The Assistant

by S. K. Tremayne

  Arlo nodded, squinting, wondering. Then he scraped the stool and walked to the tall black fridge, pulling out a bottle of white wine. Expensive stuff. Probably Meursault. Tabitha watched as he deftly uncorked the bottle, sniffed the cork, then poured himself a glass. He drank it standing there, apparently thinking. His back to her.

  It must be seven o’clock, Tabitha surmised, he always started drinking at seven, never before. But he never drank too much. About half a bottle of wine, maybe a gin and tonic beforehand, that was his rule and his limit, except on rare days of champagne, and celebration.

  Tabitha admired this aspect of Arlo, this steely discipline; it went with the hard work, the long hours, the logical brain, the masculine firmness. The confident selfishness in bed, which so turned her on. Arlo did forty minutes at the gym every morning, before breakfast. Every single day. Tabitha looked at him now, in that dark T-shirt and those dark jeans, drinking by the fridge. His gym-fit biceps were still tanned from Vietnam. She got the desire to peel off the T-shirt. Kiss the rippling suntanned muscles of his back. She resisted it.

  ‘Hey, don’t I get a glass? I am allowed one a night. A small glass, three times a week. We agreed.’

  He turned, tilting his head, as if he had been thinking of something very different, and was surprised to find himself in the kitchen, in conversation, with his fool of a wife-to-be.

  ‘Sure.’

  His smile was brief, distracted, chilly. Fetching a second glass from the cupboard, he returned to the table. Poured some Meursault. She sipped. He glugged. Another splash, another drink.

  ‘OK,’ he said, finally. ‘OK. I get it, you didn’t think straight. You probably did your best, off the cuff. But …’ He drank the wine, thirstily; his glare had returned. ‘I wish you hadn’t got us in this absurd fix in the first place.’

  ‘Arlo—’

  ‘No.’ He was holding his wineglass, but pointing at her at the same time, with the same hand. ‘No, Tabs, I told you it was risky. And stupid. Inviting her to live there. I told you from the get-go, before she even moved in.’

  ‘She was homeless! She’s my friend!’

  ‘A demented friend, whose confusion and paranoia you have made incontestably worse. Spare me the Gospel according to Tabitha Ashbury. The point is: I told you not to offer the room.’

  ‘Please, Arlo – I didn’t know any of this was going to happen, my best friend having an episode. I didn’t have time to plan one of your super logical manoeuvres. Let’s face it, I’m no Arlo Scudamore. But it’s done now. Can we move on?’

  Arlo fell silent. Musing.

  Tabitha sighed and gazed out of the window: Arlo’s spacious kitchen faced on to a grey winter garden: on which, tonight, flakes of snow were falling, and settling. The large windows and glass doors threw rectangles of pale yellow light on the whiteness.

  Arlo had finished his wine. And the whole bottle. Crossing to the fridge, he pulled out another. The same. Meursault. Probably £50.

  Tabitha stared, surprised.

  ‘Are we celebrating?’

  He ignored her remark. Uncorked it. Sat, and poured, and drank, and said:

  ‘There is of course another possibility, which you haven’t considered.’ He gave her an inscrutable frown.

  ‘Sorry?’

  The frown was nearly a smile.

  ‘Imagine that your poor crazed friend is telling the truth, about the Assistants? Maybe someone actually is manipulating her, through the machines. Speaking to her in her own voice. That would be exceptionally clever. Very, very clever. Get hold of someone already unstable, someone you can blackmail, you could do anything. Especially with voice tech. It’s truly impressive.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he said, his smile still lurking. ‘All I know is that there is, now, a rather tragic irony.’

  ‘There is?’

  ‘You don’t see it?’

  ‘No. Explain?’

  His smile was icy cold.

  ‘Well, look at it this way. Given what has happened, given the hideous risks, the best possible outcome, for us, right now, is that Jo does go properly crazy. Get sectioned. Locked away. If she is certifiably lunatic, then she won’t be a reliable witness to anything, least of all her own behaviour fifteen years back. Or your behaviour, either.’

  Again, he ignored her open-mouthed expression: her obvious shock.

  ‘I’m sorry, darling, but it’s true. You’ve brought your friend to this. It is sad, but there we are.’

