Next stop

Next stop

         Gemma woke up.  At least, she thought she did.  It actually felt more like she’d been awake but hadn’t been registering what was going on until just now.  More like her eyes and ears had been asleep but now they were picking up signals again and her brain was doing something with them.  She was on a bus, surrounded by a lot of people she didn’t know, bumping along what felt like a dirt track rather than a road.  As her senses returned, Gemma realised she had no idea why she was here or, indeed, where here was.  She felt sure she ought to be slightly concerned about this, but actually she just felt slightly disjointed, as though it wasn’t really happening.  She was just contemplating turning the old lady sitting next to her and asking the obvious: ‘where am I?’ question when the bus came to a halt.
         Looking through the rather dusty windows of the bus she saw a huge building.  It had lots of brightly lit windows, but oddly there were no other buildings near it or, as far as she could see, any roads other than the track they’d arrived on.  It seemed strange to have such a large building with nothing else around it; what on earth was it for?
         “Everybody off!” shouted the driver, and before she had time to think about it Gemma was caught up in the crush of people trying to leave the bus.  She let herself be carried along by the flow, feeling dazed and confused.
         Inside the building everyone was hurrying towards what looked like the sort of luggage carrousel you see in airports.  ‘Am I in an airport?’ wondered Gemma.  She had no idea how that might have happened… the last thing she could remember was going out for a drink with some friends the night before.  Had she drunk so much she’d ended up on a plane somewhere without remembering it?!  Still confused she realised she’d somehow been buffeted by the crowd to near the front of the carrousel, upon which there was indeed various pieces of luggage.  She stared at it slowly trundling around, watching as every so often someone collected a suitcase and walked off with it.  Gemma turned to the man next to her.  He was tall with dark hair and looked to be middle-aged.  “Excuse me,” said Gemma “but – “ she paused.  She’d been about to ask which airport this was but it suddenly occurred to her that she might sound like a bit of a nutcase with a question like that.  Instead, she said: “where has this luggage come from?  I’m just trying to work out if I’m in the right place…”.  The man looked at her as though she was mad and muttered: “They say you can’t take it with you.”  “What?” asked Gemma, but right then the man spotted his bag, grabbed it and walked off without looking back.
         Gemma was about to ask one of the other, for want of a better word, passengers where she was when something caught her eye.  It was her suitcase!  She’d recognise it anywhere – she’d deliberately bought one in a striking (and frankly rather unattractive) royal blue colour so that it would stand out from everyone else’s luggage at airports.  And there it was, trundling around with all the other luggage.  Impulsively she reached out, grabbed it and checked the tag.  Yes, it was her name and her address: Gemma Mills, 24 Willow Gardens.  Well, she reflected, if I did manage to get so drunk I ended up on a plane with alcohol-induced amnesia, at least I had the sense to pack some overnight gear.  Again she wondered why she wasn’t in a panic about this whole situation.  She felt sure any rational person should be worried, but she felt calm and slightly numb.  Oh well, panic probably wouldn’t achieve anything anyway, she thought.  If I tell someone I don’t know where I am they’ll probably drag me off to a mental institution.
         Now that she had her luggage she wondered what to do next.  Behind her there was a queue of people, moving slowly towards a desk.  There didn’t seem to be anywhere else obvious to go, so she joined it.  It snaked slowly forwards.  No one was talking to anyone else and Gemma couldn’t quite muster up the energy to start a conversation.  She just hoped that when she got to the end, she might get some kind of clue as to what was going on.
         At the desk the assistant behind the counter asked: “name please?”
         “Gemma Mills,” responded Gemma. 
         “Date of birth?”
         “12th May, 1979”
         The woman looked at some paper on her desk: “24 Willow Gardens?”
         “Um, yes…”
         “Please give me your case.”
Gemma handed it over, wondering how the assistant had known her address.  Do airport security normally get given that kind of information?  The woman opened Gemma’s case and peered inside.  She shut it again and reached under her desk for an envelope which she handed to Gemma.  “Your details,” she explained, gesturing vaguely behind her. “That way please.”
         Gemma looked in the direction the woman had pointed.  There were some people in the distance, and what looked like bus bays.  She looked at the envelope.  It was large and red, and had the number 18 printed on it.
         “Wait, look, I’m a bit confused – where am I going?  I know this is going to sound crazy, but where is this airport?  Where are those buses going?”
the assistant sighed.  “You don’t know?  Oh, not again.  Look, I don’t have time for this and the helpdesk is closed today,” at this she nodded in the direction of an unmanned kiosk over to the left.  Gemma wondered why she hadn’t noticed it earlier.  “Look, just get over to the bays.  I’ll make a note, someone will talk to you tomorrow.”
         “Tomorrow?  But – “
         “Really Miss Mills, I don’t have time for this.  There’s a queue behind you, in case you hadn’t noticed.  We’re short-staffed right now.  Just head over to the bays, thank you.  Yes, name please?”  She was talking to the next person in the queue now, and pointedly ignoring Gemma.  She sighed and, dragging her case behind her, walked in the direction of the ‘bays’ the woman had pointed at.
