The Actuality Read online

She is still nervous of his continuing assumption of ownership but lets it pass, for despite her initial trepidation, this brochure – her brochure – has her captivated. She’d prefer to study it in private but for now flicks through, reading to herself snippets – Elektra’s eyes are literally the windows to her soul, a breathtaking combination of art and technology utilising the fifth generation of our award winning realiris™ optical solution enabling her to appreciate her world in JVC ultradepth™ and seven billion unique colours! . . . nanofibre filtering coupled with real time interpretation provide an ultra-spectrum sensory suite complete with . . . groundbreaking gradations of perception . . . ten times stronger than steel and a fifth of the mass . . . NASA crystal gyroscope for leading-edge balance guarantees unrivalled ballet-to-catwalk stability . . . absolutely natural to the touch, indistinguishable from . . .

  ‘See here in the appendix,’ Maplin says, lifting it from her hands, ‘it lists all your technical data. Listen to what they gave you – “Powerful one-thousand core GMX Industries processor suspended within our own patented neural gel delivers superior true intelligence while leading-edge analytics come courtesy of the latest incarnation of the Realhuman operating interface”.’

  He is nearly drooling.

  ‘And there’re all the options packages listed at the back.’

  Fully customisable patented core design, she reads. Unlimited personalisation, the only restraint is your imagination. Elektra is not only perfect but also unique.

  ‘It was the opportunities for customisation which set you apart and cost the real money.’ he says. ‘I tell you, your owner really got his chequebook out for you.’ He is gazing at her unrestrainedly – taking her in with all her perfected imperfections. So nearly human, but not.

  Evie feels like an object – not a person but like the piece of machinery she is.

  ‘The basic model cost a fortune,’ Maplin continues. ‘The price of an ocean-going yacht. I just cannot start to imagine what he had to spend on you!’

  20

  Maplin replaces the brochure in its envelope and takes it back upstairs.

  When he returns, before he can speak, Evie resets the subject away from this exploration of herself. She can’t absorb any more right now.

  ‘Timothy,’ she says, using his first name, not to be friendly but as a means to get her way. ‘Do you have any clothes I can have? These are no longer any good . . .’ She looks down at herself. Her dress is stained with rust and hay dust and her stockings are crusted with mud. It is likely he doesn’t have anything suitable but perhaps he can be persuaded to go out and buy some for her, as Daniels would have done.

  He blinks at her, and for a moment she maybe appears merely human to him again. A woman in trouble who needs his help. ‘Yes, there are some things upstairs, stuff my sister left.’

  She follows him to a bedroom on the first floor. As she enters, she notices the monkey spying, beady-eyed, from an adjacent doorway.

  ‘Her things are in here,’ Maplin says, turning on a light. ‘Take anything you see, she’ll not be back.’ He lingers in the doorway, watching, before realising that she is waiting for him to go. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’

  Evie closes the door and slides the stiff bolt across before taking a look in the wardrobe. There are some skirts and dresses on hangers in garish shades and outlandish patterns, and jumpers with hoods with strange words printed across them. She finds amongst the collection a cream blouse, a little sweat-stained under the arms, and a grey jumper in a big knit, stretched from the shoulders with moth holes above the cuffs.

  She unbuttons her dress and lets it pool around her feet and, stepping out of it, pulls down her filthy stockings. Straightening, she is caught by her reflection in the wardrobe mirror. She rarely gives her body much attention – it is just an instrument she was provided with – but now she touches her chest, lifting her small breasts together to form a cleavage and releasing them. She runs her hands down her sides, cinching the spare cotton of her slip tight in a knot around her waist, and spreads her fingers out over her narrow hips. Compared to the photographs of the gorgeous Elektra, she is insignificant – flat and forgettable. The body she shares with Evelyn is without flare or plenty.

  Evie sits down and wriggles on a pair of narrow jeans. She saw women wear these in Cambridge and they will serve to aid her disguise. She has never had anything like them – the way they mould to her thighs is utterly un-Evelyn, and the little escape from her shadow gives her a tang of satisfaction.

