When her hand closed on the door handle, she was aware of a strange tingling sensation, like mild pins and needles in her head. The sensation was accompanied by a subtle, low humming noise that seemed to be coming from everywhere. It all seemed slightly familiar. Joni knew she had felt this many times before, but normally it was brief and obvious. It was one of those things she assumed everyone must get every now and then. Like hiccups.
As she left the room, she glanced over her shoulder. The door was swinging toward her, but, just before it closed, she caught a glimpse of someone on the other side, holding the handle. She gasped and stood still, looking at the door. She knew she hadn’t imagined it. But she couldn’t have seen what she’d thought she’d seen. It was impossible.
Come on. You’re sixteen, not six.
She put her hand on the handle and pushed slowly downward. There was no resistance from the other side. As soon as she heard the click of the mechanism, she pushed the door hard and leaped into the room, shouting, “Ha!” as she landed, fists raised, in a fighting posture.
The room was empty.
Not sure what the ninja pose was supposed to achieve, Jones.
Joni smiled at how ridiculous she must look. Then she went to find her mum, but not before checking over her shoulder twice before the door shut behind her.
8
Haltwhistle
First love is supposed to be special. It’s supposed to be an emotional rollercoaster. And, almost without exception, it’s supposed to hurt. It’s a rite of passage very few avoid and‚ like most rites of passage, the participant, ideally, emerges wiser, more realistic, and better prepared for the rest of life’s journey. Joni, although she was in some respects—unlike every other teenager who believed the same—unique, was dismayed to find herself on the same emotionally volatile path countless others had followed before her.
Odd was a beautiful boy. There was no other word for him. Fourteen teenagers attended the writing course, of which only five were boys. Of the five, only Odd had broken with tradition. He upended the idea of the spotty, bespectacled, introverted teenage boy who wants to write. He was tall, his blonde hair unfashionably long, falling onto his broad shoulders in heavy, Byronesque curls. His blue eyes were very blue. Amazingly blue. The blue of an unexpectedly bright Spring day. A glacial blue. Joni was in trouble the moment she saw him.
Then there was his accent and his slightly halting way of speaking. Odd’s parents were Norwegian and had only moved to Britain the previous year. Odd had quickly discovered that his name attracted attention and some amusement in his new country. He might have even been bullied, especially combined with his lilting accent. But, either by instinct or design, Odd made it impossible for his name to be used as a weapon against him, by bringing it up himself and disarming everyone around him.
As excruciating as it was unavoidable, the first evening at the hotel hosting the course had opened with the group tutors introducing themselves, then making everyone else do the same.
Joni, blushing to her roots, had managed to stammer out something about wanting to write fiction. Others had fared little better, some almost inaudible as they stumbled over their own names. Mell, perhaps half a year older than Joni, was an exception, cool and poised as she announced her intention to write a bestselling novel before she was twenty. It was hard to doubt someone with that much confidence.
Then Odd stood up. Joni saw an older female student unconsciously part her lips slightly, her eyes widening. He certainly had a palpable effect on those around him.
“I’m Odd, hello,” he began, and waited for the inevitable giggles to die away. He laughed himself, and everyone relaxed. “You might interpret what I am saying in two ways. Both the ways are right, so well done to you. My name is Odd, it is a common name in Norway, but in the UK you hear me say it and think, ‘hmm, is he saying he is odd?’”
More giggles.
“So, let me tell you now, yes, you are right, it is also that I am a little odd. The way I speak is odd, my face is a little odd. If you get to know me, you will find other odd things, but I am thinking you might find fun things, too.” He smiled and everyone, everyone smiled back. Joni was acutely aware that she wasn’t the only one who wanted to get to know him and find out what the other things, the fun things, were.
“Don’t feel sorry for me, though, if you please,” said Odd. “Feel sorry for my sister - she is Randy.”
He sat down amidst gales of laughter.
Joni had always felt an inner confidence, always been comfortable in her own skin, and being brought up in an ever-changing community on a small island meant she was used to being around people she didn’t know. But suddenly being thrust into the company of a group of strangers her own age propelled her into an uncharacteristic introversion. She became more of an observer than a participant. She was fascinated by everyone, but couldn’t seem to find a way of initiating conversations. She spoke when spoken to, then clammed up again.
Jones, what are you doing? These guys are just like you. Talk to them.
There were two sessions every morning. The first ninety minutes were set aside to discuss the exercise they had worked on the previous afternoon, with students randomly selected to have their work read aloud and critiqued. This was a painful process for most of them, but as Rae (the lead tutor, and a published author of a series of best-selling thrillers, plus three impenetrable literary novels) pointed out on the second morning, they’d better get used to it.
“You want to write without any criticism? Fine, never show anyone your work. But you’re here, you’ve all expressed an interest in writing for a living, so I’m telling you to prepare yourself for some pain. You put a piece of writing into the public domain with a price tag on it, and someone will hate it. Guaranteed. The more copies you sell, the more people you’ll unearth who’ll tell you it’s a pile of crap. You’ll find readers who love it, too, but if you spend your time worrying about the ones who don’t, you’ll never write anything worth shit.”
