(Leve
DrØmet i Norge)
Monday
4:20 p.m., Oslo
“So how far is it to the hotel?” Chloe asked, walking up-front with Christian as he led the way out of the station and into a small square.
There were steps lining two sides of it, with a man-made waterfall cascading down a section on the left and a burger van perched in the far corner.
“We’re staying at the Millennium Hotel, which is just down the street from Musikkens hus.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a big music centre, like a music library, sort of.”
“Oh, cool!”
“It’s about a 10 minute walk from here. We just go straight down Karl Johan’s Gate and turn right.”
“Aren’t we staying at the Grand?” Ben asked.
“Nah, we usually stay there when we’re working. This is a holiday!” Mark said.
“Is that the really posh one?” Paul asked.
“Five Star.”
“Eurgh, I hate posh hotels.”
“Why?” Rose asked.
“Coz I feel so out of place! I definitely don’t belong in posh hotels.”
“Aww.”
“Wow, trams!” Chloe exclaimed excitedly, seeing the blue vehicle slide up the main road in front of them.
“They have trams in Manchester, Clo.” Ben reminded her.
“Not Norwegian trams.”
“No, that is true.”
“I love it here so much.” Kate said. “The palace grounds are really great for writing. Very peaceful.”
“There’s a palace?” Rose asked.
Christian nodded. “Royal Palace is right at the end of this street.”
“Does the Royal Family live there?”
“Yup – King Harold. One of the Princesses has just had a baby girl, actually, and there was a big stir over that because the new baby is the first female successor to the throne for a very long time.” Christian explained.
“Cool!”
“They’ve got armed guards, haven’t they?” Kate said.
“Oh my God, wow!” Rose said excitedly, nudging Chloe and grinning at her. “We so have to go there!”
“When we’ve checked into the hotel, though.” Ben said.
“Alright lazy bones, we’re on our way.” Chloe said with a smile.
“You keep calling me names today.” Ben complained. “You are very very mean.”
“Awww I’m sorry, am I upsetting you?”
“Ohhh it’s a good job I love you so much.” Ben said, pulling Chloe closer to him as they crossed the road.
“Ooh, McDonalds, excellent.” Rose noted as they walked down a pedestrianised street lined with shops of all descriptions.
“Chip fiend.” Chloe said. “Oooh, CD shop!”
“All in good time.” Ben said, guiding Chloe past her weakness.
“You can buy my new single if you want.” Christian said.
“Ohh here we go.” Ben said.
“Currently residing at number 8 in the charts I believe, Christian.” Mark said.
“That’s right.”
“So if you’re that massive here, how are we walking down the street unnoticed?” Chloe asked.
“Coz we all look rough after travelling all day?” Paul offered.
“I don’t look rough!” Ben said, checking his reflection in a shop window.
“Stop it.” Chloe said, catching him doing it.
Ben grinned. “But I’m just so gorgeous!”
Chloe just sighed.
“Norwegian fans are a bit calmer than British ones.” Mark said. “They don’t take it so seriously!”
“And of course, Ben’s got his shades on, which automatically form a protective barrier around him because the glare from them is so overwhelming that if you get too close you’re blinded for life.” Paul said. “Didn’t I tell you to take those off, anyway?”
“You took them off for him, actually.” Chloe said.
“Oh yeah. Good for me. They should have stayed off.”
“Oh leave me alone. Just coz I look better than you ever will. You could never even hope to emulate me, Paul – you’re simply jealous.”
“Ohhhh, okay, I didn’t realise, I’m sorry.” Paul said, grinning at Ben. “Well at least now I know I have massively overrated self-importance ego coming out of my ears above everyone and everything envy. I feel it’s good to be aware of these things before they get out of hand.”
“Carry on bickering and we’ll lock you two in a dark cupboard to fight to the death, or whatever else you want to do in there.” Mark said.
