Beauty (and Bananas) are only Skin Deep...

 Douglas squeezed his eyes shut in an attempt to concentrate on the many questions brought into being from the situation he found himself in.  He had to whittle them down to just the three important ones, but Iris's staring eyes were putting him off.  How was he supposed to think?!

 After a minute or two of fruitless reasoning, Douglas still hadn't decided if "Should he play Iris's favourite Beatles tune?" was an important question or not - and he really fancied a banana which didn't help matters.  He was dithering between including the question or not because a) he wasn't sure if he knew for definite which Beatles tune was her favourite - despite her singing "Hey Jude" somewhat incessantly in that underwater cave to take her mind off not having a toaster, and b) the fact that the question had cropped up surely meant that it was a plot point to be remembered at a later time, so it had to be important.  Right?  He didn't know so he opened his eyes.  Iris seemed to be staring even more intently, even though, from her recumbent position on the bed, her line of sight was directed at the ceiling.  He looked at his watch - time was escaping him.  All thoughts of bananas evaporated.

 "Sorry, Iris" Douglas muttered as he stooped down, brushed an errant chocolate raisin off the bed, then slid his forearms between Iris's unconscious form and the rather old fashioned candlewick bedspread, and turned her on to her side to face the wall.  "What the hells...?"

 A faint, blinking light behind Iris's right ear caught his attention.  He gently brushed aside a lock of her dark hair to get a better look.  It was probably a bluetooth earpiece, he told himself as he moved closer.  Or a hearing aid?  Although, Iris never had any hearing problems as far as he knew?  But there was nothing there.  No audio technology, no medical devices, nothing.  Except for the light that continued to blink once every second or so.  A light that was flashing under her skin!

 Douglas was momentarily stunned.  After a second or two that felt like hours, he gathered his wits and looked as his watch again.  Then at Iris.  The light was still blinking and, from his new position amongst the shoeboxes and notebooks, he noticed that the light was reflecting off a small, white triangle jutting out from her skin next to her hairline.  He moved in for a closer look.  The triangle looked like the corner of a label.  There was even something printed on it - a letter, by the look of it, but only part of it was showing above the skin's surface.  Gingerly (Douglas was proud of being a red-head), he gripped the label betwixt finger and thumb and gently pulled it out.  One centimetre, two, three, then it stopped - clearly fixed to something within Iris.

 Douglas read the fine, block-cap text: MADE IN TAIWAN

Magical Mystery Tour.... [Chapter two-ish]

"Iris, what are you doing? Can you hear me?"

Douglas shook Iris's shoulder in an effort to wake her.

"What did you see? It's really important that you wake up now."

Iris lay on her bed, her eyes were open, staring at the ceiling, but she wasn't dead.

"Iris, FOR PITY'S SAKE WOMAN, what did you see? And when did you see it?"

Douglas thumped his fist against the wall and as he did so a framed print of Salvador Dali's Persistence of Memory fell to the floor. Douglas bent to pick it up [if nothing else he was always tidy] and as he did so he noticed that stored under Iris's bed was an impressive array of shoeboxes.

'Wow', thought Douglas, 'this is an impressive array of shoeboxes, but Iris always wears battered old brogues, how peculiar.'

Douglas stopped thinking and pulled out one of the shoeboxes, he opened it, and gasped for dramatic effect. The shoebox did not contain leopard print mules, as suggested by the picture on the lid of the box, but three bulging scrapbooks and 10 used notebooks of the school variety.

He opened a notebook, this was exactly the information Douglas was looking for. He looked up fondly towards the slender, brogue wearing woman still laying unconscious, yet wide eyed on the bed, "I knew I could rely on you Iris, I'm so sorry I referred to you as a wretched curtain twitcher in a previous post, you were always such a meticulous record keeper, even when we were trapped together in that underwater cavern for days on end without food, water, a cuddly toy, a toaster, or your favourite Beatles album, you still found a way to keep meticulous records. What a woman."

Douglas began to read Iris's last entry, as he read his eyebrows began knitting together like two hairy caterpillars trying to make a sweater. When Douglas had finished reading he had three important questions:-

1) WHO IS THE SHORT MAN IN THE PINK RABBIT ONSIE WITH THE BIG GUN? [Clue: He isn't Mr Short]
2) WHO IS THIS RENNIE CHARACTER? AND WHY DID IRIS NEED HIS HELP?
3) WHERE IS ANNIE?
4) WOULD HE GET TO HARWICH IN TIME?
5) SHOULD HE PLAY IRIS'S FAVOURITE BEATLES TUNE?
6) WOULD IRIS'S FAVOURITE BEATLES TUNE WAKE HER FROM HER OPEN-EYED SLUMBER?

So many questions...but, as in every good epic, only three are important...