She picked up the pile of paper next to her - everyone’s attempts to write a horror story in one hundred words. She flicked through, pausing occasionally and making uninterpretable noise at the back of her throat.
“There are some pieces here that show real promise. Others are bad but contain one or two lines that display a spark of life. Then there are a few that are dead in the water. I’m not going to tell you which are which, but I’ll make you a promise. On your last morning, if you come and see me, I will give you my honest opinion about your future as a writer. If you have the potential to sell books, I’ll tell you. If I think you should consider an alternative career, I’ll let you know. I won’t sugar-coat it. I don’t want you to waste your time if you have no talent, but—more importantly—I don’t want you to waste the time of your readers.”
Before sitting down again, she raised an eyebrow and half-smiled.
“I’ve run this course every summer for seven years now. That’s around one hundred students. Guess how many students have taken me up on my offer during that time?”
There was silence, everyone assuming, correctly, that her question was rhetorical.
“Six. I wonder how many of you will knock on my door that last morning? And, if you don’t, you might want to ask yourself why not. Writing’s a tough game. Don’t misunderstand me. Anyone can write, but very few ever write something worth reading.”
Joni went for a walk before lunch. She told herself she needed some fresh air after being stuck inside all morning, but she knew that wasn’t the truth. She just wanted to be able to sit alone, not make conversation. She had ended up at a table full of shrieking girls the previous evening, all of whom quickly bonded over a common currency of music, movies, and online entertainment. There was one television on Innisfarne. It was over twenty years old and could only pick up four channels - five, if the weather was particularly clear. There was no internet. Joni knew what the internet was, but there was no way of getting it on Innisfarne. Even visitors q
uickly abandoned their cell phones once they realized there was no signal. Joni listened to the girls talking for ten minutes. She dropped out of the conversation and slipped away from the table as soon as she could.
Once back from her walk, she grabbed a sandwich and a soda and sat down in the corner, fishing in her bag for her copy of Gormenghast. She was quickly lost in the world of Titus Groan and his nemesis, Steerpike.
“Ooh, Mervyn Peake, how very gothic.”
Joni jumped, nearly dropping her half-eaten sandwich. She looked up. It was Mell. Tall, popular, confident, auburn-haired, unfairly attractive, and unfeasibly large-breasted Mell.
“I love Peake, isn’t his prose just scrummy?” She sat down without asking and plucked the dog-eared novel from Joni’s hands. “Wow. You’ve read this a few times, haven’t you? Now be honest with me. Even though Steerpike is the bad guy, don’t you just want to have a good rummage inside his pants?”
Joni just stared at Mell for a second, then both girls started laughing.
Underneath the bluster, the make-up tips and the encyclopedic knowledge of the current crop of male movie stars, Mell turned out to be well-read and a genuine lover of literature. The two girls soon discovered a shared love of Catcher In The Rye and Lord Of The Flies, as well as a passion for the slyly mocking novels of Jane Austen. Joni convinced Mell to read Graham Greene and, at Mell’s insistence, agreed to try Lord Of The Rings one more time.
“We can never be friends if you don’t. And I think we should be friends. Because you’re a reader. No one I know reads. Come on. Friends for life!”
Mell extended a crooked pinky. Joni stared at it before realizing she was supposed to do the same. They linked pinkies and shook them up and down solemnly.
“That’s it,” said Mell. “Friends for life. You have to be my chief bridesmaid, or turn off my life support machine if I’m hideously injured in a car crash. Right, we’re supposed to write something like a Shakespearian sonnet this afternoon. I always thought iambic pentameter was a close-harmony singing group. Come on, I’ve found a window seat with cushions. There’s room for two. And I have wine for later.”
Finding herself swept into Mell’s confidence was the first surprise. The second happened a few days later. Joni had taken to walking in the middle of every afternoon for an hour, partly to clear her head and think about her writing without Mell’s regular ‘helpful’ interruptions, partly to fulfill her longing for solitude. She had never thought about how important her ‘alone time’ was until it had gone.
She walked up the hillside at the back of the hotel. Once over the crest, a long, low, sunlit valley stretched to the west for about five miles. At the top of the ridge on the right, Joni could see the regular line of stone denoting the path of Hadrian’s Wall, the ancient border dating back to Roman-occupied Britain. She felt a little shiver at being so close to a real piece of history. The biggest, most successful, most famous empire in human history - and this was as far north as it got. Climb over that wall—an easy task now, as time and weather had reduced much of it to an uneven line barely three feet high—and she would step into a country the Romans never succeeded in claiming for Caesar, or anyone else.
As she stared up at it, the sight was abruptly blocked by a pair of hands placed over her eyes. She sighed theatrically. Couldn’t Mell have stayed behind for a smoke?
“Mell,” she said, “I’m supposed to be clearing my head. I told you, having a ‘nip of vodka’ doesn’t have the same effect for me. I need to be outside. On my own. Just for a little while.”
“Oh. Shall I go, then?”
Joni’s body stiffened. It was a male voice, and the lilting tones could only belong to one of the group. She put her hands up to her face and took hold of Odd’s hands, turning to face him as she gently pulled his fingers away from her eyes.
He was smiling.
