by Simon Ings
A light by the bell said AMBER, so I pressed. And now I’m here. Amber is nice. Not pretty, not passionate, not hardbitten either, not high, not drunk. Not afraid. Just as she described herself, in fact.
The room, though! The room is palatial – but virtually empty. A bed pulled away from the wall. A chair. A mirror. Cameras.
Amber reaches for my hand. I take it and stand close to her. Close enough to smell her hair. Close enough to feel her breathe. She leans back and I kiss her. I take hold of her hair and pull. She arches her back. I run my hand over her breasts and she opens her mouth under mine.
She says, ‘Let me do something for you.’
She has a specialism. Well, what the hell.
She takes off all her clothes. Her shoes. Her belt. Her little dress. Her tights. Her strapless bra. Her knickers. She drops them on the floor. She slips her shoes back on. ‘Is this all right?’
‘Yes,’ I tell her. ‘It’s all right.’
She kneels to fasten the buckles. I stare into the shadows her legs make. She stands and walks around the bed. I come over and sit on the bed and as she passes me I run my hand over her flank. She comes around again. My fingers brush her buttocks. After a while of this, I stop her. She kisses me and I reach between her legs.
‘I want to do something for you.’
My fingers come away wet. ‘Okay.’
‘I want to wear some things.’
‘Okay.’
She pulls them out from under the mattress. A baggy long-sleeved sweatshirt in Chroma key green. Gloves and a pillow case the same. The sweatshirt has a cord to tighten it at the waist. She slips it over her head. The gloves are long, velveteen, big enough to hide her wrists, even when she raises her arms above her head. I shake out the pillow case.
‘Put it on,’ she says. ‘Go on.’
I arrange the pillowcase over her head and pull the hood of her sweatshirt over it.
I cross to the chair and sit down, watching her hips, groin and legs move around the bed.
The rest of her has vanished.
The illusion is perfect. The legs step around the bed, deadly and elegant as scissors.
‘Wait.’
She stops for me. I get up from my chair and walk towards her, curious. The closer I come to her, the clearer I can see the obvious and unavoidable glitch. The system has somehow to fill in the body cavity where the girl’s hips leave off and her sweatshirt begins. The wireframe flickers and bends as she breathes – an irregular ellipsis of gridded grey. I stroke the line of her sex. Her small high buttocks, divorced from the curve of her back, are startling in their roundness and power. Her legs tremble as she balances with feet apart, moving against my hand. I feel for the nub of her anus and push a finger inside her, all the while gazing into the blind grey mathematics of her body cavity.
The standard fills are just a blink away. The girl’s body cavity fills with water; instantly I feel my penis engorge. I push my finger deeper into her, stirring the waters there. She groans and bends over, tipping the water away from me. The system isn’t encumbered with much in the way of physics – the watery plane simply tips with her hips, held in place by the gravitational pull of her groin.
‘Conrad.’ The voice comes out of nowhere. It excites me, this disembodied voice so close to my ear, and this extraordinary sexual contraption, at waist-height before me. It stands no higher than my waist. This is what I can’t quite get over: how small she is, reduced to arse and hips and legs. No taller than a child. A cunt and its complicated docking mechanism.
‘Conrad, I want to do something now.’
‘What?’
‘I want you to take your clothes off and lie down.’
I undress, and the legs settle on the bed, facing me. They spread apart. ‘I’m taking off a glove.’
A hand appears. Disembodied, heartbreakingly small, it settles, fluttering, on her sex. A finger uncurls – the tongue of a humming bird – and seeks her clitoris. Her sex is so wet it shines. Her legs flex, lifting her feet off the mattress, parting to reveal her sex more clearly. Her cunt flexes, ensnaring her fingers, chewing on them. Her legs flail like mouthparts. I close my eyes, afraid, listening to her come.
A disembodied hand. Oh God. The other glove comes off. Now there are two. Two white hands, hanging there in space, working at her flesh, feasting on it. ‘God.’
I hunch forward, clamber to my feet.
‘Are you all right?’
