by Jason Arnopp
Loathing the sense that I’ve become the butt of a joke, I get up and wander aimlessly around the room. I try to stretch my aching back, still feeling like an intruder in what was supposed to be my dream home. The rain has eased off, so I head towards the windows, intending to peer outside.
My right foot steps in the pool of cold water, sending chills up my leg. I picture some prick laughing at this slapstick mishap as they watch the live infrared video feed.
Even though I can’t see the face drawn on the window, I can feel it grinning at me.
You’re going to love it here.
I’m not creeped out.
You’re going to love it here.
I am not creeped out.
You’re going to love it here.
I. Am. Not. Creeped Out.
The enormity of my fatigue finally triumphs over the adrenaline. I curl up on the floor and manage to close my eyes.
One word comes back to me, over and over. Why?
Why has Scott done this to me? And why should I spend the rest of my life not knowing? I might not like myself all that much, but even I know I deserve more.
If I’m ever going to be free of all this anger, hurt and confusion, then I need to know the reasons behind Scott Palmer’s behaviour.
I’m going to use his phone to learn what makes him tick. I’m going to crush him. Then I’ll flick him aside and rebuild my life as something fantastic.
But right now, I am going to do my best not to think about all these eyes watching me from the dark.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
4 October
An evil sandman has packed my eyelids with grit.
Why did I sell my coffee maker before moving down here? Ah yes, because Scott owned an incredible machine: a mighty, silver-spired kingdom that dominated the kitchen. In my fairy-tale picture-postcard world, I should be using that machine right now. I should be sipping cappuccino on the balcony, while Scott rubs my shoulders and wishes me well for this induction day.
Of course, even if I did have my coffee machine, Scott’s failure to pay the electrical bill would render it useless.
Three gratitudes would serve me well right now, provided I can drum any up.
I’m grateful that I’ve woken in a nice flat by the sea, regardless of the circumstances that brought me here. The autumn sun has painted the walls orange. This warms the place up by a couple of degrees, even if the effect is only psychosomatic.
And, uh… I’m grateful for having chosen to unlock Scott’s phone. Yes, it was probably the worst decision in the world, but at least it was a decision and—
Fuck. Hold the front page. Looks like my third gratitude might be a stormer.
Scott’s phone lies face up on the floor beside me. Seen from this angle, sunlight reveals greasy fingerprint marks on the surface of the screen.
Oh wow. Who needs a caffeine buzz when you can spot something like this?
There are four clearly discernible points where Scott’s fingertips have tapped most frequently. When I summon the onscreen security keypad, these points correspond to four numbers.
Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate? Me, for figuring this out.
The diamond-shaped formation of these numbers makes perfect sense. We so often remember our passcodes in terms of the shapes our fingertips describe on the keypad, more than the actual numbers themselves. We pick a simple shape, then muscle memory takes over. So here’s my first guess: Scott would have chosen the numbers to form a nice, easy-to-remember clockwise circle starting from the two.
I tap two-six-eight-four.
No dice. But did I really expect my first guess to work? I should try the digits anti-clockwise, but I’m already nervous. By my reckoning, there are twenty-four possible combinations of this number, and who knows when the phone will lock itself for increasingly long periods of time? I’m reminded of how Izzy’s phone once seized up for literally twenty-five thousand hours, because Dwayne, her child’s sperm-donor excuse for a dad, tried to crack the code so many times. She had to reset that thing, which meant wiping the contents.
Two-four-eight-six.
Oh dear God, yes! That’s the one. With a jittery animation, Scott’s passcode screen flies apart to reveal a home-grid of colourful apps to explore.
I’m in like Flynn. Superb work!
Also… what the hell am I doing? My triumphant two-second rush gives way to the dread of what I might see on this phone and how obsessed I might become. If I’m going to scour this thing for the truth, then I very much need rules. I must establish clear parameters, so that this dubious investigation doesn’t spiral out of control.
