Soul Fire

talking to Sahara, and I don’t think I want to talk to any of them; their squabbles seem pathetic after what Gabe has suffered.
    The space is so tiny that we end up sitting on our bunks. Sahara is snoring, Ade is playing a game on his phone, Cara’s doing her make-up, and I’m still trying to make sense of what
happened at the café. I can hear the people in the next room having a party. Outside, firecrackers explode every few seconds in random, bad-tempered bursts.
    Zoe told us that no one in Barcelona goes out before nine at the earliest, so we’re on our own till then. But Lewis has texted to say he’s found a cool place to meet up.
    ‘Is it safe to walk to this bar?’ Sahara says, breaking the silence.
    Cara grunts. ‘Who do you think is going to come after us, Sahara? Banshees or werewolves?’
    She’s being sarcastic, but there’s something about the joke that breaks the tension in the room.
    Ade puts his arm around Sahara. ‘I’ll protect you, gorgeous. Banshees, vampires, zombies. Bring it on, forces of evil! We’re British. We shall fight them on the
beaches.’
    Even Sahara can’t help smiling at that. ‘Maybe we should eat lots of garlic tonight. It fends off muggers and supernatural beings.’
    We follow Lewis’s super-detailed instructions, and find him in a place with stained glass windows, ancient leather sofas and a little terrace outside.
    ‘Mojito for me,’ Cara says, holding a five euro note out to Ade so he can buy it for her.
    ‘Don’t get too drunk,’ I whisper. ‘Sahara’s already on the warpath.’
    But Cara just laughs, enjoying the attention she’s getting in her barely there skirt. Sahara sits down in a dark corner of the bar and beckons me over. As I approach her, the sounds of
laughter in the bar seem to fade away.
    ‘How are you coping, Alice?’
    Where would I begin? ‘It’s strange, being here.’
    Sahara nods. ‘She should be here with us, shouldn’t she? We were so close. It feels wrong to be enjoying myself when she should be here.’
    ‘I understand.’ But even though I know what she means, I can’t forget what Meggie said about how they hadn’t been speaking for a while before she died, and how clingy
Sahara was. Why weren’t they speaking? Could an argument have crossed over from frustration to violence?
    ‘Sometimes, you know, I feel as though she is here. That probably sounds crazy, doesn’t it, Alice?’
    ‘No crazier than anything else that’s happened.’
    When Sahara says nothing, I look up at her and realise she’s trying really hard not to cry. I reach out to touch her hand, feeling like a two-faced cow. But that’s how mad my life is
at the moment: one minute I am convinced she’s a killer, the next I want to tell her everything’s going to be OK.
    ‘Sahara, it’ll get easier.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Really.’ I say it to make her feel better, not because I believe it. If I do somehow resolve Meggie’s death, things could get an awful lot harder.
    She smiles. ‘I’ll always be Meggie’s friend. And now yours.’
    I smile back. But why do Sahara’s words sound more like a threat than a promise?
    Zoe doesn’t show till almost ten, and doesn’t explain why. She moans that the bar is full of gringos , even though I can’t hear any other English
voices. When I get closer to her, at the bar, I smell alcohol on her breath.
    ‘Have you been somewhere else first?’
    She gives me an odd look. ‘No. Just my flat.’ And then she orders an absinthe. ‘You should try one, Alice. It’s special. It makes reality better. You and I could both do
with that, couldn’t we?’
    ‘I’ll stick to Diet Coke, thanks.’
    The barman hands her a small glass with a yellow-green shot at the bottom.
    ‘Not one for taking advice, are you?’ Zoe says.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘You didn’t listen to me about Meggie, either. About the dangers of poking your nose in.’
    Is she warning me off because she knows who the killer is and she’s worried about me – or because she has blood on her own hands?
    ‘Zoe, please would you tell me what you know? I only want the truth.’
    ‘Whose truth do you mean?’
    ‘Is everything OK, Alice?’ Lewis has appeared behind us.
    ‘Yeah. Long queue, that’s all.’
    He nods. ‘We’ve found a table on the terrace, where it’s cooler.’
    Zoe pushes past Lewis without looking at him. The table is one of half a dozen outside on the square, where more local kids are practising their