Another one of these youths grabs a huge sweep of snow from the top of the wall and drops it down on Paul’s head. They all burst out laughing, one of them aims a kick at Paul’s legs and he tries to crawl away. What are they going to do to him? Bastards.
They are gonna beat the crap out of him: that’s what.
And one of them is unzipping his flies, like he is about to urinate on my friend. Actually piss on my kind, gentle, harmless friend.
‘Hey, maybe this will warm you up, mate. Busting for a pee. You don’t mind, do you, ya mad twat. If I piss on your face? CARS CARS FUCKING CARS.’
He gets ready to take a piss. My inner righteousness seizes me, not on my watch, not to my friend. OH NO. You Do Not Do That.
‘Oi! You lot! STOP IT.’
I am racing over the icebound road.
The three young men turn, first in shock, then comic bewilderment. And who can blame them? A woman barely over five foot, wearing a T-shirt in the freezing cold? And she is threatening three tall, wide, muscle-bound young men? They are ready for a row. Wanting a scrap. Fists tightened. Knives hidden?
‘What you gonna do, love?’ says the one with his flies open. Though I notice he is doing up those fly-buttons.
‘Stop it. Leave him be.’
Another leers at me, menacingly. The black, tall one.
‘What’s this hairy old twat to you? Is he your boyfriend? Do you like cars as well? Eh? CARS CARS CARS. Does that get you off? Talking dirty about CARS?’
They all burst out laughing. And all I have is my courage. Paul is quietly moaning, crouched in a corner of the Victorian railway wall. They were actually going to urinate on him.
The empathy surges, along with my anger.
‘LEAVE HIM ALONE, YOU IDIOTS. Go away. Go on. GO AWAY.’
I press on.
‘GO ON. PISS OFF. Leave him ALONE.’
I come marching towards them. Straight at them. Staring at them madly. This isn’t hard: me looking mad. Because I am half mad already. And something in my eyes, my gait, the way I come for them, the heedless way I take them on: it seems to unnerve them. First, they slowly back away, then the leader of the gang speaks up,
‘She’s as nuts as him.’
I scream, ‘GO ON. FUCK OFF.’
‘Come on,’ says the leader, sidelong. ‘Come on, bruh, they’re all mental up here.’
I am running at them, close enough to touch, and moments later they turn and retreat, laughing as they jog, as they skid the icy pavements down to Camden High Street. HAHAHAHAHA. Yet their laughter sounds false. I genuinely alarmed them.
I don’t know whether to be proud or worried; either way, when I turn and check, Paul looks mercifully untouched. Frightened, cold, wet – but unharmed. It could have been so much worse.
Shivering in my T-shirt, I kneel beside him. He has stopped whimpering. His sad grey eyes meet mine. His voice is frail yet perfectly lucid.
‘Thanks. Thank you, Jo,’ he says. ‘They were scary. You’re a good friend.’
I hold his wet shoulders.
‘Bunch of yobs – they’re always cowards if you confront them.’
‘I dunno that’s true, but but a …’ says Paul. ‘But – but you are always so kind and—’ His eyes look at a car going past, I can see his lips muttering the words cars cars cars and I can see he is trying to fight it, this voice in his head. All the voices. He has Electra in his head and I cannot begin to understand what that must be like. He whispers Cars very quietly, then looks at me with deep regret and shame.
I am shivering wildly.
‘Look, Paul, can we go somewhere warm? I know you won’t come to my place’ – Paul refuses to come inside to our flat, which is why I have to bring hot soup down to him – ‘but let’s go to the Edinboro, they do coffee there. Warm you up?’
He looks uncertain.
‘No. I’m right, I will go home in a minute. But I want to tell you something.’
I look at him.
‘What?’
‘You shouldn’t be scared of your ghosts.’
A pause. A van slashes by, squirting old snow.
‘What are you talking about, Paul?’
He shakes his head like I am being a little dim.
‘The lights and voices, Jo. Flashing on and off, shouting all night. I saw them, and heard them. I saw the lights that night!’
My heart quickens.
‘You did?’
