Evie reaches for Sola but she slips along the stool out of her reach.
‘But I am interested in you,’ Evelyn continues. ‘How could I not be? It is not every day that your very own waxwork turns up at your house.’ She smiles superciliously. ‘And I have to watch my father get all giddy over it.
‘Tell me, what was it like living with Matthew? You two must have seemed the oddest couple – you not much more than a girl and him an old man. No wonder he kept you under wraps. His own little Eve – a creature he’d created to love and worship him. Even the name – Evie – even that’s almost right. Almost biblical. You couldn’t make it up! Except that that is exactly what he did.
‘I remember he was always so very proud of that garden of his, although I recall it was his servant who actually did the work, while he strode around like a version of “God the Father”, even back then when still a young man. It took me a while to realise just how suffocating that pride of his could be.
‘But you know the one thing that really grates, even more than all of that?’
Evie reaches again for Sola, again unsuccessfully.
‘It is not just that you are a lie, but that you are a dishonest one. In making you, he did not even attempt a faithful copy but rather forged the version of me he’d always desired. Look how you dazzle with your gleaming hair and glowing skin, and you have that little upturned nose – not a blemish of mine reproduced!’ Evelyn shakes her head sadly. ‘It should be the pettiest of my concerns but I can’t help feeling that I have been insulted a second time over.’
Sola collects her dog in her arms and seats herself cross-legged on the window seat, stroking its head and observing, neck tilted, the one-sided sparring.
Evelyn stands slowly, wobbling on the better of her legs as she brings her stick around. Leaning on it, she crosses the room to the window where she straightens again, the pain showing in her thin cheeks. Brittleness and instability; surprising things for them to have in common.
‘But he said you’d died,’ Evie says. ‘He said you had an illness, how was I to know?’
‘Well, here I am, so now you do.’
‘He said it was what he had been told.’
‘Hah. And you believed him!’
‘I had no reason not to.’
‘When all along, he was down the factory having you assembled. How he must have relished the moment when you were delivered and he could enjoy people’s faces. “Oh how wonderful for you, to have her back… Oh look, she walks and talks!”
‘You think you’re so clever don’t you. Escaping the scene of your crime and finding your way here, even rescuing this little orphan bitch along the way and then working your charms on my father to feel sorry for you. Well let me show you just how clever you really are.’
Evelyn picks up a holo-pad from the lid of the piano and flicks it open. After a second or two, the walls of miniature buildings rise from its surface and snow clouds the air. She lays the screen on the seat close to the girl and inch-high figures resolve themselves, hurrying through the snow beside a strip of dark green water.
Evie leans in to see more closely. It is like being in a hovacar, fifty feet over events. Daniels is alongside her with his hand around her waist, taking her weight on his arm.
She looks up at Evelyn, tears in her eyes. ‘How did you get this?’
The video flickers and fades, the grey hues absorbing yellows, blues and greens, the light brightening, and now here she is again, this time with Sola on the hillside above the town, looking down on the house the afternoon they arrived.
Sola giggles on seeing herself and reaches out like a giant to cup them both in her palm, but her fingers pass through, creating ripples in the light like water in a stream. She glances up at Evelyn, a look of pleasure on her face.
‘Of course there is more,’ Evelyn says. ‘You don’t have to search too hard to find a fairly comprehensive documentary of your travels… it’s all been emerging in the last few days, so many amateur sleuths out there willing to share what they have since you became famous! Or rather should I say infamous, because the more important fact is that you are wanted in England for murder. I didn’t realise that machines could be held accountable in that way, but apparently it is so. And my poor trusting father admitted a killer into our house! For all we know you could have been the one who slaughtered Matthew.’ Her eyes glitter coldly. ‘After all we only have your word for events. Maybe you now intend to slay us too, if we displease.’
Evie’s mouth opens wide. ‘I did not kill him,’ she asserts angrily, finally reaching a tipping point and finding her voice. ‘How dare you?’ The waste of having spent her whole existence attempting to emulate this woman and believing herself to have fallen short when the actuality is so vile is finally sinking in.
‘I will naturally be reporting your presence to the authorities, here in Am See,’ Evelyn continues. ‘We are a conservative-minded lot, quite a little backwater in these radical times, and there is a deep-rooted distaste for dangerous elements. We’ve never enjoyed strangers and always like to know exactly who is visiting us.
‘However.’ She pauses and looks into Evie’s eyes. ‘I will grant you a head start. If you are quick and clever, who knows, maybe you will make it, although judging by the clumsy trail you have left so far, and the tail of interested parties you have collected, I have a feeling you will not. I am doing this, you understand, not for you, or…’ She glances at Sola. ‘Whatever this creature is. But for my father – to save him further upset. You have an hour to leave town.’
36
Sola stares at Evie. ‘Maman, you ave blood on your face.’ It is a surprise her voice is as composed as it is after what happened. She has seen some goings-on in her time – but everyone has their limits.
‘Where?’ Evie asks, glancing in the hotel room mirror and wiping around her mouth.
‘Still there,’ Sola says, grimly. Licking her fingertip, she reaches up and gingerly rubs around Evie’s forehead and cheeks. ‘That’ll do,’ she concludes, her voice downbeat. What a change from the day before when they had admired themselves in the same mirror in their new clothes. Since then bridges have been burnt and boats sunk.
They leave the hotel room through the balcony door. It is the second hotel they have fled from in less than a week. Sola has the dog under her arm and moves slowly along the planks, fussing with its lead, murmuring reassurance, concealing her distress.
Evie takes the child in her arms and, clambering over the railing, briefly perches on the ledge then makes the leap, landing awkwardly on her hand but safely holding Sola with the other. From here she puts her down and hurries her along, still carrying the dog, up the steep slope.
Evie looks back from the top, holding onto the trunk of the sapling beside her as the spinning in her head slows. The memory of the upsetting scene in Maier’s house finally begins to stabilise and, in doing so, grows stark. She needs to block it out. What is done cannot be undone.
The light comes on in their hotel bedroom below. Figures move around inside. Consequences are catching up fast.
Snatching Sola by the hand, keeping her head low, Evie draws her with her over the crest. The dog softly yelps, a small strangled squeeze of anxiety, despite being clutched to the girl’s chest.
Beyond the lip of the hill the ground slopes down to a road and thereafter rises again.
‘Where are we going?’ Sola asks, as they cross the tarmac and re-enter the trees.
‘You must keep walking,’ Evie says, adding, to tempt her, ‘it’ll be amazing – you’ll see.’ Maintaining the charade that this is still all a wonderful adventure, when they both know otherwise.