“Oh please do.” Paul said, raising an eyebrow. “After all this time, I’m desperate for five minutes alone with the lovely Ben.”
Ben wrinkled his nose. “Much as I enjoy the disturbing mental images that will no doubt scar me for life and resurface when I’m burned-out in therapy at the age of 25… no.”
“It’s a shame we’re not sharing a hotel room…” Paul said, looking suggestively at Ben.
“Okay, he’s really beginning to scare me now.” Ben said, moving the other side of Chloe.
Paul started laughing. “I’ve still got it.” He said with satisfaction.
“That’s the T-bane, over there.” Christian said randomly, pointing to some steps leading underground in front of them.
“The what?”
“It’s like the London Underground.” Kate explained.
“Oh.”
“And our hotel’s just at the end of this street here.”
“Excellent, some time away from freaky elf-boy over there.” Ben said.
“No, I’ve told you before on several occasions, not elves.” Paul said.
“He has a severe phobia of things that don’t actually exist.” Ben teased.
“Actually, talking of elves and stuff like that, this might be a really stupid question, but are they real?” Chloe asked.
“What?”
“You know, elves, and pixies, and… I dunno, fairies?”
Ben laughed. “No! Course they’re not real!”
“Are you sure?”
“Well, yeah! Fairly.” Ben looked at the others. “It’s all made up, isn’t it? Stuff like that.”
“Oh.” Chloe said.
“Why?”
“Okay, well don’t think I’m mad, but I could have sworn I saw something that looked like a fairy-type thing just before we got the train earlier.”
Ben looked at Chloe. “Are you serious?”
“Yes! I really did see… something!”
“Do you feel ill? Maybe you need to have a lie down.”
“No, honestly Ben, I’m fine, but I did see it. Whatever it was.”
“Maybe it’s the temperature change.” Ben said. “You’re like, hallucinating, or something.”
“I’m not! I saw it!”
“I saw it too.” Mark piped up.
“Did you?!” Chloe asked excitedly.
“Yeah, I think so. It was by that other flight of steps, right?”
“Yes! Yes, that’s exactly where I saw it! See, I’m not mad!”
“Either that or you both are.”
“No no, there was definitely something there, wasn’t there Mark?”
“Well I thought I’d imagined it, but if you saw it as well…”
“What did it look like?” Kate asked.
“Little, with wings, I think. Did it have wings?” Chloe asked Mark.
“Yeah, think so. It looked sorta… friendly! If that’s at all possible.”
“Well considering you’re both obviously on drugs, I think anything’s possible.” Paul commented. “I think maybe now would be a very very good time to run to the hotel and lock these two away before they start trying to eat our brains, or something.”
“Nooo, it was real! It was a fairy!” Chloe protested.
“Fairies don’t exist, Clo!” Rose said. “Really honestly they don’t.”
“Yeah, they’re just made up. Like tooth fairies and stuff, they’re not real.”
“And none of the rest of us saw this thing.”
“Well maybe you weren’t looking in the right direction, or something. It was there!” Chloe said, utterly convinced.
“I think it’s been a very long day so far,” Ben said diplomatically. “And maybe we’ll all be feeling a bit fresher after unpacking and stuff.”
“You don’t in believe me, do you?” Chloe asked disappointedly.
“I don’t believe anything I can’t see.” Ben said.
“That’s so narrow-minded.” Kate said. “There are lots of things you haven’t necessarily seen that exist.”
“Like what?”
“Like… well I’m not you, so I don’t know, but personally, I’ve never seen a Polish person, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there aren’t any to see if you’re looking in the right places.”
“Yeah, but fairies?! It’s kids’ stuff.” Ben said dismissively.
“But who’s to say that Chloe and Mark didn’t see one? Maybe they’re the most open-minded people here and that was why they didn’t filter it out before the image hit their consciousness.”
Ben frowned. “You’ve lost me.”
