Soul Beach

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The Management Team

14
    The page doesn’t load straight away. As I wait, the sound of the waves through the headphones seems more distant than before . . .
    I’m in a beach hut. No, a beach bar . It’s empty, but there are lounge club tunes playing, deep red tropical flowers in empty green beer bottles on each of the dozen or so metal tables, and the smell of mandarins and limes heavy in the air. It’s intensely seductive, and my breathing slows as the fragrance fills my head.
    Fragrance?
    ‘It’s Alice, isn’t it?’
    I spin around, and see a girl behind the bar.
    A person! Or, at least, a person-shaped delusion.
    When I look a second time, I realise she’s older than I thought, late twenties maybe, with dark, dread-locked hair, laughing eyes, and a painfully detailed Celtic tattoo stretching up her skinny left arm, under the spaghetti straps of her green top. She looks like a grungy pixie.
    ‘Who are you?’
    ‘I’m Sam.’ She waves at me: the half-dozen silver rings on her tiny fingers cluster like a knuckle-duster on her hand.
    ‘How did you know who I was? And how come I can see you? I thought I wasn’t meant to be able to see anyone.’
    She smiles; her eyes crinkle. ‘Everyone can see me, including Visitors. It’s only Guests you can’t see yet.’
    Her accent is Liverpuddlian, like Mr Bryant’s. I wonder if I’ve misheard her. ‘Who?’
    ‘Guests. It’s what we call the people here. The dead people.’
    I flinch. ‘I thought we weren’t supposed to mention death,’ I whisper. ‘What if the management hear you?’
    She laughs, but I don’t feel like she’s laughing at me. She takes a packet of cigarettes – Silk Cut – from her apron, and lights one. ‘Alice, I am the management.’
    I stare at her. ‘You?’
    ‘Well, I’m not like senior management. But I do work here. I’m kinda part bar manager, part Mother Superior and part shoulder to cry on. Everyone needs a big sister here, sooner or later.’
    I immediately think of my own big sister. ‘Where’s Meggie? Has something happened to her, because of what I said?’
    ‘No, no. She’s still here. The reason you’re seeing me is so you get the chance to ask a few questions privately. Where we can’t be overheard.’
    ‘Questions? Like what?
    ‘Whatever you like, mate. Can’t pretend I know everything, but I’ll do my best.’
    I can’t think straight. So many questions.
    ‘Oh, Alice. I wish I could pour you a drink.’ She looks around the bar, which is better stocked than the flashy Greenwich club Meggie sneaked me into last Valentine’s Day.
    ‘It’s OK. I’ve got some water,’ I say. It feels like a physical effort to drag my attention away from the screen and back into the ‘real world’ so I can take a sip. Why is Soul Beach so vivid in comparison?
    ‘Let’s sit down,’ Sam says, and she pours most of a bottle of red into her glass, before leading me to a table. The bar has a palm-leaf roof, but is open on all sides, and when I sit down all I can see is the sea, and the horizon above it. Tonight the water looks a bright jewel blue, like sapphires, and the sun hasn’t set yet, so I don’t know which time zone we’re in. ‘Now. What do you want to know?’
    I try to focus. ‘OK. Why is Meggie here?’
    ‘She was murdered, right?’
    I flinch. It still sounds so wrong. ‘Yes. Do you know who by?’
    ‘No. No way. We only get the basics, and to be honest with you, it’s a bloody good job, because I have a crap memory. And – no offence, because I like your sister, she’s a laugh – but there are so many of them, and they’ve all got a good story, so after a bit, it’s tricky to remember who’s who, never mind how they got here.’
    ‘Seriously?’
    She nods. ‘I know I sound a right callous bitch. But, you know, part of helping people settle in is about making sure they forget why they got here, and focus on . . . well, life after death.’
    ‘Is this it, then? Heaven?’
    Sam shakes her head. ‘Not quite. Look, to be honest, most of what we get told is strictly need to know. But have you heard of limbo?’
    ‘As in, that thing where you dance under a rope?’
    She smiles. ‘No. The other sort. It’s the idea that there’s a kind of . . . waiting room between life on earth and eternal life. Or a purification process. Depends on your religion.’
    ‘Purification? Like hellfire? So Meggie did something wrong?’
    She shakes her