Soul Fire (18 page)

‘How are we doing for time?’ Ade asks Sahara.

Sahara looks up from her phone, checks her watch, then leaps up from her chair. ‘Shit. We’re late. We might be denied boarding, you know these budget airlines.’ And she throws
her khaki-rucksack onto her back and starts to run.

We struggle to keep up. She could be a soldier on exercise. Cara ends up slugging her white wine on the way to the gate, while Ade tries to keep up with Sahara, and Lewis and I do a fast walk on
the travelator together, trailing behind.

‘Why do I get the feeling this is going to be one of those trips, Ali?’ he says.

‘I still can’t get over you being here.’

‘The conference will be worth it. Plus . . . well, I’d like to get a measure of this Zoe girl. You know how I love a puzzle. Not to mention a bloody great bonfire.’

‘I think the fireworks might kick off
before
we get to Barcelona,’ I say.

‘Hmm. Sahara seems very intense.’

‘I’d forgotten you’d never met her before. It just seems like you’ve been part of our lives forever and ever. Sahara is odd, though. It never made any sense that she was
my sister’s closest friend at college.’

Lewis shakes his head. ‘No, I can’t see the two of them sharing much of a world view.’

I really wish he wouldn’t say stuff like that. Stuff that suggests he actually
knew
my sister, when he’s always insisted he didn’t. ‘Perhaps she was a different
person once she got to uni.’

‘People are bloody unpredictable, Ali. That’s why the objects of my desire generally have lightning-fast chips and a serious oversupply of RAM.’

And he grins in that self-conscious way that always makes me relax.

When we get to the gate, Sahara is hyperventilating because the queue’s so long. I look out of the triple-height window and I see the plane and I freeze.

Flying’s never bothered me before, so why do my legs feel as though someone has sliced through all the muscles? Then I understand: this is about Danny. Danny died when his plane fell out
of the sky and smashed onto the desert below. Until I met him, crashes happened to strangers, in strange lands. Now they’re terrifyingly possible.

‘You OK, Alice?’ Cara says, and I realise I’m blocking the tunnel that leads onto the plane.

‘Sorry,’ I mumble at the tutting passengers behind me. We’re at the plane door and Cara pushes me inside with a no-messing shove on the small of my back. I fall into the cabin,
and the steward has to catch me.

‘Wow, you’re keen to get there, aren’t you, sweetheart?’ he says.

I’m trying not to freak out as I breathe the stale-air smell. There are too many seats packed into too little space.

‘Over there,’ Cara says, steering me into the fifth row. ‘The nearer we are to the front, the sooner we get off the plane.’

And the closer we are to the emergency exits.

Meggie would laugh at me. She loved flying. She told me she knew it was only a matter of time before she turned left into first class instead of right into economy. She was going to spend her
flights sipping champagne or wrapped up in cashmere, before the inevitable paparazzi reception committee at the runway. But she never made it to first class.

Sahara and Ade and Lewis file on board behind us; in Barcelona, Zoe will be waiting. My suspects are all lined up. I am never going to stand a better chance of discovering who killed Meggie.

My breathing slows a little. This flight isn’t where the danger is. But when we touch down in Barcelona, that’s when I’ll be playing with fire.

Even in the sea of faces in Arrivals, Zoe stands out.

It’s not just her pale skin, or the skullcap she’s wearing even though it must be twenty-five degrees Celsius. It’s an aura of unhappiness so powerful it seems to repel people.
All around her, families push and pull and call out, but there’s open space around Zoe. No one gets near.

Get a grip, Alice, you’re starting to sound as weird as Sahara.

We head towards Zoe, and she holds up her hand in a half-wave that also keeps us at arm’s length.

‘You’re late,’ she mutters to Sahara, then starts marching off without bothering to check that we’re all here. Zoe walks
at
people, and they seem to get out of her
way. ‘Bloody tourists everywhere, thanks to the bloody fire fiesta.’

The way she says it leaves me in no doubt that we’re a nuisance. Any euphoria we felt on landing safely and seeing the
real
sun for the first time in months is extinguished.

‘Little ray of sunshine, she is,’ Lewis says behind me.

‘Do you see why I think it could be her?’

‘Burning Truths?’ he whispers. ‘Or . . .’

‘Don’t.’

I’m hot and sweaty by the time we get to the train station. Zoe hands out tickets like we’re ten years old. But when she gets to Lewis, she stops. Her face
contorts.