  She looks in the drawers and finds a bag of cosmetics. She takes out an old lipstick and applies the stub to her lips. There is also a tube of mascara. It is a bit dry but she coats her upper lashes, copying what she has seen women do in films. She examines herself in the mirror, removing a fleck of the mascara from her cheek and pressing her lips against her sleeve.

  She searches again in the drawer and pulls from the back a blonde wig. It is surprisingly natural to the touch, the fibres liquid between her fingers. It compresses to almost nothing in her palm and she tucks it away in her pocket.

  She opens the door and exits onto the landing. The monkey retreats before her. Has he been watching through the keyhole? Why would he do that – mere mischievousness or so that he can report back?

  Evie steps around him and descends the stairs.

  The monkey holds onto the banisters, pushing his face between them, as if behind bars. His head is level with hers. He stares, saliva glistening on his dark lips. If it hadn’t been for the nest of wiring behind his ears, she would have taken him to be real.

  She stops and glares back. ‘What do you want?’ she demands, baring her teeth like David did at the museum. ‘Prying little beast!’ She suspects Evelyn would have been assertive despite her modest demeanour, but it is something she herself has rarely managed. Now it is as if the change of clothes has given her a new edge.

  ‘You should be careful,’ the monkey replies calmly. ‘You would do well not to trust him.’

  Stunned, Evie backs against the wall, touching her chest. She and the monkey stare at one another. It is not just the shock of his talking, but that he has an educated upper-class voice not unlike Matthew’s.

  Evie glances back up the stairs to see if Maplin is concealed there, playing a trick.

  ‘You are out of your depth,’ the monkey concludes sadly, now reminding her of Simon with his attitude of self-importance.

  Letting go of the banisters, he slopes off into the shadows.

  21

  Evie rejoins Maplin in the kitchen. He looks at her differently. Maybe he is seeing in her, with the change of clothes and the red lips and dark-rimmed eyes, a copy of his sister. Maybe she is only imagining it. Imagination – another thing she is not meant to have. She glances down at the ridiculous top with the silver tufts on the shoulders, like fairy epaulettes or the tips of wings, which she would never have been seen dead in in her previous life.

  ‘I thought a change would be good,’ she says. Defensive when there is no need to be.

  The fact is, when she put the musty old jumper and blouse back where she’d found them, the little rebellion was another step in casting away the identity she was grafted with. Bundling it up with her old dress and torn stockings in the bottom of the wardrobe had been a further small act of faithlessness to Evelyn.

  She is putting together a disguise piece by piece. When she leaves here, which she soon will, she intends not to be found.

  Evie’s growing assertiveness is apparent in other ways, too. She hears Simon less – or perhaps listens less – and when he speaks, the volume is reduced and his tone, higher-pitched, merges with her own. It occurs to her for the first time what she has had to put up with over the years: their relationship was always about him when he had a vested interest, but all about her when something went wrong.

  Part of the process of survival has to be finding her way to Austria. Can she make Maplin help her in this – not to come but to tell her how? She m
ust approach the subject obliquely. She suspects he will not assist in anything that will hasten her departure.

  ‘Timothy, have you been to Europe?’ she asks, throwing the question out there, like a ball, casually, as if she doesn’t care whether he catches it. But he is like the eager little dog in her Ladybird reading books and happily leaps. B is for Ball, she thinks. D is for Dog. U is for Using someone to get what you want.

  ‘Yes,’ he says.

  ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘Shinier, more advanced. They have tech you’d never see here.’

  ‘Is there anything there similar to me?’

  Maplin looks at her carefully. ‘Depends what you mean. They brought in equivalent laws for the control of AABs – particularly in Germany because of the trade unions – but they’re keen as mustard in the east. The Russians have thousands of specialised units in the military – male and female – and there’s little to stop the ones that desert from getting around. I saw them quite a bit. The farmers use them for cheap labour and in towns they do the unpleasant tasks that people won’t. They were actually why I went but to be honest I was disappointed. None of them were like you. Or if there were any, I wasn’t able to find them.’

