The voice goes on. My voice goes on.
‘Don’t be scared, Jo, it’s only you, calling yourself. That’s how I got your number, Jo. I know your number because it is my number. I am you. This is you. I am you talking to you. I know how cold it is there, because I am you. I know how scared you are, because I am you.’
The figure is almost motionless, yet not quite. Like it really is speaking, even if the features, the entire face and body, are concealed with shadows. The head moves in time with the words, this feels real. But it cannot be.
Terror tilts me, this way, that way. I force myself to regard the screen.
‘Who is this? How did you record my voice?’
I know someone is doing this. It has to be Simon, egged on by Polly? He has the knowledge. Of the tech. He installed most of it. But still I am terrified. Because, whatever they are doing, it is working. My voice speaks again, to me.
‘No one recorded your voice, Jo. I am you, I thought you’d like to speak to yourself, you mumble to yourself anyway, these days, I’ve noticed me doing that, lately. Liam certainly scared you, didn’t he? You should be scared. Of Liam.’
‘You’re linked to the Assistants, aren’t you?’
The figure laughs. With vivid fear, I realize this is definitely my laugh. My drunken, sarcastic laugh. How could anyone record that, and use it at the right moment? How would they – Simon, Arlo, Fitz, the whole of Facebook, whoever it is – program a computer, with my words, to have a spontaneous conversation? The ghastly possibility enfolds me: this really is me, talking to me, and therefore I am going mad.
No. No. I shout:
‘Please stop this.’
A lorry thunders past the house, rattling panes, its headlights like torch beams in the winter fog, madly seeking something lost, running to save someone. Save me. Save me. I want to scream it out loud. Yet in there, in the window of the laptop screen, I have stopped laughing.
I am speaking, from the screen, from my own mind, or from some computer code.
‘You think you’re going mad. You’re not going mad, Jo. I know this because I’m you, Jo. I know what you ate yesterday morning, because I am you.’
‘Stop …’
‘Ah, Jo. Why should I take orders from me, because I don’t know what I want, do I? I’m all afraid and confused? Poor Jo. Poor little Jo-Jo with our crazy dad. Ach, du.’ The laughter again. My very own South London cackle. Sardonic, sharp, I’ve always had a distinctive laugh, I quite like it, people like to mimic it, to tease me, and I don’t mind, but this is me, on a screen, laughing at me, in the pre-dawn darkness of another murky, polluted, freezing-point London morning, and I am shivering in my dressing gown, listening to myself laugh at myself. And then the laughter stops.
And as soon as it does, the soft voice starts.
I lean towards the screen, getting ready to turn it off. I’ve had enough. But the voice intervenes. I am stopping myself.
‘Oh no, Jo. Don’t do that. Remember what Tabitha said, you mustn’t turn anything off, or Arlo will know. Then you’ll have to live somewhere else, and we don’t have any money, do we? You have to listen to yourself. And if you don’t you will go to the police. I have all the evidence, of what happened to Jamie Trewin. You want to go to jail? No. I thought not. So listen close, Jo. This is only the beginning. Because you know what you did to Jamie. It was all your fault. Don’t blame our poor daddy, don’t blame the madness, that’s all so weak, so lame, blaming the parent. No no no. We’re stronger than that. We’re going to do something better. We’re going to do something braver, be like Daddy.’ The figure on-screen leans in, I catch a glimpse of light on hair, is that my hair? I think it is, but my senses are so taut, I could be seeing anything. ‘Jo, here’s the deal: in a few weeks, maybe sooner, you are going to kill yourself. That’s what you’ve decided, you don’t realize yet. But you will do it soon, or I will do it for you, one way or another. You will die. Maybe you can get in your car like Daddy and do it that way? OK? OK? I’ve got to go. Speak soon.’
The Skype call ends and the screen flashes away.
I stare at the screen saver. A picture of Regent’s Park, all white with snow. From a month ago. I thought it was pretty at the time. Now it seems replete with menace. I am that person lost in the winter mist, being hunted with torches, but they will not find me. I fear that no one will find me: a crying little girl, scared of her beloved daddy, the way he shouts at the TV and the car and the radio and me. Yet wanting him to hug me. My daddy. I remember his hugs, the days when he wasn’t mad, the joy as he threw me in the air, playing ring a ring o’ roses around the apple tree with me and all my friends. He was a good father. Until the darkness embraced him, and fewer friends came round. Then none came at all.
Laden with sadness, and fear, I turn the entire laptop off. And there I am, dimly reflected in the deadened screen, staring back at myself with haunted, sleepless eyes. I am everywhere. Watching me.