She shakes her head. And looks at me. With pity?
‘I first noticed about eight o’clock, as I was coming home from work. Saw all your lights doing this. Flickering. I thought it must be your fuses. But it’s been going on so long.’
As we both gaze upwards, the lights in my empty flat do it again. They flash on. Then off. Repeatedly. For a minute. I am holding my breath, frightened like a young child confronted by an adult horror movie. Why is this so scary, yet so hypnotic?
Because it must be the Assistants. They have control of the lights. I feel a certain relief, that others are witnessing this, even as the uncanny fear grows. What exactly are we all witnessing?
‘It’s weird … I am sorry, but it is,’ says Deborah. ‘It’s like there’s somebody in your flat, flicking all the switches. But you can’t see them. You haven’t got a ghost in there, have you?’
She is trying to make a joke of it. But this feels anything but funny. The tiny flickers of snow are melting on my face; and my sweet, mildly neurotic neighbour Deborah is properly unnerved.
‘I tried to call Tabitha.’ Deborah lifts an extended thumb-and-little-finger to her ear, as if holding an old-fashioned phone. ‘Thought she should know, as it’s her place and everything … But I couldn’t get through.’
‘I’ve been at a pub. With her. I guess she had it switched off?’
‘Jesus look – there they go again—’
Deborah is right. The lights are flashing, flashing across Delancey, flashing at Cumberland Terrace, flashing at the empty vastness of Regent’s Park, and the lunatic wolves trapped in their tiny pens at the zoo.
‘I’d better go in,’ I say, keeping my voice calmer than I feel. ‘It’s probably some glitch with the technology – you know what Tabitha is like. Everything is always the best, always on the cutting edge, but things go wrong. Whole flat has been on the fritz the last few days.’
Deborah looks at me. Squints. As if trying to work out if I am being sarcastic.
I say a cold goodbye. With shivery hands I press a key to the front-door latch, and I find that I am taking big soothing breaths. Stay calm. I don’t want to go in the flat. Stay calm. I DON’T WANT TO GO IN THE FLAT.
Standing by my door, I can sense Deborah’s eyes on my back, pitying, fearful, as I step across the threshold into the dry and the warmth, and the piles of slippery flyers for curry houses and pizzerias and burger chains gathering like drifts of autumn leaves in the hallway.
Big deep breath. If I’m going to confront this, I have to do it fast or not at all. Marching up the steps, I press the key into the latch of my internal door, Tabitha’s door, I still don’t feel this place belongs to me in any way, maybe I don’t want to be too closely associated with it.
What am I about to see? I imagine all manner of ludicrous technological monsters, gibbering spectres made of electricity. Or dead things. My dead father. My dead father will be sitting in a corner and talking to me. Drooling.
Stop. Calm.
Key. Turn.
The door opens. I see a well-lit flat. Orderly and normal. Red painted walls. Pictures and photos from Tabitha’s many travels, some of the ones we did together, most she did with boyfriends, and Arlo.
Ceramic Mexican skulls commemorating the Day of the Dead. A tiny, authentic ancient Egyptian statue: a man with a dog’s head.
Stepping inside the inner hallway, I make for the living room. The silence is like the hum of a meditation bowl.
Nothing has changed. I can see that chunk of volcano from Ethiopia. And the beautiful, somehow melancholy seashells from Sanibel, Florida. Plus shelves of books – Tabitha’s literary fiction and natural history, and below them racks of my books: thrillers and mysteries and art history, and those endless guides to screenwriting.
Whatever the lights were doing, whatever the Assistants were doing to the lights, has stopped. I look out of the window, Deborah has disappeared. So has everyone else. The street is empty. Did we see a glitch or did we see something more?
The only strange thing, now, is the intense cold. The heating has gone off. It shouldn’t have done this. The smart heating is meant to maintain the flat at twelve degrees Celsius, even when it is empty, so pipes won’t burst in a freeze. And it is freezing out there, and possibly even colder in here. Like a fridge.
OK, OK. I must stay calm. And try not to think about Liam. What he said. However weird. He must have had a reason, nothing to do with me.
Opening the Electra app on my phone, I select Skills and check out Lights and Heating. It seems I’ve got the lights set to turn on at 11 p.m., for when I get home. But they’re also set to turn off all night, in case I am late. Ah. Is this conflict simply my fault? I vaguely remember doing something like this at the pub; I was a little drunk, and distracted. Did I confuse the Assistants myself?
I have no idea. All I know is that the cold is too intense to bear.
‘Electra, turn the central heating back on. To twenty-two degrees, please.’
The diadem chimes, and Electra bongs back:
‘The heating has been turned on to twenty-two degrees Celsius.’
‘Thanks, Electra.’
‘That’s what I’m here for!’
I look at her. This neutral black pillar of chips and wires, and a hostility curdles inside me. A genuine anger. Because I am sure something strange and nasty is being done to me, by someone – or something. First the taunts, then the music, now the lights? And Liam, too, almost threatening.
Somebody’s done for.
I have some evidence, and it is accumulating, but I still can’t take it anywhere. Certainly not to the police. Because of the backstory. Tall, athletic, friendly, buy-everyone-a-beer Jamie Trewin – and his spasmed, vomiting death, and his eyes that rolled white into his head, and all because of me, and Tabitha.
Enough. I am tired. The flat is palpably warmer than it was. I need to get up tomorrow and get to work and go back to normal life: see a friend, make a friend, have friends. Brushing my teeth, moisturizing my face, I jump into pyjamas, and head for my bedroom, telling the Assistants to switch off the lights as I make my way down the landing.
The lights go off, obediently. As if I am trailing darkness, an empress followed by servants, extinguishing candles. Everything is working as it should. Not a hint of strangeness. Climbing wearily into bed, I am so ready for sleep, and the moment before I close my eyes … I realize I can hear ‘Hoppípolla’.
No, I am imagining it. I am half asleep.
No, I am not imagining it. HomeHelp, the creamy-grey, ostrich-egg-shaped Assistant in my bedroom, has reeled her cotillion of little lights, and she is quietly playing ‘Hoppípolla’.
‘Stop,’ I say to HomeHelp. ‘Stop playing that tune, never play that tune again.’
HomeHelp obediently stops. But I can hear ‘Hoppípolla’ from somewhere else. The kitchen. The little Assistant in the kitchen has taken over. Jumping out of bed, I go into the darkened kitchen, slap the lights on – not trusting the Assistants. The black hockey-puck-sized machine above the microwave is blasting out this beautiful song, with its hateful memories.
‘STOP,