Simon mumbled she’s fine, even as he wondered how, by merely repeating and emphasizing Simon’s unremarkable surname, Fitz managed to convey a kind of low-key sneering. Nothing too awful, of course, but a definite sense that Edward Amwell Fitzpatrick was indulging someone ten to fifteen IQ points lower than his normal caller.
Not for the first time, Simon asked himself why Jo was friends with this supercilious wanker. Could Fitz be the one behind all this? He was so casually, if amusingly, nasty. Seeing people as playthings. Bastard.
From deep in his guts, Simon felt the temptation to blurt some ugly homophobic insult, and crash the call, but he restrained himself.
He had to do this, for Jo.
‘Fitz, look, I know we’ve never been close, but we both care about Jo, right? That’s why I am ringing?’
The second pause was longer and more awkward. Fitz was either thinking what to say, or uncertain whether to agree. Was this a sign? Was Fitz the perpetrator, or another victim? Simon seized on it.
‘Fitz, I’m guessing you might know why I’m calling. Jo has been sending all these vicious emails, texts, Facebook messages, and they are seriously nasty. Deeply bloody insulting. She’s lost lots of friends – almost everyone. I want to know why she is doing it. Is she having a breakdown, or what? I’m worried.’
At the other end of the line, a mile away across snow-chilled London, Fitz said nothing. Simon went on, ‘Sure, you know Jo’s personal history, her father’s madness. So I’m worried. I want to make sure if Jo is really sending these.’
Fitz answered, ‘What do you mean, is she really sending them? Who do you think is sending them? Hitler’s less likeable brother?’
‘So you have got one as well? One of these emails?’
Fitz grunted. ‘Yes. A while ago.’
‘And?’
Fitz sighed. Without sarcasm. ‘It was absolutely vile, as you say. Projectile vomit turned into electronic messaging. She said some utterly unforgivable things – and Jo and I have forgiven each other quite a lot, over the years.’
Startled, Simon realized that Fitz – cynical, urbane, unfazeable Edward Fitzpatrick – was sounding sad. Simon had never heard Fitz sound sad before. Fitz continued:
‘If you want to know the truth, I haven’t spoken to her since. For the very good reason that I don’t know how to respond without forever ending our friendship. I am trying to let time pass. Perhaps it will do that healing thing? I rather doubt it.’
Simon felt the excitement of a mystery being partly revealed. He wasn’t sure why. Jo had hurt Fitz as well? One of her very best friends.
‘Fitz, do you have the email there?’
‘Unfortunately.’
‘Do you mind looking at it for me? I want to make sure it was Jo. What did she say, how did she phrase it?’
Fitz languidly answered, ‘It was a series of well-fashioned and lucidly repulsive remarks about my sexuality, my promiscuity, my lack of morality. She also sent these emails and selfies to my boyfriend, enumerating my infidelities. That is to say: she copied him in, which was neat. My boyfriend and I have since broken up.’
‘Wow. I’m sorry.’ Simon was shocked, but couldn’t afford to take a long by-road into sympathy. ‘But did it sound like Jo? That’s what I mean, Fitz: the prose – do you think it was truly her? Or a mad version of her?’
A silence. Presumably Fitz was re-reading the email. He came back online.
‘I’m afraid it does, Simon. It sounds like her in a particular mood – but angry. You know? When she is at her most sardonic, acidic, uninhibited, perhaps after two gin martinis, but not drunk. Add in a wild dash of fury and, yes, it’s her.’
‘But—’
‘But what? The insults are well aimed and cleverly fashioned, designed to hurt where she knows it will hurt. There are also things in here, things I’d rather not discuss, that only she could know. She mentions a friend of mine who was murdered, and she references it in the most contemptuous and disturbing way. It’s almost … Satanic.’
Simon faltered over this fact. A murder? That was unsettling. He wanted to pursue it. But clearly Fitz was not going to say any more.
‘What about semicolons? Does she use any semicolons? You know how Jo always uses too many in her writing, she once told me how her editors had to weed them out, do you see any in this email?’
Fitz’s laughter was gently bitter.
‘Semicolons? Are you actually claiming that Jo didn’t write these emails because her punctuation is atypical?’
