Part 17 (1/2)

'Time will tell. Is that what the money was for, Mrs Trafford? Were you one of Mr Silvermann's customers?'

She shook her head. You're crazy was what she wanted to say, but she couldn't wrap her tongue around the words. And was afraid, too, that it was she who was crazy.

'Because I've been doing a little digging since yesterday, Mrs Trafford. And it wouldn't be the first time you've had trouble with drugs. Would it?'

Sarah felt her past open up and swallow her alive.

It was another bas.e.m.e.nt party. They were always popular. 'Everybody has to go down, man. Now that's what I call a party,' some relict told her on the stairs: a relict in a T-s.h.i.+rt advocating the legalization and widespread use of soft drugs. A packet of Rothmans poked from his jeans pocket like an admission of defeat.

She pa.s.sed him again hours later, on her way up.

It was her first time on LSD. Dope had long been her drug of choice. Speed was okay. Sometimes she'd do a line before a party or a dance; it injected a little craziness into an ordinary dull event. But it had its downside; it wasn't mood altering so much as mood magnifying, and once when she'd taken it feeling low, she'd wound up suicidal. Dope was safer. It made you hazy and stupid and friendly, none of which she was the rest of the time. It was a nice place to visit, though she wouldn't want to live there.

But until this evening, she'd never tried LSD.

Like most events of its kind, the party segregated early: dancers, drinkers, snoggers. The previous week, she'd spent so long with the second group she'd ended up in the third, so avoided catching anybody's eye as she collected an unattended bottle of wine and joined Jane in a corner of the drinkers' room. Jane was the only woman on her corridor she could stand. Malcolm, her boyfriend, supplied them both with dope.

'Guys.'

'Cool,' said Malcolm. He pa.s.sed his polystyrene cup. She filled it.

Jane, leaning against the wall, giggled. 'h.e.l.lo, Sarah. Sarahsarah-sarah.'

'G.o.d, what's she on?'

He mouthed something she didn't catch.

(There'd been warnings, of course, from various authorities; even a policeman once, who had held a seminar on drug abuse. Attendance, being voluntary, had been minimal. More useful were the snippets of etiquette you picked up at parties; for instance, that somebody always stayed straight, to look after the others. In case of a bad trip . . . What could put you off drugs faster than anything, Sarah thought, was the b.l.o.o.d.y hippiespeak you had to use.) 'You what?'

'Acid.'

The negotiations took forever. Throughout them, Jane planet-hopped without moving a step; transfixed on the dancers or on whatever it was she thought the dancers were she looked like she was approaching a state of transcendental calm from a particularly interesting direction. Malcolm, though, wasn't selling Sarah any.

'It's not the money, baby.'

(Some people still thought you could still say baby then.) 'I'll be okay. She's okay.'

'Everyone takes it different.'

'I can look after myself.'

He shrugged.

'I'll stick with you guys.'

He shrugged again.

In the end, it was sheer persistence wore him down. Or so he'd have said. Sarah's own take on Malcolm was, he didn't have scruples as such, but he liked women begging him for favours. By rights, she should just kick him in the b.a.l.l.s; this evening, though, she was grateful for the acid. Which looked just like a sugar cube.

'It looks just like a '

'Christ, tell everybody. Just take it.'

She took it.

Nothing happened.

He told her it could take half an hour or so; that for guaranteed instant results, she should drop a laxative. For the next thirty-six minutes she counted down time, watching utterly ordinary people dancing to the most ba.n.a.l music ever. Her pulse remained normal. Her senses worked to rule. She'd had more of a rush from neat orange juice.

'It was just a sugar cube.'

He shrugged. 'What can I say? Some people, it's a trip to Lake Placid. Just be thankful you're not in the Palace of the Zombies.'

'What makes you so sure?'

'And you still owe me eight quid.'

'You'll get your money.'

'G.o.d is in the details,' Jane announced firmly.

They looked at her.

'G.o.d is in the sideboard.'

'What colour is he?' Malcolm asked, with genuine curiosity.

'I'll just p.i.s.s off, then,' Sarah said. Neither of them paid attention.

She wandered off and found another drink. In the background, the music changed from a thud to a smooch; as reliable an indication of time's pa.s.sage as the dropping of autumn leaves. She checked her watch anyway: it showed a quarter to eleven. The hands waved at her, then clenched into fists.

When your watch starts misbehaving, she realized, it is definitely time to go. More worrying was the floor. For some time it had been melting, and only a few chunks remained solid enough to stand on; it took great care to reach the staircase without mishap. The last crumb of floor hissed and sank behind her as she jumped. Everybody else was doomed. The stairs, however, were wonderful, and she determined to climb them to the top.

It was on the first landing she encountered the sad hippie again. 'Hey, you shouldn't be going up there, man. The party's downstairs.'

'f.u.c.k off.'

'That's cool. Hey, you, er, going to the roof or what? They got a roof up there. They keep it at the top.' He tagged behind her while she fought her way up Emerald Mountain. On each landing a small sun burned overhead, circled by tiny pterodactyls, who ate each other then shat each other out again. Ice had formed on the walls. A girl could lose herself in a landscape like this. She could just keep going up and up, where no search party would ever find her.

'You ever make it on acid? It's like f.u.c.king with angels, you know? King pleasure. You gotta do it once just so you don't die never knowing about it.'

Sarah put recent practice to good use, and ignored him.

There was, it turned out, a roof at the top. You reached it through a door marked FIRE ESCAPE in letters formed by serpents: before her eyes they rearranged themselves into IFOR OSTRAPE, which was a secret message meant only for her. She pushed on the bar and the door opened with a thud. Behind her, the hippie started re-evaluating his position vis-'a-vis property rights.

'Er, should you be doing that?'

The door led on to a fire escape; an actual ifor ostrape, which ran down the side of the house all the way to the ground and far beyond. Leaning over, Sarah could make out the dim lights of h.e.l.l winking miles below . . . It seemed sensible to continue onwards and upwards. The ostrape rattled and shook beneath her feet. As she climbed, the city lights grew brighter. It became apparent that this was the nub of the world; an undiscovered pole. The tragic hippie had sloped off, rattled too by her courage and daring. There was a mission awaiting her at the very top. Already it transmitted a sense of urgency, which in the dark glowed like powerful green beams.

At the very top, she found a playpen.