The Story Begins

EMMA’S JOURNEY

by

Robert Shearman

From an original story by Telnic

CHAPTER ONE

Emma always liked games when she was young. Not because of the games themselves, not because she ever hoped to win – but because they brought her family together. There would always be games on Christmas Day. And after the presents had been opened, and the turkey had been scoffed, Daddy would say, “I think it’s time for a spot of Monopoly!”, or, “I think it’s time for a spot of Risk.” And Mummy would put the washing up aside, and Emma would put down her new toys, and they’d gather around as Daddy fetched the game down from the attic where it had been safely stored since last Christmas. Daddy would take the lid off the box, and carefully lay out all the dice and all the counters, and with mock severity he’d read out the rules. “I shall read out these rules only once,” he’d say, and eye them beadily, “and if you get them wrong, straight to bed with no Christmas pudding!” And he’d give Emma a wink to show he was only teasing, and Mummy and Emma would laugh. Indeed, Mummy laughed a lot as they played the game, and Daddy would laugh too; Emma wouldn’t always understand what they were laughing at, but she laughed as well, just to see her parents together, just to see them happy. They weren’t together all that often, really. But on Christmas Day, at least on Christmas Day, and at least playing those silly board games with their little daughter.

Conversely, Emma never liked train stations when she was young. She spent a lot of time at train stations – always waving her father away as he set off on yet another of his business trips. He’d travel all over the world, and she envied him that side of it: she’d ask him if he could take her with him, and he’d always laugh, and ruffle her hair, and say “Not yet”, and say, “When you’re older”. When he came home he’d tell her stories of all the countries he’d visited. Some of them had such silly names! But the trips lasted longer and longer, and he never did take Emma with him.  And then, one day, Daddy never came back at all. And Mummy, who’d always put on such a brave face as she stood with Emma at the ticket barrier, who always made sure she never cried in front of her daughter… she burst into tears when she heard the news, and Emma had had to hold her and be a grown-up and tell her everything would be okay.

And Emma carried right on being a grown-up. Without a Daddy, and with a Mummy who had been crying pretty much consistently all the years since. And without any games in her life to play.

But now, here she was, back at a train station – how she loathed the places. She’d done her level best all her adult life to avoid them, to travel by bus or by car or by boat if need be. And in spite of herself, what she was doing at the train station was playing a game.

As Emma walked down the platform at St Pancras she felt she was being watched. She looked around, and it seemed to her that everyone was moving their heads away from her, everyone was trying to avoid eye contact. And that the moment later their eyes would be back on her, looking at her, studying her. The woman with the suitcases, and the small children racing about her in small circles. The ticket guard who let her through the barrier. That old man sitting on a bench, Emma was quite certain he was staring at her, so rudely, and then affecting a sneeze and covering his face with a handkerchief when she stared back.

And it was all so ridiculous. They had no reason to watch her. Because she’d already made her contact, hadn’t she?

The man had written a web address into the grime of the train window. She now typed that into her BlackBerry. And it brought up his .tel name, his contact information, a mobile phone number she could call.

“All right, Ben Turner,” she said, when he answered. “So. What happens now?”

*

When the letter arrived in the post, there was nothing that marked it out as special. It was just another bland envelope amongst all the other bland envelopes that lay on the front door mat. Emma opened it as she ate her breakfast.

“You will be tempted to throw away this letter. Do not throw away this letter.”

Emma thought at first it must be some sort of scam. Maybe a competition, something like that, any paragraph now it’d be telling her to rub off three bells from a scratch card, all so she could qualify for a Timeshare holiday. But there was no scratch card. And the letter was typed, it was so old-fashioned – she could see where each single letter had been punched into the paper.

She thought she might throw it away anyway. She didn’t like being told what to do. But she carried on reading.

It was all nonsense, of course. The letter told her that her life would be changed irrevocably if she simply followed the instructions given. “Precisely and meticulously,” the letter stressed, in a sentence of their very own. She was told that she had been judged suitable, that she was now part of a quest. She was to catch a specific train from Leeds to London St Pancras, and on her arrival she was to collect from a locker flight information for her next destination. And it wasn’t just that she was being sent about the place like a ping pong ball; on her journey she would make contact with an associate and be briefed further – for safety’s sake, the identity of that ‘associate’ would remain a secret, but she could signal to him by dropping a scarf that he would then pick up. There were lots of warnings, contradictory things: she’d be told in one sentence that she must not be frightened, and in another that she was in great danger.

Turning over the sheet of typed paper, Emma found taped to the back a seat reservation to London – just a single ticket, she noted, no return – and a locker number.

She considered telling Justin. But she knew what Justin would say. He’d laugh, and say it was all stupid, and that she should bin the letter, and that she should forget all about it. Justin was not the most dynamic boyfriend in the world, and sometimes, as they sat on the sofa on a Saturday night eating kebabs from the local chippie, she’d wonder why she’d settled for him. This man who’d always be there, no matter what, whom she’d never need to wave goodbye to at a railway station. She didn’t breathe a word about the mysterious letter to Justin, because Justin’s response would have annoyed her. And what would have annoyed her most would have been that he’d have been right.