“Perception is projection.” Kate said. “Everything we see and hear has to pass through personalised filters before it actually gets to our consciousness, and while the truth goes through our subconscious filters we adapt it to our beliefs and personal experiences, so by the time it actually reaches our minds it’s no longer the truth, but what we perceive to be the truth because of the preconceptions we unintentionally project onto everything around us. Therefore,”
“Everyone’s perception of truth is different.” Rose joined in.
“Exactly. There is no universal truth and therefore, no definition of what is real. Reality is what we make it, and it’s being shaped all the time by what’s happening in our lives while we carry around with us all these inadvertent prejudices that we don’t even know about.”
“So what you’re saying is, maybe nothing is real?” Ben asked, frowning.
“Yeah, maybe! Who’s to say?”
“Like The Matrix?”
“Not exactly.” Kate said. “What it all comes down to in a very basic way is that I might see a situation from a completely different angle to someone else standing right next to me because we have different previous experiences and subsequently different filters.”
“That’s so cool.” Rose said, looking at Kate in admiration. “How do you know all that?”
“It’s sorta a mixture of psychology and NLP.”
“What’s NLP?”
“Neuro Linguistic Programming. It’s like, um, kind of the study of how we think and how our minds work in relation to things like learning and memory. Stuff like that. It can get quite complicated, but there are a lot of cool theories in there if you stick with it.”
“But where did you get it from?” Rose asked, clearly intrigued. “It’s not the type of thing you just come across when you’re reading Heat! Did you do it at University, or something?”
“No, I actually did just stumble across it years ago when I was doing research for a book that’s never emerged from the depths of my writing cupboard. I needed some sort of academic knowledge for one of the characters – anything would do: plants, medicine, even something like nuclear physics; I only needed it as background information - and I just got engrossed in these psychology journals. They were really fascinating, and so I took it one step further and turned this character into a psychology student so I could incorporate all the things I’d found out into the book.”
“What about the NLP stuff?” Rose asked.
“One of the psychology reports about something to do with learning styles had a recommended further reading list at the end of it, and one of the books was on NLP. I went and got it out of the library, and it made so much sense that I just started applying theories within that field to some of the psychology theories I’d read about before. I think you really have to make up your own theories about things. Nothing’s yours otherwise.”
“But what does this have to do with the fairy thing?” Ben asked.
“Well if you’re 100% decided that you don’t believe in fairies, even if you did see it, your filters would be so strong that anything that made it through to your conscious would be so flimsy that you’d put it down to maybe a trick of the light and it’d immediately leave your mind so as not to take up unnecessary space in your memory. We get rid of what we don’t need within seconds of it coming into our brains.”
“So, what – Chloe and Mark believe in fairies and the rest of us don’t?”
“Well aren’t they the two people most likely to?” Kate asked with a smile.
“I think you have a point, actually.” Paul said. “Which is a shame, because the mockery could have gone on for weeks!”
“So fairies do exist?”
Kate shrugged. “Anything’s possible, I guess. But hey, don’t take my word for it – I’m not qualified in this. Or anything, actually!”
“It’s really cool, though.” Rose said. “I’d love to be able to come up with stuff like that.”
Christian smiled at Kate. “Have I ever told you how completely amazing I think you are?”
Kate blushed. “No, coz you’re not allowed to.”
“I’m still not? Not even after one year and 334 days?”
“What?”
“That’s how long we’ve been going out.” Christian said, wrapping his hand around Kate’s as they walked.
“God, how do you remember that?”
“It’s important to me.”
Kate smiled. “I don’t have any words.” She said.
“Why should you need any?” Christian said simply. “If I had a brain like yours I’d never say anything, I’d be too busy knowing things.”
“Oh come on, you’re way more intelligent than I am; you know you are.”
“I don’t care what you say, I think you’re incredible.”
“Do you know you’re the sweetest guy I’ve ever met?”
“I do now.” Christian said, stopping Kate to give her a kiss. “Come on, let’s go and run rings round everyone else with our mental ability.”