Is that
fear
? Or just irritation? ‘What’s going on?’ she asks Sahara, as though Lewis isn’t even there.

‘Sorry, Zoe. Last minute addition. Lewis is a friend of Alice’s. He’s here mainly for some conference.’ Sahara frowns. ‘You’re not planning to join us in the
hostel, are you, Lewis? Only I’m not sure there’s room.’

Lewis shakes his head when she mentions the hostel. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve made my own arrangements.’

Zoe still won’t look at him. ‘So long as he doesn’t expect me to take him where he wants to go. I’m busy enough as it is.’

Lewis raises his eyebrows at me. It’s not much of a welcome.

‘Watch your bags, passports, everything,’ Zoe says, in the weary voice she must use with her language school students. ‘Barcelona is more famous for pickpockets than Picasso
now. They’re on bikes, skateboards, on foot and especially on the Metro. Better not to take anything valuable out with you. But I wouldn’t leave stuff in your hostel, either; it’s
one of the dodgiest in the city.’

‘Welcome to beautiful Barcelona,’ Cara calls back, and everyone laughs.

Everyone except Zoe.

The hostel isn’t
that
bad.

OK, the communal bathroom is grim. And our shared room is a sectioned off area of corridor, with bunks stacked four high. And I’m sure I spot two different kinds of cockroach. But the
bathrooms and bunks aren’t the point. The point is that we are
thirty-six
steps from the beach.

I kept seeing glimpses of it through gaps between buildings as we struggled through narrow streets with our trolley bags. Zoe seemed to be leading us on a crazy route, but then finally we turned
a corner and she watched our faces, as though she’d handed us the best present ever, wrapped in a giant bow.

The sea, dreamboat blue, with nothing on the horizon except a few windsurfers and a shimmering building in the shape of a boat sail.

I glanced at Zoe and she looked . . . proud, as though the view belonged to her. It was the first time she’d acted like a human being since we arrived. But then she scowled and told us we
were making her late for her intermediate conversational English class.

Sahara and Ade stand by the window and coo at the shimmering sea and the purring waves.

Cara calls down to Lewis, who is waiting in the sun while we check in. ‘You can keep your posh hotels, mate. We’ve got the best view ever from up here!’

This was Javier’s beach, of course. His secrets are buried here. But not for much longer. I reach into my pocket and feel the slip of paper with the address of the café on it.
I’ll find it today. I promised.

‘Hey, daydreamer, let’s get down there,’ says Cara, abandoning her stuff.

‘Wait for me,’ Ade shouts out, then sees Sahara’s glowering face. He corrects himself, ‘Wait for
us
!’

They leave the room. Zoe and I are alone.

‘How are you finding it here?’ I ask. ‘Better than home?’

She shrugs. ‘Honestly?’

‘You don’t have to lie to me, Zoe. I know what it’s like to lose someone.’

‘Then you’ll know it doesn’t seem to make that much difference where you are. Though at least the sun shines more here than it did in London.’

I study her colourless face. I bet she never sunbathes.

‘What about you, Alice? Did you take my advice to move on?’

‘I’m here, aren’t I? My first holiday since it happened.’

Zoe seems to see right through me. ‘Holiday? Is that what this is?’

The odds are that this is the person behind Burning Truths. I could ask her right now if she is, and where she got
that
photo and who she believes killed my sister.

Unless
she
killed Meggie herself.

No. If she did kill her, surely she’d have been happy to let Tim take the blame. I’ll only have one chance to catch her off guard. I don’t feel ready now.

‘You coming to join us on the beach?’ I ask, gesturing towards the door.

‘No. Apart from having to earn a living, I think beach bums are the dullest people in the universe.’

‘Funny place to live if you hate beach bums.’

She shrugs. ‘Funny choice of boyfriend, for a girl like you.’

‘Lewis? He’s not my boyfriend,’ I snap back, before realising something. ‘Do you know him?’

Zoe stares at me. ‘How would I? But I know his type. Be careful, Alice. Not everyone is on your side.’

‘What do you mean? What aren’t you telling me, Zoe?’

‘Leave it, Alice.’

‘I can help you. You don’t have to live with this alone. If there’s anything you know, you should share it. It might . . . keep you safer.’ It’s the nearest I can
come to hinting that I know about Burning Truths.

