Grif, it seemed, missed Tamsyn, and replied that he hadn’t seen her for some time, adding that he found it a shame, as she brought an extra element to the game.
Matthew ignored him, and logged out, selecting a gay-sex site to which he could masturbate for a degree of grim satisfaction.
* * * * *
“Lee, did you put out the rubbish, as I asked?” Lee’s mother shouted from the bottom of the stairs.
“Fuck!” Lee said quietly, trying to negotiate a labyrinth, fight off a dragon and carry some stolen gold all at the same time.
“What?” she yelled.
“Bum!” he exclaimed, as he dropped the gold and had his head bitten by the dragon. Being killed ended that portion of the game. He threw down his mouse in disgust and stomped out of his room and around the rooms upstairs, collecting the rubbish and then stomped down the stairs to do the same on the ground floor.
His mother watched him, shaking her head silently, knowing that if she spoke her mind, he would get very angry. He was a large young man, well-built and with little flab. He was too like her ex-husband – his father, for her liking. Although, his character and temperament were fortunately very unlike his father’s.
She was at her wit’s end with the boy. He had done so well in school, obtaining three A-grade ‘A’ levels, but had done absolutely nothing in the last year.
He had claimed he wanted a year out to travel and expand his horizons.
Last September, it had started well, as he and two others went to Europe on a three month tour on their motor bikes. They were starting in the Netherlands, and following the Rhine through Germany and then, hoped to get to Switzerland and Austria, coming back through Italy, France and Belgium.
Only it didn’t work out like that. Three weeks in, one of the boys was hit by a car In Germany and suffered a broken leg. Once he got out of hospital, they all came home and none had ventured anywhere since.
He was due to start university in September, hoping to read Computer Games Programming, of all things. Laura Saunders despaired for her son, as he showed absolutely no interest in what she considered to be normal socialisation. His two friends, who joined him on the aborted trip to Europe, had not seen him since their return, as he seemed only interested in shutting himself away in his room playing on that damn computer.
She watched as he took the bags out to the wheelie-bin and then, took the bin to the road, leaving it for the collection later that day. Trying to get him to do anything was an extreme effort, and she just felt tired.
He was a good-looking boy who should have a flock of girls following him. He didn’t because he didn’t mix.
When she and Frank divorced, six years ago now, things had been very different. Frank was still a policeman, a detective. Laura discovered that half the overtime, he claimed to have been doing was in fact not overtime and he had been screwing one of the girls with whom he worked. He walked out just after admitting he was having an affair and that he wanted to be with Sarah and not with her.
He tried to get her to leave him the house and move Sarah in, as both of them would get housing allowance from the police. Laura had a better lawyer, and she got the house and a fair crack for Lee’s keep.
Homes in North West London had gone up since they bought it, so after a while, they sold the house, and she was able to buy a smaller home in a better part of Eastcote outright, with no mortgage.
She worked as an office manager of a housing association, so was able to adapt her hours when Lee was younger. Now he had left school, things were easier in one way, but still tough in so many.
A year after the divorce, Frank and Sarah immigrated to Australia and were both now in the police in New South Wales. He kept up his payments, and occasionally dropped in when he was back. It had been a rough time, but she remained on reasonable terms with him, considering he was a two-timing, lying bastard, whom she could only trust once he was dead.
Prior to his father leaving, Lee had been an out-going boy, who took his father’s betrayal very personally. Frank had offered to pay for the boy’s return airfare to go out and stay with him in Australia. Lee told him to shove it where ‘the sun don’t shine’.
From being a very sociable lad, who loved sports and riding his bike, Lee turned inwards to his computer, and nothing Laura could do would shake him out of his doldrums. He rarely went anywhere, even though his Suzuki GFS650 Bandit was his pride and joy.
Conversations about anything other than his game were futile, and those things that he would talk about were meaningless to her.
A few weeks ago, he began talking about a girl. It was Tamsyn this and Tamsyn that, and my friend Tamsyn did this, or you’ll never guess what Tamsyn did yesterday. She became quite hopeful that this girl might shake him out of his doldrums. It took her a while to discover that Tamsyn was just a character in one of the computer games. She probably wasn’t even a real person, just something the computer generated.
Laura sighed as Lee walked past her and returned to his room without a word.
She went into the kitchen and started lunch. If only, she thought, and then smiled grimly. If only everything!
At half past twelve she called him down. She was used to calling him several times, so it was a surprise when he came at the first call. He looked shocked.
“What’s the matter, dear?” she asked.
“Tamsyn found my email address somehow and wants to come and see me,” he said, looking rather pale.
“What?”
“Tamsyn; she’s close and wants to meet me. She has questions for me that she says she can’t ask online.”
“Tamsyn is real?”
“I think so,” he said vaguely.
“What does she want to talk about?”
“Me.”
“You? What about you?”
“Um, well, you see, in the game, I’m a thief, and she’s, well she’s a sort of a warrior princess and, this is daft, I think she thinks I’m a thief in real life.”
“What?”
“I told her I wasn’t but she just said that we have to talk. She has a problem, and I think she hopes I might be able to help.”
“Lee, you’re just a computer geek, so just who the hell does she think you are?”
“Grif.”
“Who?”
“That’s my game name – Grif.”
“What’s her name?”
“Tamsyn.”
“Duh, I mean what’s her real name?”
“I don’t know.”
“This is not really very clever. You don’t know anything about this woman. She is a woman, and not some strange bloke who pretends to be a woman or anything?”
“I’m sure she’s a girl, mum.”
“Hmm. When she coming?”
“In about ten minutes.”
She opened her mouth to say something when the doorbell sounded.
Lee grinned self-consciously and dashed to the door.
“Lee, wait!” she started to say, but he had already opened the door. Feeling angry and a little fearful, she went up behind him and stared at the girl on the doorstep.
She was a slim, very pretty girl around five eight and smartly dressed, with long, very dark hair. Initially, Laura suspected it was dyed, but her face was devoid of the Goth makeup that girls wore these days. She wore a little makeup, but to be honest, she possessed such a natural beauty, she didn’t need much.
There was an older woman standing behind her looking as dubious about this incident as Laura felt. She wrongly assumed the woman was her mother.
Lee and the girl were in mid-conversation and it all sounded gobbledegook to her.
Lee seemed to be completely oblivious to the world around him. He had only known Tamsyn as the avatar in the game. The avatar was very realistic, but it wasn’t the same as being real. When he opened the door, the avatar stood there. Oh, she wasn’t wearing the same clothes as in the game, as she was in a skirt and top, but her face was as similar to the avatar as makes no difference. Actually, Lee believed that the real person was far more beautiful than the avatar.