The Actuality Page 25

  She reaches a chamber where she finds them seated at a piano with their backs to her – Sola and Evelyn – but it is Sola at the keys, her gaudy pounding infused with the thrills of The Dolls’ House – flamboyant and grotesque. Evie didn’t know the child could play, even if it is with a clumsy smash, grab and bouncy slam.

  The child is full of joy, even more so than normal. Evelyn smiles down on her indulgently. Aware of Evie’s entrance – perhaps having orchestrated this moment – she slowly turns.

  The smile of affection twists into a sneer. ‘You’re here, then,’ she says, looking her up and down coolly. ‘You appear fresh and well-rested, although I guess, being as you are, you always do.’

  Sola continues playing, the clatter of the music hall growing cacophonous until Evelyn scoops the girl’s fingers from the keys and crisply brings down the cover.

  Sola grunts and, facing Evie, mutters a weary, ‘Maman,’ as if it is she who is the cause of the entertainment’s termination. The dog, snoozing in a shaft of sunlight, disturbed by the sudden silence, wakes and yelps irritably, before again closing its lids.

  ‘Interesting,’ Evelyn says, ‘that the child calls you that.’ Her eyes glint with malice. ‘I would not have thought it was possible for such feelings to exist between . . . but then what do I really know of your kind – or, for that matter, of her.’

  ‘Thank you for looking after her,’ Evie says, maintaining a surface calm.

  ‘Not at all, the child is a delight. I can see why you’re so charmed. So amusing to hear her prattle. Some of the things she comes out with have quite made me blush.’

  ‘She is just a child.’

  ‘But such colourful language! I have been entertained. So much profanity from such a young mouth! So brave and kind of you, to take her on.’

  Evie reaches for Sola but she slips along the stool out of her reach.

  ‘But I am interested in you,’ Evelyn continues. ‘How could I not be? It is not every day that your very own waxwork turns up at your house.’ She smiles superciliously. ‘And I have to watch my father get all giddy over it.

  ‘Tell me, what was it like living with Matthew? You two must have seemed the oddest couple – you not much more than a girl and him an old man. No wonder he kept you under wraps. His own little Eve – a creature he’d created to love and worship him. Even the name – Evie – even that’s almost right. Almost biblical. You couldn’t make it up! Except that that is exactly what he did.

  ‘I remember he was always so very proud of that garden of his, although I recall it was his servant who actually did the work, while he strode around like a version of “God the Father”, even back then when still a young man. It took me a while to realise just how suffocating that pride of his could be.

  ‘But you know the one thing that really grates, even more than all of that?’

  Evie reaches again for Sola, again unsuccessfully.

  ‘It is not just that you are a lie, but that you are a dishonest one. In making you, he did not even attempt a faithful copy but rather forged the version of me he’d always desired. Look how you dazzle with your gleaming hair and glowing skin, and you have that little upturned nose – not a blemish of mine reproduced!’ Evelyn shakes her head sadly. ‘It should be the pettiest of my concerns but I can’t help feeling that I have been insulted a second time over.’

  Sola collects her dog in her arms and seats herself cross-legged on the window seat, stroking its head and observing, neck tilted, the one-sided sparring.

  Evelyn stands slowly, wobbling on the better of her legs as she brings her stick around. Leaning on it, she crosses the room to the window where she straightens again, the pain showing in her thin cheeks. Brittleness and instability; surprising things for them to have in common.

  ‘But he said you’d died,’ Evie says. ‘He said you had an illness, how was I to know?’

  ‘Well, here I am, so now you do.’

  ‘He said it was what he had been told.’

  ‘Hah. And you believed him!’

  ‘I had no reason not to.’

  ‘When all along, he was down the factory having you assembled. How he must have relished the moment when you were delivered and he could enjoy people’s faces. “Oh how wonderful for you, to have her back . . . Oh look, she walks and talks!”

  ‘You think you’re so clever don’t you. Escaping the scene of your crime and finding your way here, even rescuing this little orphan bitch along the way and then working your charms on my father to feel sorry for you. Well let me show you just how clever you really are.’