A hesitation. Simon said yes.
Fitz replied, ‘Well, I’m afraid there are a couple of semicolons, yes. So that’s your brilliant punctuation theory out of the window.’
They both fell quiet. Fitz made his goodbyes, trying to finish the conversation. Simon interrupted.
‘Wait, please—’
The evidence pointed firmly towards a mental breakdown: so he wanted to know when the email was produced. It might indicate how long Jo’s madness had been building. It was better than nothing.
‘Fitz, please, one last question, and I’ll go.’
‘If you insist.’
‘You said Jo sent this some time ago, this email? Can you tell me the day? Perhaps we can get a measure of this, sense the depth of her problem?’
Fitz hmm’d, in a bored way, as he checked. ‘Look I’ll forward it to you. You’re the expert.’ A pause. ‘OK. Done. Check it out. See for yourself. She sent the email on Tuesday twelfth, seven thirty-three p.m. Dinner time. Perhaps she destroyed my relationship as she ordered her starter.’
‘OK. Thanks, Fitz. Thank you. And I’m sorry for all this, making you rake over it.’
‘Sorry? Yes. So am I. And so is my ex-boyfriend. Goodbye.’
The call ended. The ensuing silence was brief. The sleet had turned to hail, not snow. It rattled on the window.
Simon put down his phone and gazed at the gelid darkness of the winter sky. He pondered Fitz’s revelation. Then he checked the email to Fitz, he checked the routing, the same process as before. It all confirmed that Jo sent this.
And she sent it Tuesday the twelfth, 7.33 p.m. Dinner time?
Why did that jar with him: that date?
He picked up his phone, and went to the calendar app. And this new excitement was real.
On Tuesday the twelfth at 7.33 p.m., Jo Ferguson was indeed having supper. Simon knew this because she was supping with Simon: that was the day they had met at Vinoteca. At 7.33 p.m. Jo had been staring at a steak bavette. And they had both turned their phones face down, on mute, and out of reach. As they always did.
In which case, she couldn’t have sent the email. Not even by proxy: there was none of the tell-tale evidence of special email-timing software in the routing. Zero. Simon did this shit for a living. He had proof. Here. He Had Proof: Unless she had developed some unheard-of ability to manipulate her laptop by telepathy, Jo had not sent the email to Fitz.
The hail rattled, maddeningly, on the windows. Big stones. Hard, as if they might break the glass.
Various explanations lined up to be counted. Perhaps someone was pretending to be Jo, and sending these emails to fuck her up, socially. Hacking her. That, however, raised the question: how could this person know so many facts about Jo? And her friends? Fitz, Jenny, Gul?
Whatever the answer: he had his proof.
Jo was innocent. She wasn’t mad. She was genuinely being attacked.
29
Simon
A noise from the corridor startled him from thought. This time it was Polly. He came out of the study to greet her – but she gave him a glare. She was empty-handed. Wet from sleet and hail. With a gesture of rage, Polly threw her coat onto the floor.
Where was Grace?
‘Polly? What’s wrong? Where’s Grace?’
‘I left her at Nan’s. I was too angry.’
‘But – I don’t – Pol—’
‘How dare you! You bastard. How dare you.’
‘What??’
> Polly came over, standing six inches away. She smelled of cold and sweat, and anger and snow. She was brandishing her phone. In his face. It was playing a little video. It was homemade porn. And it was his homemade porn: a grainy, amateur video of him fucking Jo, from behind; it seemed that he was filming, via a mirror, and Jo was laughing.
‘Your bloody Jo Ferguson just sent me this. She says you made it a week ago. She says you’re still fucking her.’
‘But—’ he protested. ‘But – but this video, it’s ages old, three years old. Look – look at me, my hair—’
Even as he said this, he knew it was pointless. The video was too low-fi, made with a very crappy phone. The bedroom was too dark. It could have been made last week, even though it wasn’t.
Polly stared at her husband.
‘Why should I believe you? Why should I believe a word? When I know you’re still obsessed with her? Mmm?’
Simon tried to respond. He failed. Because Polly was right and he didn’t want to make things worse with some sordid lie.
