Soul Beach

mirror, I know this is probably just another way of putting off the moment when I find out, but if it makes me feel more confident, then maybe I can justify it.
    The brush struggles through the tangles at first, but I keep going, holding onto the knots so they don’t pull at the roots, just as Meggie always used to when she styled my hair for me when I was little. Slowly, surely, it begins to look glossy again. All right, maybe not glossy, but at least I don’t look as though I’ve been living rough for the last month.
    But now my eyes look tired. I find my neglected make-up bag in the bedside drawer, and apply a coat of mascara. Bloody hell , I actually look awake again. I empty the lipsticks and pencils out onto the desk, remembering how my sister showed me what they can do. ‘You’ve got such gorgeous lips, Florrie. If you use this rosy shade of gloss, it’ll make all the boys want to kiss you!’
    I smile to myself. I don’t want all the boys. I want one who’ll never be able to kiss me. But at least today there’s a chance I might make him proud of me.
    Enough time wasting. I have to get this over with. I reach under the bed, pull out the box with Meggie’s room key in it. I don’t know what I expect – for it to sing me a song, or glow in the dark – but it’s just a key.
    Click, click.
    Not half a dozen clicks at all. Two. The distinction between real life and the Beach has been getting thinner and thinner until it barely exists.
    Mist. Breeze. The smell of coconut. I guess it seems more intense right now because of the day I’ve had, and because of the contrast with the night air outside, full of sodden firewood and slippery, rotting leaves.
    I blink, hard, because the screen won’t clear. Something has changed, but I don’t know what. The site is slower to react on screen, but the smells, the sounds of the waves seem even more intense.
    ‘Alice!’
    ‘Over here, over here!’
    ‘Florrie . . .’
    Danny, Javier and Meggie are calling out to me, but I can’t see them. Their voices circle me.
    Yet when the mist finally clears, I am sitting in the beach bar at the table nearest the ocean, just me and Sam. She looks different. I see lines and dry skin around her eyes and nicotine stains on her teeth.
    Sam smiles. ‘You did it, mate.’
    ‘Triti?’
    ‘Gone.’
    I feel dizzy. ‘It was definitely me? What I did?’
    ‘I don’t even know what it was you did, Alice, but what or who else could it have been?’
    Is that sweat I can smell when she leans towards me?
    Everything is so much clearer now. It’s as though I was looking through grubby glasses before, and now someone’s given them a good clean. And I can feel the rush seat of my chair scratching against my bare legs, even though, of course, I am in thick, November-proof jeans on a pink velour office chair in my bedroom.
    ‘When did she go?’
    ‘There was a storm. At first we could still hear her howling like a banshee, but then her voice changed. It was like she was calling out to someone she knew. Someone she loved. To tell you the truth, Alice, I almost didn’t recognise her voice because she sounded . . . well, happy. For the first time since the fireworks. And then when the storm had blown itself out, there was nothing. No howling. No calling out. Just the sound of the waves.’
    I close my eyes and I see Triti’s face: not the skeletal mask but the round-cheeked, beautiful girl she was, smiling. I feel tears pricking at my eyes but then she mouths, thank you and then is gone.
    It’s so bizarre to think I have made that happen. I’m sixteen: I can’t drive, I can’t vote, I can’t have a credit card, and yet I have that power.
    And it’s not just the power to help Triti. Now I know that Danny’s theory was right, I can push on to solve Meggie’s murder too. Even though freedom for her will mean I lose her for ever, and I’m not sure I’m ready for that.
    But, whatever it takes, I’ll put Meggie first. I know that helping Triti is just the first step, that I’ve only just begun. But right here, right now, it’s enough to have achieved something so life-changing – or should that be after life-changing?
    ‘Alice? Are you with me?’
    ‘Sorry, I’m just . . . surprised it worked.’
    ‘The thing is,’ Sam says gently, ‘I brought you in here to warn you that it might not be all that’s changed. As far as I know, we’ve never had any Visitor intervene like this, but now you have, there will be . . .