by James Smythe
They make it to the lights of the estate, and the bollards. Beth can see her flat from here. at a dash, it’s only thirty seconds away. The waiter stops. you all right from here? he looks back where they’ve come from. The boys are nowhere to be seen.
I’m fine. Thank you so much.
Pleasure. Want to walk me back to the restaurant now? he grins. Joking, joking, he says. enjoy your dinner.
He heads back down the path towards the road. There’s a bit where there are no lights and he disappears, and Beth waits to see him reappear on the other side of it. When he does she goes into the stairwell, and then along to her flat. She fumbles for her keys, but there’s nobody anywhere near her, and no noise she can hear apart from the background murmur of neighbours’ televisions, and the occasional rustle of a cat. She locks the door behind her, then goes to the kitchen with the bag and unpacks it on the worktop. She peels the lids from the tubs, takes a plate and turns them both out onto it, then sits on the sofa with the plate on her knees, the greasy paper slip of poppadoms on the table. She puts the TV on and tries to concentrate on it. She flicks through channels with one hand, eating with the other. But there’s something else. She can hear it: a buzzing. She mutes the TV, cutting the weather report off midsentence – the symbols all sweating comical suns, not much chance of them saying anything to contradict that – and listens for it. It’s like a fridge, but hers is silent, or an old light bulb about to blow, but hers are all energy-saving modern ones. She puts the plate on the table in front of her and walks around the living room, looking for the source. She can’t find it in here, so she tries the spare bedroom and then remembers about the Machine. The screen is on – still – and the buzz coming from it. not the screen: just, vaguely, the Machine itself. She can’t pinpoint it, but she’s sure of the source. She puts a hand on the casement and there’s something, a movement. The most subtle vibration.
I should switch you off, she says to it. She leans down to the plug and flicks the switch and the Machine’s screen goes dark. She can still hear the buzz, though, as she goes to leave the room: and as she lies in her bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about how this is all going to go. and still, even with it this close to actually happening, how she has her doubts.
Copyright
The Borough Press
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2014
Copyright © James Smythe 2014
James Smythe asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014
(Epigraph): Extract taken from The Signal and The Noise by Nate Silver. © Nate Silver 2012. Reprinted by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007541904
Ebook Edition © May 2014 ISBN: 9780007541928
Version: 2014-04-30
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