Dream Paris (5 page)

I reached to take back my script, and his hands tightened upon it.

“I don’t think I should let you keep this.”

“If you don’t give it back to me, I’ll get out of the car right now.”

“And miss out on the chance of seeing your mother?”

“Don’t treat me like a fool. If the fortune scroll is correct, I’ll end up seeing her with or without your help.”

Mr Twelvetrees smiled.

“Clever girl.” He released his grip. I tucked the script into my coat.

We drove in silence through the broken streets of London. We passed through freshly restored areas lit up with electricity, shop windows steamy with central heating. We plunged into the gloom of less fortunate districts, where the broken shell of London was lit by nothing more than moonlight. In one such zone I saw a silver tube train, brand new and shiny, zooming on its way, full of passengers relaxing as they headed home from work. The train glided by against a backdrop of ruined Tudor houses, cracked open like eggs.

“Why me?” I whispered. The words were spoken to myself, but Mr Twelvetrees answered.

“Quite simply, because we know that you are going to find your way there. Maybe you can find your way back. If you can bring some people back with you, that would be a bonus. But just knowing a route would be a start.”

“Why?”

“Because if we’re going to help all the lost people, we need to know where they are. We need to know the route back home. You remember how things were in Dream London.”

I certainly did. The city changed a little every night. Roads and railways had a habit of drifting off course, of connecting themselves to new destinations. Finding a path anywhere was almost impossible. There in the car I was seized with a pulse pounding fear. I felt myself getting hot, felt the sweat prickling under my clothes. I was going back to that disconnected place. I was returning to the Dream World.

After half an hour or so in the car we drove up to an endless wire fence. Lines of green lorries and Land Rovers stood behind it. Men and women in green fatigues hurried back and forth. A soldier opened a gate as he saw the black car approach.

“This is an Army barracks,” I said in surprise.

“Oh, yes,” said Mr Twelvetrees. “What were you expecting? You must know that Whitehall took some of the most extreme changes in Dream London. Half the buildings are uninhabitable, and we don’t know if we can trust the other half. What could be listening? What’s the matter?”

I was gripped with another fear, one quite different to my earlier panic. A group of men and women in bright red tunics was walking across the centre of the compound. They were carrying instruments: a bugle, two horns, a clarinet…

“I’m okay.”

“No, you’re not. What is it?”

“The band. They’re not going to play, are they?”

“I shouldn’t think so. Now, gather your things. We’re in a hurry. The minister herself wants to speak to you.”

The minister. I didn’t register his words; I was too busy looking at the band.

E
VERYTHING WAS HAPPENING
in a hurry, that was obvious. I was taken to a spare meeting room, the tables down one side filled with the half-empty teacups. The flipchart at the front of the room had the letters
DP
scrawled across the top sheet. Displaced Person? Or Dream Paris? I had just begun to flick through the other sheets when the minister walked into the room. She was speaking into her phone.

“No! Cancel that meeting! I need to be in Munich tomorrow!”

She saw me and held up a hand, a brief acknowledgement.

“I’m sorry, I’ve got to go…” She dropped the phone in a pocket then advanced upon me, hand extended.

“Therese Delacroix, Minister with responsibility for the Dream World. Anna, I want to thank you so much for coming.”

Therese Delacroix was a slight, plainly dressed woman. She gave me a firm handshake, gazing deep into my eyes as she did so. Everything about Therese suggested confidence: the minimal make up, the grey hair, the sensible shoes. This was a woman in charge, someone who did things her way. A role model to spunky, gutsy school girls everywhere. School girls like me.
See?
she was saying,
you can do it, sisters!

I disliked her immediately.

“Anna, I’m so glad we got to meet. I’m very busy at the moment and I was afraid you’d have set off before I had a chance to thank you personally. I can’t begin to tell you how impressed we all are by what you’ve agreed to.”

“I’m not sure that I’ve agreed to anything. My name was on a scroll.”