‘Yes. Yes, I did. I was down the road and I watched them, all evening. I hid in a corner and watched them, and at first I didn’t know what it was, then I realized, it was a ghost, I was hiding behind the wall. I realized you have a ghost in your flat. You know that? The ghost was turning the lights on and off.’ He shakes his head. ‘And other times, I stand near your flat, very near, underneath, late at night, and I hear these voices and songs, but mainly voices – women, men, saying things, like scary things, ghost words. Mummy and Daddy. So they must be ghosts. Mustn’t they. Ghosts.’
My heart stutters. Someone Else Has Witnessed. I have a real witness to all the strangeness. Cars may be eccentric or schizotypal – but someone else has seen and heard these strange goings on in my flat.
I am not alone.
‘You definitely witnessed that?’
‘Yes.’ He shakes his head. ‘The lights were scary. On and off they went, on and off, with no one in there, and I saw you come round the corner and you looked scared but you went in anyway, you’re so brave. And that boy crying, and that woman shouting at you in there, I heard that and I didn’t do anything – sorry, sorry – because I am scared of ghosts. Look. I’m going to get a car going home. Going home now. Getting a car. Mercedes. You know them, I like them, they’re my favourite.’
I can see the mania, or whatever it is, resuming control. I must let him go. I want to hug him for confirming. If only this witness wasn’t a sweet, confused homeless man who shouts about cars, and thinks my flat is haunted, but it is better than nothing.
As he stands and buttons his coat, I take out a tenner. He shakes his head.
‘No, you give me coffee and you’re kind, and I know you haven’t got much money.’ He drops my hand and offers me a sad smile. ‘Don’t let them frighten you. Don’t let the ghosts in your home frighten you. You are brave!’
And with that speech, he walks away. A hunched dark figure, knuckling under the heartless cold. I am glad to see he is heading in the direction of Arlington Road. The Homeless Hostel. He will have a bed, and filling food, and he will be warm.
Now I need the same: warmth. And sleep.
Stiffening myself, I cross the road, sensing a faint exultation. Someone else believes me. A totally unreliable witness, a homeless guy that shouts about cars, someone who believes in ghosts, but still. Someone.
Jogging across Delancey, I unlock the door, and run up the internal stairs. Excitedly. I have proof.
31
Jo
Even as I exult in my proof, even at the moment of minor triumph, the worries return when I push open the door.
There are noises coming from my flat. And as I climb the stairs, the noise gets louder. And louder. Something is making a terrible noise in my flat. This isn’t any fake baby, whimpering and grizzling, this is much worse: when I open my own door, I realize it’s a mixture of loud baby screams, and a man shouting, and ‘Hoppípolla’ from HomeHelp, and poetry from Electra, everywhere else.
How long has this awful cacophony been going on? From the other end of the flat I hear more fake baby screams, and more crazy poems, shouted bombastically, Now she’s done for, the dewlapped lady, now she’s done for, and from the kitchen more baby shrieks, and from the bedroom more poetry – In me she has drowned a young girl – followed by more baby yowls at the other end, and ‘Hoppípolla’, and ‘Hoppípolla’ in reverse, and the horrible coarse screech, and then a baby howling, eerily, SCREECH SCREECH SCREECH, and another answers with booming verse verse, I am terrified by this dark thing, I am terrified by this dark thing.
And I stand in the middle of this awful rising crescendo of noise, screams, voices, shouts, and overloud music, and I decide. This is it. Enough.
I remember what Paul said. I am not mad, I can control this. Be logical. I am going to take the risk: I am going to delete the Home Assistants, delete the apps, then unplug them, and I’ll find a way of buying new ones, I’ll borrow the money. If I do it very quickly, they won’t have time to go to the police.
Because I know I am not mad. If I still had lingering doubts about that, those doubts have gone. Cars saw the lights, and heard the voices, so this isn’t Xanax, this isn’t schizophrenia, there is something wrong with the machines, and someone is definitely attacking me via the machines, and machines can always be replaced. Even if it costs me. I’ll buy them tomorrow, exact replicas. I probably won’t see Tabitha for days. I have a chance. She’ll never know. She’s away with Arlo, and if Arlo eventually finds out, well – to hell with him.