You don’t think you’re already heading right off the chart? Last night, lest we forget, you gave an empty living room the finger.
Okay, here goes. I, Kate Collins, solemnly swear that when I learn the truth about Scott Palmer, I will smash his phone and retreat to my blissfully data-free Nokia.
I also solemnly swear that I will not – repeat, not – use Scott’s phone to check on what that dickhead Rudolpho’s been up to. Gorging myself on six months of his dumb social media posts would be like re-opening old, healed wounds. There can be no going back to stalking that braindead bison.
Most importantly of all, I solemnly swear that I will not keep Scott’s phone about my person while at work. Non-negotiable.
Work must come first. In order to function properly as an ambulance-driving paramedic, I must rigidly compartmentalise my life. I must seal my personal affairs in a biohazard box until I come home each day.
Speaking of which: I have to be at the ambulance station really very soon.
What if Scott comes here while I’m at work? Unlikely, but possible.
I single out my most precious moving box, then slide it into one of the kitchen’s under-cupboards. This box contains special goods like my passport, a shiny stethoscope the service gave me as a gift and a framed photo of a baby I delivered that ended up being named after me, God help her. I really should have personally driven this box down from Leeds, but clarity of thought hasn’t exactly been my specialty over the last twenty-four hours.
Swearing to myself and checking the time, I grab my jacket and drop one phone in each pocket.
Oh, that’s interesting. I thought you weren’t taking Scott’s phone to work…
No… uh… I said I wouldn’t keep it on my person while working. And I won’t, so shut up.
As I head for the front door, something halts me in my tracks.
On the mat beneath the letterbox, there’s a new scattering of wood chips.
Closer inspection confirms that these chips have fallen from the door, leaving ugly new craters in the varnished wood. And now that I have morning light to assist me, I can see that these holes are more like gouges. They come in batches of five, too, as if ripped out by… fingers?
An obviously ridiculous thought. These chips simply fell from the damaged door overnight, and there are far more important things to think about right now. Such as getting a taxi instead of using my own car, so that I can read the fuck out of Scott’s phone on my way to work.
“How’s your day going then, love?”
“No offence,” I tell the back of my cab driver’s head, too tired for niceties, “but I’m not up for chatting at all.”
His only reply is to turn the radio sports news up a notch.
For the first two streets of this journey to the ambulance station, I found myself paralysed by choice. There are now genuinely two hundred times as many smartphone apps in the world as there are lions. Staring at Scott’s home screen, I wanted to look at everything, all at once. I also wanted to see nothing at all. I felt sick with trepidation, yet dizzy and excited, like the kid on their birthday who can’t decide which chocolate and cake combo to devour.
And now I’m ploughing bravely through Scott’s photos. All twenty-six thousand of them. Scott might have more phone memory to play with than I did, but I can’t remember him taking all that many pics. Of course
, he may not have felt inspired to do so when we were together, what with not giving a damn about me.
These pictures are eclectic. Streets, meals, starlings flying in tight formation around the Palace Pier like an airborne fingerprint, cats, sunsets, the views from train windows. You name it, looks like Scott was keen to snap it, probably to stick on social media. Must brave his Facebook and Twitter apps at some point. Can’t wait to slide into those DMs… I think.
The driver turns the radio up another notch, and I ask him to turn it back down.
There are many people in these photos, too. Naturally, my mental filter singles out the women. Which of these ladies could have been seeing Scott at the same time as me? Pretty much any. Okay, probably not the smiling, seventy-something woman wearing a purple paper Christmas hat at a dinner table – but hey, who knows how wide-ranging this rogue’s tastes might be?