On the day specified on the train ticket she went out shopping. She deliberately went to a supermarket as far from the railway station that she could find. And as she stood in the queue at Asda she looked at her watch ruefully, and realised that even if she now changed her mind - even if she went suddenly mad and decided to scamper off into the unknown on the say so of a complete stranger – that it was too late, she’d never make the train in time. “That’s that then,” she said out loud, much to the surprise of the checkout girl, and she paid for her magazine and her oven chips.

The next day another letter came. In another envelope, just as bland as before. “Good,” it said. “Your independence of spirit is admirable. It is a necessary quality, and further proves why are ideally suited to the task ahead of you.”

And then, underlined, in capital letters:

“THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE.”

On the reverse she found a second train ticket. The train was set to leave later that afternoon.

Sod Justin, Emma thought, and went to the station.

The train sped towards London. In the first carriage, about half an hour into her journey, Emma decided it was time to find her contact. She stood up, so that all the passengers had her in full view. And she dropped her scarf. She looked at everyone expectantly. No one had been watching. So she reached for the scarf, cleared her throat loudly, dropped it again. Dropped it a bit more ostentatiously this time. A man stared at her as if she were mad. A little kid snorted, then stuck out his tongue at her. No one picked up the scarf.

By the time she’d reached the fourth carriage, performing the same scarf trick all the while, her cheeks were burning with embarrassment. She thought how Justin would laugh when she told him. No, he wouldn’t, she decided, because he must never find out. She’d never live it down, he’d never stop smirking at her over his Saturday night doner. By the final carriage she’d tired of the whole thing; she dropped the scarf casually, almost matter of fact. Two men reached for it. One of them had cappuccino foam on his upper lip. And the other was called Ben, and it was to Ben she was now speaking on the phone.

*

“I thought we might go for a drink,” replied Ben. “You know.”

“Fine,” said Emma briskly. “When, where? Let’s get this over and done with.”

“How about Friday?”

“Friday?” repeated Emma. “I’m not waiting around here that long! This info you have, can’t you just tell me now, over the phone? This flight, are you on the plane with me?”

Ben paused. “Look,” he said at last. “You seem lovely. Really. But I don’t think I’m flying anywhere with you just yet. Um. Couldn’t we just have a date first?”

“Why did you pick up my scarf?” asked Emma.

“You dropped it,” said Ben.

“I know,” said Emma.

“On the floor,” added Ben.

“Yes,” said Emma.

“So, you know,” said Ben. “I… I picked it up.”

“To be helpful,” said Emma.

“Helpful, yes,” said Ben. “That was the idea.”

“Great,” said Emma. “So. The other man who picked up my scarf. Is he about?”

“What, the man with the foam on his lip?”

“Yes.”

“You want to speak to him instead of me?”

“Yes.”

“Right,” said Ben, “right. But,” he added, a bit plaintively, and Emma thought he sounded like a little boy, “you can’t prefer him. I mean. He’s got foam on his lip.” Then he sighed, and Emma heard him call out, and another man react with surprise, and the phone was handed over.

“Hello? Yes?” said a new voice.

“You picked up my scarf,” said Emma.

“Oh. Yes.”

“Was there some ulterior motive in that? Or were you too just being helpful?”

“What? Well. No. Yes. I mean. No, on the ulterior bit. Yes, on the helpful.”

“Wonderful,” said Emma. “I spend the afternoon playing a secret agent. And I get foiled by the last two gentlemen in England. Right. Never mind. Doesn’t matter. Sorry to have wasted your time…” And she took the phone from her ear, was about to hang up, when she heard the man still squawking down the receiver at her. She pressed it back to her eardrum. “Yes, sorry, what?”

“I was saying hang on. Hang on.” The voice sounded concerned, and really rather kind. “Is there something wrong? Why not tell me what this is all about?”

So Emma told him the whole story. It was something that kept her occupied as she searched the station for the lockers. The man sounded surprised, and not a little impressed. (“Can I have my phone back soon?” Emma heard Ben ask in the background a couple of times, but her new friend was clearly having none of it.) “So, what will you do now?” he asked.

“There should be a plane ticket in this locker, and perhaps I’ll find out when… Oh.”

“What’s wrong?”

“There isn’t a plane ticket at all. Just a riddle.”

“A what?”

“A riddle.”

“How exciting!” said the man. “I like riddles. Can I help?”

“Knock yourself out,” said Emma, and she recited it to him:

What goes in this man yet does not kill him goes in others with swift death.

A half Dane visiting a neighbour’s country in an Ig Nobel act of courage.

This city that grows stronger through struggle, hosts a man that possesses much steel.

Find the man to find the place.

“It’s like a treasure hunt!” said the man, cheerfully. A bit too cheerfully for Emma’s liking. The clue made no sense to her at all.

She sighed. “Well, if you can solve it,” she said, “you’re welcome to it.” She hung up on him.

She stared at the message. Scrawled above it, tantalisingly, mockingly, was a picture of an aeroplane. Find the man to find the place. She wasn’t going to get those plane tickets until she’d solved this puzzle.

Her BlackBerry was still in her hand. The last web page she’d looked at was Ben’s .tel name.

Emma had an idea.

*

Solve the puzzle in the chapter above and use your answers as search terms in Telpages (http://telpages.com) to locate the .tel name with the link to next week’s chapter.  The link will appear somewhere within the relevant .tel name.  Once you’ve found the link, the next chapter of the story will not be live until Friday 21^st May at 12:00 BST.  Hints may be available at http://twitter.com/emmasjourney - good luck!