The Passengers(4)
Jude blinked quickly. ‘What did you say?’
‘The destination you programmed into your GPS is about to be replaced with an alternative location of my choosing.’
His eyes darted towards his dashboard where new coordinates appeared on-screen. ‘Seriously, what is going on?’ asked Jude. ‘Who are you?’
‘More details will follow soon, but for now, please sit back and make the most of this beautiful spring morning as it will likely be your last.’
Suddenly, the car’s privacy windows switched from clear to opaque, meaning no one outside could see he was trapped inside.
Chapter 3
SOFIA BRADBURY
‘Tell me where I’m supposed to be going because I can’t bloody remember,’ Sofia Bradbury snapped.
‘Again?’ Rupert replied, exasperated.
Sofia was in no mood to be patronised. The painkillers and anti-inflammatory tablets she’d swallowed at breakfast along with a tumbler of brandy were doing little to ease the discomfort of the spinal osteoarthritis in her lower back. It also didn’t help that her hearing aids were malfunctioning, making some words hard to hear.
‘The hospital, remember?’ he continued with a note of weariness. ‘Please assure me you’re in the car now?’
‘No, I’m in a bloody spaceship. Where do you think I am?’
‘I’ll send the address to your GPS.’
‘My what?’
‘Oh Jesus. The map on your screen.’
Sofia watched as coordinates appeared on the centre console and calculated the route her vehicle was to take from her home in Richmond, London. The car’s gullwing doors automatically locked and the vehicle began its journey, the only sound coming from the gravel of her lengthy driveway crunching under the thick tread of the tyres.
‘And why am I going there again?’ Sofia asked.
‘I’ve already told her once this morning,’ she could just about hear Rupert saying. She assumed he was addressing the boy with the effeminate mannerisms interning in his office. Rupert went through assistants with alarming regularity, she thought, and they always shared a similar appearance – skinny T-shirts, skinny jeans and skinny torsos.
‘Rupert, you’re my agent and my PR; if I ask you a question, I expect an answer.’
‘It’s the meet-and-greet with the young cancer patients.’
‘Oh yes.’ A concern sprang to mind, causing her brow to furrow. However, her facial muscles were still too paralysed from last week’s visit to the dermatologist to feel anything move above her mouth. ‘This is not going to be one of these events where nobody knows who the hell I am, is it?’
‘No, of course it’s not.’
‘Don’t “of course it’s not” me like it’s never happened before. Remember when I went to that school in Coventry and they were all too young to recognise me? It was humiliating. They thought I was Father Christmas’s wife.’
‘No, as I explained to you earlier, this group are patients in their early teens and I’ve been assured they are all huge fans of Space & Time.’
‘I finished filming that a decade ago,’ Sofia dismissed.
‘No, it hasn’t been that long, has it?’
‘I may be seventy-eight, but I’m not bloody senile yet. I remember it as clear as day because it was the last time you got me an acting job on prime-time television. I’m hardly likely to forget it, am I?’
Despite reading the script a dozen times, even while filming, Sofia had no idea what the storyline was to the popular sci-fi show. All she grasped while acting against a green screen – and running away from an off-camera man with a tennis ball attached to a stick – was that an alien’s head would be added to the shot in post-production. Not that Sofia had ever watched the finished product. She rarely viewed her own work, especially in her advancing years. She didn’t take any satisfaction in seeing herself age.
Lately, her acting work had become sporadic, and the parts offered, stale. Sofia had tried to remain relevant by waiving her fee for a handful of film student projects, and she’d toured the country in acclaimed regional productions of Macbeth and The Tempest. She had also been offered huge sums of money to join the casts of two long-running soap operas. But she didn’t relish playing grandmothers clad in charity shop costumes and little make-up, and had turned both parts down without hesitation.
Instead, she lifted her spirits by lifting her chin and her breasts with the help of a Harley Street surgeon’s knife. Now, the wrinkles and creases on the backs of her hands were the only tell-tale signs of her true age.
‘Oh Oscar, what have you eaten?’ she scolded the sleeping white Pomeranian lapdog lying by her side and tried to waft away the toxic smell he omitted with her hands. He briefly opened one brown eye, shuffled his body further towards her thigh, then closed it again.
Sofia unhooked the clasp of her vintage Chanel handbag and removed a compact mirror. She applied another coat of her trademark crimson colour to her lips and watched, displeased, as it bled into vertical lines under her nose. She squinted at how pale her grey eyes had become and made a mental note to ask Rupert’s assistant to research medical procedures that might reduce their milky hue. With her veneers, enhanced cheekbones, hairpieces and breast augmentations, momentarily she wondered if all that was left of the original Sofia Bradbury was her ambition.