Here’s one skinny blonde in her early thirties, with big expressive green eyes, holding a glass of something like Prosecco. Yep, I could certainly see Scott being attracted to her, what with him being male, and human. Same goes for the deathly pale, late-twenties Action Girl looking so triumphant on top of a mountain which she must have scaled. Bright red-dyed dreads burst out from under her climbing helmet like snakes, and a dense tattoo sleeve covers one arm. Hmm, surely Scott couldn’t have snuck off on a mountaineering trip with her while dating me, even if we did mostly only see each other at weekends.
Annoyingly, none of these photos have any date attached… but here’s a picture of me and Scott from August. Smug Kate From Two Months Ago looks like she’s won the lottery. I remember him slipping his arm around my back, pressing the side of his head against mine and snapping the photo while we ate in a Thai place on St James’s Street.
I pinch Scott’s head between my finger and thumb, exactly as I’d love to in real life, then zoom in on his face.
Specifically, I want to re-evaluate his eyes as they fill the screen. I want to gaze into the soul of the man who Smug Kate From Two Months Ago thought she knew so intimately.
I half expect to see some big and terrible revelation in these eyes – some devastating clue as to the nature of the real Scott Palmer – but even in isolation they sparkle. On the face of things, he appears every bit as happy as me.
And the Oscar goes to… La La Land. Oh no, wait, sorry everyone, it’s Scott Palmer.
Tapping the picture back to its original size, I suffer a pang of loss. I yearn to dive back into the idyllic world of this photo and immerse myself in our warm love. To shake off this pang, I remind myself of how Scott’s love was nothing but cold make-believe.
Back on the photo-grid, I scroll down to see a whole ocean of bare flesh and pink parts. Please don’t let these be two thousand pictures of Scott having sex with other people.
Doesn’t look that way. On closer inspection, when I tentatively open some, this is a whole bunch of pretty generic porn.
Phew. Hooray for good old generic porn.
Except you’re almost disappointed, aren’t you? If you were to see the cold, literally hard evidence of Scott screwing someone else, that would bring closure. It might kill you, but also cure you. Yeah, you won’t be happy until you’ve demolished yourself and then have to rebuild from the ground up.
By flicking my finger up the screen, I reveal a block of pictures that still look filthy but are also entirely different. Completely bizarre, in fact.
My driver’s voice is muffled, as if underwater, as he asks whether this is the right entrance.
Seeing this stuff in thumbnail form, I can’t even tell what I’m looking at. The colours are different from the previous pinks and tans: now they’re pink, blue, green, yellow and more. What fresh hell is this?
Even when I expand one of these pictures to fill the screen, I have no idea of what I’m seeing.
Here’s what looks like part of a bare human thigh. Smooth, so it could belong to a woman. The rest of the picture is filled by what might be part of some bulbous green octopus. Except there’s a large claw poking into one corner of the screen, vaguely like a crab’s. Some kind of mutated giant crab.
What. The. Christ?
The driver repeats his question: is this the entrance I need?
Braving another picture, I’m confronted with a woman’s breast that drips with a bright blue substance the colour of food dye. Goo, that’s the word for it. Goo.
The next picture is a close-up of a man’s open mouth, filled with a multi-coloured thing that resembles nothing I’ve ever seen. Looks like some kind of nauseating cross between a human muscle and… and a big insect. This thing has eyes, and lots of them. Some kind of stinger protrudes from its rear end and has pierced the guy’s tongue.
I still don’t know what I’m looking at, but I really, really don’t like this.
Hey, Scott must have been watching some dodgy horror film on his phone and taken screenshots so he could share this fucked-up shit with his social media mates. Look at this, everybody! Retweet, Like, comment, please please love and validate me.
“Look, love, are you all right? I need to know where you want to get out.”
We’ve arrived outside the ambulance station, so I mutter an apology to the guy and pay up. While waiting for change, I wonder if I dare check out the Videos folder. Video feels even scarier than still photography. Seeing a picture of your boyfriend banging someone else is tough enough, but a moving picture with sound?
Still… in for a penny, in for a psychological pounding, that’s my motto. So I tap open Videos.