  Evelyn picks up a holo-pad from the lid of the piano and flicks it open. After a second or two, the walls of miniature buildings rise from its surface and snow clouds the air. She lays the screen on the seat close to the girl and inch-high figures resolve themselves, hurrying through the snow beside a strip of dark green water.

  Evie leans in to see more closely. It is like being in a hovacar, fifty feet over events. Daniels is alongside her with his hand around her waist, taking her weight on his arm.

  She looks up at Evelyn, tears in her eyes. ‘How did you get this?’

  The video flickers and fades, the grey hues absorbing yellows, blues and greens, the light brightening, and now here she is again, this time with Sola on the hillside above the town, looking down on the house the afternoon they arrived.

  Sola giggles on seeing herself and reaches out like a giant to cup them both in her palm, but her fingers pass through, creating ripples in the light like water in a stream. She glances up at Evelyn, a look of pleasure on her face.

  ‘Of course there is more,’ Evelyn says. ‘You don’t have to search too hard to find a fairly comprehensive documentary of your travels . . . it’s all been emerging in the last few days, so many amateur sleuths out there willing to share what they have since you became famous! Or rather should I say infamous, because the more important fact is that you are wanted in England for murder. I didn’t realise that machines could be held accountable in that way, but apparently it is so. And my poor trusting father admitted a killer into our house! For all we know you could have been the one who slaughtered Matthew.’ Her eyes glitter coldly. ‘After all we only have your word for events. Maybe you now intend to slay us too, if we displease.’

  Evie’s mouth opens wide. ‘I did not kill him,’ she asserts angrily, finally reaching a tipping point and finding her voice. ‘How dare you?’ The waste of having spent her whole existence attempting to emulate this woman and believing herself to have fallen short when the actuality is so vile is finally sinking in.

  ‘I will naturally be reporting your presence to the authorities, here in Am See,’ Evelyn continues. ‘We are a conservative-minded lot, quite a little backwater in these radical times, and there is a deep-rooted distaste for dangerous elements. We’ve never enjoyed strangers and always like to know exactly who is visiting us.

  ‘However.’ She pauses and looks into Evie’s eyes. ‘I will grant you a head start. If you are quick and clever, who knows, maybe you will make it, although judging by the clumsy trail you have left so far, and the tail of interested parties you have collected, I have a feeling you will not. I am doing this, you understand, not for you, or . . .’ She glances at Sola. ‘Whatever this creature is. But for my father – to save him further upset. You have an hour to leave town.’

  36

  Sola stares at Evie. ‘Maman, you ave blood on your face.’ It is a surprise her voice is as composed as it is after what happened. She has seen some goings-on in her time – but everyone has their limits.

  ‘Where?’ Evie asks, glancing in the hotel room mirror and wiping around her mouth.

  ‘Still there,’ Sola says, grimly. Licking her fingertip, she reaches up and gingerly rubs around Evie’s forehead and cheeks. ‘That’ll do,’ she concludes, her voice downbeat. What a change from the day before when they had admired themselves in the same mirror in their new clothes. Since then bridges have been burnt and b
oats sunk.

  They leave the hotel room through the balcony door. It is the second hotel they have fled from in less than a week. Sola has the dog under her arm and moves slowly along the planks, fussing with its lead, murmuring reassurance, concealing her distress.

  Evie takes the child in her arms and, clambering over the railing, briefly perches on the ledge then makes the leap, landing awkwardly on her hand but safely holding Sola with the other. From here she puts her down and hurries her along, still carrying the dog, up the steep slope.

  Evie looks back from the top, holding onto the trunk of the sapling beside her as the spinning in her head slows. The memory of the upsetting scene in Maier’s house finally begins to stabilise and, in doing so, grows stark. She needs to block it out. What is done cannot be undone.

  The light comes on in their hotel bedroom below. Figures move around inside. Consequences are catching up fast.

  Snatching Sola by the hand, keeping her head low, Evie draws her with her over the crest. The dog softly yelps, a small strangled squeeze of anxiety, despite being clutched to the girl’s chest.

