The last people in front of them had carried on up the steps, and there was nobody behind them – it was very quiet – and suddenly Carmen realised in the dark sputtering maze she didn’t know where Oke was at all. She pressed herself against the side of a mirror. When she let out an involuntary giggle, it echoed throughout the space eerily. She glanced around, her heart beating faster. She could just see a flicker of his old coat, reflected over and over, but she couldn’t see where he was.
‘Where are you?’ she said, her voice bouncing off a thousand panes of glass.
‘You will have to find me … me … me.’
She spun around, sure that he was right there behind her, but there was nothing, just a flicker of a coat against the mirror, replicated into infinity in two glasses facing one another.
She stepped to the side, concentrating very hard on listening over the sounds of her breathing and her rapid heart. There was something just on the left … She leaped there and gasped as she saw a satsuma bouncing off a side mirror and onto the floor.
‘You … （you you you） Did you just throw a satsuma at me （me me）？’
‘It distracted you,’ said the voice, and she stole past the satsuma and towards anything, any tiny spot of light darting here and there, but he was absolutely nowhere to be found as she ran around columns of mirrors, the lights changing colour, disorientating her as she came face to face with herself and an empty nothingness again and again and again, and she nearly collided with the walls as she went faster and faster, running out of breath. It wasn’t possible.
‘You’ve left the room!’ she called out eventually. All she heard in response was a chuckle that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Increasingly desperate, she spun around; where was he? And again, nothing. Crossly she hit at the wall, and made a clanging noise, then leaned against it, quite out of breath and a little spooked.
Suddenly she felt two hands across her eyes and spun around, till she was in his arms. The room went oddly still, and she was conscious of his tall presence above her, how close she was to another man for the second time in a very short space of time, who, it felt to her in that moment, was taking her for granted.
She jumped back in shock.
‘What are you doing?’ she said.
His face was absolutely stricken and he jerked his hands upright.
‘I am so sorry! I am so, so sorry! I shouldn’t have touched you! I’m so sorry!’
He looked scalded. Carmen’s anger faded almost immediately. It wasn’t his fault, was it, that she was feeling cross and undervalued and jealous?
‘You just gave me a fright, that’s all,’ she said.
‘You should have kicked me!’ said Oke. ‘I am so, so sorry.’
‘Okay, stop apologising.’
Rather stiffly, they both went on further upstairs. They found themselves inside a large turret with doors either side leading out onto a narrow turreted balcony. Once more, there was nobody there, and outside it became clear why: the sky was bright blue but the air was utterly freezing cold.
Carmen forgot to be cross. Right there, straight up was the castle, bold and terrifying as it must have been, designed all those years ago to strike fear into anyone considering attacking the city. It was strange, she was so used to looking at it as abstract, symbolic, just something colouring the background of this extraordinary place. Carmen found herself leaning away from it, so overwhelming did it appear.
But everything from the turret seemed extraordinary, leaning in over her, bamboozling her sense of perspective. A church, its steeple almost bending over her. Absurdly high ancient buildings around courtyards and squares.
To her right, the higgledy-piggledy Royal Mile, descending past St Giles and all the secret closes and passageways, dropping to Holyrood, out of sight below so you felt you could almost fall into it.