Both cars were in their spots. They hadn’t left him, at least. It was cool in the building’s shadow. The thick stone of the house and the leafy trees protected the car park almost entirely from the direct rays of the sun no matter what time of day. He headed for the garden, sure somebody must be there. The sun was shockingly hot, and the driveway tarmac was sticky under his trainers.
As he put a hand on the black iron garden gate, he heard Fleur call.
The relief was dizzying. She was walking up from the woods along the outside of the hedge maze. She was holding a white golfing umbrella above her head and wearing a black summer dress, black trainers with no socks. The dark privet seemed to want to suck her in.
He went to meet her. Her skin had browned even in the few days they had been here.
‘Where are you going?’ she said.
‘I’m just walking.’ He couldn’t hide his smile at seeing her. ‘I thought everyone had left. Nothing like a big empty house to freak you out.’
She wiggled her umbrella. ‘Join me.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘The maze again. I had to go back in. Did you see that it dissolves away? Like they lost interest.’ She lifted the umbrella a little and looked around. ‘Where shall we go?’
‘Let’s go down to the gatehouse,’ Stefan said. ‘I want to see if someone lives there.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’ He thought of the deer, its carcass still on the road. ‘I’m curious.’
‘I’ll pass.’ She sniffed. ‘I want to sort out the headset. The week’s almost over.’
Stefan kicked at an imaginary stone.
‘Here, hold this,’ Fleur said.
She gave Stefan the umbrella while she adjusted her hairband, then slipped her arm though his. Her forearm was cool and smooth. He angled the umbrella, so if anyone was now in the house, they couldn’t see them. Fleur guided them towards the tennis court.
‘I ran all the tests again and everything is fine,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing in the hardware logs either. That was my last good idea. So, it’s working. Technically.’
‘Which is good?’
‘I’d rather fix it. I hate mysteries.’ Her arm was surprisingly strong, keeping him close. ‘So, I have another idea, but it’s asking a lot.’
‘Go on.’
‘This time you wear the developer headset. I’ll go in the game.’
He mulled that over as they climbed to the tennis clubhouse. Fleur peered in from the balcony while Stefan looked at the view. Over the roof of their bedrooms were folds of hills. The Areas were in that direction.
‘I thought I saw something move,’ Fleur said.
Stefan climbed the steps to join her. He opened the doors and waited, listening.
Fleur gave him a conspiratorial look. ‘You go first.’
‘Have you got a thing for trapped animals, or what?’ He knocked on the doorframe. Then he called in, ‘Hello? If you’re an animal, could you leave. Please.’
Fleur giggled. ‘You’re so polite.’
‘Unless you’re a baby deer. Baby deer can stay.’
‘That was my fault, Stefan. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made us go in.’
‘I wanted to go in,’ he said. ‘Your enthusiasm is infectious.’
‘Like a virus?’
‘Stop it. You’re looking for offence. I meant it with love.’
‘With love?’
‘You know what I mean.’ He tried to change the subject. ‘There’s nothing in there.’
‘There’s no love in there?’
He couldn’t help but laugh. ‘You are relentless.’
‘You have no idea.’ Fleur closed the doors and swung under the balcony rails. ‘Let’s go and try the headsets again.’
Walking past the sculptures with Fleur wasn’t much better than walking past them on his own. ‘What do you make of those things?’ he asked.
‘They’re like meteorites. Perhaps they found them in the ground when they were building this place.’
‘Dad calls them crystals,’ Stefan said.
‘They seem crystalline. Sort of. Is that chemistry or geology?’
‘Both, I think. A little bit of physics too.’
‘I should know that. Why don’t I know that?’
It was the first time all week that Stefan had glimpsed any doubt in Fleur about her ability to do well in the Finals. It gave him some hope.
Back in the library, Fleur gave a satisfied grunt as she pulled the canvas bag holding the headsets from behind some thick reference books. She pulled out the larger headset and dangled it on her finger. ‘Your room or mine?’
‘Yours is good.’
‘Okay,’ she said, putting the headset back in. ‘You take this.’ She gave the bag to him. ‘Just in case we see Daddy. If he asks about it, you’ll have to improvise.’
Stefan didn’t believe they would see anyone, and he was right. He watched Fleur’s tanned legs as he followed her to her room, remembering at the last second that she might catch him looking in the mirror. Her room was as he had left it. He felt like a creep. The dress drew his eye again.
‘You really like it, huh?’ Fleur said.
Stefan looked from the dress, to Fleur’s face, then down to her trainers. ‘Yeah. I don’t know why I keep looking at it.’
‘Perhaps I’ll keep it.’
Stefan liked the jumble of feelings her words gave. He watched her put the headsets on the bed.
‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ she said.
The concern in her voice surprised him. ‘Of course.’
‘Last time was pretty rough. I’ve got you into trouble twice now. I’m beginning to feel like your albatross.’
‘No, it’s fine. I want to see what you see.’
‘Let me set it up,’ she said.
Fleur put the larger headset on and spoke several quiet commands. After a few minutes she said, ‘I’ve enabled full logging, so if anything happens again, this time we’ll have a complete real-time report.’
