S. K. Tremayne - The Assistant

Stepping around the bar, I say,

‘Hello, Arlo! Lovely to see you.’ And give him a quick double non-kiss air-kiss.

‘Ah, Jo. Hello, so glaaaad you could make it!’

He returns the duo of non-kisses. I had no idea social greetings could be this insincere.

‘Where’s Tabs?’

‘Vaping outside, swathed in perpetual smoke like some hydrothermal vent.’

Who, or what, is a hydrothermal vent? I have no idea. He probably said it to make me feel insecure. So we are stuck, in a corner of the Flask. Just me and him and rows of glittery obscure new artisanal gins on the mirrored shelves behind the bar, and the deeply sinister prints of the local executions on the wall, and a lovely roaring woodfire in the mighty hearth. Waiting for everyone else to arrive.

‘Everything OK at, uh, work? Facebook?’

This is probably the most irritating thing I could ask him. Which is possibly why I ask it. He does the same to me all the time. Needling Arlo at least takes my mind off my own deepening vortex of worries.

‘Work? Oh, superb. I’ll be leaving in a week or two. For the start-up.’ His smile is so icy it could kill wintering songbirds at twenty metres. ‘Ah!’ The smile becomes brighter, warmer, even real. ‘Here’s Jeremy. Lex! Rollo.’

Rollo.

Rollo.

Arlo has an extraordinary number of posh, pink-faced friends with names that end in O. Hugo. Rollo. Theo. Rocco. Orlando. Otto. I think Otto is a ‘Von’ as well. They are all stupidly rich. Dutch bazillionaires. French bankers. Film directors. Venture capitalists investing in Arlo’s Big New Thing, which is all to do with Artificial Intelligence and FinTech, and other stuff I Officially Cannot Understand. I know some of these guys by sight, but they barely know me. I am clearly only here because of Tabitha. If I am lucky, one or two university friends that me and Tabs share might show up, diluting my social isolation.

But as I have recently confirmed, to my own dismay, most of my friends now live out of town.

‘Jo!!’

Ah. A slender blonde girl tucking a vape in her chic denim jacket is smiling, broadly, my way.

‘Jo! Darleenk!’

She does a heavy, fake, theatrical German accent when she’s in a good mood.

‘Heyyy, Tabs! You didn’t get eaten by jaguars!’

My friend skips towards me and gives me a big big hug and a kiss where her lips actually touch my skin. I realize, with a hidden but painful cramping sensation, how much I’ve missed physical interaction. No one has touched me in days, let alone hugged or kissed me.

‘Jo-Jo babe. How are you!’

‘Oh God, fine! You? Brazil? Peru? What happened?’

‘Put it this way, if I have to film another tiny, critically endangered tree frog, I will dedicate my career to wiping out amphibian life. I will shoot a fucking newt.’

We laugh. We hug again. I sooooooo want this. I so need this.

Freelance journalism, I have realized, doesn’t even make you free, it can all too easily imprison you in your flat, devoid of human contact, and you don’t get out of pyjamas from Monday to Wednesday. And freelancing plus digital technology is worse . All the significant conversations I have had this week have been with the digital world.

Since I went freelance five years back, I’ve discovered quite how much people don’t even want to talk. Rather than pick up a phone, they will go to great lengths to text or email. They want to type and WhatsApp and message, so they can edit and censor. Curate themselves: their souls and their discourse.

I should have put this in the article which so annoyed Arlo. The fact that tech was fucking up our social lives, fucking up our humanity, our interactions, our everything. And in return is it fucking with me?

‘Arlo!’

‘Theo.’

‘Cicero.’

The Os have turned out in force. Tabitha chats with them. I stand alone. The executed man dangling from the gallows on Primrose Hill sticks his vile and blackened tongue in my direction. My thoughts return to the machines in my home, undermining me, throwing me off-balance, and a question forms. Could this be Arlo’s doing? Is it some kind of cynical vengeance? He’s certainly clever enough, and controlling enough. He’d probably find it loftily droll and piquant. Using the same tech I criticized to gaslight me, to send me round the bend.

His dislike of me, based partly on pure snobbery, was confirmed by my so-called journalistic betrayal. When I first moved to Delancey, he came round and looked at my paltry wardrobe and delivered a litany of acidic remarks about how lucky I was to live in that flat, when I could have been stuck in some horrible bedsit in nowhere, perhaps along the A40 ‘breathing in pure carbon monoxide’. He actually said that. And he knows how my poor dad died. And then, he added, for good measure: ‘Instead, you get to live here, with the smart TV, the Assistants, the smart lighting – you have only to ask for music and it floods the rooms, and all of it is made by those companies you hate. How … ironic?’

I stare across at him, framed by the shelved arrays of fashionable gins, surrounded by his eager peers. He is chortling in that austere way he has. Like he finds laughter slightly vulgar but will indulge in it for close friends as a favour. He is handsome and fit; aristocratically cheekboned, yet somehow not sexy at all. At least not to me.

Tabitha relieves my tense isolation by handing me a drink. A fluted glass.

‘Proper champagne, Perrier Jouët!’ She grins, and tilts her head at her fiancé and his moneyed pals. ‘You hanging back? Can’t blame you. Arlo is actually discussing blockchain with some of his bankers. What the hell is blockchain? Does anyone know?’

We are already a few yards from the main social group by the bar. Physically sidelined: symbolically lesser. I look down at the inviting glass tulip of golden-bubbling alcohol. Should I feel guilt for guzzling Arlo’s champagne when I dislike him so much? Nope. I tilt the flute and gulp the fizz so quickly it makes me sneeze bubbles. The glass is trembling in my slightly trembling hand. I am revealing my hideous anxieties.

Tabitha frowns, looking at my glass, which I quickly set down on the bartop.

‘Heya. Are you all right? Everything OK at Delancey?’

This is the time to mention it. She has cued me up. This is my chance to offload, share, ask for help, mention the Assistants, the possible malfunction. In them. Or in me. The taunts. The music. The clownish horror show. And yet I cannot. Because the conversation would rapidly come back to the deeper reason: the death of Jamie Trewin. And we have vowed never to discuss this between us; vowed on our lives, vowed on the lives of both our families. And we have kept that vow: it’s not something I can easily break. I want to. But I can’t. For a start, Tabitha might throw me out, and then I’d have to go and live on the A40 and breathe pure carbon monoxide.

Also, the Assistants have been quiet the last day or two. Nothing has happened since I rang my mum. This does not help me, as it leaves me open to the possibility that I am becoming schizophrenic like my father.

But that is so chilling I do not think about it.

Ever.

Do. Not. Think. About. It. It. It. It. It. It is listening to me. Talking to me. The TV is talking to me. Like it apparently talked to my dad. A voice from the dark. I was too young to understand, at the time, but I’ve learned since that this was the first symptom of the disease that killed him a few years later.

The TV started talking to Dad the way the machine, Electra, has started talking to me. Which suggests I am my dad? I will end my days gassed in a car?

‘Jo? You OK?’

I come to, with a jolt. I must have been silent for a minute, lost in myself. My dad did that too. Before he got scary. Before his tickling got aggressive and I ran to Mummy. Before his madness cost me friends. Dave, Jenny, others, many, all driven away. At least it made me self-reliant.