Laura hammers on the door with the balls of her fists.
This is wrong, she shouts. Beth, you have to listen to me! The neighbours have come out of their flats to watch, because they assume it’s a domestic – and that’s one of the pleasures, for them, of this block’s forecourt, the sheer number of arguments that spill out of the flats and onto the concrete, complete with whatever’s thrown out after the offending party, and usually a crying brood, begging for whichever parent has the greater potential for violence to calm down. They stay standing as Laura continues her tirade. What you’re doing is wrong, Beth. What you’re doing is against everything that we are!
Beth sits on a chair at the dining table as Vic rests. She watches the shadows of Laura’s fists raise and fall on the glass.
Beth, answer the door. Answer the door.
Or what? Beth asks. She doesn’t shout it, but she knows that Laura will hear.
Or I’ll tell people what you’re doing.
It’s not illegal to stay inside your flat. This is a game in which neither of them is going to say it first: Laura in accusing Beth of something that’s barely common knowledge, something that barely exists as a possiblity; and Beth won’t admit any more than she already has. And Vic isn’t here against his will. He was checked out of the clinic, taken by his wife for the summer, a break from the monotony of his care, and he won’t be returned because he’s being changed.
You know what I’m saying, Beth. She hushes her voice to a spat whisper. Let me in and we can talk about this.
This isn’t your business, Beth says. She drinks water and rubs her head where it’s sore – she’s so tired still, and when she closes her eyes all she can see is the Machine, that wave of ever-deep black metal – and takes more ibuprofen. She counts her pills: half the diazepam gone, half the ibuprofen. She’s been using more of them than she anticipated. She’ll have to do another run: late at night, she thinks, when there won’t be people outside, when she can rely on Vic to stay asleep. He’s excellent at that. Sleeping through the night, never waking, never making a peep. That’s something he was good at before he went to war, being able to drop off anywhere, any time. Cars, trains, the hard benches of an airport: he could sleep on them.
You need help, Laura says.
I can handle him.
Beth, you need friends and you need help to see you through times like this.
I’m sorry, Laura.
I don’t know what you’re doing in there, Beth. I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but it’s not your husband inside there—
Stop it.
—because he was destroyed, and he cannot now be reconstructed, not from nothing. That isn’t your right. She pauses. Genesis 2:7: the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground, and he breathed life into the man’s nostrils; and the man became alive.
You seemed so normal when we first met. Beth says it to hurt her, and there’s silence for a while, as the slump comes: Laura’s clothes dragging themselves down the door.
I’m not leaving, Laura says. I can help save you, don’t you see?
There’s nothing to save, Beth says. She shuts the door to the Machine’s room again and puts the Crown on Vic’s head. She presses play, and Vic’s voice emerges: so instantly reassuring.
I’m having trouble remembering things, he says.
That’s natural, the doctor says. You had a nasty accident.
Yes. That’s what I’m told.
You don’t remember?
No.
The recording is from after it was all settled: after the majority of the work had been done. From here, they told Beth, it was just cleaning up. From this point onwards, anybody could talk him through it.
And then shouting, coming through the flat.
What’s that voice? Beth, who’s in there with you? Laura beats the front door again, and Beth remembers that the playback is still at full volume, so that she could hear it over the Machine. She wonders why Laura hasn’t heard the Machine itself: supposes that she’s assumed it to be a normal household appliance. She wonders if the neighbours have noticed the vibrations coming through their floors or their ceilings. If the shudders carry through the foundations and supports and make their light fixtures rattle and their carpets hum. Beth, I can hear voices, who’s in there?
Beth opens the door. The voices fill out into the rest of the flat.
I remember being somewhere. The desert? Is that where I had the crash?
What crash is that?
The, ah, the car crash. That’s why I’m here. Speaking to you.
Who are those voices, Beth? Laura sounds desperate. And then Beth unlocks the front door and opens it. The sunlight from outside is brighter than she thought: it’s been a few days – how many? – since she left the flat. Laura’s there, fingering her necklace. Oh my Lord, you’re seeing sense. You’re seeing sense. Beth looks around. Fat neighbour is there, pretending to be hanging out washing across the balcony rail (which they’re banned from doing). The kids stare. Across the way, some of the other families stand on their balconies and watch, because Laura’s voice is shrill and loose and echoes across the courtyard. Below them, a group of youths in the courtyard, standing on the benches and the flower-beds, look up at Beth and Laura. The boy is there: the one with the scar and the bike and the naked leaps into water that he can’t judge the depth of; and he spits onto the floor and stares, and doesn’t stop staring at Beth as she scans the complex.
Go away, Laura. I won’t ask you again.
You need me, Beth. You need comfort and advice.
Just go away. She picks up Laura’s bag from the floor, which is open, spilling with her wallet, a bottle of water, a bag of crisps and a book, and Beth knows what the book is without even having to look. She hurls the bag over the railing towards the youths, who laugh and act like it’s a bomb. Apart from the one with the scar, who doesn’t move.
What? Laura asks, and she turns and starts to run to the stairs as the gang look at the bag’s spilled guts.
Beth slams the door shut behind her. She walks into the bedroom and the recording is still playing, but she speaks over it. She talks to Vic about Laura, and how irritating she is. How she won’t leave them alone. How she – Beth – needs to get out of this place, because it’s all becoming too much. She wonders if he’s becoming more receptive. If, somehow, he can hear her through all the other noise.