Wurmtoter, visibly sagging with relief. ‘That's really kind, you're a pal.' While Paul was still speechless, he added, ‘Well, won't hold you up any longer, you'd better be getting a move on if you don't want to run into any of Dennis's loathsome relatives. Thanks again, Paul, I won't forget this, you're a real life-saver. And you will get it back, promise.' Mr Wurmtoter grinned awkwardly, sneezed ferociously, and more or less ran out of the room.

Oh
, Paul thought.
A pal. Me.
Also a life-saver – a
real
one, too, not just some kind of cheap imitation. On the other hand, he reflected, he was now minus one extremely useful enchanted object, which could well have come in handy when (for example) faced with an angry fire-breathing dragon. Presumably that was why Mr Wurmtoter –
his pal
Ricky Wurmtoter – wanted it so badly. Oh well.

Won't mention this to Sophie
, he thought, though he wasn't quite sure why. He put on his coat and headed for the front office.

No goblins as such; but Mr Tanner's mum was on reception. That is, behind the reception desk was a stunningly lovely chestnut-haired beauty he'd never seen before in his life, who winked at him as he went past. Mr Tanner's mum was a goblin; like the rest of her kind she could assume human shape at will, and she made no bones about the fact that she fancied him rotten, something he tried very hard not to think about. Pretending that he hadn't noticed, he hurried past and didn't slow down till he reached the bus stop.

It's not true that it's easier to get from Bokhara to Tashkent on a three-legged camel than to travel from the City to Kentish Town by bus. It just seems that way, particularly when you're in a hurry. Paul had found out long before that magic doesn't work on traffic jams (implying, rather disturbingly, that traffic in Central London is
meant
to be permanently gridlocked), so he spent the journey fretting and looking at his watch, which if anything appeared to be running backwards. His idea had been to get home before Sophie did, tidy the flat, do the washing-up, cook dinner and generally impress her with his caring, responsible side. After dinner, he'd smear a solemn look onto his face and suggest that it was time they had a Serious Talk about Us, which would please her no end; Us was probably her favourite topic of conversation, and although generally speaking he tended to lose the thread after the first few minutes, it never seemed to matter, so long as he agreed with everything she said and maintained eye contact. That was the plan; a sort of pre-emptive apology for whatever it was he'd done, or was about to do, wrong. Unfortunately, infuriatingly, it looked like sixty thousand cars had sworn to stop him or die trying.

When Paul eventually set toe to pavement, it was thirty-five minutes after his ETA. As he scuttled homewards from the bus stop, he quickly reshuffled his plans. If he still managed to get home first, the main priority was the washing-up, followed by a quick skirmish with the dirty laundry on the bedroom floor. Most important of all would be that he suggested the Serious Talk. Basically, once he'd tabled the motion, that'd be his duty done for the day. He could rely on her to do all the serious talking.

When he unlatched the door and flopped through it, his first reaction was relief. She wasn't there, so obviously she hadn't got home yet. Then he saw the envelope.

It was on the kitchen table, and it said
Paul
in her handwriting; and that was very bad, because when she left him little notes to say she'd just nipped down to the shop or the video library, she wrote them on yellow stickies and stuck them on the fridge door. An envelope on the table, with
Paul
on it, couldn't possibly be anything good. Feeling as though some malevolent joker had opened him up and stuffed him with newspaper, he sat down and opened it.

Paul—

We're finished. When I got home tonight I realised that there's no point going on. I care about you and I know you care about me but I also care about us and I know you don't. It's not your fault, it's just that you're you and I'm me and I can't see any way round that, and if we tried we'd end up with neither of us being who we are. I'm sure you can see that, can't you?

They want me to go and do three months at the Hollywood office – I didn't know they had one but presumably they do – and when I get back I'll come and get the rest of my things. I've sent the landlord a cheque for my half of the rent, so you don't need to worry about that. If you need to get in touch with me I suppose you can call me at the office out there, but I'd rather you didn't. There isn't anything left to say, really.