The legs right themselves. They snap and rise upon their feet and scythe towards me. I stare at them: the swell and tremble of calves and thighs, up and up to their folded junction. I run.
Beyond the room the house is a wreck, all brick and plasterboard. It’s deserted. There’s usually at least a minder in these places, but there’s no-one. I’m alone with her. Alone. I can’t remember where she said the bathroom is.
‘Hello?’ She’s coming after me. Poor cow. Still trying to do her job. Probably wondering what shitty review I’m going to give her on what shitty website.
‘I’m fine. I just need – I’m fine.’
Very late – stupidly late – it occurs to me to take off my glasses. Without my glasses, the illusion that so frightens me will be broken, and in place of Mandy’s white clown hands there will just be some plain, industrious, vulnerable girl in a hoodie chasing after me. Too late, stupidly late, as my fingers brush my face, I remember that I have no spectacles today. I’m wearing lenses now. I can’t just pluck them out.
A small, uncertain voice: ‘Do you need the bathroom, love?’
If I keep my back to her, I can imagine her as she really is. Whole. Complete. Her voice, after all, is coming from the right height. A normal human voice that says, ‘It’s the door on your right.’
‘I’ll be a minute.’
There’s a toilet. A bidet. The sink is as big as a shower tray. The mirror, decorated with a cut-glass border, fills the entire wall – how in hell did they ever get it in here? It dawns on me that nothing I am seeing need be real. I blink up the preferences pane on my lenses and hunt for Force Quit but it’s buried away in the menus and already Amber’s calling through the door. ‘Are we done, then?’ She tries to sound disappointed but she can’t keep the shiver out of her voice. It’s freezing out here.
‘For God’s sake go put something on.’
She stalks off, her absurd heels clattering the tiled hall. What was this place? Some grandee’s mansion. What’s she doing here?
She’s probably taken offence now. They do so easily, these women, their antennae cocked to detect the slightest hint of disrespect. What is it about working in the sex industry makes people want to be taken so bloody seriously?
In the bathroom mirror, my eyes glitter back at me. These lenses strip all the life from them. However did they catch on? I look like a cheap doll. A doll with my mother’s face.
Look at my face! It only ever took a little make-up, a few strokes of sponge and brush, and Mum and I looked exactly alike. I was her maquette. In four years I will be forty – the age Sara was when she died. The resemblance has not gone away. If anything, it has grown stronger.
‘Fuck you, so I made a mistake.’
He made a mistake, all right. A bloody big mistake.
I lean against the sink, my head buzzing.
I remember Vaux standing before me, his hand on the back of my head, his erection white and hard and as long as a dagger.
Vaux.
Vaux set this up for me. Vaux the rich man, the businessman. Of course the house is big. Why not? It is his house.
I bend double over the bowl. Wrong bowl. Bidet. Christ. It’s suddenly all so bloody obvious. What, after all, did that young, blindsighted invalid see when he saw me, in the murk and leafy confusion of the lane behind the hotel?
He saw Mum.
‘Good afternoon.’ And his hand worked at his fly and his erection slid into the light.
Vaux, blindsighted, navigating his crudely pixellated world, had never intended to assault
me. It wasn’t me he pushed onto his knees, or made obey him in the dirt and weeds of a clearing marked out by rusting white goods. In Vaux’s mind it was Mum he forced that day. Or not even forced. Played with. Enjoyed. For all I know, it was a game they had played before. (Gabby said, ‘Who knows what your mum got up to?’)
Later, of course, the truth must have come out, which is why Vaux quit the hotel.
And on the platform of our quiet railway station, as he waited for his train, who did he see standing beside him?
Mum?
No.
Someone like her, but—
Heavy boots. Shorn hair. (‘You feel like a man,’ I’d said to her, pulling away for the last time.)
Vaux mistook her for me!
What happened then? At what point did Vaux realise he had mistaken us again – taken mother for son as, weeks earlier, he had taken son for mother?
Was it Vaux watching me that night, as I pushed my mother’s corpse into the waters rushing by the mill? Who else could it have been?
