Her eyes are closed, her face remains beautifully pale and still, and she’s surrounded by gallons of red blood.
‘No!’ he screams over and over, trying to get into the pit with her. But he can’t.
People hold him back, their hands slick with her blood.
‘Why couldn’t you wait?’ he screams and his voice is hoarse. ‘Why did you do this—?’
Then he comes out of the nightmare as suddenly as he went into it.
There’s no blood-covered Julia, no pit.
He’s had a nightmare.
In reality, he’s in his room in Villa Artemis, with its white walls and the soft turquoise armchair beside the double doors to the balcony, which he left open. The muslin curtains move gently in the half-dawn of Tuesday morning.
He’s utterly shaken. He doesn’t want to go back to sleep in case he falls into that dream again.
He grabs the hated notebook and writes in it:
Tonight I had a nightmare about Julia in hospital. I’m running to find her but I can’t. Up and down all these corridors.
When I find her, it’s too late. She’s covered in blood. She’s dead. In a pit and everyone’s covered in her blood. I feel such anguish, like I’m responsible. Because I’m too late to find her.
Then the realisation hits him.
He was angry with Julia in the dream.
Furious.
How dare she risk her precious life. How dare she make the people who love her suffer.
And yet …
Dan knows there’s a deep grief in Julia that he can neverreach. How can he be angry with her when she’s trying to cope with such pain?
Will she ever be able to let go of the pain?
Will he ever be free of it?
Winded at this thought, Dan lies back on the bed.
He probes inside his head, searching for the unaccustomed anger the way he’d reach for a sore tooth with his tongue.
He’s never angry with Julia in real life. He idolises her.
But idolatry is not love.
Chapter Twenty-Three
‘Hi Keera, it’s your momma here. I’m in Vegas and, guess what, I’m too old for the shows! Me! Too old? I am so fricking annoyed. I came to see my pal Ernesto, you know the guy who told me for years he could get me a gig out here, no problemo.
‘Turns out he was lying!
‘All the jobs go to bands of young dudes doing Eagles covers or girls who can’t sing but can rock a pastie, if you know what I mean. What’s some twenty-one-year-old Barbie going to know about heartbreak? Jack shit, that’s what they know.
‘I’m only here because I need the money. We are broke, in case you don’t know, Keera! I can’t believe you used the money in that last account to go to this “retreat”. You got fixed already, for chrissake. How many more fixes do you need?
‘I’m staying at Maggie Flatbush’s house. I’m in with the lizard. Gecko. Whatever. It has a triplex and a cubic zirconia necklace. I’m on a blow-up mattress on the floor. Lizards have it better than me!
