A small, uncertain voice: ‘Do you need the bathroom, love?’
If I keep my back to her, I can imagine her as she really is. Whole. Complete. Her voice, after all, is coming from the right height. A normal human voice that says, ‘It’s the door on your right.’
‘I’ll be a minute.’
There’s a toilet. A bidet. The sink is as big as a shower tray. The mirror, decorated with a cut-glass border, fills the entire wall – how in hell did they ever get it in here? It dawns on me that nothing I am seeing need be real. I blink up the preferences pane on my lenses and hunt for Force Quit but it’s buried away in the menus and already Amber’s calling through the door. ‘Are we done, then?’ She tries to sound disappointed but she can’t keep the shiver out of her voice. It’s freezing out here.
‘For God’s sake go put something on.’
She stalks off, her absurd heels clattering the tiled hall. What was this place? Some grandee’s mansion. What’s she doing here?
She’s probably taken offence now. They do so easily, these women, their antennae cocked to detect the slightest hint of disrespect. What is it about working in the sex industry makes people want to be taken so bloody seriously?
In the bathroom mirror, my eyes glitter back at me. These lenses strip all the life from them. However did they catch on? I look like a cheap doll. A doll with my mother’s face.
Look at my face! It only ever took a little make-up, a few strokes of sponge and brush, and Mum and I looked exactly alike. I was her maquette. In four years I will be forty – the age Sara was when she died. The resemblance has not gone away. If anything, it has grown stronger.
‘Fuck you, so I made a mistake.’
He made a mistake, all right. A bloody big mistake.
I lean against the sink, my head buzzing.
I remember Vaux standing before me, his hand on the back of my head, his erection white and hard and as long as a dagger.
Vaux.
Vaux set this up for me. Vaux the rich man, the businessman. Of course the house is big. Why not? It is his house.
I bend double over the bowl. Wrong bowl. Bidet. Christ. It’s suddenly all so bloody obvious. What, after all, did that young, blindsighted invalid see when he saw me, in the murk and leafy confusion of the lane behind the hotel?
He saw Mum.
‘Good afternoon.’ And his hand worked at his fly and his erection slid into the light.
Vaux, blindsighted, navigating his crudely pixellated world, had never intended to assault me. It wasn’t me he pushed onto his knees, or made obey him in the dirt and weeds of a clearing marked out by rusting white goods. In Vaux’s mind it was Mum he forced that day. Or not even forced. Played with. Enjoyed. For all I know, it was a game they had played before. (Gabby said, ‘Who knows what your mum got up to?’)
Later, of course, the truth must have come out, which is why Vaux quit the hotel.
And on the platform of our quiet railway station, as he waited for his train, who did he see standing beside him?
Mum?
No.
Someone like her, but—
Heavy boots. Shorn hair. (‘You feel like a man,’ I’d said to her, pulling away for the last time.)
Vaux mistook her for me!
What happened then? At what point did Vaux realise he had mistaken us again – taken mother for son as, weeks earlier, he had taken son for mother?
Was it Vaux watching me that night, as I pushed my mother’s corpse into the waters rushing by the mill? Who else could it have been?
Click-clack.
‘Are you done in there?’
Abruptly, painfully, I come to. ‘Yes, Poppy.’
‘What?’ Amber rattles the doorknob.
Oh, Jesus Christ. ‘Amber. Yes, Amber. I mean. Yes.’
‘Because I need a shit.’
I’m at the flat and half-undressed, shedding my clothes as I go and desperate for sleep, when I hear sounds from the study.
I have a study in my apartment. A glorified name for it. When did I last study? I spend my life answering emails. I swing the door open, fast as I can, less to surprise the intruder as to force my own hand; it would be so easy to bottle it and sneak away.
He is sitting at my desk. Dark suit, dark shirt, no tie. Sandy hair. A smoker’s face – a rarity these days. Burst blood vessels in his nose. Kind eyes, and hands like hams. The desk, the floor and every available surface are smothered in papers, scattered folders, spilt plastic wallets, and this is strange, because I don’t remember storing so much paper in here. There’s more paper thrown about this room than I thought I owned.
He’s very confident, whoever the hell he is. He scuds a vast pink hand through the air before him, by way of hello.
‘What are you doing?’
‘You won’t find anything missing.’
‘Who are you?’
He stretches his legs, puts his hands behind his head and flexes the knots out of his back. He wants me to see how big he is. ‘Cobb. Adam Cobb.’
‘You get what you wanted?’
‘There was nothing to get.’
I think about this. Once I’ve got my breath back, it’s not hard to figure out the elements of this. ‘Vaux sent you.’
Cobb smiles, showing even, yellow teeth. ‘Vaux sent me.’
‘He should be more careful about how he goes about threatening people.’
‘Yes?’
‘You’re in a world of shit, mate.’
‘Why? Are you going to do something?’
‘It’s already done.’
Cobb’s smile widens. ‘You mean your cameras?’
I bite my lip.
‘It’s all right. They’re still running. They’re still streaming. Do they talk to the police, or to a private security firm? Nice installation, anyway. Can’t be too careful, nowadays.’
‘Was Amber part of this?’
‘Who?’
‘Amber. Kept me entertained tonight while you’ve been smashing up my flat. Vaux’s girl. One of many, I’d guess.’
Cobb shrugs. ‘I don’t doubt that. You want to sit down? I promise you I’m not going to do anything.’
‘Get out of my house.’
‘In a minute. First, there’s something I have to say.’
‘Out.’
‘Mr Vaux accepts that in the past he was responsible for certain misunderstandings.’
‘What?’
‘He wants you to know that he regrets any upset following certain compromising episodes. I’m referring here to his stay at your father’s hotel. I think we can both agree that these events took place a very long time ago.’
‘Are you his thief or his lawyer?’
‘I’m his private detective.’
‘Tell Vaux I don’t know what he’s talking about.’
‘All that aside, Mr Vaux takes his digital privacy very seriously indeed. You’re presumably aware that his medical records, in particular, are off-limits, and attempting to access them is—’ At this point Cobb runs out of quasi-legal steam. ‘Well, it’s illegal, isn’t it?’
My blood runs a little colder. ‘You want to tell me exactly what I am supposed to have done to deserve this visit?’
Cobb waves the question away. ‘You get the visit. Your university friend gets a string of strongly worded emails. She’s fine. Her job is fine – if she desists. But you do not set your friends digging around in Vaux’s medical files.’
So this is what this is about. Gabby, or Gabby’s graduate student, has snapped a tripwire somewhere in their search. ‘These misunderstandings—’
Cobb stands. ‘You’ll be getting a letter in a couple of days setting out the details of Mr Vaux’s proposed no-blame settlement. He regrets any upset, he says.’
I don’t know what to say to this.
At last Cobb takes pity on me. ‘I assume this has to do with his knob. This is what it usually boils down to.’
His knob. Christ. ‘So I made a mistake.’ Vaux thinks I’m after him for a spot of rough fellatio on the river path. ‘He thinks I’m trying to sue him? I’m not trying to sue him, for crying out loud. Do I look like a goosed secretary?’