Weeks in Naviras (30 page)

I began to resume a series of functions and meetings, in the press my shadowy eyes were much commented on.
Poor Ellie Weeks, she just wants to hide out at Chequers
, someone remarked on a panel show.
The mounting crises surrounding James Weeks have driven his wife to the verge of a nervous breakdown,
wrote a columnist. Very quickly Rav and Rosie agreed that my diary should be cleared again. This came through Anushka, nobody bothered to have a discussion with me directly.

On some level I must have been aware that I was crumbling. How would I get my kids out of this, that was my only real line of thought, day in and out for nearly a week. How, not why or if. There might have been more articles about me, had it not been for the rapid deterioration in the Middle East; speculation mounted that Morgan was preparing to send ground troops in. Israel was outnumbered, whether it was outgunned was truly unknown.

‘I fear it’s only going to end up in a massive war,’ said James to me one morning, as he was getting out of bed and the latest skirmishes dominated the news bulletin. ‘It’s going to be difficult for us to not get involved.’

‘Get involved?’ I could hear the kids arguing in the room next-door.

‘Well, there’s no way the UN’s going to agree to any intervention, but the Americans are already putting out feelers to see if we’ll sending HMS Elizabeth.’

I realised there was, after all, something worse than having an airport as one’s namesake. ‘You wouldn’t authorise that, surely.’

‘We might have no choice.’

I was about to say more, but stopped myself. Maybe, I thought, yet another unpopular and questionable war might be my escape route. It could bring down the government.

Later that day the news broke that Rosie was leaving, effective immediately. Of course it was front-page news, even if hardly anyone outside of Westminster cared. Unusually there were no leaving drinks, no card sent around the building. Rosie sent an email around Number 10 that afternoon, promising to organise something in a few weeks. The subtext was that she was exhausted, describing her exit as a ‘career break.’ A young man I’d never heard of from party HQ quietly replaced her.

Anushka called up to the flat. ‘Rav’s down here, wonders if you’re free?’

‘Of course,’ I said, and up he came, looking concerned.

‘You’ve heard about Rosie, I assume. I just wanted you to know that we’re going to have to let Anushka go, too.’

‘What? That’s unacceptable.’

‘Look, I’m not happy about it either, but it’s boss’s orders.’

‘What’s his reasoning for this?’

‘He didn’t say, other than he thinks Rosie’s departure is a good opportunity to look at the staff closest to his family. He thinks you need two people, so we’ll get younger staff in on lower salaries. It’s a good thing. It’ll lighten the load on you, that’s what James wants to see.’

I don’t quite know how it happened, but it immediately felt like I was haemorrhaging. ‘You can tell him that if he does that, I’ll leave him. And I’ll take the kids with me.’

‘Oh, come off it, Ellie,’ said Rav. ‘Anushka’s just an expensive bag-carrier, and she hates being a part-time nanny. We can’t justify her salary as well as hiring someone else, it’ll look bad.’

‘What she hates, Rav, is the repugnant way James behaves towards his family. She has no problem looking after Bobbie and Sadie, otherwise she would’ve told me so.’ I stood up, took two steps toward him. ‘He’s a selfish prick, my husband, and you prop him up. I don’t know how you sleep at night.’

‘What? You have no idea the pressure James is under,’ I’d never seen Rav get so angry. ‘How he’s tried to shield you from all the shit that’s going on downstairs. Sometimes I wonder whether it’s you who’s selfish, Ellie.’

‘Oh, shut up, Rav.’

‘No I won’t, actually.
And as for how I sleep, I don’t. I was fine before,’ His voice was rising. In all the time I’d known him I’d not once heard him shout. ‘Then after what you said to me last week, putting that bollocks into my head…’ His face screwed up. ‘If you want to get yourself sectioned that’s your prerogative. But do me a favour and stay the fuck out of my head, will you?’

‘It’s not me who’s been fucking around inside your head, Rav, it’s them.’ I was waving my arms around, gesturing wildly to the window. ‘They fucked with your head, and with mine, and with Morgan’s, too. She’s planning World War Three because somehow she’s decided it’ll bring about Armageddon.’

‘Oh, come off it, Ellie.’

‘Don’t tell me you don’t suspect something. You must know, Rav, something’s going on here, and it’s extremely wrong!’

