that had meant they weren’t yet together.
The photo on the display wasn’t Floss.
Cassie stood still and gazed at the phone as it went silent and the picture that stared at her from the screen, her mother, disappeared. Disappointment started at the nape of her neck and trickled slowly down her spine, seeping into her through her skin. She breathed deeply for a moment, blinking hard, and called her mother back.
‘Well, well?’ her mother asked on answering. ‘Did she arrive OK? Are you bringing her here? I thought you were bringing her here. I thought you’d be here a couple of hours ago.’
‘Um, she’s not here yet,’ said Cassie, chewing her lip.
‘What? Why not?’
‘I don’t know. I guess something went wrong. She was delayed, maybe.’
‘The flight was delayed?’
‘No, the flight arrived. She wasn’t on it.’
‘Where are you?’
‘At the airport still. I’m waiting.’
‘For what? Planes from Argentina don’t arrive every five minutes, Cass. You’d best come home and find out what’s happened.’
‘Brazil.’
‘What? Yes. What? Come home, love, I’ve a roast in the oven.’
‘I’m going to wait a while, Mum. See if I can find out anything here.’
Cassie’s mum was still talking, but a large German tour group was walking past, their voices raised in excitement, and Cassie couldn’t hear her anymore. She hung up and slipped her phone back into her pocket.
The crowd surged around her, pushing at her, catching her hair in the zips of their bags, but she did not move.
She didn’t realise it, but she had not moved in five hours.
DELIA’S SHOULDER WAS ACHING FROM carrying her bag. Why had she even brought it? It felt like she’d packed for a weekend away, instead of a light stroll and a read. She’d been walking for over an hour and she had no idea where she was. She couldn’t figure out how she could have got lost. She never did pay much attention to where she was going, but then she’d never really needed to. She always found her way.
She pulled out her phone, feeling stupid for needing it, and brought up her little blue dot. There she was, standing on a street. She could see the street she wanted; it was much further away than she’d realised. She’d bypassed her neighbourhood completely and veered off wildly to the north. She checked which direction she needed to walk in and set off purposefully down the road.
It was five minutes before she realised she’d gone in the wrong direction. She checked the map, and tried again.
She could see clearly where she needed to go, but every time she looked up and started moving, she lost sight of it. She tried holding her phone in front of her face, but even then it didn’t seem to relate. No matter what she tried she ended up walking further away.
Delia decided to find the nearest bus stop and get home from there. After giving up on her phone, she walked, even more purposefully, for another ten minutes. The street she was on was tiny and winding. She stopped for a moment, wondering if it was best to go back the way she’d come or continue on in the same direction. She couldn’t remember seeing a bus stop recently so there had to be one coming up.
She kept walking. The area was small and residential and void of transport links. Each winding road, flanked by brick houses, led to another, more winding road, flanked by more brick houses.
The sun had returned in full force and Delia’s back was itchy with sweat.
After a further twenty-five minutes, Delia heard what she was certain was a lorry. It didn’t sound far away; it was somewhere ahead of her. She picked up the pace, her eyes set forwards, weary and desperate, and the street soon broke out into a small row of shops with, oh joy, a bus stop.
After a few minutes, a bus pulled up and a weary Delia hopped onto it. A whimper rose up within her, but she remembered she was in public for long enough to quell it. She flung herself into a seat and closed her eyes. She had no idea how she’d managed to go so far astray. She leant forward with her head in her hands as the bus trundled her towards home.
ROBERT FOUGHT HIS WAY THROUGH the crowd of commuters to exit the tube station. He climbed the escalators with more of a wince than usual, regretting the morning’s ill-advised run. He should do that more often, he thought. Or never again. As always, he got out a stop early to get a bit of air before being confined at his desk all day. As he walked, his mind was still at home with Mara and Bonny. He knew the day would be long, he knew he’d be tired and moody by the end of it, he wished he could have just called in sick. He hadn’t faked a sick day since he was fifteen though; he’d almost forgotten how to do it. He sighed as he turned onto his street, thinking about what he and Mara could be doing if he didn’t have a responsible job.
He’d gone two blocks too far before he noticed he’d passed his building. He turned back, still smirking, and walked three blocks too far in the other direction. He stopped and tried to concentrate. He walked directly and purposely to the position of his office. He didn’t get there. He paused and looked around. This time he’d made it to roughly the right position on the road, but for some reason he wasn’t at his building. In fact, he couldn’t see his building at all.
Suddenly he chuckled. He was clearly on the wrong street. He retraced his steps back a couple of blocks. He was sure he was on the right track now. He turned down the street he’d turned down every weekday morning and quite a few Saturdays for the last six and a half years. How had he got this wrong? He strode on.
He stopped. He’d gone too far again. No, he hadn’t, he’d not gone far enough.
No. No, that wasn’t it at all.
He was in the right place, he was in the exact spot, but there was no work. His work wasn’t there.
The entire building was gone, vanished as if it had never been there at all.
Robert turned around slowly, twice. There was the travel agent he’d booked his and Mara’s last holiday in. There was the French restaurant that used to be really great but had then changed hands and gone sharply downhill. There was the hotel that seemed a bit rugged but that Robert had once seen a quite famous actor he could never remember the name of leaving. There was the new building that housed three identical nondescript businesses with shiny receptions and ambiguous names. Robert’s building should have been next to the hotel, but it wasn’t.
Robert stood staring at the lack of his work for ten minutes, with no idea what to do. His body was frozen while his mind tried and failed to comprehend the vanishing of the building that should have been right in front of him.