‘Okay.’
Fleur took the headset off and gave it to him. It was much heavier than he expected. He was wary of putting it on.
‘If anything goes skew-whiff,’ she said, ‘it’ll be me who gets it. You’re observing.’
‘Skew-whiff?’ Stefan laughed. ‘What century is this?’
He put the headset on the bed, took his shoes off and put them by the bathroom door, closing the bedroom door completely. Fleur was twiddling something on the visor of the small headset. Stefan took his place next to her and brought his feet up, adjusting the pillow behind him so he was comfortable.
‘You can’t break anything. I’ve disabled everything for you. There’s a session already running. Take the helmet off whenever you want. It’s not immersive in dev mode. It’s a different experience altogether.’
She put the smaller headset on, the mesh sitting lightly on her tied back hair, the visor covering her eyes. ‘Okay?’
‘Okay.’
Fleur sat back, and her face slackened.
She looked so vulnerable. Now he could imagine what it had been like for her when the glitch hit. She simply wasn’t present. It was like a comatose state. She looked unnatural. He wanted to shake her, bring her back to life. The thought of kissing her came to him, but he pushed that away. The headset in his hands was ugly, but she had worn it only a few minutes before. She was waiting in it for him.
He put it on. It was still warm. This was more intimate than sharing headphones. He flexed his fingers in front of his eyes and he could see their shape through the partially opaque visor. In a cognitive trick, when he focused on the visor screen, everything else disappeared. There was a three-dimensional map. When he wondered how to zoom in, the map got bigger. Whether it was eye movements
or brain patterns, he was impressed. Very neat. There was a red dot in a corridor, presumably the one he had been in, and when he zoomed closer still, he could make out basic details on the walls. Fleur’s avatar was a digital skeleton of unfilled lines.
‘Can you hear me?’ he said.
Fleur’s avatar didn’t move. ‘Can you see me waving?’ A synthetic female voice.
‘Yes.’ She was a skeleton, a wireframe person, but one arm was in the air.
‘The headset only holds game data, not experiential data,’ she said.
‘There are two blue dots ahead of you.’
‘I see them.’
‘Be careful,’ he said. Those in-game characters. That woman.
‘Will you relax? This is my game. You’re making me jumpy.’
He remembered the double doors, and now he could see the room behind them on the map. There were dozens of blue dots in it.
‘More blue dots,’ he said, unable to help himself.
‘You’re hilarious,’ she said. ‘I’m going into the main room in a second. I’ve done this lots of times. The two characters are normal. I’m not getting anything glitchy.’
He watched her avatar go through into the larger room.
‘This never gets old,’ she said.
The blue dots began to slowly converge on Fleur’s red dot. His neck was beginning to ache and his ears were hot. He tried to adjust the headset, but it wouldn’t move. His head was bigger than Fleur’s and it was a snug fit.
‘Fleur?’ he said. She was surrounded.
‘Stefan?’
He put his hands to his headset to try to make it more comfortable. His fingers touched hair and skin. He felt like he was tumbling backwards. Then he was looking down at white gravel. He stumbled but managed to find his balance without falling.
He was on the gatehouse drive. He blinked. It had happened again. He closed his eyes and tried to will himself back to Fleur’s bedroom. He touched his face. Just skin. No headset.
‘Fleur?’ he said.
He should have listened to his gut. She was an albatross. Unlike in the game, he wasn’t a woman. He looked at his fingers – fingerprints. And he was wearing the trainers he had put on in his bedroom. This was real.
The sky was grey and smooth. There was no wind. The front door of the gatehouse was open.
He ached to be back on Fleur’s bed with the headsets smashed to pieces on her bedroom floor. He would do it with one of his racquets. He looked back towards the top of the ridge, knowing that in the house, their two bodies were lying vacant on the bed.
At least this time he had agency. He wiggled his fingers and twisted his trainers in the gravel, hearing them scrunch, to prove to himself he was in control of his own body. He had a strong sense that he had to go into the gatehouse. Hadn’t he been curious ever since he’d arrived? He stepped tentatively onto the low porch, trying to see inside and get a jump on whatever was waiting for him. He wished his body had the bouncing energy from the simulation, but he did feel invulnerable, like it really was a game. He had to watch that. He didn’t know the consequences of anything that happened here.
‘Hello?’ he called.
‘Can I help you?’
A woman was suddenly in the doorway, only a couple of feet from him. He jumped and put a hand to his chest.
‘Still beating?’ she said.
Her voice was soft, but clear. She was wearing a long white summer dress and her face was almost as white, though he could only see her mouth and chin – her eyes were concealed by a fine white veil that hung from a narrow-rimmed white hat.
‘Hi,’ Stefan said.
‘How wonderful,’ she said. ‘An unexpected guest. Come in, my dear.’
She stepped back and gracefully lifted a thin arm. Her shoes were flat and pale yellow. He was reminded of a retired ballet teacher.
She must have sensed his unease. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘It’s an excuse for me to make a pot of tea for two for a change.’