Click-clack.
‘Are you done in there?’
Abruptly, painfully, I come to. ‘Yes, Poppy.’
‘What?’ Amber rattles the doorknob.
Oh, Jesus Christ. ‘Amber. Yes, Amber. I mean. Yes.’
‘Because I need a shit.’
I’m at the flat and half-undressed, shedding my clothes as I go and desperate for sleep, when I hear sounds from the study.
I have a study in my apartment. A glorified name for it. When did I last study? I spend my life answering emails. I swing the door open, fast as I can, less to surprise the intruder as to force my own hand; it would be so easy to bottle it and sneak away.
He is sitting at my desk. Dark suit, dark shirt, no tie. Sandy hair. A smoker’s face – a rarity these days. Burst blood vessels in his nose. Kind eyes, and hands like hams. The desk, the floor and every available surface are smothered in papers, scattered folders, spilt plastic wallets, and this is strange, because I don’t remember storing so much paper in here. There’s more paper thrown about this room than I thought I owned.
He’s very confident, whoever the hell he is. He scuds a vast pink hand through the air before him, by way of hello.
‘What are you doing?’
‘You won’t find anything missing.’
‘Who are you?’
He stretches his legs, puts his hands behind his head and flexes the knots out of his back. He wants me to see how big he is. ‘Cobb. Adam Cobb.’
‘You get what you wanted?’
‘There was nothing to get.’
I think about this. Once I’ve got my breath back, it’s not hard to figure out the elements of this. ‘Vaux sent you.’
Cobb smiles, showing even, yellow teeth. ‘Vaux sent me.’
‘He should be more careful about how he goes about threatening people.’
‘Yes?’
‘You’re in a world of shit, mate.’
‘Why? Are you going to do something?’
‘It’s already done.’
Cobb’s smile widens. ‘You mean your cameras?’
I bite my lip.
‘It’s all right. They’re still running. They’re still streaming. Do they talk to the police, or to a private security firm? Nice installation, anyway. Can’t be too careful, nowadays.’
‘Was Amber part of this?’
‘Who?’
‘Amber. Kept me entertained tonight while you’ve been smashing up my flat. Vaux’s girl. One of many, I’d guess.’
Cobb shrugs. ‘I don’t doubt that. You want to sit down? I promise you I’m not going to do anything.’
‘Get out of my house.’
‘In a minute. First, there’s something I have to say.’
‘Out.’
‘Mr Vaux accepts that in the past he was responsible for certain misunderstandings.’
‘What?’
‘He wants you to know that he regrets any upset following certain compromising episodes. I’m referring here to his stay at your father’s hotel. I think we can both agree that these events took place a very long time ago.’
‘Are you his thief or his lawyer?’
‘I’m his private detective.’
‘Tell Vaux I don’t know what he’s talking about.’
‘All that aside, Mr Vaux takes his digital privacy very seriously indeed. You’re presumably aware that his medical records, in particular, are off-limits, and attempting to access them is—’ At this point Cobb runs out of quasi-legal steam. ‘Well, it’s illegal, isn’t it?’
My blood runs a little colder. ‘You want to tell me exactly what I am supposed to have done to deserve this visit?’
Cobb waves the question away. ‘You get the visit. Your university friend gets a string of strongly worded emails. She’s fine. Her job is fine – if she desists. But you do not set your friends digging around in Vaux’s medical files.’
So this is what this is about. Gabby, or Gabby’s graduate student, has snapped a tripwire somewhere in their search. ‘These misunderstandings—’
Cobb stands. ‘You’ll be getting a letter in a couple of days setting out the details of Mr Vaux’s proposed no-blame settlement. He regrets any upset, he says.’
I don’t know what to say to this.
At last Cobb takes pity on me. ‘I assume this has to do with his knob. This is what it usually boils down to.’
His knob. Christ. ‘So I made a mistake.’ Vaux thinks I’m after him for a spot of rough fellatio on the river path. ‘He thinks I’m trying to sue him? I’m not trying to sue him, for crying out loud. Do I look like a goosed secretary?’