“Shall I?” he said again. “Do you want that I should leave?”
Joni was aware, intensely aware, that Odd was still holding one of her hands. On one level it seemed like the most natural thing in the world but on another, she found it was all she could think about. The beauty of the landscape seemed insignificant, Hadrian’s wall no more than a boring pile of stone. Gosh, Odd’s eyes really were incredibly blue. This close, she could see he wasn’t wearing contact lenses.
“Can I walk with you, Yoni?” Joni loved the way he said her name. No one else said it like that.
“If you like,” she said, trying very hard to sound casual. As they walked across the edge of the ridge, he finally let go of her hand. Shit.
Odd was disarmingly honest about himself and his literary prospects. He admitted he was no great writer and had no real hope of becoming one, although he enjoyed reading. He just wanted to be able to document the times he was living through. He had three brothers, and the house they had moved into in London was smaller than the house they had lived in just outside Bergen. His mother was an anesthetist, his father a radiologist, and the UK had offered them a very generous package to bring their skills to the National Health Service.
“London?” said Joni. “Aren’t you scared of Manna gangs?”
“No, not really. It’s not as bad as the people are thinking. They control certain areas. No one would want to go to Putney, for example. But they are not coming into the city much. The police are many and if Users get caught, they know of the tags.”
Joni knew most of this, the various ways government had cracked down on Manna users—now they were out in the open—was old news, even on Innisfarne, but she liked Odd telling her about it. She liked hearing his voice, the way he constructed his sentences. She liked looking up at him while he explained, the way he tucked stray blonde curls behind one ear when he was thinking. The curl of his lips when he smiled. Those eyes.
Joni had read about romantic love and had formed the considered opinion that it was, well, a bit overrated, if not downright silly. Despite Jane Austen’s acerbic subtext, her heroines still swooned. Still dreamed of romance, still longed for a good marriage. Characters in other books—thrillers, horror, science fiction, fantasy—fell in love and allowed their feelings to cloud their judgement. Even in the fairytales she read as a child, humans were forever falling in love with a fairy, leading inevitably to disaster.
Joni was a daydreamer, a romantic in the true sense of the word. Her heart was moved by a beautiful old tree, the sun setting over a stormy sea, the smell of the forest after rain, the music of Bach, Mahler and The Beatles. She rhapsodized over a well-turned sentence in a novel, an inner thought of a fictional character expressed in such a way that she suddenly felt linked to that character—and the writer—in some profound way that transcended time and space. But going all gooey-eyed over a boy? Hardly. She had decided that falling hopelessly in love was a literary cliché bandied about by hacks who wrote cheap trashy nonsense. She was certainly not going to fall hopelessly in love. She would never fall hopelessly in love.
Joni fell hopelessly in love.
9
The last few days of the course passed in a blur. Mornings critiquing, usually in smaller groups with Rae coming around to offer her pithy insights. Lunches with Mell, followed by writing sessions on the window seat. These sessions were broken up by frequent interruptions whenever Mell was stuck on a particular word, or couldn’t quite think of a metaphor, or was bored, or wanted to start on the vodka for inspiration. The afternoon walk belonged to Joni and Odd.
By unspoken agreement, they hadn’t mentioned anything to anyone else, and barely did more than exchange pleasantries at any other time. But, walking the ridge, or heading into the forest for an hour and a half that always passed too quickly, they talked to each other as if no one else existed. Their walks seemed to take place in a bubble, a separate space which would admit no other.
Odd told her a little more about his family and the move to Britain, but Joni always felt he wasn’t telling her the whole story. Norway had escaped most of the problems associated with Year Zero. Its
Manna population was small and confined to just one area of Oslo. Why leave such relative security for the uncertainty of London?
“I think they just want to help people,” said Odd. “We are coming from a long history of people who love freedom. We do not like it when people try to take this from us. Manna users deserve freedom, too. I think we do not like how the government is so quick to lock them up, you know?”
He looked sidelong at Joni. They were holding hands again. Neither mentioned it, but Joni felt as if her hand was a new kind of limb which had an existence all of its own, sending messages of happiness back to her brain. She could feel the pressure of his long fingers. Sometimes he squeezed when he was empathizing a point. She wasn’t going to let go of that hand, even if she got cramp.
“My family has used Manna,” she said. “I don’t see a problem.”
Odd looked startled at her bold admission. His eyes darted left and right as if scared they might be overheard.
“You have to be careful what you say, you know,” he said. “I am happy you have told me this. I know Manna is ok, it depends on the User, but not everyone is agreeing with this. Some people would have you tagged if they heard you.”
Joni looked at him doubtfully.
“It’s got that bad?”
“Yes. In the cities, yes. People have to be very, very careful. A boy at my school, his father was tagged. One day, coming home from work, there was a Manna gang looting some shops. He tried to get away when the police came, but he was rounded up with the rest. The police found the tag, so the boy never saw his father again.”
“But that’s terrible! Surely, if he was caught up in it by chance, if he has no criminal record, they can’t just—,”
“But no, they can. And they do. There is much, oh, what is the word I need? Much…panorama?”
“Paranoia.”
The World Walker Series Box Set Page 71