Rav tried to grab my arms. ‘You’ve got to calm down, Ellie. People will hear you.’

‘I don’t care who hears me. They’ve got to know what’s happening, before we get dragged into it and it’s too late!’ But I was losing my strength, my vision was turning grey at the periphery.

I blacked out.

I’m submerged underwater, cold and dark grey. Slimy things are drifting past me, touching my legs. Panicking I push upward, trying to kick the slippery things away from me. I can see the surface is just a few feet above, undulating and rippling. With one last push I break through it, feeling like I should be gasping for breath.

I’m in the pool on the roof of the Naviras Beach Hotel. The sky’s a charcoal colour, the raindrops are landing in large plops on the water I’m struggling to swim in. The roof terrace looks like it’s recently seen an earthquake, the sun loungers all twisted, the planters formerly containing exotic shrubs upended, soil and roots strewn across the terrace. The pool hasn’t been cleaned for years by the looks of it; there’s a film of green sludge on the surface and mould clinging to the sides, coating the metal steps which I can’t quite get purchase on with my hands. I haul myself over the side instead, struggling to grip the slick tiles lining the pool. My
sarong’s clammy against my legs.

There’s a low but loud thrumming noise coming from somewhere in the village. I walk over to the wall lining the edge of the roof and look out over Naviras. The sheets of rain make it hard to make out details, but it’s obvious much of the village has been destroyed. La Roda’s on fire, the inside of the building glows, flames are spreading onto the veranda outside, the plastic chairs and tables catching alight one by one, warping and shrivelling into black mounds.

Four dark green helicopters are hovering over the ocean, a hundred metres out to sea. They’re all facing the beach, their noses lowered slightly. Underneath them small black dots on the ocean surface, slowly advancing towards the beach. Then there’s a boom as some kind of rocket launches from one of the helicopters. It shoots horizontally across the bay and slams into the beach bar, which explodes. Pieces of burning wood fly into the air before landing all over the beach, the old sun deck, the path leading to the slipway. Another helicopter fires a rocket, which roars over the village before exploding in a cluster of cottages further up. It won’t be long before the whole of Naviras is on fire.

Looking over to my right it’s impossible to see whether Casa Amanhã’s still intact, but the poplars surrounding it are all burning, the topmost branches waving around in the heat, writhing almost. The village seems deserted, nobody in the streets or the square outside La Roda. Then I look down to the beach and see two kids running away from the wreckage of the bar. A boy and his younger sister, she falls over in the sand and he stops to help her up.

The black dots are getting closer to the shoreline. I turn and run towards the stairs leading down, even though I’ve no chance of getting to them in time. I open the door to the stairwell and seem to fall through it, sideways on, like a drop of water through the surface of a pond. Then I’m already down at the slipway, looking at the kids as they struggle across the wet sand. I jump off the slipway onto the beach and run towards them. I try to call their names but I can’t make a sound; nothing comes out of my mouth, not even a croak.

Bobby’s face is streaked with black marks intersected by white lines where teardrops have run down his cheeks. Sadie’s screaming at the top of her voice, her blond curls dirty and matted. I pick her up and press her against me, her howls muffled against my bare shoulder. Bobby presses close to my waist as the black figures begin to wade out of the ocean.

They’re like marines, wearing dark uniforms and large black boots, each of them carries a large gun in their hands, cocked and ready to fire. They’re marching in unison, their legs kicking up water as they goosestep out of the sea. Each of them has a fuzzy bee’s head, large reflective black eyes and twitching mandibles. There’s a dozen of them, spaced out so they cover the entire length of the beach. Even though they’re all marching straight ahead each of their faces is turned towards us.

I push Bobby away from me, grab his hand and try to run away back up the beach, aware that Sadie can probably see what’s behind me over my shoulder. But we’re too late; I feel hands on me, covering my face, prising screaming Sadie away from me, grabbing Bobby and pulling on him so his hand separates from mine. Still I can’t say anything.

