– Pathology bollocks, I said. I felt indignant. They were trying to put some – label on me. – That’s complete bollocks! The family – they were –
– They were what, Harvey, she asked quietly. Her glasses flashed. The eyes behind were blue, and distorted by the lenses. She was clicking the mouse.
I felt stupid now. Sheepish.
– You wouldn’t understand, I said.
– What the questions are aimed at, she said, is establishing your feelings about your family.
– My feelings?
I felt a lurch. Years of work, constructing them so lovingly. And suddenly boom, bang. It was there, when Hannah Park said that word – feelings – that it hit me. My relationship with Mum, Dad, Lola, Uncle Sid, and Cameron was polluted for ever. We’d been a private concern. Going public – it would kill us.
As for telling this woman – well, she was a complete stranger.
I looked out. Down below, the city, the flat roofs of entertainment parcs, the high spinning windmills, the glass bubble-domes, the churches, the estuary fanning out to sea. The customers going about their business.
I guess I’d never experienced loss before, not really. Gwynneth and Tiffany moving out of Gravelle Road three years before was a surprise, but it was really the end of something that’d begun to go wrong a long time earlier, giving it a feeling of au naturel, to quote Gwynneth’s moisturiser. My own real parents, well, they’d never been there in living memory. And what you’ve never had, you can’t mourn. But now –
My eyes searched for the comfort of the purification zone, but Hannah’s voice drew me back to the room.
– I’m here to do a job.
There was a sort of scary energy passing between us, like we were a couple of kids who’d been shoved in a room and told to come up with something. I grunted. It came out like a pig’s snort. There was a patch of silence, and when our eyes met, hers slid away. Mine stayed on her.
– We analyse the members of the family one by one, she said. You answer the questionnaires. The resulting data will be fed into the system. For analysis.
I was about to ask more, but she put up a hand.
– Now. If you’d like to select a beverage from the vending machine, we can make a start on the questionnaires. Her mouth jerked into a small, hesitant smile. – So. Tea, coffee, Frooto?
And it was on that civilised note that the nightmare began.
– Have you ever dreamed you were drilling to the centre of the earth? I ask John suddenly, remembering those hopeless, helpless days I spent at Head Office, filling in Hannah Park’s humiliating paperwork. But you couldn’t make any headway because your drill-bit was blunt, and then –
– A chasm opens up and swallows you, he interrupts uncannily. He’s sewing again.
– Yes!
– No, says John. Never.
There’s a silence for a while and we think our thoughts. As I chew and spit, I’m remembering Hannah. So different from all the other women I had ever known. The effect she had on me, right from the start. The way I thought about her more and more, even when she wasn’t there. The way the feelings virused their way in through a back door in my heart.
But John’s mind is elsewhere.
– Which would you prefer, he asks. Being executed by electric chair on global TV, or being stuck for the rest of your life in a cabin with a bloke who spits grey cud?
For the first time, there’s a shake to his voice.
PEOPLE-WORK
– Ever since I was busted, I’ve been having dreams about them, Harvey Kidd sighed, when he’d glugged down his Frooto and wiped his mouth on his shirt-sleeve. He hadn’t even looked at the first question yet. – They’re talking to me, telling me to stay cool, and everything’ll be all right. But it won’t be, will it? This dream I had, well, Mum said if I just keep my mouth shut, don’t say anything, and –
He stopped as suddenly as he’d started, and Hannah felt the moment come to a standstill between them. The air seemed to shimmer. Without warning, Hannah felt a blush rise and spread. This people-work was getting to her. Bothering her. Stirring things up that –
– I used to live near the purification zone in South District, Harvey said mournfully. Gravelle Road.
Hannah started. Remembered her brief. Cleared her throat.
– I thought we might begin with Gloria Hogg, she said.
– D’you know South District at all? he said, as though he hadn’t heard.
Denial, Hannah typed quickly into the laptop.
– Gravelle Road’s near Tarre Street, he was saying. Did you know that the crater’s two kilometres deep? He sounded pleased to be the owner of such information. Displacement thinking, she typed. Apparent customer pride.
– If we turn to the questionnaire, she began tentatively.
– Sod your questionnaire! he shouted at her, all energy again. I’m not filling in a sodding questionnaire!
She flinched, thought of reaching for the buzzer under the desk. Then stopped herself. She was only to call the guard if he got violent.
She remembered the handwriting on the disc box. Retarded development was the phrase Wesley Pike had used. She managed to calm him down, somehow. Assured him it was a formality, that it wouldn’t take long, that once it was over –
– What? he asked. Once it’s over, what?
– Then we’ll no longer require your co-operation, she mustered. She had an odd urge to touch him. It might calm him down. You did that with animals, didn’t you. You stroked them.
– I’ll still go to prison?
– You’ve committed a series of crimes, she sighed. I’d be very surprised if you didn’t have to undergo some form of corrective adjustment.
She hadn’t a clue, to be honest. Emotional immaturity, she wrote.
She wondered how often married people had sex. Twice a week, she’d read somewhere. That seemed like a lot. He was separated, according to the file. She wondered if he had a girlfriend.
– I chose Libertycare, you know, he said suddenly, indignantly, as though he’d just remembered. I chose them twice.
– So did over 95 per cent of the population, said Hannah. You’d be unusual if you hadn’t. But we didn’t just choose its shopping malls, did we? We chose its security system too. We opted for it as a package. You can’t just pull out of part of it. It’s against the customer charter.
While Harvey Kidd was mumbling and grumbling over the first page of the questionnaire about Gloria, Hannah unrolled a large photo-sheet from under the desk, depicting a blow-up of Gloria Hogg’s face, printed off from disc, and pinned it to the wall to his left. He didn’t look up; he was too engrossed.
More than ever, the notion that this blonde, blue-eyed, glamorous and absurdly young woman could even for a moment be taken for the mother of this balding, late-fortyish man seemed absurd, laughable.
Her mind flitted briefly to an image of her own mother, her narrow papaya face puckered into a moue of disappointment, the high whine of her voice. Tilda had never seemed young.
Harvey was grunting again, and chewing at his pen; he finally seemed to be concentrating on the questionnaire. Hannah didn’t move. She didn’t want to distract him. But he must have sensed something, because suddenly he looked up and saw Gloria.
– Mum! he gasped, his whole face creasing into a huge child’s smile.
Hannah recoiled, and turned her face away from the glare of it. But then her eyes crept back to watch. So this is what love looks like, she thought. And a sudden pain jabbed at her ribcage. Harvey Kidd seemed mesmerised by the sight of this mother-figure.