As the lorry pulled out and before it headed for the exit ramp, Hugh waved his phone.
‘Want to stop for a bit, stretch your legs?’
Hope grimaced. ‘Kind of, but I’d rather not disturb Nick. Besides, I just wouldn’t feel safe, I’d be nervous of the lorry going off without us.’
‘Couldn’t happen,’ said Hugh.
‘You know how it is.’
‘Yeah.’
Back on the motorway, Hope put her glasses on and, feeling like she was being just a bit obsessive-compulsive, checked in to the house wifi. Everything seemed to be in order: burglar alarm armed, the deadbolts in place, blinds down for the night, cameras all showing empty rooms. The bathroom light went on, then off, which startled her for a moment but made sense as part of the programme to make the flat look occupied. Her vision flitted from camera to camera like a ghost. The tap in the kitchen sink was dripping. She could see each drop gather, glistening in a stray street-light gleam past the edge of the front blinds, and after a second or two plop into the sink, then the next would begin to form. Drip, drip, drip.
She blinked hard and shook her head at that. She could hear the drips. Now that she noticed, she could hear sounds from all over the house and outside – boards creaking, cars passing, a dog barking. All very faint in the earpieces, and she might not have noticed them above the motorway noise and the truck’s engine note, if it hadn’t been for that drip.
Hugh was gazing out of the window, watching the traffic and the road as intently as if he were actually driving. Hope found herself hesitating to break his concentration, then shook off the illusion.
‘Hugh?’
‘Yes?’ He didn’t look bothered at all. Maybe he’d just been bored.
‘Do the house cameras record sound?’
‘What? I’m not sure. Never bothered to check, actually.’
‘Well, they do.’
‘Oh,’ said Hugh. ‘How did you find out?’
She told him. He fired up his own phone, put in an earpiece and looked at the screen. She could see the dark rooms flick by, one by one.
‘So they do. Hang on.’ He frowned, and poked about on his screen. ‘Oh yes. Here it is. Homebase catalogue.’ Flick, flick, flick of his thumbs. ‘Home security products. Cameras. Got it. Oh yeah, there it is. “Also records sound with piezoelectric module in shaft.” Talk about small print.’
‘Oh well,’ said Hope. ‘So much for putting my hand over my mouth that night.’
‘So that’s why you were doing it? I did wonder.’ He laughed. ‘That wasn’t the only sounds they must have picked up, eh?’
Hope smiled. ‘What can I say?’
‘Look,’ said Hugh, in that irritating male tone of patient explanation, ‘the whole point of having cameras in the house – apart from making burglars wear masks, I guess – is to have a record if you ever get accused of some kind of domestic violence or… you know. Nobody but us can see them without a warrant. If it comes to the cops checking our cameras we’re in the shit anyway. And we’re not.’
‘That’s reassuring.’
Hugh seemed to take this literally. He nodded and went back to gazing at the road.
Hope now felt a bit paranoid. She ran a search for any references to herself. None were current. The argument about the implications of the Kasrani case that had started the whole trouble had dropped far down the list of threads on ParentsNet, and only cropped up here and there on legal sites whose jargon she found impenetrable. She wished she had access to her own personal profile. Fiona, as a relevant professional, could look at any time at Hope’s ever-evolving profile, but Hope, as its subject, couldn’t. For sure it would be evolving now: unconventional though their mode of transport was, it wasn’t quite illegal, although no doubt Hugh’s father had cut a few corners setting it up. They hadn’t made any attempt at concealment – for people like themselves, as opposed to professional criminals, spies and the like, such attempts were foredoomed to be worse than useless – so the cameras and face-recognition software and all the rest of the surveillance systems were right now aware, at some level, of their location and destination. Her glasses, and Hugh’s phone, were in themselves quite enough to pinpoint their location to the nearest metre. The only precaution they’d taken was to block calls from Maya or from Geena, to prevent at least these dots being joined to them again. The outstanding question was whether the priority algorithms thought Hope and Hugh’s actions significant enough to call for human attention, and intervention.
Probably not, Hope thought, though she kept a wary eye on police vehicles in the fast lanes until she fell asleep, to dream of shining lines connecting dots.
She woke to dawn, and Scotland. Hugh was in the back. He came through with two paper cups of coffee.
‘Mmm,’ said Hope. ‘Thanks.’
She stared out, bleary-eyed, feeling stiff and sticky. They were just past Berwick-upon-Tweed. Low, rolling hills to the left looked rugged and high after most of England. To the right, she caught glimpses of cliffs and the North Sea. Hugh sipped, while thumbing rapidly on his phone.
‘Done,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Cancelled our flight to Prague.’
‘What?’
‘More than twelve hours’ notice, so I’ve kept the penalty down to the deposit.’
He looked pleased with himself.
‘What flight?’
He hadn’t told her. He did now.
‘I’m not sure how clever that was,’ Hope said. ‘It looks exactly like an attempt at a diversion.’
‘Well, it worked, didn’t it?’ Hugh waved an arm. ‘We’re in Scotland!’
‘Maybe you could ask Nick to repeat that explanation he gave Max last night. About how artificial intelligence works. Because you bloody need it!’
Hugh shrugged. ‘Aw, come on.’
‘How much was the deposit, anyway?’
‘Two hundred quid. Think of it as the fare for this journey, and it’s a saving on the bus or the train.’
‘Think of it any other way, and it’s a waste.’
‘Peace of mind, then. Insurance.’
‘Hmph!’
Hugh leaned over. ‘Come on. Good-morning kiss?’
She had to smile. ‘All right.’
Nick emerged from the back of the cab and climbed on Hope’s lap.
‘I’m hungry, and Max needs recharging.’
‘Good morning to you, too.’
Something between a shrug and a squirm.
‘Ah, come on, let’s sort you out.’
Hope went into the back of the cab and got Nick washed – or wiped, anyway – and into his clothes. While he went into the front to sit in her seat, Hope washed her own face and changed her underwear and pulled on a fresh shirt. Back in the front, sitting in the middle, she even found a way to recharge Max, from a socket marked mysteriously with a symbol for a lit cigarette. After a while, the Firth of Forth swung into view, then disappeared and appeared again, then vanished entirely as they hit the city bypass. Hugh tapped on his phone so that they pulled off just south of the Forth Road Bridge, and rolled into the lorry park of a McDonald’s.
Hugh looked over at Hope.
‘Now… sure you’re not nervous about leaving the cab?’
‘Yes, I am, but I’m a bit more willing to risk it in daylight. It’s not like we’re in the middle of the night and the middle of the motorway. Anyway, hunger rules right now.’
‘Don’t it just.’
They stretched their legs, had McBreakfast, bought drinks and snacks for the rest of the journey, and piled back into the cab, hands overloaded, laughing.
As they crossed the Road Bridge, the biotech towers of Grangemouth glittered to the left, and the Forth Rail Bridge and the vast array of tall windmills decommissioned but not yet dismantled on the horizon beyond it loomed to the right. Nick couldn’t decide what to look at, and compromised by surging from one side of the cab to the other.