Hari Kunzru - Transmission

Iqbal gave an exasperated shrug, indicating the impossibility of this idea.

‘Well, then, a quote. If necessary I could write something. Give it to her for approval.’

This, Iqbal thought, was possible. They went through the details, and at the end of the meeting Gaby went back to her room to work on a draft statement. As she was fitting her key in the lock, she heard a cough behind her. It was Vivek, the DP.

‘I heard her singing,’ he said. ‘In the room. She says she has lost her voice, but behind closed doors she is singing.’

Gaby sat up working on the press statement until the room’s heavy rose-patterned wallpaper started to oscillate before her tired eyes. Deciding the paragraph she had written was finally usable, she shut her laptop down. Before she cleaned her teeth, she stood at the window and smoked a cigarette, looking over the lake at Dimross Castle, Tender Tough’s ‘fort location’. Coloured spotlights had been placed strategically around its base, bathing the walls in dramatic violet and blue. By night the hills surrounding Loch Lone were no more than a denser band of darkness, and Dimross stood out against it like something supernatural, a faerie structure superimposed on the ordinary night.

She went to bed shivering a little, pulling the chintz covers up to her neck and feeling relieved to be away from London and all the clutter of her life. And Guy Especially Guy. From the perspective of a big double bed in a mansion by a lake in Scotland, Guy Swift seemed more or less irrelevant. She went to sleep halfheartedly scripting the conversation the two of them would have to have. She hoped he would not make it too hard.

Some time later she was woken by the sound of knocking at her door. She got up to answer it, but something stopped her, something in the tone of the knock: a slyness, an insinuation. The thought came to her, surely illogically, that it was Iqbal, and once it was there the idea would not go away, so she waited, standing at the door listening to the tapping until it stopped and she heard footsteps heading off slowly down the carpeted corridor.

She felt uneasy. Without switching on the light, she pulled on a jogging top, groped for her cigarettes and went back to the window. The moon was out, and the swathe of striped lawn that led down to the water was illuminated like a stage set. The ambience was so gothic, particularly with the castle glowing eerily in the background, that it took her a moment to separate the figure in the white robe from the rest of the scene. It was as if a frame from an old horror film had come to life. Her unlit cigarette drooping from her top lip, she stared, bristling, at the thing gliding spectrally over the lawn. Then she saw an orange dot rise and fall close to its face, and realized that it too was smoking. As her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, other details emerged. The sweater over the nightdress. The trainers. The young woman walked down to the very edge of the water and stood for a while, looking out at the loch. Then she dropped the cigarette butt, ground it into the grass with her shoe, pushed her long dark hair away from her face and headed back inside.

Miss Leela Zahir wishes to disassociate herself from the computer virus which has been causing so much destruction and confusion around the world. She wishes to emphasize that she has no connection with the person or persons responsible and hopes that they will be brought speedily to justice. Her sympathy goes out to everyone who has been affected, especially those of her fans who may have mistaken these malicious emails for an official communication from Miss Zahir, LovelyLeela Pvt or some other person or company connected with her. As an artist, she has found the whole experience distressing and disruptive. She hopes that, having made this statement, she will be left to pursue her path of thespian creativity in peace.

The flourishes were added by Iqbal, who considered Gaby’s draft too formal. ‘We need a little emotion here,’ he said. ‘Some touching sentiments.’ He also altered ‘Ms’ to ‘Miss’ and ordered that the whole thing be typed in a tacky handwriting font, ‘to give a personal touch’. The statement was slipped under Leela’s door, but elicited no response.

Gaby ate breakfast sitting cross-legged on her bed, watching CNN. Unusually for her, she had an appetite and ate a quantity of toast and muesli, washing it down with cups of strong tea. The virus was the second lead story. According to one of the talking heads, it was a new variety. According to another, it was thought to originate in India. They alternated video of various upsets and commotions with clips of Leela Zahir singing and dancing, commenting that after a tennis player and a stripper the actress had become the latest in a line of women to be associated with this type of computer crime. Apart from the publicity stills it was Gaby’s first proper sight of her. She shimmied down the middle of a London street in front of a squad of identically clad dancers, looking flirtatiously into the camera and drawing a hand over her face. On her eight-by-tens she had looked like every other production-line Indian actress, a perky black-haired Barbie, but in the midst of the song-and-dance routine Gaby thought she discerned something else, a hollowness behind the eyes which seemed at odds with the broad smile and the come-hither look those eyes had been trained to deliver.

After a mercifully short meeting with Iqbal, Gaby photocopied the completed release in the Lodge’s tiny business centre and drove the minivan down the driveway to meet the press. Their numbers seemed to have increased since the previous day, and were swelled by several dozen Asian teenagers, who sat in their cars playing hip-hop and sending text messages to each other on their phones. Where they had come from (Glasgow?) she had no idea, but they were causing chaos, making obscene gestures behind the local news reporter as he tried to record a piece to camera and asking everyone, including the nervous policeman guarding the hotel gate, if they had seen ‘Rajiv Baba’ or ‘Leela Zee’.

Gaby handed out copies of the statement, which, as she had expected, did little to satisfy any of the correspondents. They crowded round her, pushing and jostling, each trying to get in first with their requests for interviews and photos. As she tried to deal with them, her sleeve was tugged by kids with cards and soft toys and photos they wanted her to pass on to the two stars. Just one picture. All my editor wants, ten minutes, five minutes, I love him innit, I made this myself. Muscling her way to the front came a middle-aged Indian woman dressed as if she were going on an Antarctic expedition, complete with scarf, hat, Gore-Tex jacket and hiking boots. Introducing herself as chief showbiz reporter of Film Buzz magazine, she asked whether the latest rumours’ were true.

‘What rumours?’ asked Gaby.

‘That Leela has walked off the set.’

‘No, absolutely not.’

‘But there has been no shooting.’

‘I can confirm that Miss Zahir has been slightly unwell due to an allergic reaction to an insect bite. They had to suspend shooting while she recovered, but it’s nothing serious. She’ll be back at work very soon.’

‘It must be an unpleasant bite. Maybe from bad boy Rajiv, perhaps?’

‘I understand,’ Gaby improvised, ‘that her arm was very swollen.’

‘And this virus tamasha is all a publicity stunt, am I correct? This is Rocky Prasad drumming up interest in his picture.’

‘As Miss Zahir’s press statement says —’

‘Well, it would, wouldn’t it?’

‘I’m from Fox News,’ butted in a tall blond man with a North American accent. ‘We want to talk to the girl.’

The Sun, Asian Age and most of the others wanted the same thing.