‘But you brought it here.’
‘Please Iz, don’t call her that.’
‘Like it has feelings! Like it’s not a machine!’ Evie can hear the tears in her voice.
‘That isn’t the point.’
‘I think the point is that you’ve always made it so obvious.’
‘What so obvious?’
‘How you valued her more than mum and me. How do you think that made us feel? Why do you think mum left you?’
‘That’s not true.’
‘Always so polite and accommodating. And do you know why that is?’
The ghastly atmosphere is palpable even in the back room.
‘Because it’s a robot programmed to fuck and clean and the crazy thing is that you’re so completely and utterly taken in!’
‘She is being unfair,’ Evie says quietly, as much for her benefit as Simon’s. ‘She’s twisting things.’
Iz starts to sob and she hears her father seat himself on the sofa beside her. ‘It was never like that,’ he says quietly. ‘Since your mother took you away, things have not been the way I wanted them. We’ve not spent the time together we should have.’
‘That fucking bitch,’ Iz’s tears are so strong, she can barely articulate.
‘Evie is not you. She is not a substitute. You are my daughter, you’re the only daughter I want. The only one I’ve ever wanted.’
How long before I am charged? Evie asks. She is trying to stay calm, but her tone gives her away.
You’ll be at fifteen percent in ten minutes but to get to full will be at least three hours.
There won’t be time for that.
She removes the connector and sits up.
What do you think you are doing?
I’m going to find some better shoes and then we’re getting out of here. She looks in the wardrobe but at the bottom is only a bag of clothes pegs and a jar of fishing bait.
In the hall, Simon mutters.
She opens the door quietly and, looking under the coats, picks out a pair of padded boots and from above, a red fleece-lined jacket with a furred hood. She likes neither, was more comfortable in what she had before, but these are practical choices. She returns to the back room where she finds socks in a drawer, pulling them on as the discussion in the front room intensifies.
Iz draws breath and blows her nose. ‘So where is Troy?’
‘Who’s Troy? Is he your boyfriend?’
‘Yes, Troy is my “boyfriend”,’ she mutters. ‘Why are you here? Are you in this together to try and rob me of my share? I won’t allow it!’
‘There was a break-in, in the apartment last night,’ Daniels says. ‘Matthew was killed.’ Evie can hear the suffering in his voice and the sadness washes through her too.
Iz catches her breath.
‘It happened while I was returning from here. When I got back he was… he’d been shot… he was dead. It was too dangerous to stay.’
Daniels’s daughter draws noisily on her cigarette. ‘And what happened to… ?’ she asks.
‘To who? The intruder?’
‘Yes “the intruder”!’ she answers angrily.
‘He died.’
‘Died? How?’ Her voice is shaking. ‘No one just dies. It was the fucking android wasn’t it?’
Daniels doesn’t answer.
‘That little cunt killed him, didn’t it?’
‘It was self-defence.’
‘Fuck self-defence,’ she shouts. ‘It’s a machine!’
‘Why do you care what happened to him?’
‘Because he was Troy, you imbecile!’
There is silence for a few seconds.
‘But why?’ Daniels asks weakly. He is struggling to make sense of what she has just told him.
‘Because of her! What do you think? Jesus, how dense are you!’
‘You lured me here, while you sent your boyfriend – Troy – to—’
‘I didn’t lure you here,’ she snaps. ‘Don’t be so fucking melodramatic! I did you a kindness. I got you out of the way to save any heroics. But I underestimated what that little snatch was capable of. I warned Troy to be careful, I warned him that she’s not the docile little suck she pretends to be, but would he listen?’
‘Why?’ Daniels asks. ‘Why have you done this?’
‘Why?’ She sounds incredulous. ‘I’ll tell you why. Rumours of this clockwork freak were all over Troy’s station. They were all nosing around. It was only a matter of time before it was picked up. Me and Troy were just trying to – Oh fuck! What’s the time? Oh fuck, it’s gone eight! Oh Christ, they’re going to be here any minute.’
‘Who?’ he asks.
‘The people Troy found. The buyers.’
Evie is standing in the doorway of the small back room, transfixed by the revelation of how nearly she was trapped.
We’ve got to get out of here right now, Simon urges.
‘You were going to sell her!’ Daniels says.
‘Oh don’t look at me like that. Too right we were going to sell it. It was going to be enough to settle both our debts and give us a fresh start. Get away from this wretched country. We were going to America!’
‘You really hate her that much?’ Daniels asks.
‘Yes, I do,’ she spits. ‘I fucking detest it, always have. Getting even with that mechanised little slut was the icing on all this.’
Evie enters the front room. ‘We need to go,’ she says.
Daniels is seated beside his daughter, staring forwards with a dazed expression. ‘Yes,’ he says, but he does not move.
‘You’re not going anywhere,’ Iz says, getting to her feet. She is looking at Daniels but the statement is for Evie.
Evie crosses the room and takes Daniels by the arm, pulling him to his feet.
Iz makes a grab for her but overbalances and falls against the wall. While she struggles upright, Evie pulls Daniels along the passage into the back room and shoves up the window with a bang.
Footsteps echo in the stairwell beyond the front door. ‘They’re here,’ Evie says and bundles him out ahead of her onto the fire escape.
In the courtyard behind the building floats a sleek hovacar eighteen inches above the ground, its doors retracted, the driver standing on the river bank, face to the sun, nodding along to the music in his earphones.
Evie feels the warmth of the downdraft as they run through the melted snow. They climb in and the doors automatically close. Daniels, now recovered, glances over the instrumentation and touches the wheel. The motors accelerate and the vehicle bucks, the rear rapidly rising, tilting the front towards the ground, throwing them against the control panel.
The driver, abruptly aware of the theft in progress, casts away his cigarette and rushes towards them.
‘Anchor?’ Daniels mutters frantically. He scans around himself, then lowers a lever by his seat and the front of the vehicle, freed from gravity, ascends sharply, levelling as the compass acquires control.
Men appear at the window with handguns. Green and orange beams glance sizzling off the armoured bodywork.
As the car accelerates upwards, the force pins Evie to her seat. The buildings rapidly shrink until her view of the ground is of the giddy prospect of the tops of the cylindrical gasometers and the dark waterway cutting an emerald wound through the white snow.
12
‘You’re going to need a new name for when we meet people,’ says Daniels. ‘Any ideas?’
‘Jane,’ Evie answers, without hesitation. ‘I’d like to be Jane.’
Simon huffs, poor little Jane. But he has been happier than normal for the last half an hour, feeding off her own distracted delight as they zoom over the snow-covered fields.