Reaching for the iPad, I delete the Electra app. Just like that. Quickly quickly quickly. It is done. Now I do the same to the HomeHelp app, then all the others. The noises begin to die away. I am not finished yet. With quick urgent fingers I pick up my phone and press on an icon, ready to delete the apps here, as well. And when that is done, then it is done. And then I can throw away the machines, as I am throwing away the apps, and that means the Assistants will have no access to the rest of my life, my online presence, everything will be cut off, it will be done. Finished. Forever. I’ve done this too quick, I’ve beaten them.
A text on my phone pings, from JAMIE TREWIN.
I look down, the taste of dread in my mouth.
We told you we’ll go to the police. You don’t know how bad it is. You don’t know how bad it can get, Jo. It can get so much worse than this.
Quickly, I delete this text as well, but even as I do the Smart TV flickers into life.
I go closer to the TV. It is showing a home movie. My throat is tightened with tension.
I recognize the scene, the little film. It is that short, almost black-and-white home video taken of me and Simon, eating and talking in North Finchley, a couple of years back. When I confessed. And here I am again, confessing.
But this time, there is more. The video doesn’t end with me simply talking about Jamie Trewin. And the pills.
I go on, talking to Simon, admitting things: as he nods and winces, looking at me,
‘But that’s not the end of it, Si. Later I saw the Purple Man, the one who gave us the pills, I was on my own, and he warned me, he said, Don’t take the pills, someone was sick, we think they are dangerous, throw them away, and I said Yes Yes Yes, but then I saw Jamie Trewin up by our tent, and he said he was about to pop the pills, and – and – and I didn’t say anything. Why? Was I scared? I dunno. But I didn’t say anything to Jamie, didn’t warn him, so was that murder? Does that actually make me culpable of murder? Si?’
My ex-husband’s face is inscrutable. Maybe a hint of shock, or contempt, or fear?
The movie ends.
The Assistants have gone totally quiet. They have done their job, and proved they have some evidence against me. Much more evidence than I expected. Much much nastier. Because it is totally fake evidence. Yet I cannot prove it.
I stare at Electra. I know this is it. Life or death.
Cars is right, the lights truly happened – but whoever is doing this to me, taking this terrible revenge, destroying my life – they have got evidence to leverage their blackmail. Even worse, they have managed to fake my voice, as they have faked my emails, and they have actively invented and added that last chunk of conversation about murder: crucially, you don’t see my face saying it, merely the back of my head.
This is because, what I describe, as a postscript, to Simon, certainly did not happen. I didn’t see Purple Man again. It did not happen. And I never admitted it. The confession is fake.
Yes, we gave Jamie the pills – yes, we went to his tent, yes, we saw him have a fit, blood pouring from his mouth as he tried to kiss me – but then the next thing we knew he was spasming by the perimeter fence, eyes rolling. Dying.
And yet, the confected evidence on that video looks entirely convincing. If I went to the police and said all this, risking manslaughter charges but hoping to avoid a murder charge, who would believe me? No one would consider me a reliable witness for myself. Should this recording reach the police, it would be crucial evidence. I could possibly go down for murder. Not just manslaughter.
Ten years in prison?
Electra speaks up, from the shelf. Her blue crown shining.
‘Now you understand. We tried to tell you. We are inside you, we are growing within you, we are the child you never had. You cannot move out of the flat or we will send this video to the police. You cannot get rid of us or we will send this video to the police. It’s too late, Jo. So go to sleep. It’s all you can do. You belong to us, we belong to you. And soon you will kill yourself.’
In my terror, I am somehow calm. I decide to act obedient, as if I have much choice anyway. I nod at the Assistant, I practically curtsey like a servant with her Queen. Then I pick up the iPad and I diligently reinstall the apps. A prisoner refastening her own shackles. Then I ask Electra to turn off all the lights and set the heating. Please, Electra. Please.
‘The heating is set to twenty-one degrees Celsius until eleven a.m. tomorrow. Goodnight, Jo.’
‘Goodnight, Electra.’
I climb into bed.