I'm sorry, Paul. I didn't mean it to end up like this, but I think we both knew it was coming, sooner or later, and it's best to get it over and done with rather than dragging on. I think we've both been kidding ourselves all along. It's not because you're a bad person or anything that you've done. I should have been honest with myself earlier, and then it'd never have got this far. Don't forget that the rubbish has to go out on Thursday evening. I think the seal's gone on the vacuum cleaner.

I hope everything works out for you.

Sophie

Chapter Two

A
nd then I woke up
, he told himself,
and it had all been a dream.

People are sometimes easily overlooked. The holes they leave behind when they aren't there any more are far harder to miss. It made Paul think of science lessons at school. He'd never been able to get his head around concepts like negative numbers and antimatter, but now it made complete sense. Everywhere he looked, and even when he closed his eyes, all he could see was the absence of Sophie, the gap where she used to be, should have been, no longer was. It was so large, it dominated the landscape so much that he was pretty sure it must be visible from orbit, like the Great Wall of China or the lights of the San Francisco freeways.
Maybe
(he speculated, not that he gave a shit)
that's what ghosts are
; the huge empty spaces left behind when someone dies, kept wedged wilfully open by the self-destructive human mind. Above all, for some crazy reason, Sophie's tangible absence put him in mind of the ridiculous Portable Door, except that it was a gap in Nature that opened only into the past, and through which it would be extremely perilous to go. Paul made himself a strong cup of tea, but it didn't really help much. He considered going to the pub on the corner and drinking himself into a spongy mess, but he had to go to work tomorrow and learn how to fight stupid dragons. Just on the off chance he tried magic, but he gave himself a headache concentrating very hard, and when he opened his eyes Sophie still wasn't there. That figured: magic only repairs that which has got screwed up. In this case, apparently, the mistake had already been rectified.

There wasn't anything on the telly apart from game shows and snooker, and he wasn't in the mood. He tried going to bed, but the hole next to him was so wide and deep that he was afraid he'd roll into it and never climb out; so he sat in the armchair. He'd have read a book, only all the books on the shelf were hers.

At three o'clock in the morning, Paul came to the conclusion that he didn't like himself very much; which was a pity, since he was stuck with him, forsaking all others.

At seven o'clock he got dressed, shaved, combed his hair. There wasn't any bread, and the milk wasn't entirely liquid. Magic would've set it right, but he couldn't be bothered. He went to work.

The receptionist smiled at Paul as he went past the front desk, which showed how much she knew about anything. He really didn't want to go to his office, because there'd be a hole on the other side of the desk he didn't particularly want to meet.
Fuck Ricky Wurmtoter
, he thought;
just when I could use a Portable Door, he's got it.
But he went and sat opposite the hole for a few minutes, until suddenly he remembered that he was supposed to report to Benny Shumway first thing to begin his Heroism lessons.

‘Sorry I'm—' he started to say as he opened Mr Shumway's door, but the office was empty. He stood on the threshold, frowning. He'd been at JWW long enough to know that the cashier's absence (
Dammit
, he thought,
is
nobody
here any more? Pretty soon, I'll have the whole place to myself
) could mean many things. It could be an intelligence test, the first step in his training; or maybe, twenty years ago, Mr Shumway had sold his soul to the Evil One and the bailiffs had just been round to collect him; or maybe he'd just nipped across the landing for a quick pee. For once, though, not knowing what was going on didn't bother him particularly. One of the advantages of nothing mattering any more is that nothing matters. Paul sat down and stared out of the window. Some trick of the light meant that he saw his own reflection, rather than the buildings opposite. He didn't like looking at that. Depressing.

‘Great,' said a voice behind him. ‘You're here, finally. I've been all over the place looking for you.' Mr Shumway didn't sound happy, but that was hardly unusual. Paul noticed that in addition to his customary shabby charcoal-grey suit, he had a pair of safety goggles pushed up onto his forehead, and a pair of scorched leather gloves. He took these off and stashed them in a desk drawer. ‘Right,' he went on, ‘since we're late starting, and since we've already met, we won't bother with the getting-to-know-you crap.
Beowulf
.'

