There's no opening across the canal. The buildings stick together without a gap as far as I can see in both directions. Staring at them only gives me the impression that the ripples on the water are invading my skull. Did somebody in one of the houses train a spotlight on my room? The notion makes me feel watched, all the more relentlessly since I can't identify from where – and then I realise that a boat must have cast the light. I close the slats of the blind and turn away with a laugh, and step on the object that has emerged from under the bed.
My mind struggles to present me with the idea that I'm on a beach and have trodden on a jellyfish. The intruder is cold and rubbery enough, but the similarity doesn't work even before I look down. In some ways it does indeed resemble a jellyfish; it's flattish and as good as round, and pale, and glistening. It widens its eyes and its grin at me before slithering under the bed.
THIRTY-TWO - I'M IN MOTION
I know where I am now. I'm really on my way home. If the Frugojet staff at the departure gate are wearing red pointed floppy hats, that simply proves it's real. The drug is losing its hold on my mind; in fact, it must have worn off hours ago. I didn't actually see Tubby's flattened face crawl across the floor of my room, even if I can't forget how the cold puffy substance felt under my bare foot. I seemed to feel the cheek quivering with gelatinous mirth, but it has to have been the drug.
I couldn't convince myself then. I almost fell headlong in my haste to switch on the light and to avoid anything that shouldn't be on the floor. I grabbed my toiletries and threw them in my suitcase before realising I'd left it open while I was in the cupboard that did duty as a bathroom. I pawed fearfully through the contents and shook my clothes to establish that they weren't harbouring an intruder. As soon as I was dressed I hauled the case out of the room and barely prevented it from tumbling me head first down the precipice of the stairs.
The receptionist or night porter or whatever occupation had been compressed into his spindly form was at the desk. 'I have not called you yet,' he said, no doubt thinking that I didn't trust his promise or possibly his English. I mumbled to the effect that I preferred not to risk hurrying down those stairs, and slumped in a chair, jamming my wrist through the extended plastic handle to keep my luggage safe. He looked affronted by the gesture, and I could only pray that he wouldn't leave me on my own.
At some stage he did. I kept nodding off even though it took me back to the hotel room, where I crouched on the bed in an attempt to stay clear of the faces that swarmed from beneath it. They glided snail-like up and down the walls or poised themselves on the ceiling as if they were preparing to drop on me, a prospect that made them grin more widely still. When I lurched awake and found the counter unattended, I grew afraid of seeing the replacement's face. The next time I regained consciousness, however, the squeezed man was back. 'They are coming for you now,' he said with no expression at all.
The van had barely enough space for my luggage and me. The seven passengers stared hard at me as I clambered in, and the woman beside me edged away, waving one wrinkled hand like a farewell she wished she could make. As the burly driver slid the door shut he gave me a grin so secret I couldn't tell whether I was expected to share it. All the way to the airport I clung to a handhold on the door. I was ensuring that I didn't loll against my neighbour, but I felt as if I was clutching at the moment so that the room infested with Tubby's face didn't recapture my mind.
It can't now. The departure hall is loud with announcements, and every row of seats around the departure gate features children squabbling or wailing or both. To help keep me awake I have the twinges of my wrist, which I must have scraped on the handle of my suitcase. Nobody appears to understand the new delay, including the Frugojet staff, but one of them is reaching for a microphone. She lets go of it to do up the top button of her blouse, on which FRUGO is emblazoned in increasingly large capitals apparently emitted by the rear of a toy jet, and then she picks up the microphone, producing a magnified clunk and an electronic squeal. 'Thank you for your patience,' she says. 'Flight FRU 2012 to London Heathrow is now ready to board.'
This receives a standing ovation not far short of hysteria. She halts the stampede to the gate by inviting the disabled and anyone burdened with small children to board first. Families with larger children take advantage of this as well. Her invitation to all remaining passengers to board is as good as redundant, since everyone stays crowded around the gate. The protracted seconds her colleague takes to check my boarding card and passport make me feel as if time is congealing around me again. As I tramp down the temporary corridor it shivers in the wind. I grin at the pilot, since a pointed red hat trimmed with white is drooping on his head. Once the crowd lets me reach the first empty aisle seat I sit next to a woman who sneezes in greeting. Neither this nor her girth augurs well for the journey, but passengers are pushing by me, and changing my seat would be impolite.
At last everyone's seated, having crammed the magically capacious lockers with items bigger than the cabin is supposed to accept. By this time I've examined the contents of the pocket on the seat a child has tilted within inches of my face. I ask him if he really needs so much space, but either he and his mother are deaf or they're ignorant of English. I feel as if I'm in the cheap seats. The pocket contains a vomit bag stuffed with sweet papers, a dog-eared copy of the airline's magazine Flies in which the margins are full of incomprehensible scribbles, and an extensively chewed safety instruction card. The tooth marks look unappealingly fresh, but a steward gestures me to hold onto it. It's time for the safety demonstration.
I want to believe he's serious, but the wagging of his red hat that would barely fit a pixie doesn't help. Nor does his grin, which is too close to fixed. I could imagine that he's using it to communicate with his colleague behind me. He enacts the action of the seat belt with a relish that suggests he's binding a captive and only reluctantly letting them go. He stretches his arms so wide to indicate the emergency exits that he might be parodying a crucifixion, especially when his fingers wriggle in the air. He drops into such a sudden crouch to point at the emergency lighting concealed in the floor that the boy in front of me flinches, jolting the seat nearly into my face. Of course the steward doesn't actually fancy that he's using an oxygen mask to hang a victim, but there's no mistaking his imperfectly suppressed mirth when the recorded voice to which he's miming warns passengers not to inflate their life-jackets inside the aircraft. Is he tempted to yank the toggle on his jacket and block the aisle with his ballooning self?
During the performance the plane has crawled backwards and then forwards while my neighbour sneezes into a succession of tissues pulled out of a box. At first the tarry darkness outside the dwarfish windows seems to retard the wings, and then they slice through it as they gather speed. I feel the ground vanish, and the windows turn blank as dead screens. 'They've gone,' the boy cries in front of me. 'The wings have fallen off.'
'It's just the clouds, Tim,' his mother assures him.
'We're up above them now,' says the man beside her. 'See, we've got wings again.'
'I thought you didn't speak English.'
Though I only mutter this, my neighbour retorts 'Who says? No fools in this family.'