nice… Somewhere, a time and a place, where the VVLHC hadn’t blown up, he was still married to Amanda, and they were lying on a beach together in the sun. And – because that was what was so very different about YouSpace – it was real –
The sky, he noticed, was emerald-green.
She grunted again, and he realised he was staring at her right shoulder blade. He’d always been ridiculously fond of it, though when he’d mentioned the fact she’d accused him of being weird. And all he’d done was think somewhere nice.
If it’s real, he thought, I don’t have to go back.
He lifted his head, just to make sure. He didn’t recognise the beach, but it was everything a beach should be: a perfect interval between the blue sea and everyday life, a thin golden ribbon of calm joy. So, if the VVLHC hadn’t blown up, presumably he still had his job. And – his mouth went suddenly dry – the money. Maybe, if he was quick, there’d be time to get all the money out of Schliemann Brothers before the crash –
About fifteen yards away, he saw the back of a man’s head, just visible over the top of a colossal sandcastle. It was blond and curly, and it had enormous ears. He blinked, then shifted a little, just enough so that he could see round the side of the sandcastle. Sure enough; there were Lunchbox, in swimming trunks, eating a bacon, lettuce and tomato roll, and the old man, in a raincoat and a scarf, screwing a long lens into a camera body. Well, he thought, almost perfect. But close enough can be good enough, sometimes. Behind him, he heard a crunch, which he recognised as the sound of someone biting into an apple.
Amanda growled and turned over. He smiled at her. She smiled at him. And then her face froze.
“Theo,” she said, “who the hell is that?”
She was looking past him. He wriggled round, and saw Matasuntha, wearing two pieces of string and biting into an apple. She smiled, waggled her fingers and said, “Hi, Theo.”
Amanda moved like a cobra. She sort of slithered and reared up out of the sand, and the look on her face was one he’d seen ever so many times before, though never quite at this level of intensity.
“Um,” he said.
It was what he’d always said, and it had never done him any good. In fact, he remembered, it was surefire guaranteed to make things much, much worse. “Well?” she snapped. “I’m waiting.”
“I’m Mattie,” Matasuntha said. “Who are you?”
There’s never a doughnut when you want one. “I’m his wife,” Amanda said, in a voice you could’ve preserved mammoths in. “For the time being, anyhow.”
Matasuntha frowned. “You never said you were married. I’m not sure I’d have come here with you if I’d known you were—”
“Theo—”
And then he saw it: fifty yards or so down the beach, under a canvas awning, a man in a white T-shirt, frying doughnuts over a portable gas ring. “Just a moment,” he said, swooping and grabbing Amanda’s handbag. “Won’t be long.”
When he got back, twirling the doughnut round his finger, Amanda and Matasuntha were more or less where he’d left them. Amanda snatched her bag back from him and lashed out at his ankle with her foot. He swerved to avoid her, darted behind Matasuntha, who turned her head to look at him, and smiled at them both. “I’m going now,” he said.
“Theo,” Amanda said. “If you leave now, don’t bother coming back, you hear me?”
He ignored her. He was smiling straight at Matasuntha, who finally got the point. “Theo,” she said. “How do you—?”
“Ah,” he said. “That’d be telling. Well, have fun, you two. I feel sure you’re going to be great friends.”
The doughnut was a circular frame for a miniature of Matasuntha Suddenly Worried, but not for very long.
He just had time to sit down and put his feet up on the desk. Then she was back.
“You bastard,” she said.
She looked different: pale, thinner, hair tangled and bedraggled, fingernails bitten short. “Hi,” he said, as she dropped to the floor, sat with her back to the wall and pulled her shoes off. “You got home all right, then.”
“Eight weeks,” she spat at him. “Eight weeks I was stranded there, you total—”
“But you figured it out in the end, I take it.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I was rummaging about in a dustbin looking for something to eat, there were some cakes and things, I picked