by James Smythe
They think I live alone, she says. So stay here, stay quiet. Just let me talk to them.
Who’s they?
The police. They’re doing interviews. She doesn’t look at him. She drinks water and takes headache tablets, and then steps outside, pulling the door shut behind her. They’re still with the neighbour, so she heads to the railing and looks over it. She tries to make this feel as casual as possible. Nothing to it. To her this is a normal day, only one loaded with intrigue. She thinks she should ask questions. That’s probably what somebody who knows nothing would do.
They thank the neighbour – the one who did most of the talking puts his hand on her arm and tells her to call if she thinks of anything – and they turn to Beth. The consoler consults his sheet.
Mrs McAdams?
Beth, please. She holds out her hand to shake theirs: her palm hot, her whole body hot. They shake it, but don’t tell her their names.
Mind if we ask you some questions?
No, sure. Sure.
You know what’s happened?
I saw the crowd down there, and the flat opposite, obviously. They said that there was an accident?
One of the boys who lives on the estate has died. Did you know him? They bring out his picture and hold it up. Oliver Peacock, the officer says. Went by Olly. The picture has him smiling. It’s a few years old, taken when he was still at school. He’s so young. Grinning, because he’s a kid and he was told to, and it was school-photograph day. He’s in a uniform from her school, tie done up, shirt buttoned, not quite posing.
I teach at his school, Beth says.
You know him?
No. I mean, I’ve seen him around here. Not in school.
He was excluded earlier this year.
Oh.
But you’ve seen him on the estate.
A few times.
The other officer speaks finally. We’ve heard some reports about trouble he caused. Ever give you any? he asks.
Beth thinks about lying completely, but plays along. He shouted things sometimes, she says.
What sort of things?
Names. You can imagine, kids’ stuff.
Do you know where he used to hang around? The things he used to get up to?
By the shops. They hung around there a lot. And he used to jump off the point with his friends.
The point?
Suicide point. They would jump out and into the water. The police look at each other. They close their notebooks, and one pulls a card from his pocket.
You’ve been really helpful, he says. He hands her the card: his name, his telephone numbers. Anything else you think will help, give me a bell, okay?
And then they’re gone. Vic appears from the bathroom as Beth steps inside the flat again.
Is it okay? he asks.
It’s okay, she says. She checks her phone. Another message from Laura.
BETH PLEASE DON’T DO THIS ALONE YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT PEOPLE ARE CAPABLE OF WHEN THEY ARE GODLESS.
I don’t know what we do now, she says to Vic.
43
Laura’s next text arrives at almost exactly the same time as the banging on the door, and Beth reads the text as she opens the door, thinking that it might be the police. They left the estate the night before, taking the cordon away from his flat and getting the landlord – who owns so many of these flats – to lock the door, but Beth’s on edge, convinced that they’ll reappear and intrude and make guesses, and want to ask her more questions. So she opens the door without looking, clearing the text message – WE HAVE TO TALK, PLEASE – and it’s Laura herself.
I thought this was easier, Laura says. To just come around and see you, because then you would know I was serious, Beth.
Because your last visits didn’t give that impression? Beth asks. She sighs. Please go away, she says, and she shuts the door, but Laura puts her hand out, between the door and the frame. She braces but Beth stops it shutting. Don’t do this, Beth says.
You’ve messed with things that you don’t understand, Beth. Don’t you see that? Don’t you see that it’s not yours to play God?
I didn’t play God, Beth says.
He’s in there with you still, isn’t he. It isn’t a question.
I’m on my own. Laura pushes the door slightly and peers past Beth. He’s in the spare bedroom: waiting there until she gives the all-clear.
Where do you keep him?
I don’t keep him anywhere, Beth says.
He isn’t right, is he? I know about it, you know. Back when they used it on people with dementia, they weren’t right either. That’s why they stopped it: people left wrong and vacant, you know that.
You don’t know what you’re talking about, Beth says, but she can even hear it in herself: that there is something wrong. The Vic she loved would never have done what he did. And it’s true: the dementia cases remembered things wrongly sometimes. A hazard of the treatment, they said. Better than the alternative, they said.
Laura shuts her eyes. Lazarus rose from the dead, because he was touched by the son of God, she says. Jesus healed the sick and the lame: Jesus, not the physicians, not the doctors. He could heal mankind, body and soul, Beth. Don’t you see?
There’s something insistently pleading about this, Beth thinks. Histrionic as it is, her performance is almost convincing.
Can that thing heal the soul, Beth? Or does it replace it with something much weaker? Laura leans in towards the door. Oh Beth, we were friends, we were. I could feel it. You’re better than this.
I’m not, Beth says.
He’s in there, isn’t he?
Please, Laura, Beth says. Go away. Please just leave me alone.
I can tell. He’s in there. You’ve helped to make a monster, Beth. When he was lost in the first place, that was God’s will. People cry when their loved ones die, but there’s a plan, Beth. He was part of God’s plan. That insistent tone again, and she jams her shoe further inside the doorway, and puts her weight behind the door to keep it open. You should have left him well alone. She backs away from the door. Yours is not to meddle, she says. She makes a sign of the cross.