He watched as Polly picked up her coat and hung it on the hook, then she turned and looked at Simon, and she said, slowly, sadly and meaningfully,
‘This is it, Simon. You’ve got one last chance. Jo must go.’ She hurried on, not giving him time to defend himself, even if he could think of a way. ‘For Grace’s sake, I want her out of your life. I want you to stop thinking about Jo from this moment on, stop obsessing, stop talking, stop lunching, stop all communication with her, stop everything. If I find you’ve sent one single text message – and I will be checking, oh, I will be checking very closely, every day – I will take Grace and I will leave you forever. You will see your daughter every second Sunday for half an hour, and then I’ll meet someone else and go and live in Australia, with our daughter. And I want the passcode to your phone, and emails, and texts. So I can check.’
‘Polly—’
‘Now!’
He handed over the phone. He told Polly the passcode and she wrote it down in her own phone. He watched, glumly. The completeness of his defeat was applauded by another mad rattle of hail on the windows. There was a human quality to the sound. Like someone trying to signal, desperately. Trying to get his attention. Trying to make him look out into the bitter-cold darkness, and see.
The hail rattled on as Polly left the room. Leaving Simon with one last conundrum.
It struck him like a snowball, thrown by a laughing child. Cold shock down his back.
He had never sent this video to Jo. Never shared it with her, never even showed it to her, as far as he could remember. He’d kept it private. They had made quite a lot of homemade porn, photos, and vids, but he didn’t want her to realize how often he filmed them having sex, how obsessed he was, quite how many photos and videos he kept: of him and her. Especially of her.
So who had stolen this video from his private files, and sent it, purportedly, from Jo’s email address? Who had access to his laptop at home, with all its security? No one. Well, almost no one.
He could hear Polly in the kitchen. Angrily making supper. The clatter of knives.
30
Jo
There’s a baby quietly wailing in my flat. I do not have a baby. It is 9 p.m. and the endless snow has abated, but the cold has hardened, leaving dirty bulletproof earthworks of snow, like ancient defences against sudden medieval invasion, piled each side of Delancey Street. The soiled and shovelled drifts are sullenly glittering under the streetlamps, and I sit here, mute and helpless, as Electra pumps out the whimpering baby noise.
‘Electra. Please. Just stop.’
It goes on. I try to ignore it, reading my thriller. I wonder why I still read scary books and watch scary movies, even as my life turns into one: perhaps because, no matter how unnerving the movie or the novel, it cannot be as unnerving as my life. And I still want to write – a script, a thriller, a mystery – it is my only route out of poverty. I know it is a silly dream, but I need some kind of silly dream, a forlorn hope of escape, perhaps more than ever, as my house and my life are taken over as if by one of those giant cold octopuses which slowly smothers and strangulates its prey, the suckers injecting a paralysing venom. The machines are smothering me with their suckers.
And it is working: I am poisoned, helpless, and inert. I’ve sent texts to Simon and got no response. Is he simply blocking them? Probably he junks them without reading. I do not know what else to do. I can hardly go to the house where he lives with his baby, and confront him; stalking him at work still feels too mad. And I am not mad, and the Xanax is not to blame, yet I have no idea how to take revenge, so instead I sit here and let Electra whimper her baby noises. Taunting me.
Perfection is terrible, it cannot have children.
Looking at my closed laptop, I lean across, open it, reboot, let the screen shine, and I begin to think of work I might do, finish my Camden piece, or send some new ideas, and then the baby cries again: that baby I never had. The fake baby in the machine, softly calling the mother she never had. The mother who will gas herself at 4 a.m., her head in the oven, laid on a little folded tea-towel.
I cannot work.
The laptop can wait. I turn to my phone, I need a friendly voice, and now I have no friends to be those voices. Tabitha is abroad.
I call my mum. Again. As soon as I dial, the baby noises stop. Naturally. The Assistants don’t want anyone to witness their behaviour but me. That’s how they will drive me to suicide.
Because I have no proof of anything. I need a witness. All I have is Deborah, who saw nothing more ominous than lights flicking on and off.
Help.
My mum answers.
‘Well hello, dear, this is a surprise! You only rang a few days ago!’
