The Assistant

by S. K. Tremayne

  Of course it was Jamie. The handsome young man. No more than twenty. The rugby-playing lad who would always buy you a beer. Oh, Jamie.

  It was the way his body jerked and jolted that made me feel sick with pity – and horror. He was having some truly hideous seizures: the eyes rolling back, till they were completely white, grotesque, bulging, demonic, and his body was trembling like he was possessed, rocking sideways, then up and down, up and down. And then he vomited again, red blood and yellow puke – and the last spasm was so fierce it knocked over one of the paramedics, as the others tried to stop Jamie breaking his own spine.

  As we watched, horrified, I saw Tabitha turn and look at someone else, almost hidden in the press of people. It was Purple Man. Tab’s acquaintance. He didn’t say a word. He just tilted his head at Jamie, slowly, and meaningfully. Then he looked, with a questioning face, at Tabitha – and she nodded. Briefly.

  Purple Man put a finger to his lips and did a zipping motion. And then – glaring at us both – he made a quick throat-slitting gesture, before disappearing into the crowd.

  Then Tabitha was tugging me, more frightened than ever, but I still had to see. I looked back at Jamie. He wasn’t spasming any more, he was just still. Terribly still. And then the paramedics were all over him: pumping his upper body. They had those electric pads – defibrillators – on his chest: repeatedly they pressed them, urgently, desperately, until I saw one of the medics, a woman, reluctantly sit back and shake her head at a colleague.

  Jamie was dead. I knew it. I knew, from Purple Man’s reaction, what we had done to Jamie Trewin. Given him some pills that had killed him.

  Tabitha’s soft hand found mine, and this time I let her pull me, back to the tent, away from the scene. We had to escape. But I knew it was a scene I would never escape.

  And, it seems, I haven’t.

  Sitting here in Delancey I watch a police car swing by, sirens singing in that mad childish way. Frenzied. Overdone.

  ‘Electra, tell me about Jamie Trewin.’

  ‘Sorry, I’m not sure.’

  ‘Electra, how do you know what happened to me at Glastonbury Festival?’

  ‘Sorry, I’m not sure.’

  She stops. Do I detect a hint of teasing smugness in the way she suddenly goes quiet?

  I retreat to my memory.

  Tabitha and I returned, in the sobering darkness, to our own little tent, no longer giggling, not clowning with corkscrews, not doing anything. For a while we sat there, Tabitha sobbing into the silence, and me on the edge of tears. Perhaps I was too shocked to cry, too sad, numbed, horrified.

  After ten minutes of this, Tabitha drew a big gasping breath and said,

  ‘OK, we must never ever tell anyone. Ever.’

  ‘What?’

  She shook her head. Looked up. Eyes wide. And she grasped my shoulders, one hand firmly on each, as if pinning me down to the ground, or to reality.

  ‘Jo, I know what happens after shit like this. The very same thing happened to my friend’s brother, Hugo. He was only twenty-two, bought some pills at a rave, handed them on without even trying them. But the guy he gave them to died. Had a major overdose. The pills were, you know, unexpectedly strong.’

  ‘But it wasn’t his fault? Like it wasn’t our fault?’

  Tabitha’s grasp on my shoulders was almost painful.

  ‘Jamie is dead, don’t you see? And when it gets that bad, it doesn’t matter: there is no defence, not in the eyes of the law. Don’t you get it?’

  ‘Tell me,’ I said, very quietly. ‘What happened to Hugo?’

  Tabitha answered with a shake of the head. ‘He was convicted of manslaughter, and he went to prison. He’s doing five years, Jo. It’s effectively ruined his life.’

  Somewhere across the field that song drifted.

  ‘So that,’ I said, my mind wandering, ‘that was why Purple Man did that zipping and slitting thing? He must know this, the trouble we’re all in.’

  Tabitha raised her voice. The Festival was still noisy enough, all around, for us not to be overheard.

