375
I feel the vomit thicken and spew from my throat. I hear it hit the bowl of the toilet. A side effect of quitting the Amzipan, no doubt. It’s like the morning sickness I never had. When it passes, I rise and stare at my reflection. It’s tempting to seek an Amzipan (I think there’s a spare box stashed in the medicine cabinet) – but what if it’s dangerous to restart without a titrated dose? Quitting it has been bad enough. I ought to have come down slowly, but my abrupt cessation was a ‘fuck you’ to Jaime.
My memory hasn’t flooded back over the past few days – I suppose it will come with time. Not that it matters: I know the truth now. My hunger for the details feels like a kind of masochism, but I’m hoping that they’ll coalesce into an anger that gives me the momentum to make a final decision. I’m tired of this perpetual seesawing between resignation and fury.
When I leave the bathroom, Jaime reminds me that we’re due at Anjali’s house for brunch. I pull a face and drag on some clothes. I picture Anjali’s white carpet splattered with my sick and take a packet of cardamom from the cupboard, feeling its cool seeds pop between my teeth.
We hug Finn goodbye, and the Help confirms our instructions: ‘Don’t let Finn eat chocolate and keep the dodo inside.’ His eyebrows rise too slowly, his failing circuitry creating a time lag, so that his instruction feels charged with portent. Jaime 376laughs but I only feel sad. It’s an omen, I think. Everything is falling apart around us.
In the car, Jaime tries to hold my hand. I pull away, nausea twisting in my stomach again. I tell him that I feel sick and that I want to turn back. He snaps that we can’t cancel on Anjali again and that he’s forging on despite having a headache that’s threatening to become a migraine. We give each other furious glances; competitive hypochondria has recently become a key tenet of our rows. The car doors click open as we arrive at Anjali’s; now I have to go through with this fucking farce.
Anjali has a new partner, Brian, and they’re in the honeymoon stage of romance that seems delusional to a jaded couple like us. Brian is a bear of a man with a hoary beard. He’s wearing a suit even though it’s a Saturday. He greets us with a trembling handshake, which seems incongruous with his thick fingers and overbearing physique. I think it’s a sign of nerves, rather than a desire to appear more human.
As soon as we enter, Jaime changes the music. He puts on New Order’s version of the ‘Ode to Joy’, a track he knows I hate. I mutter, ‘I thought you had a headache,’ and he turns the volume up. Anjali makes us margaritas, cooing that we may as well start early. Brian lays out the Monopoly board and we’ve just sat down to play, when he insists on Anjali finding a little cup in which to juggle the dice. She makes a show of exasperation, before kissing him in acquiescence. Anjali’s emotions are always close to the surface, tossed out without censorship, quickly forgotten. Jaime and I keep so much locked in.
‘You guys OK?’ Anjali suddenly asks, giving me an intense look.
‘Sure,’ I say. ‘We’re both great.’ 377
We nod: a Stepford couple.
Brian looks very pleased with himself when he lands on Pall Mall – the pinks are his favourites, he explains, because you can snag people when they come out of jail. Then he rolls a six and a cocky smile appears on his face. He asserts that the roll of the dice can’t be put down to luck or charm. It is a reflection of the state of the player’s consciousness, which will subtly influence the number that falls.
Jaime buys Old Kent Road. He has always liked the browns; whenever he lands on Mayfair, he tends to look embarrassed and puts it up for auction.
I land on Regent Street.
‘I’ll put it up for auction,’ I sigh. Brian looks slighted and says I ought to invest. I shake my head and mutter that I don’t want it. There is a round of bids and Anjali gets it for £20 less than the asking price.
On my next go, I land on Trafalgar Square and I refuse to buy it. Brian starts to bite his nails. I’m spoiling the narrative of the game, interrupting its suspension of disbelief. Every glance at the board makes me feel sad; it’s meant to reflect how we buy and sell and accrue to survive, but it’s also a tragic reminder of the fact that life is too long. If you die in the game of Monopoly, mortgaged to the hilt, you can fold up the board; you don’t have to face three decades ahead of you, trying to unravel the wrong moves, the bad decisions you took. I think of Finn’s early years, his sped-up life. They say that the scientists will be able to give that opportunity to all of us eventually, that chance to press the fast-forward button when times get tough.
‘I think you’re some kind of anarchist, Rachel,’ Anjali teases me. 378
‘Well, I’m going to buy another house on Whitehall,’ Brian says, fixing me a stern look.
Jaime lands on Whitechapel and tries to get it for less, but I bid him up before dropping out, so that he’s forced to buy it for a vast sum. When he looks at me, there is an affection in his eyes that cuts me. How much easier it might be if there were no embers left, if he could just hand me the divorce papers. Our love hangs in limbo.
I can’t keep this up any longer: everything I’ve been repressing for the past week is about to erupt. I leave the group and go to the toilet. It was only a month ago that Anjali held her dinner party; back when I was innocent and unhappy, before I became knowledgeable and unhappy. When I wipe, I find the Rothko streaks that always prologue a period.
Flushing the toilet, I tiptoe out down the hallway, prise open the latch of the front door ever so slowly and shut it with a soft click. I tap down the steps and I am free.
At the end of the street, I look back, unable to quite believe I’ve got away with it. I hail a cab, but pause before giving my destination. I could go to Orchard House, but I doubt it will provide comfort. I would have to play parent to my mother when all I want is for her to hold me tight and rock me like her little girl.
‘Shantytown,’ I hear myself instruct the AI, slotting a credit card into the reader.
There’s a tracker on my mobile which we installed soon after becoming parents, so that Jaime can always find me. I switch it off. When we arrive, I stagger out of the cab, which reverses away quickly: they’re programmed to avoid degenerate or dangerous areas. I hurry down the street, passing shops and shacks selling cheap mobiles and gadgets made from the old parts of 379defunct robots. Then I see him, coming down the street, hands in his pockets: Alek. What on earth he is doing here?
He looks lost and crazed and dirty; part of his shirt has been ripped away and there are symbols painted on one of his forearms.
But when he sees me, he opens his arms, pulls me in and holds me tight. The gesture is so tender that I find myself crying into his shirt.
He takes my hand and guides me through the streets. I’m conscious of my phone vibrating in my bag. I don’t know where we are, except that we’re going deeper and deeper into Shantytown and that I’m now lost in its labyrinth of broken housing and graffiti crawling in a rash over walls. Life is no longer sacred here; it hangs on a dice-roll. We come to a half-built Cybersenx tower block, its construction having been halted by the recession. Against the darkening sky, it looks like the skeletal diaphragm of some dinosaur that’s been dredged up from the deep earth. I think of Anjali’s cosy, middle-class dwelling with longing. Alek leads me into the building via a heavy, piss-stained door. A group of robots is sitting in a circle on the dirty concrete in one corner. I whisper, ‘Why aren’t you in your cell? How did you escape?’ but he puts a finger to my lips. We climb the stairs, our footsteps spraying dust. My head throbs and I keep on climbing.