I’m not on the beach anymore, I’m suspended in a bright room with a door in the corner. There are little lights embedded in the walls, floor and ceiling. Not painfully bright by themselves but still they hurt my eyes because there’s so many of them. Transparent wires are protruding from all over my body, connected to my skin by little hooks which dig painfully into me. In front of me Bobbie and Sadie are similarly suspended, cocooned in what looks to be chainmail. They’re hanging in the middle of the air, the same taut wires attached to their arms, legs and bodies, radiating out from them. The wires cluster even more densely around their heads. Their eyes are closed.

I try to move but I’m locked into place, the hooks in my skin are so tight they start to tear at my flesh every time I try to change position. Bobby starts to scream, even though his eyes don’t open. Sadie joins in, like she’s having a nightmare. I want to comfort them but I can’t reach them, not without tearing out my own flesh.

Then the door opens and two men in white coats walk in; both of them have the same bee-heads as the marines. One of them starts to walk towards Bobbie’s body, the other heads for Sadie. As their pulsating mandibles quicken each of them pulls out a syringe and injects the contents into my kids’ arms. Still I can’t make a sound. The lights surrounding us flicker, then start flashing in patterns that snake up and down the room, becoming lines and diagonals, intersecting. Bobby and Sadie scream even louder, this time in agony.

A hand on my cheek. ‘Ellie, wake up.’ I felt myself jump as I opened my eyes.

I was on the sofa again, Rav kneeling on the floor next to me. ‘You’re okay,’ he said.

I didn’t say anything for a moment. ‘No, I’m not okay.’ For the first time I remembered things in their proper order; from the moment I stepped out of the sea in ‘Naviras’, to feeling like I was drowning off the slipway. Then the period after that, when I was suspended in mid-air in bright light, wires attached to my body. The memories were uncurling, they scooted across my vision like a download from a camera – no, an upload, perhaps. They’d been lurking underneath the surface of my consciousness, were bursting through. I started weeping; partly because the process was giving me a splitting headache but also because of what the memories entailed; the violation they implied.

‘Carolina,’ I said eventually, before repeating her name twice more. ‘I need to contact her, I need to tell her about Luis and how he died. But I don’t have her number, Rav. It was in my old phone, the one I lost in the attack. Oh, Rav, I’m fucked! We all are.’

He sighed and frowned. ‘You’re not well, Ellie. We need to get you some help.’

‘No,’ I grabbed hold of his arm. I could feel it trembling. ‘No, I know where they’ll send me, Rav. They’ll send me back to the cave. It’s where they sent Morgan.’

He looked at me patiently. ‘What cave?’

‘It’s where she was tortured,’ I said, before explaining about the bees. It was the wrong place to start, because I then explained how they’d later come for me, egged on by Bill and Jean. Then I told him about Naviras, and how it was connected to Parliament, and how I’d watched Rav at the dispatch box acting out the part of prime minister.

‘That’s just…’ He seemed a little embarrassed. ‘It’s just a dream I had, Ellie. You’re conflating things I’ve told you with something else.’

‘No, it really is something else,’ I sat up slowly, feeling a pressure around the sides of my head. ‘I watched you, Rav, in the Commons. Dozens of young men sitting on the benches, clearly in love with you. They passed a motion saying how wonderful you were,’ I grabbed his shirtsleeve. ‘You don’t remember but I do. And you know, I don’t think I was ever meant to see that. Something went wrong. It all started to go wrong from there…’

I didn’t say anything else because Rav quickly got up and ran to the bathroom; seconds later the sounds of being violently ill. I walked in find him hunched over the toilet. I went to put my hand on his shoulders but he reached around to push me away. ‘Please, will you just leave me, Ellie, for a moment?’ He wretched again as I stepped backwards into the living room and sat back on the sofa, my head in my hands. After another minute I heard the flush and then the bathroom taps run, before Rav reappeared, his hair and face wet.

I lifted up my head to look at him. ‘Do you remember, now?’

He nodded. ‘Bits of it,’ he closed his eyes. ‘But more’s coming back. I think I’m going to be sick again.’

‘Here, sit down. I’ll get you the bowl.’ We swapped places on the sofa and I went to get the basin from the kitchen, placed it at Rav’s feet and sat down in the chair opposite him. ‘What do you want to do?’

‘I’m going to have to get James up here,’ Rav went to stand.

‘No, you mustn’t,’ I leaned forward to stop him from getting up. ‘You can’t tell him.’