Therese waved a hand dismissively.

“You’re going to Dream Paris. That’s a brave thing to do. I’m not sure you realise how brave.”

That got me.

“Really? Tell me,
Therese
, were you in Dream London?”

She didn’t try to flannel me.

“No, I wasn’t, Anna. My constituency is in Manchester. I was part of the Emergency Parliament located there during the Incursion.”

The Incursion,
I thought.
Is that what they’re calling it?

“Manchester. A lot of the ministers are still up there, aren’t they?”

Therese nodded. That was when I realised that my first impressions were wrong. There was nothing plain about Therese. Her clothes, her make up, her hair. This was a woman who had spent a lot of time and money on trying to appear natural.

“Shall we sit down, Anna?”

We pulled two of the metal chairs up to face each other. The people who had been in this room before us were too important to straighten up after themselves.

“Now, Anna. As I said, we’re very grateful to you for agreeing to do this for us.”

“And as I said, I don’t know why. It’s not like I’m choosing to go.”

“It’s very brave of you to admit that.” Therese leaned forward slightly. I’d seen this trick before. This is what some people do when they want you to think they’re admitting you into their confidence. They’re trying to make you feel special.

“I realise that your biggest concern is your mother, Anna, and that is right and proper. But as you’re going to Dream Paris, I want to ask you to think about something else.”

“Go on.”

“Anna, have you ever wondered what happened when Dream London ended?”

“Wondered? I was there, Therese. I was there in the parks. I was there when they destroyed Angel Tower. When they destroyed the Contract Floor. Where were you, Therese?”

Therese smiled. Little creases failed to form at the edges of her eyes. Therese was a nipped and tucked, coloured and toned, creamed and exfoliated one-hundred-percent-natural woman.

“I like to think I did my part, too. But Anna, I want you to understand. When the freedom fighters such as yourself…”

“The freedom fighters?”

I couldn’t help but laugh. Therese pretended not to notice, she carried on speaking.

“… when they broke the hold of Dream London, when they destroyed the Contract Floor, what do you think they achieved?”

“They destroyed the contracts. All that land that had been sold to the Dream World.”

“That’s right. The Dream World no longer owned Dream London.” She sat back in her seat. “So who did?”

I opened my mouth. I closed it again. I’d never really thought about that before. “The people who used to own it?”

Therese steepled her fingertips.

“For the most part. But London is a different shape today. There is land here that didn’t exist before the changes. Who owns that?”

“… the Queen?”

Therese pursed her lips and nodded.

“Actually, that’s probably as good an answer as any. But even so, there are assets in this city still unaccounted for. No one owns them.”

“Good! Make them common land!”

“That would be a good thing, wouldn’t it? But this is the modern world, Anna. Nothing remains unclaimed for long. And that’s what’s happening here. The ownership of parts of this city remains unknown. We believe that some of the missing contracts may lie in Dream Paris…”

I shuddered. Dream London had started when things from the Dream World bought property in London.

“What do you know about the French Revolution, Anna?”

“That it was the start of modern Europe?”

“Good answer. But what about the Communes? The Great Fear? The Reign of Terror? Do you know about those things?”

“I’ve seen
Les Misérables.
”

“That was much later. Anna, I won’t lie to you…”

Only liars say they won’t lie to you, only liars think of lying enough to mention it.

“I won’t lie to you, Anna. What little we know about Dream Paris suggests that it’s a dangerous place. There’s no democratic government there. Rather, they have something called The Committee for Public Safety. A group of people that changes by the month, new leaders denouncing the old and putting them up for execution.”

I gazed straight ahead. I’d been frightened enough at the thought of re-entering the Dream World. Now I was being told I was going to enter a revolution.

“The citizens of Dream Paris live in fear of each other. Dream Parisians live in fear of being accused as traitors by their friends and neighbours.”

“I still have to go.”

“You know how they show that they’re suspicious of you? They hang burning fruit in the street outside your apartment.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

“It will be worse for you, Anna. You’ll be a foreigner. An outsider.”

