Dreamside - By Graham Joyce Page 0,3

her hand.

"I don't know why, but I feel dull against you."

"You haven't got what it takes to be dull." In her flying jacket she looked like a wounded refugee from some fiery aerial combat. "I see you work in advertising."

"It's a job. I turn in every morning. Then I come home."

She looked at him. He felt compelled to carry on talking. "I mean it's narcotic. That's how I like it."

"You sound disappointed."

"No; I really do like it like chat. But when I'm happily numb, narcotized, nodding my way through life, then the you-know-what starts over again."

Ella stuffed the scarf into her pocket. "That's what I'm here to talk about."

"Oh dear. Pandora wants a little chat about her box."

"Not my box; our box."

Lee turned towards her. "Ella, I don't want it opened up. I don't know what's going on, but it scares the liver out of me and I really don't want it opened up."

Ella put down her glass and took hold of his wrist. "Look, I don't want it opened up again any more than you do. I'm as frightened by it as you are. I guessed—hoped, even—that you'd be having some of the same experiences as me. I only got in touch with you because—"

Lee put his hand to her mouth. "Can we sit down?"

They moved through to the living room, Ella discarding her scarf and jacket as she went. They sat and nursed their brandies.

"I got in touch with you," Ella continued, "because of what we had together. What we did."

Silence. "I'm starving," said Ella suddenly. "What have you cooked for us?"

"Cooked? God!" He hadn't even thought about food. "I'll phone for takeaway, shall I?"

"No food in the house, eh?" She smiled. "I couldn't help noticing the bachelor feel to the place."

"I noticed you noticing." Then Lee bit the biscuit. "Ella, will you be staying here tonight?"

"I thought I might. Unless it would be easier if I found a hotel."

"Don't be ridiculous. You'll stay here."

"Fine."

"Fine."

"Only . . . Just so that it's clear."

"So that what's clear?"

"Look; I didn't drive two hundred and fifty miles with my foot flat down on the accelerator after an absence of twelve years to start our relationship up again. I couldn't stand to have that opened up, as well."

"Understood," he said, waving his hands in the air, "I was just about to say that the spare room is ready for you. So you can calm down."

"I'm already calm. You don't need to tell me to calm myself."

"That's settled then."

"Right, that's settled."

Lee took this concert of understanding as a suitable moment to escape to the kitchen. He closed the door behind him, putting his back to it as he expelled a deep breath. He was furious about that business of renewing their old relationship, not with Ella but with himself. He had made his feelings transparent, trailing her with spaniel eyes from the moment she had come into his house. He wanted to bury his head.

Their meal arrived. "Tell me," she said, "what was happening before I phoned?"

Lee glanced over his shoulder as though there might be an enemy in the room. "It started around Christmas. I thought it was just some kind of throwback. That's happened before, and there's been no problem. Since then it has come with greater frequency. Over the last few nights it has come without fail."

"Just the repeated awakening?"

"Yes. That's all, thank God; I mean there have been one or two other weird things happening in there besides, but mostly it's the repeater. It doesn't sound much but it's scaring the hell out of me."

"It's the same for me. I know how frightening it is. You get to dread every click or sudden movement in case you wake up and find yourself back in bed."

"But I've even been testing myself in the dream, burning my hand, sticking pins into myself to see if I'm in or out: it doesn't make any difference."

"That's how it was before."

"Sure, but then, somehow, even though I'd get it wrong sometimes, I felt I could tell the essential difference. But not now. It gets so I don't want to bother going to work, cooking my breakfast, washing my face even, in case I wake up. Every time something just a little bit off the wall happens, or if I get a client at work with a screw loose, I end up thinking I'll wake up in five minutes and then I can go to work and deal with the real psychopaths."

"I thought we were