Heartache High - By Jon Jacks Page 0,1

one.

Same job lot of paint used for the walls.

Same basic decoration too; no pictures hanging on the walls, no flowers.

So no phone either.

Bleaksville.

There’s no one around.

There’s not even any noise hinting that someone might be close.

No clanking of a chambermaid’s cleaning buckets, or fresh bed sheet trolley.

No yelling kids, no dad bawling at them to be quiet.

No music playing or dreary presenters droning away on a TV.

That figures, I realise looking back into my room; there’s no TV, nothing to play any music on.

Come to think of it, there isn’t any electrical equipment in here, apart from that lonely looking light bulb.

I can’t even see a plug socket.

How’s a girl supposed to manage without a hairdryer?

I could knock on a door and ask where I am. First, though, I need to put some clothes on, spruce myself up a bit.

I slip my clothes back on as fast as I can. Give my hair a quick shake. Run my hands through it to flounce it up a bit.

I hate putting on clothes I’ve warn the previous day, but it’s hardly like I have any choice. At least there’s a towel, soap and a toothbrush and paste, all neatly stacked on the seat of one of the armchairs. But that can wait.

I run a tongue against my teeth, just checking that there aren’t any tell-tale signs that maybe I had something to drink last night that might have been best avoided.

Nope.

All seems fine.

Thing is, though, there goes another explanation as to how I could have ended up here without remembering a single thing about it.

*

I think, Forget knocking on a door.

How’s it going to look?

‘Oh hi; er, could you tell me where we are please?’

Yeah, that’ll go down well.

All I need to do is find mum and dad and have a minor rant at them for bringing us to the Dreary Hotel, Drearyland.

As run and decorated by your friendly proprietors, Mr and Mrs Dreary.

While I’m at it, I can ask mum and dad what sort of travel sickness pill they slipped me to knock me out for the entire journey.

Both the corridor and the bedrooms leading off it are still eerily silent.

Sometimes, I get this weird impression that doors are opening and closing behind me. Movement I think I’m seeing out of the corner of my eye.

But I must be imagining it, just a little freaked. Because when I turn to make sure, there’s never anyone there.

Perhaps we’re the only ones staying here.

Not that that would be too much of a surprise.

Near the end of the corridor, I at last find what I’m looking for; double doors, opening up onto a landing connected to wide stairs, leading both up and down.

Before using the stairs, however, I take a look out of the large window at the end of the corridor.

(Why hadn’t I thought of this earlier? I could have looked out of my room’s window.)

As soon as I look out, over smart lawns and imposing Victorian gothic buildings lying just beyond them, I immediately regret it.

It’s a layout that just screams – hospital!

You’re in a hospital Steph!

*

Chapter 3

No, no; I’ve got to stop torturing myself, trying to guess where I am.

Just how many Victorian hospitals are left? Most of them have been converted into business parks, or apartment complexes.

Mum and dad are probably downstairs, waiting for me in the hotel’s breakfast room.

‘Where have you been sleepy head?’ they’ll ask. ‘We let you sleep in to recover from the journey.’

(The journey I can’t remember, yeah?)

I step through the double doors onto the wide landing.

Once again, everything’s bare and basic.

No signs. No directions.

Down; that’s where a hotel’s breakfast room usually is.

At the bottom of the stairs, either side opens up onto corridors similar to the one I’ve left behind upstairs; long, straight, lots of doors leading off. Every door the same, like it’s all nothing but more bedrooms.

Wow, just how big is Hotel Dreary?

How many people do they expect to stay in a place like this?

There is another door, however; one leading to the outside.

In the circumstances, that seems my best bet.

I step outside, breathe in the fresh air like I’m clearing my lungs of all the dreariness I’ve been inhaling over the past few minutes.

Moving a little away from the building I’ve just come out of, and looking back up at it, I can see that it’s of a similar style to the building facing it, only plainer, less decorative and elaborate.

A dormitory, that’s what it reminds me of; a university’s student dormitory.

I