“Excuse me?”
The woman speaks English with a faint American accent that is pure international schooclass="underline" stateless, bright. I stare at her in surprise, taking in her high-collared dress in a Chinese style, adorned with silver dragons on a black background; her black hair done up high with a messiness that could only have cost a great deal of money; her silver bracelet and earrings, her black mascara, her cautious smile. The darkness round her eyes make them seem deeper than they are; the earrings hanging down make her neck seem long. After a night of drinking, she would be a pale, starling-sized creature, but now, in this place, she is moonlight in heels.
“Are you alone?” she asked. “Do you know anyone?”
Instant thought: is this woman security? Why else would anyone watch me for long enough to discover my loneliness, without forgetting my being? But she remains at the precise physical distance required to be audible, without intrusion, keeps smiling politely, head slightly on one side.
“I… no,” I mumbled. “I don’t know anyone.”
“Are you British?”
“Yes.”
“Here for work?”
“Yes — with the British Council.”
A lie, quick and easy. I am here to promote Britishness. I spread the word of Shakespeare, the history of cricket, the memories of colonialism and the taste of fish and chips to the world. I am a symptom of goodwill. I am an adjunct to national arrogance. Who knows?
The woman, still smiling, said nothing.
“What do you do?” I blurted, to fill the space.
“I’m in research.”
“What does that mean?”
“I study the human brain.”
“That sounds… big.”
For the first time, a twitch in the corner of her mouth that could be a smile wanting to become real. “All of thought is feedback and association. Faced with mounting social stress, the body responds as it would to any alarm. Capillaries constrict; heart rate elevates, breathing accelerates, skin becomes hot, muscles tight. Charm falters in the face of hypertension. From this moment of social rejection, pathways are reinforced in the brain to strengthen a link between socialising and anxiety. A series of assumptions develop which leads to a perception of social systems as threatening, triggering an anxiety response. All thought is feedback: sometimes that feedback can become too loud. Are you with the 106?”
“I don’t know what that means.”
A flicker of surprise, then: “Do you have Perfection?”
“What? I… no.”
“Don’t tell my brother.”
“Is your brother…”
“He’s looking to do a version that promotes Islamic values. Fifty thousand points for going on hajj; five hundred points for every direct debit made to charity and so on. I said that I wasn’t sure God worked that way, through reward algorithms and shopping vouchers, but here we are…” A gentle raising of her hands, palm up, as if she would lift the room from its foundations to be examined. “And it would appear that everything is going… very well.”
She thought she knew what “very well” meant once, but by the look in her eye, this present time is redefining it.
I opened my mouth to say oh, really, that’s fascinating — but there isn’t time. The virus implanted nine days ago at an electrical substation goes live right on cue, and takes out some 30 per cent of the electricity of Dubai.
A flickering, as the bulbs dim, followed by a recovery as the hotel’s emergency generator picks up the load. The sound of music dips, then revives, voices oscillating quiet, then loud again in the brief lull. The woman’s eyes flick to the ceiling, then out to the windows, looking across the water to where a pattern of lights have gone out across the shore.
Thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven…
“Sub-station,” she mused. “Probably just a trip.”
“My friend had Perfection,” I said, and was surprised to hear my voice, see her eyes turn to me. “At the time, I didn’t think she was unhappy.”
“I’m sorry,” the woman said. “What was her name?”
“Reina.”
… nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, sixteen…
I opened my mouth to say something more, something banal, and instead found myself offering my hand, which she took. “I’m Hope.”
“Filipa,” she replied. “You’re much more interesting than you pretend.”
“And you more than people think?”
She pulled in her bottom lip, eyes up to the ceiling, as if seeking out a bright thread of silk from a tangle of cobweb. “Exactly that, I think. Exactly that.”
… six, five, four…
Seven paces to Leena’s aunt, the clasp around her neck is easy, I practised with my eyes shut on the same fitting for three hours the other night. Three people are between me and my target, now four, the turning of the room disadvantaging me.
I open my mouth to say something that matters; but in the mess of service corridors and not-so-secure locked doors beneath the hotel, my nugget of Semtex finally explodes.
The blast didn’t shake the building; there was barely enough firepower to punch through the cables to which it was attached. There was instant darkness, like hands round the throat. It will be a matter of moments before someone suspects foul play, a matter of minutes before engineers have found the problem. The generators, when I inspected them on one of my nightly rounds in a cleaner’s uniform, are designed to survive earthquakes and hurricanes. Repairing will not be hard.
A lack of reaction in the room — a few sighs, a little gasp, but no screaming or panic. Power cuts happen; it’s just the way of things.
I turn, hands in front as my eyes adjust to the dim, feel my way between silk and velvet, past lace and pearls, counting steps, five, six, seven, not rushed, until I feel the brush of a waist against my hand and hear the little intake of breath of a stranger in front of me.
“Princess Shamma?” I ask in Arabic, inflected with my mother’s accent.
“Yes?” the lady replies.
I put one hand on her wrist, hold it tight, and with the other pluck the necklace from around her throat. Easy; practised. She is surprised, but only by the unexpected contact on her arm. The eye will always follow the larger motion; the body will always respond to the bigger feeling — every magician knows that.
I pulled the diamonds away, released her wrist, and walked away.
It was all of forty-seven seconds before Leena’s aunt began to scream.
Chapter 10
I was not always what I am now.
Once, I was remembered.
I had friends and family, teachers and homework.
I did badly at school and that was fine.
You’ll never amount to much with your attitude, said the geography teacher.
It’s not your subject, is it? said maths.
Just write it out!
One day in English, we were told we had to talk for a minute on a random subject. The girl before me, Emma Accrington, pulled the words “open-plan offices” from the hat on the teacher’s desk.
“I don’t know what this is,” she explained, twisting painfully before the staring class. “I guess it’s like an office but, you know, in the open air and that. Like, maybe everyone goes outside and like, there’s animals, yeah? Like, chickens and cows and that?”
The class laughed, and she laughed too, recognising the absurdity of it all, and when the teacher told me to speak next, I was still laughing, and couldn’t say a word about my subject — dog walking — for the tears running down my face.
Do you think you’re funny? asked my teacher as she gave me detention. Do you think you’ll ever do anything of worth?