  ‘We are not in any trouble – not if we keep cool, and tell no one, ever. Not anyone. Purple Man won’t say anything. No one will say anything. No one saw what we did, no one saw us give the pills to Jamie, no one saw us go to his tent, there’s no evidence there. It’s very unlikely he told anyone where he got the pills, or named us. We will be fine. WE WILL BE FINE.’ Her pale blue eyes burned into mine. ‘But from this moment on we make a vow, OK? We never talk about what happened tonight. Never talk about it to friends or family or anyone. No one knows. We won’t even mention it to each other. OK? As far as the rest of the world is concerned, we went to Glasto and we had some fun and smoked a bit of weed and then we went home and we know nothing about the boy that died. We know nothing. We did nothing. We saw nothing. We say nothing. Ever. Agreed?’

  Her hands dropped from my shoulders. She was extending her right hand to mine. I shook her small soft hand.

  ‘Agreed,’ I said. Feeling a sense of relief because my best friend Tabitha had taken control. That private school of hers, breeding leadership and resourcefulness in its spirited girls, was doing its job.

  Tabitha sighed. In a back-to-normal way. Forced, but necessary.

  ‘God, we need to sleep. I’ve got a couple of Temazepam. You want?’

  ‘Yes please,’ I said meekly, and Tabitha handed me the pill and I swallowed it with horrid warm cider and then we both crept into our sleeping bags. For a moment I lay there, wondering what would happen if someone else died. Surely we should warn people? But then I realized there was no way of doing that without incriminating ourselves. We would simply have to pray that Jamie was the only victim. And stay quiet.

  And from that moment, we stayed quiet. We kept our vow.

  When I got back to uni I read the news reports of Jamie’s death – New Zealand Student Fatally Overdoses At Music Festival, Police Search For Suppliers, No Helpful Witnesses Yet – and I looked up drug deaths and the law, to see if Tabitha was right. And she was; what we had done was viewed as manslaughter. The only upside was that Jamie was the single casualty of our trafficking. But the fact we trafficked to him unwittingly, innocently, even blamelessly, would be no defence. The drugs were illegal, we gave them to someone else, he died as a result.

  Manslaughter.

  Average sentence: three to five years in jail. And our lives and careers ruined. Our families shamed.

  After that, it wasn’t hard to keep to the vow. The only time I broke that vow was when I told Simon, years ago. I kept getting nightmares – I still get nightmares – replaying the horrible sight, Jamie convulsing, and vomiting, the blood pouring from his mouth when he went to kiss me, and Si eventually asked me what was wrong, and I had to tell him, so I offloaded onto my husband. I knew he was entirely trustworthy with something like that. And he was duly sympathetic, and kept shtum; he saw it from our perspective, he’d done some drugs in his time as well. Could have happened to anyone, babe.

  He pitied me and consoled me. In that way, he was always a good husband.

  Ah, Simon.

  As for Tabs, as far as I know, she hasn’t told anyone. Except, possibly, her fiancé, Arlo: the person closest to her these last three years. Certainly, Tabitha and I have rigidly stuck to the precept that we should never discuss it between ourselves. It has gone completely unmentioned.

  Ironically, the effect on our friendship has been positive. What happened to Jamie, at our hands, has bonded us. We’ve been good friends ever since, loyal and kind. I am pretty sure this is why she offered me her flat at such a ludicrously generous rent.

  Yet now this luxurious, beautiful flat seems less of a bargain. I stare at the Home Assistant.

  ‘Electra, tell me about Glastonbury.’

  ‘Glastonbury Festival is a festival of music and other arts, held every summer near Glastonbury Tor, in Somerset.’

  I wait, tensed, for the next line. ‘It was the scene of a notorious death: twenty-y
ear-old Geography student Jamie Trewin. The boy that you killed, the boy you murdered in his tent, even as you reached down his jeans, remember the eyes rolling white—’

  But Electra does not say this. Her lights go dim. And whatever the horror of these memories, I have to get on with my life.

  Have to.

  12

  Jo

  Within an hour I am showered, coffeed, breakfasted, and staring at my laptop, forgetting myself in work. I pore over accounts of Historic Camden for my New Neighbourhood column. I learn that Dylan Thomas, the poet, lived four doors down from me in a cold greasy basement, when Camden was considered a slum. He complained about the filth and the soot from the trains in the tunnels and cuttings across the road. He lived here because it was so cheap and undesirable. Last month I noticed that a house right next door to his sold for three million. Half a lifetime’s earnings.

