Anne Billson - Suckers

She sighed as though I was putting her to enormous trouble. 'Ten o'clock? Midnight?'

'Midnight ?' It took a while for this to sink in. 'You mean nine o'clock in the evening? '

She blinked. Once. Twice. 'Our Editor has a very full schedule. She often takes meetings at night.'

'In that case, nine o'clock will be just fine.'

She sighed again. 'Name?'

I missed a beat, but not so as she noticed. Something inside me suggested it would be prudent to keep a low profile. On the other hand, I might just have been fibbing out of habit. 'Patricia Rice,' I said.

'Address?'

I gave her Patricia's address and telephone number, and she punched them into the computer. As I watched her fingers on the keys, I had what seemed like a smart idea. 'Any chance of some back issues?'

She stared at me as though I'd asked her to remove her clothes. 'There have only ever been two issues of the magazine.'

'Well, perhaps you could spare a couple.'

Her mouth twitched. I thought she was going to tell me to get lost, but she didn't. 'Please wait,' she said, and disappeared through the door to her left. I could hear her talking, but I couldn't hear what was being said.

I have never been computer literate. I could operate simple word-processing software, but the finer points of bytes, pips, and programs left me at the starting-point. Still, Eva Peron didn't appear to be in the Albert Einstein class, and she was coping. I hovered long enough to check she wasn't coming straight back, and then I leant across the reception desk and examined the monitor — just in time to see Patricia Rice's name and address flicker on the screen, and vanish.

I thought I'd stopped being the sort of person who takes risks. I'd taken a few back in the early days, when I'd been younger, with an imagination which had not yet expanded to encompass the full range of unpleasant things that can happen to a person. But once again I was experiencing the weird sensation of the world shifting beneath my feet. Rocky times called for reckless behaviour. I slapped the EXIT key and the screen ticked over until we were back in the basic launchpad system. Quickly, I scrolled through the databank to see if I recognized any of the names. ARTEMIS. ARTISTIC AGENCIES. ARTISTS INC. ARTO. ASTRA. ASTROPOLOUS. They unfurled on the screen at a rate of knots. I zapped through the Bs and Cs. One or two companies I'd heard of, but nothing of interest. I had the vague intention of getting as far as M for MURASAKI. But then I saw DINO.

I could still hear the murmur of voices beyond the door, so I punched into what I thought was inspection mode. A load of indecipherable rubbish came up. I pressed exit and enter and return and I ended up with an address: Studio E, 174 London Bridge Road. I tried punching my way back into the main file, but I must have pressed the wrong key. The screen went blank except for a single word in the top left-hand corner: ROTNACHT. I pressed what I thought was the correct key (but hadn't 1 pressed that one before?) and the word disappeared, but then it was back again: ROTNACHT. Now it was flashing on and off. ROTNACHT. ROTNACHT. ROTNACHT. I panicked, pressed EXIT and ENTER and CANCEL and STOP and the word disappeared again and I was just wondering whether I'd erased all the other data in the process when I realized the murmur of voices in the next room had died away.

I straightened up with a sinking feeling. Eva Peron was leaning against the doorframe, watching me with her arms folded. She smiled, but I wished she hadn't. 'Seen anything you like?' she asked, sauntering over, holding out my two back issues. I took them, even though I didn't particularly want them any more.

'Not really,' I said. 'I was just trying your computer, but I don't think I'll buy one like this. It's much too complicated.'

She sat down and scrolled back through the files, trying to work out how much I'd seen. 'This is a specialist machine,' she said frostily.

'I thought as much,' I said, shuffling towards the lifts.

'Thank you…' she said, looking directly at me. 'Miss Rice ,' she said, as though she'd always known it wasn't my real name, and smiled again.

'Bye,' I said, pressing the down button. The microwave door slid open. I remember thinking how odd it was, in a building that size, with that capacity, that the lift I had come up in was exactly where I'd left it — ready and waiting to take me down again.

Duncan and I had arranged to meet in one of the few Soho streets which had not yet been redeveloped as a parade of upmarket eateries, which could still boast one or two Girls in Bed signs, and a sex shop full of inflatable dolls and crotchless panties. The cafe was next door. It was a lousy cafe; it didn't even do cappuccino, but it had the advantage of being undiscovered by bright young media folk and it had never been written about in the Good Food Guide , so there were always plenty of empty tables.

In thirteen years nothing had changed. The radio was tuned to a station which played nothing but Slade and Showaddywaddy. In the corner, the same faded poster for a peach-flavoured aperitif called Sex Appeal. On the walls, the same bleached prints of the Bay of Naples. The contents of the sweet-trolley looked suspiciously familiar as well: the same strawberry gateau with its dusty Quick-Jel filling, the same primordial slime the waiters claimed was Tiramisu, and profiteroles which had calcified into geological specimens.

'The place hasn't changed at all,' I remarked, stirring sugar into my cup. I didn't usually take sugar, but the coffee hadn't changed either; it was so disgusting it needed all the help it could get.

'Hasn't it?' Duncan said absent-mindedly. 'I wouldn't know. I've never been here before.'

My jaw dropped. 'Yes, you have .'

He was puzzled by my insistence. 'No, I don't think so.' I felt like shaking him. Wake up! What kind of spell did she put on you? Not for the first time, I wondered what was going on in his head. Was all the time he spent with me so forgettable? Which pieces of the past did he bring out and mull over in his private moments? Did any of them include me, or were they all memories of Violet? Maybe all the booze and pills had given him brain damage. My own memory wasn't so hot, but I'd always been able to recall certain occasions in the minutest detail. I could even remember what people had been wearing. That Saturday, thirteen years ago, for instance: he'd been in a green corduroy jacket; I'd been wearing a black crepe dress which I had bought from an Oxfam shop. That had been back in the days when I'd still been wearing black.

I buried the memories and described my trip to the Multiglom Tower. This was what Duncan had been waiting for. He'd heard some of it on the phone already, but now he leant forward, listening intently as I ran through it again. I gave him a fairly straight account, but played down my feeling of having been caught trespassing in a high-security morgue.

'But you didn't get to see her ,' he said at last.

'Who? Murasaki? You're kidding. It's like getting an audience with the Pope. I've got to stand in line with everyone else. But I made an appointment for Monday.'

'It's her . I know it is. It has to be her.'

'If it is, she's come up in the world. Her standard of living has improved.' I was on the verge of saying too much, and swallowed the rest, but Duncan didn't appear to have noticed anything. 'Those offices are pretty plush,' I added quickly.

'She always did have resources.'

'I should say. I was looking through those back issues. You should see the bylines — all the really big guns.'

'That's what I was afraid of,' Duncan said. He reached across the table and took one of my cigarettes.