on every surface – are endless bits of … stuff. Boxes of wires, components, tiny tools, rolls of gaffer tape, a soldering iron, boxes of screws and nails, and a selection of eye-shields, helmets, gloves and glasses for use with virtual-reality games. Some of them are dusty and look years old, with different names on them. Google, Vis-Art, Apple, Ocean Blue, Samsung … Some of the names I recognise but most I don’t.
On one aluminium worktop lies a computer and a monitor – an old one, from the last century, with its insides spilling out as though it’s been dropped and no one has swept up the pieces. I don’t think anyone has swept anything, to be honest: the whole place is pretty rank.
Below the desk are several cabinets, housing – I suppose – the actual workings of the computers. A few lights blink but they make no sound, not even a hum.
On a worktop next to a sink is a wooden board with a wrapped loaf of bread, and some butter and cheese, plus a load of dirty cups. Mr Mash has found some crumbs and snuffles around, trying to locate some more.
Dr Pretorius eases her long body into a wheeled desk chair, adjusts her spectacles and taps the keyboard on the desk, which makes the middle screen come to life.
‘Sorry about the mess,’ says Dr Pretorius but she doesn’t sound sorry at all.
Her fingers tap and type while page after page scrolls up on the screen. The two other computer monitors light up with images that flash by, too fast to see properly, before they stop on a picture of a beach.
It’s a moving image, from three different angles, one on each screen.
I look at Ramzy, who has been silent since we walked in. He gazes at the screens, his mouth hanging open.
‘Don’t worry, guys,’ says Dr Pretorius behind us. ‘It gets better. Here.’ She holds a bicycle helmet in each hand, and waits for our reaction. ‘Well, put ’em on,’ she says, eventually. ‘Adjust them so they’re a good fit, and make ’em tight: tighter than you’d normally wear.’
A tiny earbud plugs snugly into each ear. She helps us with the straps and buckles, fiddling and pulling, till Ramzy says, ‘Argh! It’s too tight!’
‘Can you breathe?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then it isn’t too tight. OK – follow me. The dog stays here.’ She leads us out of the control room and back into the studio and we stand with our backs to the foamy green wall.
I look down and realise for the first time that we’re standing on a kind of path that runs round the whole of the circular floor. The floor itself is a huge disc filled with … what? I bend down to look closer.
‘One-millimetre matt-black ball bearings,’ says Dr Pretorius beside me. ‘Billions of them, half a metre deep. You can walk on them – it’s OK. They’re packed tight. You won’t sink.’
She stands before us, checking the helmets and finally lowering a curved steel bar that attaches to the helmets like a visor. It rests above our eyes. ‘That’s the 3D generator,’ she says. ‘It’ll dazzle a bit but you’ll get used to it. You’ll probably also feel a little discomfort on your scalp, but it’s nothin’ to worry about.’
Ramzy says, ‘This is just like the Surround-a-Room at Disney World!’
I get the impression that that was not the right thing to say, although I can’t be sure. Dr Pretorius blinks slowly and takes a deep breath through her nose, as though considering her response. Eventually, she says, ‘Dead right, sonny. Only this is waay better. This is a game that’s gonna change the world. OK, this way.’
She leads us towards the deckchair. The ball bearings feel odd underfoot, like walking on soft gravel. ‘When the program starts,’ Dr Pretorius says, ‘the floor will shift a little beneath you. It might feel strange at first but you’ll get used to it.’ She turns and goes back into the control room, pulling the curtain behind her and closing the door with a thunk. In my ear, there’s a crackling noise, then I hear her say, ‘Ready? OK – let’s do this!’
It is only then that I realise that I have no idea what I’m doing. I have just gone along with this unquestioningly, strapping on a weird bicycle helmet, stepping on to a floor made of tiny balls, beneath a vast dark dome, while outside people stroll around and eat ice creams, and …
I have exactly the same feeling as the first time I went on a roller coaster. I must have been about six. I was with Dad, and we were in the front car. It had crawled up a steep slope, and it was only when we got to the top that I looked down and realised that I was much higher than I wanted to be.
Five minutes before now – less! – I was banging on the big double door with a wolf’s-head knocker and now I’m about to test some new … what? A game? Who IS this woman?
I am terrified. How, I am wondering, did I end up here?
‘Ramzy? I don’t like this.’ I reach out and grip Ramzy’s hand, then I call out, ‘Stop!’ and then louder, ‘STOP!’
But it’s too late. The pin lights in the ceiling all go off and everything goes dark.
Exactly where we’re standing in the Spanish City was – till very recently – a restaurant, although I never went inside it. Years before that it was a ballroom, then a discotheque, with cafes and amusement arcades; outdoors there was a permanent funfair dominated by a huge white dome, and the whole thing was called the Spanish City.
Granda, who grew up here before he moved to Scotland with Gran, says he remembers an ancient, rattling roller coaster made of wood and iron called the Big Dipper. By the 1990s, though, the Spanish City was almost a ruin, and it stayed like that for years, apparently.
It was all refurbished a few years ago, and there’s no funfair now, and no Big Dipper. But there are still ice-cream shops and cafes in another section – swanky, expensive ones like the Polly Donkin Tea Rooms that make Granda suck his teeth and go, ‘You’re kidding! That much for a pot of tea! I tell you, when I was a kid …’ and so on.
The king visited the Spanish City once, before he was the king. I was a baby, and there’s a picture of me and Mum, and the king looks like he’s smiling at me, although that’s just the angle of the picture. He was smiling at something else. It’s in a frame in our hallway.
Anyway, last winter the restaurant under the dome closed down. No one knew why. Saskia Hennessey’s mum worked as a waitress there and one day she was called in and told she no longer had a job. But … she was given a shedload of money, the family all went to Florida and had brand-new laptops when they came back, and Mrs Hennessey got a job at the Polly Donkin Tea Rooms, anyway.
It was the same for everyone who worked there, according to Sass.
One day: busy restaurant. Next day: removal vans being loaded with tables and chairs. Week after: builders moving in with sledgehammers and skips.
It all still looks the same from the outside. But no one knows what’s going on inside.
