Page 122 of The Sleepwalker
Olga opens the door, and the others follow her into a narrow corridor lit by the pale-green glow of an emergency exit sign.
Agitated voices reach them through the walls.
They walk past a number of closed doors, and in a red plastic bucket on the floor, Hugo notices three mobile phones.
Olga opens a metal door to a room containing a blue denim sofa, a low coffee table with a grubby glass top and a couple of yellow plastic folding chairs.
‘You can wait here, Hugo,’ she says, shooting him a quick glance.
‘But I don’t understand what—’
‘You don’t need to understand.’
‘Great,’ he says, moving into the room.
The door swings shut behind him, and he hears their footsteps fade down the corridor. The room smells like dust and old fabric. Beside an empty Coca-Cola fridge, he notices, there is a dented suitcase.
Hugo slumps onto the sofa, unbuttons his coat and leans back. He fiddles with the ring in his lower lip, checks his phone and sees that he has ten missed calls from his dad.
Coming to the club was a mistake, he thinks. Olga is stressed, and she is taking that out on him. He should have just gone home, eaten dinner and studied for his exam.
Muffled voices and music drift through the walls.
In the corner, there is a floor lamp without a shade, the bare bulb casting a circle of light onto the rough wall.
After around twenty minutes, the door opens and Olga comes into the room and hands him a plastic glass of beer.
‘Thanks. I just wanted—’
‘I need you to stay here till I come to get you,’ she says.
‘OK, but how long are—’
‘Did you hear what I just said?’
‘I heard you.’
Her thin bracelets are caught on her hands, and she lifts both arms into the air to shake them back.
‘Take this,’ she says, putting a small white pill on the arm of the sofa.
‘What is it?’
‘Just trust Olga.’
She looks down at her phone, then turns around and leaves the room.
Hugo sips his beer, wipes the head from his top lip and lowers the cup to the table. His eyes drift over to the little white pill.
He pops it into his mouth and washes it down with a mouthful of beer. It leaves a bitter taste on his tongue, and he takes another swig of beer to rinse it away.
Hugo is messing about on his phone when he starts to feel a pleasant prickling sensation in his knees and toes. It slowly spreads upwards, making his lips tingle.
He looks around the windowless room, at the closed door, the dented metal and the worn handle.
There is a soft whirr from the vent up by the ceiling, dust swirling in the glow of the lamp.
Hugo reaches for his phone again, but his mind starts to drift, and he struggles to focus.