He swallowed. ‘Ellie, this involves him.’

‘No, you don’t understand, Rav,’ I wasn’t sure if it was me who needed the bowl. ‘I saw everyone. You, Gavin, Morgan. But I only saw James at the very end, and things were horrible, then. Please, Rav, promise me you won’t tell James. I swear, I won’t cause any more problems.’

‘You don’t understand, Ellie. James was with me. Where I was.’

Of course, I thought. I’d heard his voice. ‘He was in your office, in Parliament.’

Rav nodded, slowly. ‘He was my chief of staff. And he was happy, Ellie. He told me I’d always been the better of us, that I deserved the job more than he did.’

‘How did it end?’

‘He told me…’ Rav screwed his eyes shut, opened them again. ‘He told me that I had to go back, to make everything right. Then he said he had to go somewhere and then it all started to fade. Then I was in the hospital in Virginia.’

‘But he was also in Naviras,’ I said, struggling to comprehend it. ‘Telling me what I wanted to hear, too.’

‘But Naviras and Parliament were connected, you said. How?’

‘Through the wine cellar at Lottie’s.’

‘And had James ever been there?’

‘No, nobody went down there much, except for Luis.’

‘And Luis was.. wrong, somehow? What about Lottie?’

‘She was younger, but it was different with her. I had no secrets with her, not like I had with Luis.’

‘How so?’

Now it was my turn to squeeze my eyes shut, to wonder whether I could trust Rav. ‘Because Luis and I had been sleeping together, Rav. It had been going on for quite some time, on and off. I don’t think James ever knew.’

Rav looked disappointed. ‘You cheated on James.’

‘I did.’

‘I don’t believe it. With a Portuguese…’ he was lost for words, but I knew where he was going with them. ‘Why, Ellie?’

I told him about Rosie and James in Portcullis. Said out loud it didn’t sound any better or make me feel any more vindicated. ‘I thought you must’ve known about them, on some level.’

‘I had no idea. Why didn’t you tell me?’

Why not indeed? ‘I was in a different place then. I was pregnant with Bobby, very pregnant.’

Rav was quiet for a while. ‘It can’t have gone on for long, I would’ve known about it.’

‘I don’t think it happened very often. You don’t know what his sex drive was like back then, Rav. I barely satisfied it at the best of times, and definitely not when I was pregnant.’ I sighed. ‘I allowed it. Once Bobby was born things went back to normal.’

‘But still, there was Luis. After that.’

‘You don’t understand, Rav. There’s no way you could.’

‘Beyond my comprehension? Thanks, Ellie.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.’ I stood up and went to the kitchen to draw two glasses of water from the tap, giving one to Rav who gulped it.

‘I’m just upset, that’s all,’ he said after gasping. ‘I believed in the two of you.’

‘Me and James?’

‘Of course. You’ve been like family. You wouldn’t understand.’ He almost smirked. ‘Look, I won’t tell James anything. And I’ll think of some reason why we can’t ditch Anushka. But now I’ve got to get back,’ he glanced at his watch. ‘They’ll wonder what’s happened to me.’

‘Are you sure you’re okay to work?’

‘No,’ He ran his hand through his hair, pushing it back at the sides, trying to tidy it up. ‘But I’m going to give it a go, anyway.’ He walked to the top of the stairs, then stopped. ‘Do you think we were dead, Ellie? Or nearly dead, somewhere else?’

I closed my eyes for a moment. ‘Wherever it was, it’s not somewhere I want to go back to, not ever.’ I nodded to myself. ‘Even if it had stayed nice.’ I couldn’t quite articulate myself.

Rav’s eyes narrowed. ‘My gut tells me we’ve been played. And maybe are still being played with.’

‘Will you tell James about Morgan?’

‘Let me make some enquiries of my own,’ he said. ‘Subtly. I’ll come back to you.’

‘Okay.’ I’d felt euphoric at no longer being alone with my anxieties but that was quickly fading. Knowledge didn’t feel like power, not one bit.

‘One more thing Ellie. Whatever you do, don’t speak to anyone about this.’ He looked around the room. ‘Or send any messages about it, especially not from your phone. As far as I know this place isn’t bugged, but they’ll almost certainly be intercepting your calls.’