  Inheriting a house around here, or buying it in the fifties and sixties, was the property-owning equivalent of winning the lottery. Life-changing.

  I will not inherit, I can never buy. I shall not win the lottery. I have worked out that on my freelancer’s salary it will take me about three hundred years to save the necessary deposit to buy a small one-bedroom flat in this area. Unless I write that bloody thriller script. How hard can it be? Three acts, fifteen beats, two or three pivotal moments, plus a big twist in the middle. Then a call from LA, maybe from my brother. We love the script, here’s your £500,000.

  It’s a dream. But it is the only dream I have.

  I gaze around the beautifully furnished flat I could never afford. The flat stares back at me, like I am not meant to be here.

  Enough.

  ‘Electra, tell me the ingredients for cioppino.’

  ‘Cioppino is a fish stew first invented by Italian immigrants in San Francisco. Specific recipes are varied, but all of them require several different kinds of seafood, such as prawns, crayfish, mussels …’

  Electra is behaving herself. I know the recipe already, but it’s good to be reminded. The herbs and spices, that delicious tomato sauce. Got it.

  This is good, ish. I’m starting to feel normal. Ish. Arming myself in scarf and gloves, I brave the napalm blast of the winter wind arcing up Parkway, bullying people into cafes, and I step into Sainsbury’s and do my shopping. Monkfish, tarragon, sourdough for dipping. Essential. The wind chases me home but as I go to cross Camden High Street I pause. Despite the cold. A message has pinged on my phone. WhatsApp.

  It’s from Fitz:

  Hey, Jo, got news. Found some tenants at last, moving in next month. Nice couple, brilliantly boring, think he’s a banker. Isn’t that good? That house is so empty. They’ll be able to watch over you. Drinkypoodle next week?

  Something in the message makes me anxious. Able to watch over you. Why would he say that? And the reference to the emptiness of the house. Does he know something? Surely not. He’s probably being playful, that’s what he does. Maybe it’s a glancing joke about my love life or something.

  I reply,

  Fitz! That’s good. That house can feel empty! Yes, let’s have gin. Many gins! I’ll be in touch?

  The blue ticks appear. I keep staring at my phone, as Camden barges past me. I look at the list of WhatsApp messages, and see the name Liam Goodchild. And underneath it: nothing. Because he deleted all those messages. After that strange conversation on Jackson’s Lane.

  Liam Goodchild …

  Now I am thinking about Liam. His responses seemed defensive, possibly scared, but with a hint of menace. Could it be coincidence?

  Liam Goodchild. Perhaps if I know more about him, I will know more about what is happening to me.

  But how? I can’t sit like an idiot in my flat and happily browse away, not without letting the Assistants know exactly what I am doing, online as well as in real life. They might be in my laptop. They might be in my Google account.

  No. I need Camden’s very last internet cafe. Which stares at me, right across the High Street.

  Phone in pocket, I hurry into the dingy internet cafe – dropping the shopping bags on either side of my swivel chair. The place is full of foreign students, most with headphones, and takeaway coffees to hand. Foreign students, I suppose, are probably the last people who need these places.

  Leaning close, I shut the Google page, which automatically confronts me, and open up a different browser. Rarer. Firefox. Years ago, I used Firefox all the time, then went back to Google. Going back to Google made things so much easier: let one or two big tech companies run your life, and then everything in your life fits together, from your calendar to your music to your heating to your phone. You yield happily to their dominance, their intrusion, their notifications and nannying. They become parents, you become the child. Yet who knows how deep this goes? Who knows how far Electra and HomeHelp and the rest might colonise my internet life?

  Firefox it is. Carefully, but curiously, I type in the words ‘Liam Goodchild’ and ‘Facebook’. Because that’s where we did most of our communicating.

  I vividly recall Liam Goodchild’s Facebook page – I visited it dozens of times. I particularly remember the photos of him running, diving, sailing. Sporty and shirtless, funny yet sexy. Not the kind of guy who might be easily frightened. Not the kind of guy who would send those weird messages, then delete.

  The screen stares back at me.

  Liam Goodchild has no Facebook page.