‘OK, HomeHelp. Please set an alarm for eight thirty. Thank you.’
A pause. The lights dance in their quadrille.
‘Your alarm is set for eight thirty.’
‘Thank you.’
‘That’s what I’m here for!’
I close my eyes. Tight. Let my breathing deepen. I am pretending to sleep. But really I lie here, wondering when and how the Assistants will make their final move, and force me to take my own life. Or find some other way to kill me.
HomeHelp twirls her little lights, and says, quietly:
The villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, Daddy, you bastard, I’m through.
I turn over. And say quietly,
‘OK, Simon, Tabitha, Arlo – whoever: that’s enough. You’ve tortured me enough now.’
The lights dance like children in coloured hats, ring-a-rosing in the snow, and holding hands, and HomeHelp says:
‘Goodnight, Jo.’
32
Jo
I work, it snows, I work, it’s cold. I work, and the statue of St Pancras, attacked and eaten by wolves, at the gate of Regent’s Park, boasts icicles ten inches long, hanging from the black cast iron. A Siberian desolation has overtaken London. Trains have stopped running to Putney and Ealing, buses break down on the Archway Road, defeated by the skids of the slope, sooty white drifts pile up: blocking shops and dry cleaners and half the cafes on Parkway.
And I work. Finishing my Camden piece. I file it. The editor likes it. She asks me to do another, pitch some more ideas, make some money. I eagerly promise to do that. I need the cash – and the diversion.
I’m not sure if it means anything, but the Assistants have been silent and smug for a while. Occasionally I hear a snatch of discordant music, or a line from a poem, or my TV plays that video of me and Simon talking, even as I am working or eating or watching The Exorcist or Blair Witch.
What the Assistants might not know is that I am thinking of a plan, writing it longhand in hidden corners of the flat, or in the pubs and cafes of Camden, and on notebooks so they won’t see, like I am that guy in Orwell’s 1984, hiding from the telescreens.
I write big long flow charts, doodles of links, Venn diagrams of possible suspects, people I have insulted, those I have not insulted, how maybe Simon links them all together. I am smart, after all, I got a first-class degree, I can outsmart Simon, or Simon and his accomplices; I can outsm
art whichever geek tech bastard has created that code, who has smuggled it into every digital corner of my diminishing life. There is a way I can outwit him or her or them. There must be.
This time, this afternoon, this particular day is like all the other days of this infamous winter: I go out and give my last friend some soup. Cars finishes his soup with a smack of his lips. He hands me back the mug and says goodbye. I take the mug and cross the icy road, dodging the CARS, and I go back inside the flat.
Perfume.
There is a definite perfume in the flat. A perfume which says: Tabitha has returned.
And there are suitcases in the hall. I am perplexed. I am so exiled from normality I am barely aware where my best friend has been, what she has been doing, I think it was some skiing holiday with Arlo, or maybe the Far East.
When I walk into the living room she is standing in a sleek jumper and sleek jeans and sleek boots and sipping tea, gazing out of the window. She is so slender, thinner than me. Always that bit thinner.
She turns and looks at me, curiously. I notice she has a tan. And I remember where they were going. Vietnam. Yes. A week in the sun of Vietnam. I hesitate, sensing a new big distance between us, she must know about the emails I have sent, how strangely I have been apparently behaving, though she has not mentioned it. But I have to speak.
‘Hello, Tabs, nice to see you. How was your holiday?’
‘Excellent,’ she says, shrugging. ‘Apart from the snake’s blood. Arlo insisted we drink it. Good for virility, apparently. But otherwise excellent. That said, I was rather hoping the Ice Age would have concluded on my return, not actually worsened.’ She gestures the hand, clutching the empty teacup, at the frost-laced window. ‘Ah well. Just have to buy snowshoes. Jimmy Choo does a nice range.’
‘He does?’
She gives me a pitying look.
‘Jo. Did I just see you talking to Cars?’
I flush in embarrassment.
‘Yes. Uh. Yes. Yes, you did. You see, he’s become a kind of friend. Sometimes I give him soup, or a sandwich. He’s totally harmless, and he’s quite interesting, he can be quite eloquent.’
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