  Maybe that is the point, Evie thinks. They were too clever to let themselves be found.

  ‘How did you get there? I read there are flying boats.’

  ‘Flying boats?’ He looks confused.

  ‘Ships that glide above the water.’

  ‘Oh those! There was something like that once, but the easiest way now is the tunnel.’

  ‘Where’s the tunnel?’ She knows so little. When she is on her own, it will be her ignorance that will be her chief vulnerability.

  ‘Dover.’ He looks at her suspiciously. ‘Why all these questions, why the fascination with over there?’

  ‘No particular reason. You’re taking it for granted that everyone has had experiences and knows things. All my life I’ve lived with people who permitted me no more than a child’s view of the world.’ Evie plays up the hurt in her voice. Will Maplin believe her? What worked on Daniels may not work on him.

  ‘There was a photograph in the apartment of the Alps,’ she continues, losing herself in storytelling. ‘They were so beautiful, I’ve always wondered about them.’ This was the picture of Evelyn, Matthew and Evelyn’s father with their picnic and bicycles. ‘But no one would tell me anything.’ Which was true: neither Matthew nor Daniels would be drawn on the image. Maybe it was designed to be a fragment of her backstory – that she was meant to believe it actually was her in that mountain meadow. If that had been their plan, they’d overlooked planting the requisite memory that would have tied it all together.

  ‘I was hoping you’d be different,’ she says, smiling up at him ingratiatingly.

  ‘Well I don’t know about any mountains, I didn’t go there for that.’ Despite all her best efforts, suspicion remains in his voice.

  Evie bites her lip, wondering how she can find out more about this tunnel.

  ‘I’ve seen maps,’ she says, ‘simple ones, I know the Channel is south of London and on the other side is France, but I’m clueless how it all joins up. I’m curious to learn and you’re the only one who can help.’ She gazes at him with wide, helpless eyes, hoping she has done enough to conceal her motives. ‘Big eyes won’t get you anywhere with me’, is what Daniels used to say but he was wrong, quite blind to the fact that they always did.

  They seem to succeed now, too.

  ‘Yeah well, of course,’ Maplin says. ‘I forget sometimes you’ve been a bit sheltered.’

  ‘How often have you been?’

  ‘Only the once.’

  ‘And you just walked through, into France?’

  He sniggers. ‘Walk through – it’s over twenty miles! You’d have to be pretty desperate to attempt something like that.’

  ‘So how, then?’

  ‘There’s a train. It used to run all the way from London to Paris – fifty years ago anyway – but now you have to transfer at Dover.’

  ‘Is that easy?’

  ‘Depends what you mean by easy. It’s easy enough to leave England, there’s certainly no law against that, but the French aren’t so keen on taking just anybody and they run their own checks before you board.’

  ‘What sort of checks?’

  ‘Primarily cameras that scan your face. Old tech but still effective enough at picking out anyone who is a problem or a potential problem or merely the wrong colour . . .’ Maplin stops and stares at her. ‘You’re planning on leaving me, aren’t you?’

  Evie’s greedy rush for answers has given her away and, not good at lying, she flushes.

  ‘Why would you do that?’ Maplin sounds betrayed. His eyes grow bright and she realises that, almost unbelievably, he is on the verge of tears.

  She is going to say something about Austria but stops herself, brought up short by the vision of him doggedly pursuing her the way he had in Cambridge. Better that she had never even mentioned the Alps.

  ‘If you’re thinking of Europe, you’ll never make it on your own,’ he tells her bitterly. ‘They’ll pick you up in no time and before you know it you’ll be a pile of parts, with your head on a bench.’

  The precision of the vision makes it sound as if he is wishing such a horror on her. There is a nastiness in his eyes and Evie realises again how little she knows about him. He has become unpredictable. A puppy turned vicious.

  Daniels told her once about a dog he came across in the street that had gone savage and tried to bite him, and how in those situations there is only one recourse: to put it down.