         Unsurprisingly, there was a bay numbered 18.  After some more queuing Gemma found herself on another bus, not unlike the one she’d arrived on, and none the wiser as to where she was.  On the bus it finally occurred to her to check her pockets, but her mobile phone and purse weren’t there, and there wasn’t anything helpful like a plane ticket, or even a passport.  The driver of the bus had stowed her luggage in the hold, so she couldn’t go rummaging through that right now.  She opened the envelope she’d been given.  There was a key and a single piece of paper inside.  On it was printed her name, her date of birth and what looked like an address: “6126a Lethe Lane”.  And that was it.  Gemma sighed, rested her head against the window of the bus, and waited.
                   Lethe Lane turned out to be a rather pleasant leafy road next to a river.  By now it was dusk, and there were people sitting on the edge of the river seemingly enjoying the evening sunshine.  A young woman dipped her hand into the river and drank some of the water.  Looks like you can drink the local water at least, thought Gemma.  6126a was on the ground floor of a large apartment block on the other side of the road.  The key from the envelope, not surprisingly, fitted the lock.  She pushed open the door and shoved her case inside.  The room was pretty basic.  There was a single bed, a desk and an old-fashioned telephone.  A phone!  Dropping everything Gemma dashed to it and picked up the receiver.  But there was no dial tone.  A small card informed her that the phone was ‘for incoming calls only’.  Groaning, Gemma sat on the bed.  Surely people would be worrying about her by now?  Something told her her mobile phone wasn’t going to be in her suitcase, but she looked anyway.  It wasn’t.  There were only a few items of clothing, a toothbrush and a hairbrush.  No makeup.  No shampoo.  Not even any toothpaste.  Her purse wasn’t there either, so she had no ID and no money, ‘and no idea where I am, and no idea how to contact anyone’ she thought.  Her only glimmer of hope was that the woman in the airport had said that someone would contact her tomorrow.
         Nothing to do then, but wait for tomorrow.  She was, she realised, very tired.  There was a small bathroom next to her room, so she found her toothbrush, cleaned her teeth with the toothpaste she found on the sink and went to bed. 
         The bed was lumpy and she slept uneasily, disturbed by dreams of darkness pierced with sudden flashes of bright light and the sound of alarms going off.  She was jarred out of sleep by the phone.  She reached for it.  “Hello?” she muttered groggily into the receiver.
         “Gemma Mills?” asked a brusque, female voice.
         “Yes, who – ”
         “Born 12th May, 1979?”
         “Yes, but – “
         “Arrived last night?”
         “Yes, look, who – “
         “Staying at 6126a Lethe?”
         Gemma gave up trying to interrupt: “Yes.”
         “Meet me downstairs in ten minutes.”
         “Ok.”  Silence, followed by a click as the person on the other end of the line hung up.
         Resigned, Gemma quickly dressed, picked up the key, and left.  Outside, waiting by the lake, there was a women.  She was dressed smartly in a charcoal grey suit, shiny black hair pulled back into a severe bun.  There was a name badge pinned to her lapel that said, simply, ‘Natasha’.
         “I suppose,” she said, with what sounded like a tinge of impatience, “that you have lots of questions?”  She crossed the road and started walking purposefully along the river.  Gemma paused for a second, and then hurried after her.  This was after all the first time anyone had suggested, however unhelpfully, that she might get an explanation.  She decided to get straight to the point.
         “Where am I?”
         “You really have no idea?  None at all?”
         “No!”
         “Oh for… I hate it when this happens,” her companion scowled.  “All right, tell me the last thing you remember.”
         Gemma paused momentarily; she had the distinct impression that if she started on a long, rambling tale she was going to be interrupted.  “I was out with some friends.  We were drinking in a bar called, um, The Horse and Hound, and we decided to go somewhere else.  I’d had quite a lot to drink I suppose.  We’d had some jugs of… something.  Anyway… we left to walk to the other bar.  That’s all I remember.  I don’t remember actually reaching the other place.  I don’t remember the journey.  And then I woke up on that bus outside the airport place.”
         Natasha stopped walking and turned to look at Gemma.  Her eyes were very dark, almost black.  Somewhere in the depths there seemed to be a tiny glint of red.  “You don’t remember, oh I don’t know, a road?”
         “Well, I… well we had to cross a road to get to the other bar… I’m not sure if I remember it or just think I remember it…” Gemma tailed off, hypnotised by the red-black eyes staring at her.
         “You haven’t been drinking out of this river have you?” muttered the woman.
         “What?”
         “Oh never mind.  No one learns any Greek mythology any more.  Try and remember again.  It’s very painful if you don’t work it out for yourself.  There was a road.  What happened at the road?”
         “I… we… needed to cross and… there was a zebra crossing… but… I didn’t… oh…” Gemma tailed off as it all came, literally, crashing back to her.  “A car hit me.”  A few things slotted uneasily into place.  “Am… am… I dead…?”
         “excellent!” said Natasha, “now we’re getting somewhere!” and she strolled on briskly.  Gemma hurried after her, noticing as she did so that there was a distinct scent of sulphur in the air.