  I click again. Then again. And again. I can sense the Spanish kid next to me looking over, observing my nervous gestures, my manic clicking. Who cares? No, yes, no, yes, NO. He’s not there. I gaze, bewildered, at the unhelpful screen. There are quite a few Liam Goodchilds. Hundreds, in fact. But they are in America, Scotland, Australia, Dublin, Bristol, Croydon – not Barnet, North London, where Liam lived.

  No sign of him.

  Gone.

  Am I doing this right? Have I made some dumb error?

  I go to my own Facebook page, do another search. Again: a blank. He really has disappeared from FB. All traces erased, no shirtless photos, no falling cat GIFs, nothing.

  OK. I take a long breath. What next? How about his Twitter account? He rarely used it, as I rarely use it; but I know he had an account because that’s how he first reached me, and his username was quite memorable: @GoodChildBadChild.

  Nerves jangling, I click on Twitter. Mouth dry with apprehension.

  His Twitter account has disappeared as well.

  There is no @GoodChildBadChild. Gone, vanished, evaporated. It’s like he’s died. No: it’s like he has more than died. It is even worse than that. It’s like he never existed on Twitter, just as he never existed on Facebook.

  Emotions surge, though I hide them. Sitting here, as the students babble on either side, in Spanish and Somalian and Swahili, I feel the presence of a new, yet unplaceable menace: I am unpleasantly aware of the prickled hairs on my neck.

  What has happened to Liam Goodchild? I clutch a few final straws.

  I check Instagram: gone.

  I check Snapchat: gone.

  Is there anything else I can do? What about a general search? I grow careless, the pulse runs fast. Tapping hard and quick, I look for anything related to *Liam Goodchild*: images, snippets, news, I remember doing an Images search when we first started flirting and I remember seeing several pics of him, one from a Linked-In account, one of his Facebook photos. That dashing smile.

  And now?

  They are all gone too. Every single image of him. There are other Liam Goodchilds, all over the world, but no photos of him, my would-be seducer. The troubles double, and they triple. How can this be? How can you delete yourself, online, so completely? Isn’t that impossible? And why should it happen the day after he and I had that menacing conversation?

  My hand is covering my mouth: I feel panicked. Scared. Closing my eyes, I put my hands flat on the table to calm myself. Then, lifting my face from the screen, opening my eyes, I notice a young man, across the shop, staring right back at me.
I am close to causing a minor scene. I must be controlled.

  A scene, however modest, is not a good idea.

  With a brief, fake smile at the enquiring young man – Hey, I’m fine, I’m fine – I look down and concentrate on the computer: carefully I erase my browsing history; then I stand and walk with my shopping to the till and pay for my internet usage, and step outside into the cold, turning on my phone so it doesn’t look too suspicious.

  To whoever is watching me.

  Walking home, I weigh the thoughts. Liam was clearly drunk or frightened last night. Since then he has become so frightened he has erased himself from the internet.

  Or someone has erased him. Why? I try to work out who might be frightening him, or who has the skill to delete him, if he didn’t do it himself. But above all else, I want to know: what does this have to do with what he said in the messages? I cannot forget that awkward yet chilling phrase.

  Somebody’s done for.

  13

  Jo

  Bags in hand, I march up Parkway, go into the flat, and set up shop in the kitchen, cooking as slowly and diligently as possible.

  I like cooking, it soothes me; busy hands empty the brain. Hard as I try to work out what has happened to Liam, I cannot work out what has happened to Liam: it makes no sense. Carefully, I open a bottle of red to let it breathe, so it will be just right when Tabitha gets home.

  A key slots into the door downstairs. Tabitha is back. So many hours have blurred away, without incident, as I have thought and cooked. I give my friend a wide smile, only vaguely faked, as she comes into the kitchen, brushing flakes of snow from the shoulders of that exquisite maroon coat.

  ‘Mmmm. Smells divine. How long?’

  ‘You’re right on time, it’s ready.’

  ‘Ta-da,’ she says. ‘I’ll lay.’

  ‘All done. And I opened that Amarone you like.’

  Her pleasure is obvious. And maybe a bit guilty.

  I say, trying to be normal and sarcastic,

  ‘Anyway, how was your day at the office, dear.’