  He sighed, without much emotion. Tabitha knew he was being maliciously playful, even cruel, at her expense. But she was feeling too guilty to fight back. She, Tabitha, had done that. To her best friend. Possibly tipped her over the edge: lied about the worst event of their lives.

  The kitchen was silent. Everything was silent. Arlo poured himself a final glass, returned the bottle to the fridge. Then he turned, and said,

  ‘There’s one other thing that makes me curious.’

  Tabitha looked up.

  ‘There is?’

  ‘Yes. You know her ex, that geek guy – Simon. Helped us with the Assistants.’

  ‘Simon Todd?’

  ‘Yes. Simon Todd.’

  Tabitha shook her head. Mystified.

  ‘What about him?’

  Arlo let the pause grow, drawing out the tension.

  ‘You know what he does, what his speciality is?’

  ‘No?’

  Another long, theatrical pause. Another swig of wine.

  ‘It’s linked to AI, robotics, all that. He’s been doing it for years, it’s all very secretive. Of course at Facebook we have – or we had – no idea how far he’s got, with his team, it’s like the Cold War between these big tech companies. Spies everywhere. But I wonder if his team has got further than any of us realized. With that technology.’

  Tabitha frowned. Frustrated.

  ‘But what is it? What’s the technology? What exactly is he working on?’

  Arlo tilted back his glass, and finished the Meursault. And set the wineglass on the table.

  ‘Voice mimicry,’ he said. ‘Those are the rumours swirling around. Apparently, he’s working on voice mimicry.’

  39

  Jo

  ‘How are you feeling, Mum? Really?’

  I put an arm around my mother’s slender shoulders: they feel too slender. Mum is looking pale, trembly, her hands shake as she pours weak coffee from the cafetière.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about me, dear. It’s this silly weather, you know. I like fresh air but it’s too cold to put my nose out the door.’

  ‘Are you sure, Mum? You look pallid. Is the pacemaker OK?’

  Mum laughs weakly, and glances down at her cardigan, which she is wearing over a jumper, and another jumper beneath that. She likes layers, my mum. She could win a gold medal for layers.

  ‘The pacemaker? Hah. That’s the best bit of me! Only bit that works properly. Nuclear-powered, dear, I’m nuclear-powered.’

  She stoops to tickle Cindy behind the ear. The old dog looks as wistful, and listless, as my mother. It is too cold for walks. Everyone is trapped by this brutal winter.

  As the coffee is followed by a dash of milk, I sit back, assessing, wondering, observing. Mum likes to talk about her hospital visits, yet she always denies serious ill health, and needs to be asked twenty times before she will admit anything is significantly wrong. And I have long admired this stoicism, I hope I’ve inherited some of it; but this phlegmatic lack of self-pity can also be dangerous. And there is that other issue which needs addressing. Swallowing my tensions, along with the coffee, I enquire, as lightly as possible,

  ‘Mum, have you spoken to Will?’

  I steel myself for the reaction, but Mum doesn’t flinch, or wince – or hesitate. She sighs, and sadly smiles, and shakes her head.

  ‘Course not, darling, you know he only calls me once a month. I don’t mind, I know he’s busy – that job, little Caleb, and that wife! I’m probably lu
cky I get ten minutes’ attention a year. I do hope he brings Caleb over again soon, though. Like last year. Such an adorable boy.’

  A guilty relief suffuses me. So Mum doesn’t know about the accusations and denunciations that I, supposedly, have been sending to California. Probably Will has kept shtum for the same reasons that I have kept so quiet about my mounting problems: the doctors explicitly warned me and Will when the pacemaker went in: it could give her five years, or ten.

  We just don’t know. There’s a lot of damage.

  That was five years ago.

  Hence, we have both had to tread carefully with Mum, ever since. Modest arguments – like the one when I was last here, and we’d had that tiff about Simon and ‘kids’ – are as far as we can afford to go. Major and upsetting traumas: no way. Not unless they are utterly unavoidable.

