Read Online Dream Paris by Tony Ballantyne - Free Book Online

holding a baby.
    “That’s my daughter. She’s called Emily.”
    Okay. Score one to Francis. Even so…
    “Who’s the woman?” I asked.
    “’Chelle. My fiancée. We were supposed to be married back in June, but then Dream London came up.”
    There was a note in his voice that softened me, just a little. He may have been a pig, but there was no mistaking the pride he felt in his family.
    “’Chelle’s very pretty.” I admitted, grudgingly. “And Emily is gorgeous.” She wasn’t, she was a typical bald baby, but you have to say that, don’t you? “How old is she?”
    “Seven months.” He put the phone back in his pocket.
    “I know why you’re going, Anna, and I don’t blame you. I just don’t think it’s right. They shouldn’t have told you about that fortune. You’re not responsible for your mother.”
    “I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself.”
    He didn’t reply to that. Instead he just said:
    “Here we are.”
    We’d reached a narrow alley, squeezed between two buildings. I shivered. The alley looked like something you might have seen in Dream London: irregular brickwork; worn stone steps leading downwards; an iron post, a ring of rust around the base.
    “Steps,” I said, peering into the gloom. “Where do they lead to?”
    “A canal.”
    I took a deep breath and looked around the old world, saying goodbye. The greyness, the rain, the sheer, tired, broken-down ugliness of wonderful normality.
    “I’ll go first,” he said.
    We descended the steps, my heart pounding. What would be waiting at the bottom? I imagined myself stepping into the heady, flower-scented heat of Dream London. Instead, I found myself on the towpath of a dark canal, wedged between the blank walls of two tall buildings. There was the same rain, the same greyness. Francis nudged me, pointed to the canal; the filthy, rubbish filled canal, the surface slicked with oil, the mud choked garbage soaked in moribund water. And there, amongst the garbage, a gloriously yellow orchid, a splash of sunlight in this grey day.
    “That’s from the Dream World,” I said. “Which way do we go?”
    “Downstream,” said Francis. “We head for the sea, for the English Channel.”
     
     
    T HE RAIN WAS getting heavier. I pulled up my hood as we marched on, Francis in front of me. I noted the way he walked, leaning forward to compensate for the weight of his huge backpack. What was in there?
    I could still hear the traffic, echoing from the high walls that hemmed in the canal. We passed by low windows and I peered through them into modern offices lit with the glow of computer screens. There were piles of paper and ring binders, people chatting and drinking coffee. One man gazed out of a window, sandwich in hand. He saw me and winked. I scowled back.
    Everywhere looked so ordinary. There were no more orchids in the canal, nothing unusual. We walked through windblown litter, we kicked coke cans, we picked our away across sections where the path had been churned to mud. We walked on one side of the canal, then crossed a little bridge and walked on the other. We passed people coming the other way, a man walking a dog, a couple arguing, an old lady…
    “Did you see her?” said Francis, the excitement clear in his voice. “She had a pigeon on a leash! We must be getting close!”
    I thought he was right. We’d walked under several tunnels already, where buildings had been built over the canal. The tunnel ahead, however, seemed different. This one seemed to emit a bluish glow.
    I walked into the tunnel entrance, senses alert for any change in my surroundings. Halfway through I realised I was holding my breath. I was still holding it when we walked out into the rain on the other side of the tunnel and saw we were still in London.
    “This is ridiculous,” I said.
    “The trail vanished when we were in there.” Francis rubbed his nose. “Didn’t you feel it?”
    I looked around, thinking, remembering what Therese had said.