It was God’s will that he took a bullet? The dreams, the nightmares, the pain: that was all God’s will? Beth feels the bile in her throat: just as when she used to take him to the clinic and they would be there, protesting outside, their heads wrapped in cloths and their arms cradling crucifixes and signs that screamed THE SOUL IS SACRED, telling her to think about what she was doing. And she said, at the time, I am helping my husband: as she led him out after the sessions, drained and weak, ready to sleep it off, and they threw themselves on the ground and begged her to reconsider.
It certainly wasn’t God’s will that he would be rebuilt in an image other than that of our Lord. An image that was created by man. A false prophet. She backs away more. She’s completely different: her eyes crazed. Beth sees her here and doesn’t know how they ever became friends. She tells herself that you don’t know about a person until they show themselves fully. Here, Laura is exposed. Beth shuts the door. She shouts through the wood.
Leave me alone, Laura.
Laura doesn’t leave. She stays standing there, Beth sees, waiting by the railing. She’s sure that Laura is praying.
Beth goes into the bedroom. Vic is asleep on the bed: the Machine is powered up. The noise is still there.
What did you put inside him? she asks. What did you do? She touches the metal: the vibrations run all through her skin, and over her and through her. When you filled in the gaps, what did you fill them with? She sits down. Vic’s asleep, she can tell from the breathing. What did you make him from? She lowers her voice and touches the screen and looks for something that might be an answer. She asks a question, feeling stupid for even considering it: because this isn’t a story or a film or a joke or a song, or anything that isn’t her life. Her actual life. Did you put some of yourself in there? she asks.
The Machine seems to shudder in a way that Beth hates.
; 44
The text message wakes Beth up, but Vic sleeps through it. It nags three times to be read, so Beth does, if only to shut it up. She knows that it will be Laura – nobody else messages her, not these days – and she almost dismisses it without looking at it. But she doesn’t, and then she sits on the edge of the bed and reads it again, and again. And she goes to the living room and reads it again, aloud, as if that might, somehow, make it feel more real.
THE BOY WHO DIED. WE BOTH KNOW WHO DID IT.
Beth’s reading it again when another text comes through.
SO HOW CAN YOU LIVE WITH YOURSELF?
Beth sits on the sofa and puts the television on. They have to leave the island now, she knows. There isn’t much time left.
45
Vic wakes her. She thinks, first thing, that she seems to do nothing but sleep: that this has taken so much out of her that she can hardly stand it. She’s on the sofa, curled up, her whole length pressed tightly between the sofa arms, and her body aches and moans as it unfolds itself.
You’re asleep, he says.
I know. I slept here.
You need to clean your head still, he says. She reaches up and touches the scab, hard and thick, and her hair is caught in it, knotted. She can feel the skin underneath the scab healing, slightly tender. She needs a shower, and she needs to clean the wound, and the hair. We’ll have a scar in the same place, he says. He touches it. He knows exactly how to touch her still. I’m worried about you, he says.
Don’t, Beth says.
I am. I do. He sits on the end of the sofa newly vacated by her feet. I don’t know why I did it. I don’t know. There’s something about him that doesn’t look sad, Beth thinks. As if he’d eaten something that he shouldn’t have, or fucked another woman: a crime that had a payoff. A result. Something done to appease a hunger. I think maybe the Machine could wipe that I did it, he says. Is that a good idea?
No, Beth says. Don’t even think that.
But it won’t do any good, knowing it. And you could wipe it as well. Get it taken away, like it never happened.
It did happen.
Yes. But.
We have to leave, Beth says. Laura knows.
Your friend.
She’s not my friend.
She knows?
Yes. She knows that you’re back. She’s … Beth’s about to say something about the Machine, about what Laura thinks of it, but she catches herself. She doesn’t want to make Vic angry. Or the Machine. But she thinks about that boy, and how Vic saw him as a threat. She doesn’t want the same for Laura. She’s just nosy, Beth says, and she’s insistent, and she won’t leave anything alone.
He smiles. You used to hate that in people.
I still do, Beth tells him. She smiles at him, but it takes effort. He dresses himself, and she watches his body putting itself into his clothes, and she wonders if she could remove his memories of the murder. She couldn’t do it again, no, no chance of her putting him back into the hands of the Machine, because she couldn’t bear to see his face contorted that way again; and that noise from his mouth; and she couldn’t stand the wrenching away, piece by piece – like a finished jigsaw being picked apart, fingernails pushed under the pieces to remove them, watching the picture fall apart.
So we leave, he says to her from the bedroom. Right?
As soon as we can.
How soon is that?
Today. Tomorrow at the latest. We pack what we need, that’s it. Landlord can throw the rest.
What about that, in the other room? He looks at the bedroom wall, as if he can see through it to the Machine. She knows he can hear it, even though she’s never asked him. She just knows.
We disassemble it.
Okay. Vic nods, but Beth’s sure there’s something else there: a twitch. A tic.