  Yet the paradox pains me, as I drink the coffee: today, of all times, is when I actively want Mum to know everything. This is MUM. Mummy. Possibly the last sane friend I have in the world, the last living soul who might offer me real sympathy. Everyone else is alienated in different ways: commonly by me. Or rather, Arlo and Tabitha. Because I am now sure they are behind all this, or most of it. Tabitha’s lie was clear and blatant. She was denying our crime, which definitely happened. And she lied because Arlo’s cousin, it turns out, was implicated in Jamie Trewin’s death. And maybe that means Arlo wants me silenced forever?

  It makes a kind of sense. Trouble is, I don’t know how to use the knowledge: how to confront them. Arlo is rich, assured, and powerful. He will have planned all this. He could cause me even greater grief, or harm my family. And I am too scared to go to the police because of him, his power: I will still be in deep, deep trouble.

  ‘How’s your coffee?’

  ‘Lovely, Mum.’

  My mother’s brown soft eyes gaze lovingly upon her daughter, and I feel an absurd urge to cry. Mum is being so kind, not even mentioning the emails – my crazy attacks. Even if they are not by me, she doesn’t know this, and it must disturb her. Yet she says nothing.

  And the next bit is the worst: better get it done with.

  ‘Mum, I’ve had a problem with my bank account.’

  ‘A problem?’

  ‘Yes, I think, the bank thinks, um, well they think someone might have hacked it and it’s left me pretty short. Suddenly.’

  My mum’s soft eyes flicker, bemused, confused. But sympathetic.

  Once more I feel the sadness surge, and I bat it away. The guilt is too much, I need to get this over and done with.

  ‘Well. Ah. Mum, I was just wondering—’

  ‘You want to borrow some money?’

  Thank God Mum has asked first. She knows me. She made me.

  ‘How much do you need, dear?’

  Yet I hesitate at the question. In truth I need thousands, three thousand or more, just to cover that tax bill, but I am never going to ask for that, even if Mum has that kind of sum squirrelled away, which she surely doesn’t.

  ‘Uhm, a few hundred. Enough to tide me over: until the bank can, you know, get to the bottom of this. Soon as they do, I will pay you back.’

  Mum nods and says nothing. I look on with that strange mix of love and guilt, that quintessential feeling of a child, to a parent, as Mum goes to a cabinet and pulls open a drawer.

  My eyes widen. She has a wooden box, and it is filled with notes. Mum laughs, quietly, at herself.

  ‘I know, I know, I’m surely the last silly person in Great Britain who keeps cash in a box. But I like to have a little reserve, just in case.’

  I watch, with pain, as I realize the box is being half emptied. My mother smiles, warmly. ‘There you are, five hundred pounds, and if you want any more, just ask.’

  Needily, guiltily, I take the cash, and say thank you, thank you, working out how long I can make five hundred quid last: perhaps three weeks, four? Anyway, the deed is done and I can relax: for the next half hour we chat about nothing much, and this is good, and this is fine, it is nice. Like the old days. And when the conversation dwindles, my eyes scan the room. And it’s only now I notice it. An Assistant. A black cylinder.

  Mum has one too?

  ‘Hey,’ I say, ‘that’s new. Where did you get that?’

  Mum turns.

  ‘Oh, the Assistant? Simon gave it me ages ago, couple of years ago, think it was a spare one from your place.’ She shakes her head. ‘Thought I’d set it up the other day, try it out, they say it can be like a friend, but I’ve never even plugged it in before.’ She shrugs. ‘To be honest, it doesn’t seem to do that much. It’s good for telling me the news. And recipes.’

  Discomfited, I sit back, wondering what to do with the info. I want to ring Simon this instant and ask him about everything, especially Arlo and Tabs. But I can’t. Polly is in the way. Consequently, I am trapped, the same way Cindy is trapped indoors by the winter. No walks, no fresh air, a world in prison.

  And now more snow is falling. I gaze out onto the ice-bound garden. It is the same as ever. It has never changed. The rose bushes. The little pond. The old wheelbarrow.

  And there. The little apple tree. Still there. Where Daddy would throw me in the air, where he would lift me up, to pluck apples. Ach, Daddy.

  From nothing, I feel compelled to ask,

  ‘Mum, do you still miss Dad? I mean, you know, I know you must miss him – but do you still think about him, a lot, or does it go away? Does it fade?’

  Mum says nothing. Instead she turns and looks out of the frosted kitchen windows at the leafless apple tree.