  Beyond the lip of the hill the ground slopes down to a road and thereafter rises again.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Sola asks, as they cross the tarmac and re-enter the trees.

  ‘You must keep walking,’ Evie says, adding, to tempt her, ‘it’ll be amazing – you’ll see.’ Maintaining the charade that this is still all a wonderful adventure, when they both know otherwise.

  Sola mutters to the dog. She tells it not to be concerned because they are on nothing more than a stroll. But her own face reveals her fear from the precipitous curdling of events.

  After a half hour, the child’s legs, despite her best efforts, are dragging. The sheer ground has taken its toll and the weather is turning.

  Above them, clouds roll in from the east, grey and wet. They pause on a stony ridge and stare at the sky as it drains of colour. A wave of cold air presses Evie’s jacket against her chest. Sola’s fine-spun hair lifts from her neck and flicks around her cheeks. ‘How far is it?’ she asks. Her half-hidden face makes her seem even smaller and more vulnerable. Evie reminds herself that they are not after the child, have no reason to harm her.

  ‘Nearly there.’ The lie that she has a plan has got her to this point but is now close on her heels.

  Sola looks behind herself longingly, as if there is an option to go back. Maybe there is for her. ‘Je tired,’ she says.

  If the child figures out that she is better off on her own, what is there to detain her?

  ‘Let’s continue,’ Evie says. ’We’ll be there soon.’

  Thunder rumbles in the valley behind.

  Evie walks faster still and Sola, motivated anew by the sense of a destination, trots beside her.

  The rain overtakes them, dense as from a showerhead, the drops larger than normal and somehow, as they burst on their heads and shoulders, more wet. To escape, they climb a few yards to where the trees grow close to one another. Here, with their heels propped against the roots of a spruce, their backs flush to the grizzled trunk, they watch the downpour. A mist rises from the valley below and a wet tongue of air licks their faces. Sola has the dog under her coat. At least she is sharing its warmth.

  The torrent lets up and Evie hears voices on the other side of the hill. Voices on the wind. Her own name called out. Promises being made to her that they think she is naive enough to believe; promises they have no intention of keeping. Although, encumbered with the child, what chance does she have? Does Sola hear the voices too? She shows no sign of having done so. Are the voices only in her head?

  ‘We need to keep going,’ Evie says, and drags the girl back into the open, into the rain – now losing strength but still as cold as sleet. It is a danger to her but Sola’s safety is all.

  They descend again, making their way over moss-covered boulders to the bank of a river. Here they pause beside the swiftly flowing water, Sola trembling in her wet things. The river is some thirty yards wide. The grey reeds on the far side poke through the grit and silt. Beyond that the hillside is clouded by mist.

  There is movement along the skyline and figures with guns emerge between the trees.

  Evie takes the child by the hand and leads her away quickly along the bank.

  Four men in grey camouflaged jackets and military caps, carrying hunting rifles with telescopic sights, crest the hill, together with another – taller, familiar in outline. No, she thinks, it is an impossibility. She saw what she saw four days ago in Paris. It cannot be him.

  From here the ground rises and they hurry up an overgrown path, batting the branches from their faces with their elbows. As they run, the dog, sensing the child’s fear, fights its way out from under her coat, leaping to the ground, and valuable time is lost in retrieving it from between the rocks.

  While the voices behind grow louder.

  Hiding behind a fallen tree they watch the men descend. One carries on his back a steel cage, nine or ten inches deep and three feet high, struggling under the encumbrance to find his footing on the mossy stone. If that is for her, how would they fit her in, how would he carry her weight if they did? Maybe they’d leave the parts they don’t need behind.

  She glimpses him again, moving ahead of the others, and breathes in sharply.

  ‘What ees it Maman? What can you see?’ Does Sola not see him too?

  Evie grabs her by the hand again and pulls her along.

  The path leads treacherously to a blind pocket of ground beside a cliff, the only way forward via a dilapidated bridge. Hazard tape has been stretched across to form a barrier, but it is ancient and ragged.

  ‘Where do we go?’ Sola asks, regarding the structure apprehensively.