She fetches bags from the bedroom, from underneath the bed: two large holdalls, one that used to be his, in their previous life, and one that used to be hers, and she puts them onto the bed and peels them open. She starts with her casual clothes: the stuff she can wear day to day, regardless of where they end up. She had planned for the UK, but there’s a lot to be said for abroad. Heading to France, maybe, where their money might go a bit further; or Spain, if they can cope with the heat there. She thinks about how much she’s been sleeping, and laughs at how easily she could adjust to the siesta lifestyle. Maybe Spain, she tells herself. Get the ferry to France, buy a car, drive down. Get the ferry to Spain itself, if Vic’s up to it. He used to get seasick. She wonders if that – his seasickness – will have made the transition, because it wasn’t mentioned in any of the recordings. Is seasickness part of a person? Or something embedded in a memory?
Vic stands by the front door.
I want to go for a run, he says.
It’s best if you don’t.
Why?
Because of the police.
They won’t ask me who I am.
Just stay here, please, Beth says. She realizes that she sounds desperate: but she doesn’t know why he’s being so casual about this. He sits on the sofa and stares at the wall, as if that is all that he is: he runs, he argues, he occasionally comforts her and apologizes. Why don’t you watch TV? Beth says.
No, he tells her. There’s no petulance in the voice, just a declaration that he doesn’t want to.
Then help me pack this stuff.
None of it is even mine, he says, which is untrue, because all the male clothes are his, every single item, but how would he remember that? So Beth does it for him: folding his t-shirts and shorts and trousers, which all seem to be white or shades of white, and which take up twice the space of Beth’s own clothes. She puts in toiletries, but they’re all hers, and then she decides against it: he needs ownership, she thinks. So she puts them back in the bathroom and decides that he should buy his own when they get to wherever they’re going, buy real male-scented toiletries that he wants to use. But then she wonders if he’ll even know what he wants, or if he’ll stare at these things on their shelves in the shop, and she’ll ask him what scents he wants, what sort of products, and he’ll be blank and clueless because it doesn’t matter to him. Because he never cried to a doctor, or to Beth, about the shampoo he preferred, and so it was never logged, and so it was never put back in. She wonders if maybe the gaps that the Machine filled in, if maybe one of them will have taken care of that. She wonders what Vic can smell at this moment. She sits on the bed and wonders these things as time rockets past, and all she can think, as she reaches every empty conclusion, is that she’s made a terrible mistake.
She takes one of the painkillers she bought, that she didn’t crush up for Vic, and another straight afterwards, deciding that one isn’t enough. Two isn’t even enough. Vic is asleep again – both of them are constantly exhausted, but after what they’ve been through maybe that’s okay – so she opens her laptop, standing with it at the kitchen worktop. On her forum, she looks at the topic that she created, and the replies. There are a few standard responses, from users who assume that she’s having problems – We’re so sorry, they say, or It’ll get there, give it time – and then there’s one from somebody whose username she doesn’t recognize. This is their first and only post.
They write that they’ve been a long-time lurker on the boards, but that they never had the urge to write anything before. They write that their partner – their choice of word, keeping everything ambiguous – had treatments in the earliest days, to get over a terrible event in their life. When they came out the other side, their faculties were hanging by a thread, and one day that thread snapped. It was, the post says, the worst day of their lives. (Beth thinks about what the writer wouldn’t have given to have had the Vic she was presented with: rough and unfinished and crudely drawn, but stable; and how she had destroyed him because she wanted so much more than that.) The writer’s partner spent four years, nearly, in a home, and then they were pulled out – not by the writer, but by the company who made the Machines. They needed people to trial their c
ure on: the writer didn’t see how it could make things worse.
There were five trial cases, the post says, and nothing has been said of them in public. They signed non-disclosure agreements and waivers of responsibility, but it was a way to get their loved ones back, in some shape or form. A year, they spent being worked on. (Beth thinks about her time rebuilding Vic, such a condensed period.) And then they were handed back to their loved ones: complete, or so they were told. Beth reads all this with her hands gripping the laptop sides, and biting into the inside of her cheek, worrying the flesh there with her back teeth. But they weren’t complete: the author of the piece doesn’t go into specifics, but says that there was something wrong.
They had it all back, says the writer, but there was something missing, and it made me think that there was something wrong with the way the Machine glossed over the gaps. But what if that wasn’t the problem? What if the problems – my partner had a temper, and said things that they would never have said before, looked at me like I was nothing, dead, filth – what if the problems are something that’s part of us already?
What if they’re part of humans, and we paste over them; and the gaps that are left after this, what if they’re just holes that let the darkness out?
Beth stands back from the work surface. She doesn’t write her own reply to the post; not because she doesn’t have anything to say, or doesn’t think that she can contribute, but because she can’t stop shaking, and she clings to the fridge, which is behind her, and she can feel that shaking with her, and she thinks, How did the Machine do this to us?
46
They’re not finished packing, so Beth tells Vic that she’ll get them a takeaway. She asks him what he would like from the Indian, and he says that he doesn’t mind.
You must mind, she says.
I really don’t.
Spicy, creamy, what?