But Cobb is losing interest now I’m up to speed. ‘Have your lawyer look over the settlement if you want, but we need your reply and a signed copy of our NDA by noon Monday.’
This is monstrous. ‘He’s paying me?’
‘He’s trying to swat whatever bee in your bonnet made you think you could dig through his personal medical data. Frankly, it’s cheaper to pay you off than have to listen to you. Clear?’
Vaux is afraid of having his dick made a tabloid headline. It doesn’t seem to have entered his head that I am pursuing the mystery of my mother’s death.
The thing is, if Vaux really did kill Mum, how did he manage to get her body into the boot of our car?
‘So are we clear?’
‘You shouldn’t have broken in.’
Cobb smiles. I don’t know what it is about that smile unlocks the rage in me but suddenly I’m lurching forward, fists clenched, furious. ‘You want I show you the trouble you’re in?’
‘Try it.’ He sees me hesitate, smiles – and disappears. Vanishes. One moment he is sitting in my living room. The next moment – nothing.
The cameras I have mounted round my flat – my household insurance policy requires them – will reveal nothing, because there is nothing for them to reveal. Cobb, whoever Cobb was, was never here. I have been talking to the air.
The room has flipped back to normal. It is as clean and tidy as I left it. There are no papers anywhere.
Nothing has been touched.
SEVENTEEN
Midway through Easter break, Michel turned up at the hotel to help me carry my bags over to Sand Lane.
I had been living alone since school broke up. Dad was already off working for his private clinic. How typical of Dad that, having invented a way for blind servicemen to see, and all but set up a clinic in his home, he should now be doing the same work, at the other end of the country, at some other person’s beck and call, for a pittance.
The sale of the hotel was due to go through any day. How this could even be legal baffled me. It meant that the business, the property, the chattels, everything must have been made out in my father’s sole name. Yet it had been Sara’s family money that had paid for the place. Perhaps Dad realised from the very beginning that Mum was not to be trusted with the family’s finances. And, looking at this the other way, perhaps Sara had been right all alon
g about Dad’s oppression of her, and his will to control.
How and when Dad made his arrangements with Poppy, I never knew. The only time I remember him and Poppy ever meeting was when we ran into her in the supermarket, a few days after Sara’s disappearance became public knowledge.
She came up to us at the checkout and, in heavy tones, she had said that if ever there was anything she could do for us, we had only to ask. She’d never shown the slightest interest in us before. ‘Now call me,’ she said.
Now we had this gimcrack arrangement whereby I would stay with Poppy and Michel until the end of the school year. Picture Michel and me, studying for our exams, elbow to elbow in those cupboard-sized rooms, deep in the heart of that housing estate I could not stand. What Poppy made of this arrangement – why she ever suggested it – is a mystery I have never been able to fathom.
Poppy’s front garden was even more doll-like than its neighbours. Nothing had been permitted to grow above waist height. It was the garden of someone grown suspicious of life’s potential. The back garden was more or less a mirror image of the front: dwarf conifers and heathers, and an anaemic-yellow lawn so close-mown, so fine-bladed, you could see the earth beneath.
The back door was open. The kitchen smelled of detergent. Poppy sat reading a library book – a collection of humorous newspaper columns. She saved her place with a tasselled plastic bookmark and stood to greet me. ‘I’ll show you the house.’ She couldn’t have freighted the process with more dignity if she’d been leading me around a stately home.
‘This is the master bedroom.’
What was I supposed to say?
‘This is the living room.’
When Poppy spoke, it was always at the shrill end of her register, as though she was pleading in her own defence.
‘This is the kitchen. And this is where you came in.’ Did she imagine the tour had disorientated me?
We ate in the kitchen, squatting on chrome stools upholstered in black vinyl. The stools were old. Their leather-look texture had worn off and they were as slippy to sit on as if they had been oiled. The table was worse – a chipboard thing, laminated in frictionless wood-effect plastic. It was the kind of table you get in caravans. It was attached to the wall. You let it down by pulling a handle.