“I feel like an outsider here.”

“You can be an outsider here and still belong. Anna, I won’t lie to you, if you enter that city, you will find it very difficult to leave.”

“I’m going to enter that city. It says so on my fortune. Besides, my parents are in there.”

“Your mother is there,” Mr Twelvetrees reminded me. He’d been sitting quietly in the corner, smiling with complacent cruelty.

“You’ll need papers to get in, papers to move across the city, papers to leave. The chances are that once you’re sucked into that place, you’ll never get out.”

“I’ll see my mother.”

“Do you even like your mother?” asked Mr Twelvetrees. “According to your school records you adjusted to the loss of your parents much faster than your peers.”

That was a barbed but remarkably astute question. Did I like my mother? The last time I had seen her she was a lush, throwing herself at any man who came by. But Dream London had changed everyone. She never used to be like that. Once my mother had been something big in the city, she’d been a woman not unlike Therese Delacroix, back before the changes had convinced everyone that a woman’s place was in the home. But none of that mattered. At the end of the day, she was my mother.

“How do you know about Dream Paris?” I asked. “If it’s so difficult to get out, how do you know anything about the place?”

Therese held up a rectangular piece of paper. An old photograph, faded brown with age.

“This was found in an old book shop on Charing Cross Road. I’m sure no one thought anything of it until after the Incursion. There are lots of other sources, just like it.”

I examined the image. It was a brown photograph of the Eiffel Tower. It looked as if it was under repairs, the structure wrapped in sheeting. And then I noticed the really odd thing. There was another, smaller Eiffel Tower off to the side of it. And then I spotted two more, even smaller, in front. At the bottom of the picture, written in faded black ink, I read the words
Dream Paris, 1938
.

I pulled out the truth script. It hadn’t worked on Mr Twelvetrees. Maybe it would on Therese.

“Look at this, Therese…”

The script looked so much brighter here in Mundane London. The curls of colour, the fluorescent yellow, gold and scarlet seemed to light up the room. A spiral of meaning that wound out and drew your eye down to the impossible colour below. Therese was hooked.

“This is a truth script,” I said. “I was given it in the parks, at the end of Dream London. Tell me, Therese, can I trust you?”

“As much as anyone else in this world.”

“Hah! Am I going into danger?”

“I’ve already told you that you are.”

I was lost. She was answering me with the truth, and saying nothing.

“Are you doing what’s best by me?”

“Yes,” said Therese, quite simply.

I felt quite frustrated.

“What can I do to succeed?”

Therese pulled me close.

“You’ve got a pretty face,” she said. “Use it.”

“I’ve got brains too,” I snapped. “I don’t need my looks to succeed.”

Therese laughed.

“You take my advice, young lady. The odds are stacked against you in this world and any other. You take any advantage that you have and you use it.”

I looked closer at Therese. She wasn’t what you would call attractive, but there was something else there. Call it power, call it determination, call it sex appeal, but there was something there. Therese had
it
.

And what’s more, Therese was telling the truth. She’d read the script.

“How come you know so much about Dream Paris if you’ve never been there?”

“You don’t have to enter Dream Paris to know about the place, Anna. Its influence is spreading across the Dream World. Dream Paris is at war with everyone. If Dream London had continued to grow, they’d have been at war with us. The Dream Parisians seek to bring revolution everywhere.”

“Doesn’t sound a bad thing to me.”

“You say that when you have a bed to sleep in every night, when you have enough food to eat, when you can walk to school and home again without fear of being denounced and sentenced to the guillotine.”

I felt a flash of irritation.

“You say that you spent the
Incursion
…” – I spoke the word with heavy sarcasm – “safe in Manchester. You, who will go back to her nice safe offices whilst I set out to Dream Paris alone.”

“Oh, didn’t Mr Twelvetrees tell you?” Therese looked across the room. “You won’t be going alone.”