James Smythe - The Testimony

Livvy had cancer, which wasn’t related to anything we’d seen before, not to the missiles or anything. It can just happen, the surgeon said, these things can just appear. That’s part of being human, he said; sometimes we just stop, and there’s nobody else – nothing else – to blame. How long? we asked, and he said that he didn’t know. It depends, he said. Hopefully we can get to it in time. He was being nice, but we knew it was going to be fatal from the second we got the diagnosis, because he said that they had to rush, but there wasn’t actually any sense of urgency to it. Livvy seemed okay with it; she let them try to cut it out, telling them it was fine as long as it wouldn’t hamper her last few days, as long as it didn’t affect her motor functions or her memories, anything like that, but they couldn’t get it all, and it would be too much to hit with chemo. We can try, they said, but she turned them down. It’s better if I just deal with it, she said. We were on the boat for a year after that, and then she didn’t wake up, one day. I think I knew it was going to happen the night before it did, because I lay in bed and couldn’t sleep, and I watched her sleeping, which I never did; but that night, it seemed like something I should do. I finally slept sometime around four, and when I woke up, before six, she was gone – as if she didn’t want to leave with me watching.

After her funeral – a Church of the One True God service, for the sake of the family, not me, or her – I was at a loss, so I went back into the city. Nobody had been in DC apart from government people, soldiers, that documentary crew who did the Ghost Towns film that got the Oscar, and I wanted to see it for myself. It was fenced off, because when you crossed that line and went into the heart of the city the radiation was bad enough to cause sickness, sickness that would only get worse the longer you stayed, and would be fatal in most cases, but that didn’t stop me. I probably could have gone any time of day, with a team, wearing suits to protect us, but that seemed to almost defeat the point. I went at night, in through one of the safe houses just outside the city, the tunnels that stretched for miles, with their golf carts to drive you through. It took me hours to get to the city itself. It was amazing, completely empty in a way that I had never seen it, absolutely dark. None of the street lights were on; just the moon to light it. As I got there it was turning to dawn, and I watched it coming up. I didn’t take a Geiger with me, because I knew what it would say, that the clicking as it warned me would spoil this. It was nearly midday when I got to the White House, and I found my old office, sat in my old chair. They hadn’t painted, yet; it was customary for the new staff to paint every room completely when they moved in, to put their own stamp on the building. But the guys who took over from us for those few days? They hadn’t even removed my name from the door. The team outside spotted me on the security cameras – they were up all around the city, to prevent intruders like me, I suppose – and they swarmed the White House, bundled me into the back of a van lined with thick tarpaulin, drove me out of the city, sprayed me down, stripped me. Doctors examined me, where my skin had blistered along the line of my clothes. We’re going to have to run some tests, they said, but they had that same look in their eyes as when the doctor diagnosed Livvy, so I told them I wasn’t submitting to it. They kept me locked in a room for a few hours, but I pulled some strings and got myself released, and I went back to the boat and lay on the deck.

The doctors warned me that the drugs they had given me might make me see things, hear things; so when I was lying there, and I could swear that I started hearing the static again, I wasn’t even close to surprised. I started talking to Livvy instead, in case she could hear me, and I stared at the sun and waited to see if anything would happen to us all before I died.

This novel was, with its multitude of voices and synchronous events, a bit of a devil to write. Thanks to my invaluable readers and idea-thrower-arounders for helping beat it into shape: Holly Howitt, Sam Barlow, Tim Glister, John Smythe and Vikki Chandler.

And, even after those early beatings, the incredible editorial team at Blue Door helped me see that it still needed another ten rounds in the ring: the wonderful Laura Deacon, the insightful Emad Akhtar, and the estimable Patrick Janson-Smith. They saw everything that the novel could be, and they tirelessly helped to make it better. Thanks to them, along with the rest of the gang at HarperCollins UK.

Thanks then to Sam Copeland, my fantastic agent, who helped shape both this book, and the many others soon to come. He passionately goes above and beyond, and I’m incredibly grateful to him.

Special gratitude to early teachers, who had faith in writing (and whose names might well be misspelled here, thanks to the passage of time and the failings of memory): Mrs Ogley, Mr Moretta and Mrs Babuta.

And lastly, thanks to my family, every single one of you. Without you, I wouldn’t have had the chance to write the book, let alone these acknowledgments.

‘Reminiscent of Ian McEwan at his most macabre, it is fiction that demands to be taken seriously’

‘A book about memory, about the impossibility of making the future match the past, and the danger of following a desire too far’

‘Like Ballard, Smythe understands and ruthlessly demonstrates, the nightmare that results when our fantasies are realised. The result is at once terrifying and moving’

She opens the door to a deliveryman, and the Machine, which has come in three parts, all wrapped in thick paper. Each of the parts is too big to get through the door.

We’ll have to try the window, the man says.

She shows him which one it is, along the communal balcony. It’s already at its widest, to let some air into the flat, to try and counteract the invasive heat from outside. Still not wide enough, so the men – the first has been joined by another from the van, having just heaved another thick cream-paper wrapped packet the size of a kitchen appliance from the van, and left it leaning against the bollards – tell her that they’ll have to take the window out.

We’ve got the tools for it, this other man says.

Beth stands back and watches as they unscrew the bolts on the attaching arms, and then lift the whole sheet down. Others in the estate have stuck their heads out of their windows, or come out of their front doors to watch. Next door, the woman with all the daughters stands and watches, and her girls run around inside. The littlest one stands at the woman’s legs, clutching onto her skirt.

Gawpers, the first man says. Always wanting to know what we’re up to.

The deliverymen don’t know what’s inside the packages. They’re just paid to deliver them. Beth wonders if she’s going to be able to assemble it herself, or if she’s better off asking them for help. Slip them a fifty, they’d probably stand around with her for an hour and figure it out. She doesn’t know how easy it will actually be: if there will be wires, or if it’s just a case of plugging the pieces together. The man she bought it from said it would be simple. They struggle up the stairwell with the first piece, stopping to mop their brows. They still wear dark-blue overalls, in this weather, and their now-sweaty palms leave dark-brown prints on the paper wrapped around the Machine’s pieces. The first piece makes it through the window maw, twisted in the frame as if this is one of those logic games. Manipulate the pieces.