Paul wondered if that was dwarvish for ‘atishoo'. ‘Sorry?'

‘
Beowulf
,' Mr Shumway repeated. ‘Fine, you've never heard of it.' He opened another drawer, picked out a dog-eared paperback, and tossed it at Paul. Much to Paul's surprise, he caught it. ‘Read it carefully, it's got a lot of useful stuff. For your information, it's an Anglo-Saxon epic poem about a guy who fights monsters. I'm assuming you've already read sections five, nine and forty-six of the office procedures manual—'

Normally, Paul would have lied; but nothing mattered any more, so why not tell the truth? ‘Sorry, no,' he said. ‘I—'

‘Bloody hell.' Mr Shumway clicked his tongue. ‘Look,' he said, ‘I know this is all an unwarranted intrusion on your free time and you don't want to be here, but I've got work to do. I'm a realist, so I don't expect you to help; but I
do
expect you to try as hard as you can not to be a bloody nuisance. Do as you're told, do your homework, and don't waste my time. Understood?'

‘Sorry,' Paul replied, as guilt welled up inside him like the contents of a backed-up toilet. ‘It's just that—'

Suddenly, alarmingly, Mr Shumway grinned. ‘I know,' he said. ‘Makes you feel a bit like you've just been kicked in the nuts. I remember one time I got told to get lost by the love of my life, I went straight out, got completely blasted, woke up in hospital. Got discharged a week later, married the nurse. Fifth wife. Nice kid, had a nose like a parsnip. Don't worry about it,' he added cheerfully, ‘you're probably better off. Great thing about getting dumped is, it means you're now at liberty to go back to the sweetshop and try a few new flavours. It's only boring people and doves that mate for life, and have you ever seen a cheerful dove? Anyway,' he said, moving a pencil so that it lay exactly parallel with the edge of the desk, ‘that's enough about that. No point you hanging about here if you haven't done the background reading. I suggest you piss off somewhere quiet and read those chapters in the manual, and when you've done that, come back and we can get started.' He hesitated, sneezed like a cannon shot, and wiped his nose on a huge red-andwhite handkerchief. ‘Right?'

‘Right,' Paul replied, slightly dazed.

‘Fine. That means you can leave the room. Goodbye.'

Paul was through the door and halfway to the stairs when he heard Mr Shumway's voice behind him, calling out, ‘Remember,
Beowulf
. Get it read.' When he looked round, he saw Mr Shumway's door closing.

So
, Paul thought as he trailed back down the stairs,
everybody in the office seems to know; probably knew before I did. Not a problem, saves me having to do the embarrassing explanations.
Probably better off, Shumway had said. Was there a current Mrs Shumway? Paul hadn't heard about her if there was, but that didn't mean a great deal. No framed picture on the desk, for what that was worth. He went back to his office and took the procedures manual down off the shelf, feeling his tendons creak as they took up the strain. As he did so, it occurred to him that Mr Shumway hadn't said go back to your office and read the chapters, he'd just said somewhere quiet. Possibly just a sloppy choice of words, but perhaps it was compassion; maybe Mr Shumway had shared confined spaces with people who weren't there, and understood. Well, it was an interpretation, and Paul could read a fat, dull book just as easily somewhere else as here.

He couldn't quite bring himself to leave the building; but, during the course of his wanderings, he'd noticed a small room on the fifth floor that nobody seemed to use for anything; it had been empty except for a plain, old-fashioned wooden desk and a chair, just right for hiding in. Assuming, of course, that it was still there.

It was, although the desk and chair had now been joined by a ratty old green steel filing cabinet and four ancient-looking VDUs. He sat down, pulled out a drawer of the filing cabinet to rest his feet on, and opened the office procedures manual.