  Boots thud on the stony path. How far are they behind – fifty yards? Forty?

  Evie leads the reluctant child forward. The bridge is suspended from ropes over the river at its narrow point. Slats are fixed at intervals, each nine or ten inches wide. Two further ropes are strung at waist height. A number of slats are missing: two here, three there; their absence no recommendation for the ones that remain.

  They peer down. The water, in being confined, spouts and spits, raging between the rock walls.

  ‘Je not like eet at all,’ Sola says, shivering. The spray from below mists their faces. ‘It ees too dangereux.’

  Evie glances behind her again. Uncertainty will cost them their lives. Before the child can protest further, she lifts her over the tape, placing her feet on the wood. If the structure can take either of them, it is her.

  ‘Go,’ she says over the noise of the water. ‘Now.’

  Sola clings to her arm. ‘You come too.’

  Evie steps over the barrier and stands beside her, to encourage her. The bridge creaks under their combined weight. ‘I want you to go ahead. I will follow as soon as you are across.’

  David enters the clearing and comes to a halt.

  Evie lets go of Sola and turns. She and David stare at one another.

  Are her visual circuits malfunctioning – generating false imagery? How can it be him? She saw him die. Saw him strike the water.

  ‘You. How?’ Evie murmurs, wanting to believe while filled with doubt. Is this a trick? One of her pursuers in disguise perhaps, acting as a lure. His head is dented and the skin scraped from his cheek revealing the fibre beneath.

  ‘Evie,’ he says, his voice stiff as if its use is new to him. ‘You must come with me.’

  ‘He does not sound right,’ Sola whispers, and tugs on her hand.

  It is also as if he does not see her, his gaze peering through.

  ‘Evie,’ he repeats, ponderously. ‘You must come with me.’

  ‘Why?’ she asks, probing his eyes. Even now, she wants to believe that his appearance is a source of hope rather than fear. That he is not aiding her pursuers but is himself pursued.

  He advances towards her. His expression is not so much aloof or even uncaring but merely a void.

&nbs
p; ‘David?’ she pleads. A tear runs down her cheek. ‘What have they done to you?’

  He is only three or four yards away. ‘Evie, come with me.’

  Sola is right, there is a mechanical resonance to his voice. But what of it? He has been damaged. Has she not been changed too?

  Thrusting aside her remaining doubts, Evie moves towards him, arms outstretched, looking into his face, seeking the person she knew.

  She reaches him and touches his injured cheek.

  ‘I,’ he says, ‘I . . . I . . .’

  ‘Grab her,’ one of the men shouts. Her pursuers are at the turn of the path.

  David shudders and takes hold of her wrist.

  ‘Maman!’ Sola screams. ‘It ees not heem any more, cannot you see?’

  Evie struggles to free herself but he is too strong – his grip like a vice. Their eyes meet again and with their faces just a few inches apart, she catches a glimpse of the real David, the one she grew to know, deep inside, struggling to surface. ‘Run,’ he murmurs, almost too faintly to hear, and his fingers unclench with a machine-like shudder, releasing her.

  Rubbing her wrist, she backs away. Sola clutches hold of her, and pulls, dragging her through the tape and out onto the bridge, which sways frighteningly. The dog bounds from Sola’s arms and she lunges for it, losing her balance on the slippery wood, causing the bridge to tilt dramatically. The frightened animal runs back and Sola twists to grab it, snapping one of the slats.

  The debris drops into the river twenty feet below.

  Evie glances behind. One of the uniformed men unstraps a rifle and raises it to his shoulder. He tries to capture her in his sights. The barrel wavers as he compensates for the motion of the bridge and a bright plume of light scorches a hole in the wood by her hand. Two inches to the right and it would have skewered her thigh.

  She recoils against the rope behind, the impact dragging the rotten retaining post from the ground. The bridge sags and they tumble sideways, a web of rope collecting around her shins.

  She and Sola are only a couple of yards apart but the girl is beyond her reach. Sola’s eyes latch onto hers and her shoulders rise in a shrug, as if she had never expected more from her life.