  ‘Once I am across the channel I will be safe,’ Evie says, trying to remain calm. She wants to be away from here, right now. She has had enough of savagery.

  ‘Well!’ Maplin says loudly. ‘This is gratitude!’ He shoves his chair against the counter and crosses the room and looks out of the window. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you this,’ he continues, ‘because I didn’t want you to worry, but when I was in the shop earlier, they have your story on a loop on the news channel behind the checkout. You’re wanted for murder. They’ve got pictures of bodies covered in blood.’ Even he sounds a little afraid. ‘Everyone in the queue was talking about it. You’ve stirred something up in people, something primal. It’d be peasants and pitchforks if they found you.’ His reflection stares back at him. His hair is dishevelled and his shoulders are hunched and stiff. He is trying to hide that he is crying but she can see it in the glass.

  Evie remains quiet. He’s probably telling the truth about her being on the news, but that version of herself, the trusting naive one, the one they have in their photographs, is long gone.

  ‘I guess, even knowing that, I’m not going to get you to change your mind,’ he mutters, disguising the choke in his voice with a cough. ‘What about at least leaving it a month or two, letting things settle down. Taking advantage of people’s short memories.’

  That may have been an option a few minutes ago, but the emergence of his manic side makes her doubt that he’d follow through. Even Matthew, who supposedly cared for her, never let her leave. She is in danger of being trapped all over again.

  ‘I could drive you to Dover, then,’ Maplin resumes. ‘We could go together. It’d be like a holiday.’ His voice brightens as he outlines the prospect. ‘And you could see your precious mountains.’

  ‘Timothy, you’ve been kind to me,’ she says quietly, avoiding his eye. ‘I’ll always be grateful.’

  His head sinks. ‘I won’t be able to rescue you next time, not once you fall into their hands.’

  ‘I understand.’ She has no intention of being taken. She has killed once and knowing what they would do to her, if caught, she will just have to do what is required again. In some ways, with that first killing, she was the one whose savage side was unleashed.

  ‘How long do I have?’ His voice is wretched. It is as though she is a lover breaking up with him.

  She has never
had to terminate a relationship of any sort, but realises, even with her lack of experience, that the situation requires her to stay strong. ‘I’ll go this evening, as soon as it is dark.’

  ‘Of course you will.’ Maplin’s tone is still upset, but perhaps a little less so than before. He turns from the glass. ‘Well, despite how crazy this is, I will respect your wishes and I’m not going to have it on my conscience that I didn’t help. There are some things I can give you, things that will increase your chances. Maps and stuff. I think I even have a compass – help you to find your wretched mountains.’ He smiles at her. ‘I just hope they don’t disappoint!’

  She can see he is making a huge effort and, grateful for it, she smiles back.

  ‘My sister left some guidebooks too – she was always one for travel. Want to take a look?’

  ‘Thank you,’ she says.

  ‘Follow me, it’s all in the store room.’

  Store room? Evie thinks, her mood lightening, now that this is nearly over. The whole house is a store room!

  She follows him into the hall where he pushes out of the way a heap of coats and exposes a three-quarter-height door under the stairs.

  She hears the patter of soft feet and glances behind. The monkey is leaning over the bannister, tail wrapped around the rail. He shakes his head at her, but who is he to give disapproving looks? She turns away.

  Maplin pulls the door outwards. A wave of chilly air washes over her face. ‘Don’t worry,’ he says, ‘it’s a little bit dark, but there is a light just ahead of you. The switch is on the wood. You’ll need to bend a bit. Here let me help, mind the steps . . .’

  Then the door slams behind her, striking her shoulder. The key twists in the lock and she can’t do anything about it because, thrown off balance, she falls down a set of shallow steps, to land hard on a brick floor.

  22

  Evie’s head spins. The darkness is too dense for her to make anything out.

  Well done, Simon says, asserting himself after hours of silence, choosing this moment that she has been brought low. Now we’re properly fucked.