  And then very softly, almost whispering, she says:

  ‘He used to lift you up, didn’t he, to pick apples from the top of the tree. I always remember that. You laughed so much. You and your friends.’

  ‘Yes. I always remember that too.’

  I bite my lip. Tears are not allowed.

  Mum’s brown eyes are also glistening. With sadness. And memory.

  ‘I think about him every day, Jo, every day. It never goes away. How about you?’

  My sigh is heartfelt.

  ‘The same. Every day. In some ways, it gets worse. Sometimes it’s like I am always running away from that darkness. But it follows me.’

  My mum puts her hand on mine. The touch invokes those tears, which I resist. I say,

  ‘He was funny, wasn’t he, Mum? I know I can’t remember absolutely everything – I was too young when he died. But I do remember him being funny, warm, loving. That’s right, isn’t it?’

  Mum brushes away what looks suspiciously like a tear.

  ‘He was a lovely man, dear, just the loveliest man. The only man I ever wanted. Clever, amusing, handsome, but never arrogant, or boastful. Never.’ Mum grips my hand tighter. ‘Even when … he went mad, he had a sense of right and wrong. He felt terrible guilt at the end, you know? He told me.’

  This is new; this is painful; yet I need to know.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Mum shakes her head, looking down, half sighing.

  ‘Just before he killed himself, he had a lucid moment, a couple of days when he seemed sane. It was in here, this room, he turned to me and said, “Janet, I cannot stand what I have done to you all – especially the kids, making them suffer.”’

  ‘He specifically mentioned me and Will?’

  ‘That’s what he said. He was sorry for you kids, his little girl, enduring his madness. A few days later he did it, in the car, he finished it, so he wouldn’t hurt us any more.’ Mum looks up, touches me gently. ‘You know I’ve always seen you in him, I look at you, you’re much more like him than your brother. He adored you. He loved Will but he adored you.’

  I squeeze my mum’s hand in return. My mother probably cannot understand how these words worry and pain and sadden me even as they gratify me. The emotions are too much, too mixed, they will never be untangled. I want to ask about the suicide, about Daddy’s madness, about so much, but I daren’t go there. I’d also like to stay here, get away from Delance
y, but I can’t, the Assistants would find out, and they are in control.

  So instead the two of us, mother and daughter, sit silently at the kitchen table, and watch the fresh new flakes of snow settling on the little apple tree, saying nothing, yet not needing to say anything. And then it is three o’clock and getting dark, and I say I have to go and Mum says, ‘I know.’

  At the door, I give Mum another big hug.

  ‘I don’t say this often enough, Mum, but I love you.’

  My mother smiles, and shakes her head.

  ‘You don’t have to say it, darling. You know I love you too.’

  ‘Thanks again for helping me, I’m sorry to ask.’

  ‘You’re my daughter!’ Mum says, firmly, almost commandingly. ‘It’s my job! Now, come and see me again soon, won’t you?’ I nod and kiss her one last time, then sling my bag over my shoulder and set off along the icy path to the front garden gate. When I reach the gate, I turn to give Mum a wave.

  My mother looks so pale, framed by the cottagey door. A soft white oval face, white as the snow in her garden. The idea of one day Mum not being down here suddenly strikes me with a frightening force.

  ‘I’ll come down next weekend, Mum. I promise.’

  Mum smiles faintly and waves and says, ‘See you soon.’ And I walk away, and yet I keep looking back and waving, until the snowy air mists and thickens, and after that I am round the corner. And I can see nothing at all.

  40

  Jo

  The walk to Thornton Heath station is silent, muffled by the ceaseless snow, past curtained windows in terraced houses with frosty little gardens, past a corner shop closing early, past deserted playgrounds where candy-coloured wooden rabbits and sheep and chickens sit motionless on springs, wearing mohawks of hardened snow.

  I remember how I used to play here: in this very playground. I remember all these streets, so ordinary and anonymous to anyone else. My primary school was around the corner: I can picture those days, when it was summer and warm, when Daddy would come home early from work and wait to pick me up, in that humble schoolyard. Those were good days because it meant Daddy wasn’t with doctors or feeling funny. The teacher would bend to my ear as I stood in the school doorway: Look, look, there’s Daddy, off you go.