She shakes her head. ‘You’re very young, aren’t you, Alice? The world doesn’t work like that. Not all stories have a happy ending.’

‘Don’t fob me off. At least
think
about it, Zoe. Promise you’ll do that.’

She looks at her watch. ‘I have to go, now. We’ll meet later. I can tell you about the city. Oh, and prepare you for the
Correfoc
tomorrow.’

‘The what?’

‘The finale to the fiesta.
Correfoc
means fire run. It’s not meant to start till tomorrow evening but they’re letting off firecrackers already, so tell the others they
should cover up tonight. People here have a thing about fire. After dark, nowhere’s safe.’

Barcelona’s beach looks all wrong to me. So many strange people: too old, too pale, too sunburned, too irregular.

I close my eyes, blink hard. Soul Beach has made me expect perfection but I’m not that shallow. When I open my eyes again, I make myself notice the laughing families and the old men
playing board games, their eyelids hooded against the sun. I hear squeaky bikes and babies’ cries and buskers’ drums. I smell fried food and brine.

I feel a hand on mine.

‘Everything all right?’

Lewis. I pull my hand away. ‘Yeah, planes make me sleepy. I thought you’d gone to check into your hotel?’

‘I did.’ And he nods towards the sail-shaped building further along the shore.

‘Wow. That looks amazing.’

‘Yeah, and it costs amazing too. It’s all there was left, because I left booking so late.’

‘Good job you’re a millionaire, then, eh? So what do you make of Barcelona?’

‘Obviously the daylight’s a bit of a shock to the system for someone who spends his life in front of a screen in a darkened room, but it seems fun – assuming we can avoid being
robbed or pickpocketed or abducted by aliens.’

‘She’s quite something, Zoe, isn’t she?’ I say, watching his face.

He laughs. Or
most
of him does. Somehow the amusement doesn’t reach his eyes. ‘You think she’s hiding something, Ali?’

‘I don’t know. I was so certain it was her after you found out the site was being updated abroad. But nothing’s changed since that horrible picture appeared. Maybe whoever is
behind Burning Truths has given up.’

Lewis shakes his head. ‘No. There’s some work going on behind the scenes, like the designer is getting ready for something. An update, maybe?’

‘More pictures?’ The idea is sickening, but I know I need more to go on.

‘Your guess is as good as mine. Oh, and I’ve got their name, too.’

‘What?’

‘Not their real name. That’d be too easy. But I got as far as the admin page and found their avatar. It’s
la Fée Verte
.’

‘Spanish?’

‘French. It means the Green Fairy.’

I try to make a connection between the name, and Tim or my sister. ‘Means nothing to me.’

‘Don’t worry, Ali. We’re getting closer. But try to enjoy being here, too. It’s not all about playing detective, is it?’

Playing detective?
I want to scream.

He points towards a bar in the distance. ‘Let’s grab something to eat with the others. A glass of sangria and a plate of Spanish sausage will set me up perfectly for an afternoon of
geeky lectures and anti-social networking. Coming?’

No. It’s not possible.

I stumble towards the bar, trying to make sense of what I’m seeing. Am I imagining it, because of tiredness, or stress . . . or total insanity?

Or is this beachfront bar in Barcelona
really
identical to the one on Soul Beach?

‘Over here, guys!’ Cara calls out. She, Sahara and Ade are sitting at a bamboo table which is laid with a glass jar of fresh lilies and a giant cocktail list.
They’re acting like everything is completely normal.

But it’s not. This shouldn’t
be
here. It’s as out of place as a red double-decker bus on the Moon.

‘Looks a bit kitsch, don’t you think?’ Lewis says to me as he helps me up onto the raised wooden platform.

I weave between the tables, trying not to stare, even though it’s doing something very odd to my brain to see plump middle-aged tourists spilling out of the same chairs that usually hold
the brightest of bright young things on Soul Beach.

As I sit down, Cara hands me a menu. On the front, there’s a silhouette of a palm and the words
Bienvenido al Chiringuito Tropicano
.

‘Chiringuito?’

‘The waiter says it’s a local word for beach bar,’ Cara says, and then I remember Javier using that word.

Maybe this is where he used to come? I rack my brains for other connections between the Guests and their former lives. Didn’t Gretchen talk about song thrushes, even though they’re
not tropical? And Triti’s descent into madness was triggered by a firework display like the ones she remembered from home . . .