Stefan nodded and followed. The hallway was spacious with solid, old wooden stairs straight ahead that went around the walls and up, out of sight. The floor was black wood, but where the main house was engineered timber, this was original wood, with swirls of grain and gaps between the boards. The detail was startling, and he remembered that he was creating it, it wasn’t in the game. But then, this wasn’t a game either. That thought stuck like a stone in his shoe.
He admired the subtle patterns in the hem of the woman’s dress and the way a window on the stairs lit up motes of dust drifting in the air. The front door closed behind him with a heavy click. He didn’t feel in danger. He had to keep his wits about him.
‘Come through,’ the woman called, already moving into another room. ‘Sit!’
In the corner of his eye, from beneath the stairs, he caught a flash of white – the snarling teeth of a stuffed bear. Its claws were close to his face. The wood-panelled wall was excellent camouflage for its black fur. He kept moving.
He entered a high-ceilinged drawing room. The woman was already leaving through yet another door. It was hard to take in the sight that met him. The walls were teeming with paintings and photographs, the floor cluttered with chairs, tables and cabinets. Every surface seemed to have ornaments or bric-a-brac on it. Whether it was a junk shop or museum, he couldn’t tell. The furthest wall was glass, like the main house, giving that end of the room plenty of light. Animals watched him from paintings as he passed – a fox in a field; a badger emerging from its sett; a crow perched on a black branch, eyes questioning. He approached a pale-green-upholstered sofa with four spindly legs and, in front of it, a dark-wood coffee table. There was an easel beyond the sofa with a blank canvas, a rack of painting materials and several more canvases stacked against the glass. The woman had thrown her hat on the sofa. He sat tentatively, wondering if it would just collapse under him.
The bundle of white that was the hat and veil reminded him of Jess’s white cat. Daniel was allergic to it, a detail which Stefan had delighted in when she had told him. That was a real memory. Fleur lying in her bed with the visor on was a real memory. He pinched the inside of his arm. It hurt. He had slipped so easily into this. He could get lost. When he picked the hat up it was a real hat, brushed wool and the veil fine like a stocking. When he lifted it to look through and see what the woman had seen, the veil fell softly on the inside of his wrist. It hardly impeded his vision at all. There was a painting on the wall, the biggest he had ever seen, thickly framed with gold-painted wood and stretching from floor to ceiling. At first it seemed wholly black, but there were purples and browns too, and as his eyes adjusted, he realised there was a black horse on the black canvas, and a shadowy man gripping its reins and driving it out of the wall, straight at him.
‘Isn’t it something?’
Stefan was still looking through the veil and dropped it, barely stopping himself from stuffing it behind his back. The woman gave it an amused glance. He put it back on the sofa.
‘We all want to see what the other sees,’ she said. ‘That’s what an artist does.’
She brought a tray to the table and put it down. Without her hat, he could see she was in her forties perhaps, not the retiree he had first imagined, the wrinkles near her eyes giving a friendly impression. Her nose was prominent, and her lips were thinly rouged. On the silver tray were two white china cups and saucers, a dainty milk jug, a plain modern-looking white teapot and a bowl of sugar cubes.
‘Come and look,’ she said, moving to the painting. He went and stood next to her. They were still a couple of metres from the painting, but it was overwhelming. The horse’s head was as wide as Stefan’s shoulders, and its face glowered fiercely down at them.
‘My husband painted it,’ the woman said. ‘During one of his depressions. Not a bad thing to do with a depression, don’t you agree?’
‘I suppose.
’
‘You are still young.’ She glanced across at him. ‘Perhaps you’ll never experience it. Look.’ She put her arm through his, like Fleur had. He was aware of her breast touching him. ‘The horse’s chest. The muscles. Hyperreal. A horse isn’t really like this. He spent months and months getting the chest right, the way the light is on the skin, the musculature. It’s incredible. Like the canvas is only just holding it in place.’
‘It’s intense,’ Stefan said, hating that he was beginning to blush.
‘Like it might trample you, yes? Like it will burst out of the canvas and crush you.’
She sounded like she liked the idea.
‘Hmm,’ he said.
‘Let’s have tea.’
She sat next to him and he watched her break the surface of her tea with a cube of sugar so that the brown liquid climbed the sugar crystals. She let it go so it disappeared with a soft plop, then stirred with a spoon and tapped the rim twice, so that two clear notes rang out. She looked satisfied.
Stefan took a sip of his own tea. It was delicious, and he was thirsty. He drank the rest quickly. The woman made a purring sound. The hairs on his arms bristled.
‘Weird,’ he said.
‘What’s wrong, dear?’
‘I don’t know. Something.’
The words from the garden came to him. Deerit nihil.
‘Who hunts the deer?’ he asked, putting the teacup down carefully on its saucer. ‘In the woods. Someone shot a deer.’
The woman looked seriously at him. ‘The deer population needs controlling.’
He thought she was moving sideways, but in fact he was the one moving, and he put his hands on the sofa to steady himself. The material was plush and soft. It would be comfortable to lie on. What would happen if he fell asleep in a dream? There was something unpleasant about that idea. If you died in a dream you died in real life. He’d heard that somewhere. He stood abruptly and walked to the window, looking for a handle to open it.
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