tiredShe decides she looks horrible, although we assure her (truthfully) that she looks lovely, and she barrels off through the store, ripping the dress as she goes. I want to talk to the pretty young man but then we're all called to the main hall where a band are playing a falsetto cover of 'I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)', and I lose him in the crowd. Later, I see
notintheseheels with him, and she runs over to tell me his name is Eric, and that I should see his collection of ties. Suddenly it's 7pm and everyone's leaving the store, but he works there, so I decide to wait until everyone else is gone and see whether I can get hold of him that way.I choose an alcove to hide in, but instead of the usual people-clearing-up-the-store, after about 7.30 everyone seems to melt away, and then through the window in the alcove I see them all disappearing through a mysterious church-esque door and down some steps, holding torches and murmuring a chant, possibly involving pigs. "Wait! Wait!" I call, and scramble down and out to join them; they just look at me, some of them rather nastily, and ask whether I'm sure. Of course I'm sure. I can get myself out of anything.
So down the stone steps and through some mystic corridors and whatever, and then into a huge sort of school under the ground; there's an assembly hall and a gymnasium and storeys and storeys of accomodation. Eric finds me and looks at me sadly, as if to say You'll never get out now and I look around and realise that he might be right. He seems younger now, maybe younger than me, and then he says, "I'll get my friend. She'll tell you." He bounces off to one of the accomodation blocks and returns dragging
sparksoflight behind him; she seems delighted to see me and gives me a big hug and then bursts into tears, because, yes, now I've been brought down there I'll never get out.I decide to prove them wrong (this is so absolutely the kind of thing I always think I'd do) and go searching for a way out that none of them has thought of. In the dusty space behind the assembly stage, there are a lot of doors that don't seem to be used, or are to storage rooms; none of them are locked. Checking that no-one's watching, which they aren't, I open one and to my delight find that, if I can climb up some boxes, there's a staircase which might lead me closer to the surface. I pull the door to behind me - not closed, because I think of Edmund and the Wardrobe - and start to tackle the boxes, but as I'm halfway up one the door creaks and opens by itself, and on the other side are some amused kids watching me get covered in dust. I feel a bit sheepish.
So I come down and decide to brave it out and wonder why it isn't possible to escape during a day's work at the department store, which is where all these kids seem to work. That's my plan, until
sparksoflight passes me on her way to, um, Mass or something, and whispers "I've got a fake System approved ticket for Panic! At The Disco". This is good news because, thanks to tacks, I also have a ticket for Panic! At The Disco, a real one, and I'm sure they'll let me go. Meanwhile sparksoflight is sorting out a second fake ticket for Eric. I begin to worry that it'll all go wrong.Still, come the day of the concert (and I've no idea how many days I'd been underground), there we are with our tickets and Eric and I make it outside and all the way to the West End for the show. In a horse-drawn carriage, for some reason. When we get there, we're met by
notintheseheels, and with her we queue nervously and watch a Town Crier in a mask wander around with a sign that says "Charles Kennedy? Ha ha ha." and has a picture of the Town Crier making a throat-slitting motion with his hand. Tony Blair leaves the theatre, coughing, and gets into a horse-drawn carriage of his own. notintheseheels decides it's time to phone sparksoflight to find out where she is; turns out she's waiting for Eric and me, on a street corner in York. She gets the bus.Then my alarm went off, which annoyed me rather. I want to know whether we somehow got away.
E.
x
