24
It was Saturday morning and Peggy had just had another row with Tim. It seemed that nowadays whenever they had a conversation it ended in a row. And sometimes, as had just happened, the entire conversation was a row. What’s more, she was seeing less of him these days than when they had lived in separate flats. He was here as a physical presence, but they usually spoke only at meals; the rest of the time he spent closeted in the little room he used as his study, with only his computer for company. Though that seemed enough for Tim.
He had always been a hard worker, studious and immersed in his books to the point of obsession, but lately he seemed consumed by something altogether different – something he didn’t want to share with her. Time was, he would tell her about his latest interpretation of some Metaphysical poetry or the interesting discoveries he had made about seventeenth-century London. But now the only discoveries he brought up were accusations – against MI5, which he knew she worked for, against GCHQ and MI6, or in his wilder moments, against ‘The Establishment’. As far as Peggy could tell, Tim was working as hard as ever, but not on John Donne.
At first, she had thought it would pass, telling herself that he’d lose this new infatuation with cyberspace and go back to his true love – English literature. But there didn’t seem to be any sign of it, and she’d noticed that the manuscript of his book seemed to be stuck on the same page as weeks before – months actually. So what was he doing instead? She knew he was constantly on the internet – he’d exceeded their monthly BT allowance by twenty gigabytes when the last bill came. He must be busy doing something.
In desperation, Peggy decided to find out. She tried not to think of it as snooping, though she knew it was. But she was deeply worried about Tim and, if she was to help him, she had to find out what was going on.
She waited for ten minutes after she’d heard the door bang when he’d marched out after their latest argument then went into the study. She stood with her back to the door and looked around. The usual neat piles of scholarly tomes, reference books and student essays were no longer on the desk. They had been replaced by a mess of press cuttings, computer magazines, political journals, and among all this, a copy of the unauthorised biography of Julian Assange. The laptop lying on top of the muddle was switched on. After hesitating momentarily, Peggy sat down at his desk and picked up the mouse. She knew his password and he knew hers; it was no big thing, they’d always shared everything. She typed it in and the machine sprang into life.
Opening his internet browser, she started by examining his online History; what she found was both bewildering and alarming. A mixed bag of blogs, chat rooms, samizdat-like publications – all patently disaffected, all addressing the same topics: the danger posed by the security services in the West. Some of the talk was philosophical and abstract; some of it was about making sure adequate safeguards were in place when Government surveilled its own citizens, and some of it was much more worrying – technical discussions of how to hack into Government sites and divulge classified information. Peggy wasn’t sure how much of this was illegal, but to her mind it was entirely wrong.
The more she looked at these sites, the more Peggy realised that there was a whole subterranean world that shared these views. Julian Assange and Edward Snowden were the two most famous public faces of this movement – if you could call such a hodgepodge of hackers, ‘libertarians’ and anarchists a ‘movement’ – and the chat room Tim frequented most often, according to his History, was called The Snow Den.
Her bafflement growing, she wondered where on earth this new preoccupation of Tim’s had originated. He had never been a political soul, didn’t usually play much of a part in dinner-party discussions when controversial topics came up – like immigration or cutting the size of the Welfare State. He was happiest talking about a play he had seen at the National, or the poetry of Philip Larkin, or Hawksmoor churches in the City of London.
Peggy couldn’t for the life of her see the catalyst for this transformation in him. He hadn’t seemed unhappy before: he’d never complained about his job, he liked to teach, and didn’t even grumble when buried in exam papers to mark. His research had been going well, and she remembered how excited he had been when the encouraging letter had come in from OUP.
Something must have happened some time ago, and more recently perhaps, someone. But who could that be? They had a wide circle of friends, who like Peggy and Tim were in their early thirties, and in the early stages of careers. A few had had children; most were waiting until they were established enough, and well off enough, to start families. None, as far as she knew, were remotely interested in this underground world where Tim now seemed to be spending his waking hours.
She opened his Mail and looked at his Inbox. There was very little there. He must have cleared it quite recently. Then she turned to his Sent box – an email to a student who’d been ill, arranging an extra tutorial; a jokey one sent to his cousin, who lived south of the river and collected bad puns. Next she glanced through his Delete folder; it hadn’t been emptied for several days. Most of it was spam he’d deleted without opening – insurance offers, retail sites of all kinds, phony bank alerts. But then one caught her eye – it was an email Tim had sent to Marina*382@gmail.com a few days ago. Opening it, she read: New account all set up and ready to recieve mail. T.
She sat there, stunned. What did it mean? But she could guess – Tim had set up another email account, one he hadn’t told her about. Why did he need that? Unless it was to hide something from her. Like… Marina. Whoever she might be.
25
Liz enjoyed driving. She liked to be alone, listening to the radio and thinking things over without having to talk to anyone. But this journey had been a bit more than she’d bargained for. She’d set off from her mother’s house in Wiltshire at eight o’clock in the morning, thinking she’d arrive in Manchester at lunchtime – the AA route finder had told her it would take four hours. But heavy traffic on the M4 and lane closures on the M62, which had her stuck behind a long line of lorries, meant it was three o’clock before she finally reached her hotel.
Manchester was foreign territory to her, brought up as she had been in the South. Recently work had brought her here several times but those had certainly not been relaxed or happy visits; she was hoping for better with this one. She had found a good online deal at a rather trendy hotel in a converted warehouse near the railway station. It seemed to be staffed entirely by beautiful young people in black – PIBs as Peggy Kinsolving called them – and Liz amused herself by watching them floating elegantly about as she waited to check in, behind a man who complained loudly to the receptionist that he hadn’t been able to rent a Mercedes from Avis when he’d landed at the airport. This was not a milieu Liz was accustomed to; it certainly didn’t match the traditional idea of Manchester, she thought, as a few minutes later she took her electronic room key and ascended in an all-glass lift to her room.
Pearson, who’d said he’d pick her up, laughed when she gave him the name of the hotel. He warned her that the restaurant he’d chosen for dinner had none of the urban chic of her hotel and was in a rather run-down part of town. ‘But the food’s very good,’ he’d promised. ‘I’ve known the chef since he was a schoolboy.’ So she left the smart suit and heels that she had been intending to wear in her wardrobe and put on trousers and a blouse and jacket instead. But she kept on the gold strand necklace and earrings that Martin had given her two years before.