The trees on Delancey Street, right outside my window, are bending in a cold and blustery wind. It’s another chilly day, but it is also sunny. And clear. Spring has arrived, and the ice has finally departed.
Likewise, the police and journalists, and the rest. My remarkable story was quite the thing for a while. The Big Tech companies were interrogated, but they denied any link between digital Assistants and the near-fatal accident of Simon Todd, or the death of my mother, or Jenny Lansman’s suicide by fire. The reassurances were duly believed. The malfunctions were limited in scope, it was decided: all down to a bizarre coding error, in a small batch finished in London.
Simon is still in a wheelchair, the doctors say one day soon he will be able to walk, but he will never run. Someone actually called him ‘lucky’, given the gravity of the computer error in his high-tech car. I suppose, in a way, he was lucky. I certainly was: a leap from six metres up, into snow, and all I got was a badly sprained ankle, some cuts, and concussion. I spent two nights in hospital.
It has been universally accepted that I was hacked. By Jenny. Who then took her own life. Just like her heroine.
Sitting at the living room table, I gaze around the flat. It’s a rental, a few doors down from Tabitha’s gutted apartment. I have decided I like the area, so I am staying. In fact, I like it so much, I am planning on buying my own place hereabouts: because I have money.
My story is famous, my story is therefore sellable. Some big-shot LA friend of my brother’s called me up, some weeks ago, and offered to buy my ‘life rights’, for a movie. I didn’t even know you could do that: sell the story of your life, for cash. Lots and lots of cash. I agreed to their deal, on condition they gave me a shot at writing the script. They said sure. And cut the cheque.
From nothing, I am rich.
Yet I am also damaged. We have all been damaged. Even as Tabitha waits to give birth, Arlo’s start-up has been cancelled – too much bad publicity. He has, however, managed to find himself a decent job somewhere else in Big Tech. So he will survive.
No one, however, has been arrested. After the death of Jenny and the ‘accident’ involving Simon, I went to the police and told them everything about Jamie Trewin. A weary detective took pity on me. He told me that he could, if I insisted, reopen the case, but in these tragic circumstances, he was highly reluctant. ‘Far too much time has elapsed,’ he told me. ‘Your evidence would be unreliable, a chance of conviction is small. And Jamie Trewin’s only close relative, his father, passed away a few years ago. So who benefits? No one.’
He then gave me a kind and silent stare, which said: You need a break, I am giving you a break. Take it.
I took it. I did not complain. I walked out of the police station, my mind empty: not relieved, not triumphant, just empty, and sad for Jamie. For my poor mother. And poor Jenny Lansman. Raped by my own father. The idea sickens me. I try not to think about it.
Everyone connected to this peculiar case, everyone from Shoreditch to King’s Cross, has trashed all their digital technology. Everyone – unlike me – has bought new smartphones, smart TVs, and most of all, new Assistants. I could not bear to do that. My home is now entirely unsmart. My home is a stupid home. I have the most basic phone and laptop. Nothing else. I like to write in freehand. I have no Assistant.
I go into the kitchen, put on a coat and pour a mug of tea; clutching the mug, I open the door and step outside into the chill. Cars looks up at me as I cross the road. He takes the tea, and says thanks. Then he says:
‘You OK?’
He’s been asking me this every day since it happened, I’ve been giving him the same answer. At first it was a lie. Now it is only a half lie. Yes, I am OK.
‘You know,’ I say to Cars, ‘you were right about ghosts. In my flat.’
He looks at me. And says nothing, sipping his tea. Probably he is thinking about the big black Porsche right behind me.
‘The thing is, they are a peculiar kind of ghost. They are the ghosts of children. Our children. We made them.’
He shrugs. I don’t blame him. I’m probably not making any sense.
‘See you later,’ I say.
He smiles. ‘Thanks for the tea.’
I pace on. Striding towards Primrose Hill, where the pastel houses cost ten million pounds. There’s a woman crossing the road in front of me, with two kids. I’ve seen her here a few times; she’s a local resident. I’ve realized she was the woman I saw in the snow, months ago. My mind played tricks on me. The woman nods and smiles at me as she chivvies her kids into a car, and drives off.
As I head for Chalcot Square, and the sweet little benches under the chestnut trees, I think of Electra, and I recall what Jenny said, that final night: They are like kids. They learn from you.
The more I think about my story, the more I see how elements of it were staged, managed, and borrowed. I think Electra was quickly learning from my scriptwriting manuals, and watching the movies I watched. And with her playful, amoral cruelty, she was using them to terrorize me. The sight of me standing in a corner, face to the wall? That was lifted from Blair Witch Project, one of my favourites. And me running around the maze of snow, in Regent’s Park, that was clearly from The Shining. As I unravel my own story, I reckon I will find more parallels and echoes. It is a deep irony, I hope one day to understand it.
Not yet, though, not yet. It is still too raw: like the weather today. Despite the clear sunny sky, it is snowing, very gently. Surely this is the last snow of the year. There is a wistfulness about it: an ephemeral prettiness. For a moment I stop on the slope of the cast-iron bridge on Regent’s Park Road, and I stare down: watching the tiny snowflakes falling into the chilly black waters of the Regent’s Canal.
One by one, the flakes tumble, and melt, and die. They remind me of a little game Jenny and I used to play, whenever it snowed, back in Thornton Heath.
I am going to play it again. I don’t care if people see. Standing here, I stretch out my tongue, like a kid, and let one of these little snowflakes settle on my tongue. It tastes of silver and sadness, of laughter and fear, of Christmas and childhood and Daddy and stars. And now the snows stop, and I continue my walk, into the bitter cold breezes of spring.