A new grid of thumbnail images assaults my retinas for one solitary second…
… before the whole screen plunges into black.
Oh, great. The phone’s crashed, leaving me with an almost subliminal impression of what I saw.
These thumbnails were mostly quite dark – nothing like those bizarre horror-sex screen grabs. Some had shown people’s faces, while others were entirely nondescript. I certainly caught patches of bare, pink flesh. Even though I hardly saw anything, my stomach lurches like a storm-ravaged yacht.
I stab the phone’s power button and mentally beg the video thumbnails to return, but nothing happens. All I see is my face in the black mirror.
The driver dumps coins into my hand. Clambering out of the cab, I tap impatiently at the screen, but the blackness persists. Jesus. What if this thing has literally died before my very eyes, never to return? This would arguably be for the best, and yet—
“Oi, look out!” The cabbie’s bark yanks me right back to reality.
Big truck! What looks like a ten-wheeler steams towards me, as I stand here in the road with the passenger door wide open.
I’m too close for the truck driver to brake.
As I picture exactly how my crushed corpse will look, my fistful of loose change hits the road and rolls off in all directions.
The truck-horn punches my eardrums.
I flatten myself against the side of the cab and slam the door, just as my driver screams, “Door!”
The horn blares on, even as the truck rolls by, right past my face.
Fuck me. Nothing like a major adrenaline spike to prepare you for your first day on the new job.
Back on the pavement, I gather my nerves while apologising profusely to the driver. I hand him an extra tip, even though he’d been more concerned about losing his door than his passenger.
“Why did you have to get out on the road side?” is all he can muster, with a sad shake of the head.
Hesitating outside my new workplace, I so badly want to jab the power button on Scott’s phone, in the hope of resuscitating the patient.
With the truck-horn still ringing in my ears, I suppress this urge and force myself in through the front doors.
“Bloody hell, mate, the loopy shit I’ve seen out in the field. Once saw a guy split in half after he got hit by a race car. I mean, his legs were literally in one place and his torso in another. And then I was faced with having to console his wife, who was goi
ng nuts. So I hope you’re ready for some scary experiences, mate.”
With his long dirt-blond hair tied in a high bun, a chunky metal hand-grenade pendant hanging from his neck and his phone in a belt-holster, Tyler has the looks and physique of a surfer who’s taken six months off and let himself go. The kid’s twenty-three years old and thinks he’ll live forever. Everyone else at the station seems really nice, so why have I been given the resident dildo as a partner?
“This isn’t my first rodeo, mate,” I tell him. Now that my official corporate induction’s done, Tyler is giving me the tour. We pass changing rooms, toilets and a shower room, which will be my new best friend, seeing as Scott’s flat has no hot water.
“Oh yeah,” he says, with a dismissive swing of his hand. “I heard you’ve done a little time in London and Leeds, and that’s going to serve you well here, but you’ve yet to see West Street on a Saturday night. Oh man, such a clusterfuck. One time, I got so covered in puke, you couldn’t see the actual colour of my uniform. Here’s another security door. As you can see, the code’s written in pen there on the wall.”
“I feel safer already.”
“Yeah,” he sighs. “Code hasn’t been changed in the six months I’ve been here. Wow, it really has been six months now. The sights I’ve seen…’
For all his dick-swinging, patronising alpha-male talk, Tyler is what we call in this game a microwave: five minutes and he’s done. These kids all think they’re amazing and infallible and that real-life trauma is something to get a buzz from. They have yet to learn compassion and empathy, which is the true beating heart of the job.
When Tyler finds me a locker, I make a point of securing Scott’s phone inside, even though my dopamine receptors scream in protest. Then I take great pleasure in trying my uniform on for size. When Tyler sees the fifteen-year badge on my lapel, his face is such a pretty picture. Ha ha, you thrusting young fuck, see my badge of time and feel your stupidity. His testosterone levels noticeably diminish, even as his irritation grows.