CONTINUATION OF 1980s ITV SERIES SAPPHIRE & STEEL. Some said the field at the top of Traitor's Lane was haunted. Over the years it had been a farm, a café, even a petrol station... all gone now. Abandoned and neglected, the place was now nothing bu...
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Tess turned her face away from the window. She couldn't bear to look at those horrific, haunting faces. It was no better looking on the solemn faces of Sapphire, Silver and Steel. What was it that was burning through their expressions? Sympathy? Guilt?
They were wrong about her being this key thing of course. She knew who she was. She was Tess who lived at 121 Cedar Tree Road. She'd gone to Grange Heath Comprehensive School and left with five GCSEs to get a job at Dewar Court Nursing Home as a carer. She had a mum and a dog and by the end of the year she aimed to have a little car. She had hopes and fears and memories. They were real; all of them. None of it involved these strange weird people with strange names. She certainly had no knowledge of being some kind of key to unlock a prison cell. If she was then surely she would have some knowledge of it. Whoever heard of such a thing? It was so crazy it was beyond belief. Her normal life was not beyond belief. It was an ordinary life, the kind of life that millions of people lead; getting up in the morning, walking the dog, going to work, doing the shopping, getting a takeaway... That was far more believable.
She turned to Silver. There was real sorrow in his eyes. 'What do I have to do?' she asked him.
He did not answer her but instead pulled her closer and put his arms around her.
'I can somehow release them from here, can I?' she said into his lapel. 'And get rid of these... Transient people?'
It was Sapphire who replied. 'You'd be sacrificing yourself though. It's important you understand that, Tess.'
She could hardly bear to think about what Sapphire was saying. 'You mean, I'd die.'
'You've never been alive, I'm afraid.' Steel's voice now, unwavering as ever. 'Your life, your experiences, your memories... They're illusions. Fabricated as part of the camouflage. They'll fade away. You'll fade away.'
Tess felt hands on her shoulders as Sapphire pulled her free from Silver. Looking into those impossibly blue eyes, she felt herself entranced again. 'I'll show you,' Sapphire whispered.
Within a second, Tess felt as though she was back on Traitor's Lane. It was late and she was calling out for her dog. She couldn't seem to find him. This wasn't like him; he always came when she called. Then she realised. There was no dog. She'd been calling out for no-one. A moment later she felt she was walking home from work the way she did each day. When she got to the junction where Cedar Tree Road began though, she couldn't seem to find it. There was no Cedar Tree Road. Her first thought was that Mum would be devastated if she did not get home from work at the normal time. Then it struck her. There was no Mum. There never had been a Mum. Even those terrible times when Mum and Dad had been fighting and she had hidden away in her room and wept were all a fiction created by someone of whom she could not even conceive. She had buried her face in her pillow back then. She had buried her face in her pillow and screamed out for help. Her cries had gone unheard. She wished now that she had screamed out loud for help instead of muffling her voice in the pillow. She wished that she had shrieked for help so loudly that Mum and Dad would have heard it, so loudly that the whole street, the whole town, the whole universe would have heard it. That was the only thing she regretted, really, even now. As a confused and frightened little girl, she should have shouted for help. Turns out, none of it had happened anyway. Tess had never happened.