‘I’m trying to be the good daughter, like I said.’ My laughter is forced. I am blushing though no one can see me. Will she sense the desperation in my words, my angst? I’m calling her so often precisely because I have no one else to call. ‘Hope that’s OK!’
‘OK. Of course, darling. It’s lovely to hear from you so much. Uhm, ah … do we either of us have any news?’
News? Oh, I have plenty of news – someone I know very well is trying to kill me, slowly, or send me insane, at the least – but I do not relay this news. Instead our conversation meanders its normal route: through the far suburbia of chit-chat, never quite reaching anything like a centre, the point, the place where things happen. We nearly always avoid difficult questions. And why not? As we talk, I stare out of the window. Cars is there: Paul is sitting on his wall, wrapped in at least three mouldy coats and anoraks. He in turn is staring up at nothing, at the sky, at the voices in his head, the scenes of London, cars cars cars.
‘So yes,’ my mum says, ‘that was last Monday, I think, or Tuesday, but the doctor said my cataract operation could be brought forward, so that’s good news. The hospitals are full of flu victims, this weather and everything.’
Mum likes to give medical updates on her eyes, ears, bladder, back. Intestines, lungs, pacemaker. It’s her version of gossip, lacking proper gossip. Bless her, my old mum. Her heart is a worry, there is a serious risk of a second attack. I couldn’t bear to lose Mum as well.
I think of my loving, clever, and gentle mum, lonely in her widowhood, down there in Thornton Heath. And I wonder if we are so very different. Am I any less lonely than her? Perhaps I am even more isolated. She has a couple of friends down the road, she plays card games at weekends. And at least her doctor sees her; I am too scared to go to mine. I might blurt something out.
‘Well, as I was saying …’
And: off we go: cousins, half cousins, divorces. Our dialogue is, once more, a series of well-known winding suburban streets, half of them cul-de-sacs, comfortingly local and safe. Corner stores we always use. But then my mum approaches a conversational junction, and turns an abrupt left.
‘Anyway, dear, I’ve been meaning to ask: are you, ah, getting on OK with all your friends?’
‘Sorry? Sorr
y, Mum? What do you mean?’ Inside, I cringe. I am horribly aware of exactly what she might mean. She must have heard something from someone. Simon. Or Fitz. Tabs. Jenny. They all know or have met my mum. And yet, despite the importance of this question, and its implication, right this moment I suddenly have something else, something more immediately worrying on my mind. Through the high sash window, I see that Cars is being approached by drinkers from the pub. And something in their stance, their leering glances, says this is BAD. Here comes Trouble.
They are big lads. Youths. Twenty-one or -two. Drunk. They are throwing snowballs at Cars, and laughing. Cars laughs along with them at first, but does he mean it?
Frowning, I return to Mum’s conversation.
‘Mummy, I’m fine, my friends are fine. Everything is OK I’ve just got too much work – ah – God—’
The snowballs are coming fast, these youths are drunk, big and boozed and cackling at Cars. Aggressive. Derisive. Going to the big window, I lift it open to the blasting cold and listen. I can hear them sneering and abusing. ‘You fuckin’ nutter. Do you wanna buy a fuckin’ Porsche?’
Another hard snowball hits Cars in the face. He is cowering now, crouching, frightened and huddled by the wall of the railway cutting, and the boys are coming nearer, malevolent, belligerent, aiming snowballs, and maybe packing them with rocks, bits of brick from the crumbling railway wall?
‘Mum, I have to go. I’ll call tomorrow!’
The phone call is killed. I grab keys and race downstairs, in T-shirt and jeans, into the cold. What am I doing? I could be running straight into something nasty. This is three big young men, tanked up on beer from the Edinboro, and very obviously in a violent mood. As I emerge from Delancey, steaming breath in the bitter fog, I see one of them is slapping Cars across the face, taunting him, haranguing,
‘You wanna fucking car? How you gonna afford a car? Eh? Eh? You stupid dull cunt. CARS CARS FUCKING CARS. What’s that about?’
My friend is haplessly shielding himself from the slaps, and whimpering like the baby inside Electra. He is defenceless. A sad, timid giant of a man, harmless to anyone.
The Assistant Page 17