THE MARRIAGE ACT, page 23
Noah looked to Jeffrey. ‘I’ve been reading through the contract you so helpfully like to remind us of and it says that people on our support list are supposed to rally round and help when a couple is Levelled up.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, where are they?’ Noah turned his head to take in the room and held his phone to his ear. ‘Because I don’t hear the phone ringing or anyone knocking at the door asking us if we’re okay.’
‘It’s a moral contract, not a legal obligation.’
‘How convenient.’
Jeffrey was noticing a gradual shift in Noah’s attitude. Evidence of confrontation and antagonism remained, like his behaviour now over dinner. But for the most part, there had been a reluctant acceptance that Noah no longer had control over anything outside the hospital where he worked. Past experience with other clients suggested it wouldn’t require much more pressure before their relationship collapsed completely.
Noah poured himself another drink, the tonic an afterthought.
‘We’re not supposed to be drinking while we’re in therapy,’ said Luca. He looked at Jeffrey who nodded.
‘I thought we’d finished for today?’ said Noah.
‘Do you cook much, Noah?’ asked Jeffrey.
‘Not since Luca talked us into going vegan. I know what to do with a steak, not so much with an aubergine, unless it’s an emoji.’
‘You could ask him to teach you. The more you do for one another, the more the other person feels appreciated.’
‘Here we go . . .’ said Noah and pushed a meatball around his plate, flecks of red sauce splashing his forearm.
Jeffrey blinked away a memory of Tanya’s blood doing the same thing when he’d slashed her wrists.
‘Can you remember when you last told Luca that he did a great job with dinner or keeping the garden tidy?’
‘Why? If I say I don’t remember are you going to add that to your notes? Perhaps it can join the list of reasons why I’m an abysmal husband?’
‘Stop it,’ said Luca.
‘Stop what?’
‘Behaving like a child.’
‘Perhaps that’s how I’m treated in this house.’
‘Compliments are an important positive affirmation in a relationship,’ Jeffrey continued. ‘We all like to be praised when we’ve put effort into something. It’s just something to keep in mind.’
Noah mimed pressing an invisible keyboard button with his finger. ‘Unsubscribe,’ he said and downed the contents of his glass. His focus remained on Jeffrey until he crunched the last remaining ice cube between his teeth.
‘Are you . . . are you wearing my clothes?’ Noah said. He couldn’t hold back his reddening cheeks.
‘Of course not,’ Jeffrey protested. But the new outfits he’d recently purchased had all been deliberately similar to pieces he’d seen Noah wearing.
‘Yes, yes you are!’ Noah persisted. ‘I have that exact same blue shirt and jean combination. Even our trainers are similar.’ He lifted his foot to prove his point. ‘Christ, Luca, can’t you see what he’s doing? He’s moved himself into our house and now he’s trying to replicate me.’
‘I can assure you I’m not,’ said Jeffrey.
‘Look at yourself!’
The tension was broken by the Audite.
‘Email: Friday May third, Message received. From New Northampton Health Partnership. Dear Mr Noah Stanton-Gibbs, We regret to inform you that your scheduled interview has now been cancelled as the position has been filled internally. Your details will be kept on file should any suitable further positions arise. Yours sincerely, Donna Hillyer, Chief Executive.’
Noah placed his fork and spoon on the table, dabbed at his mouth with the napkin and pushed his chair out. He reached for the bottle of gin but left the tonic, and, without saying a word, calmly left the room. Jeffrey noticed Noah had barely eaten his food.
Luca hesitated. He half rose, then half sat again, opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it once more.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, standing up. ‘I know we’re not supposed to be talking away from the sessions. But he really wanted that job. The interview was just a formality.’
‘Go and be with him, we can pick up on this tomorrow,’ Jeffrey replied.
Once alone, Jeffrey helped himself to more food, roused by the thought of returning home to a meal like this every night once Noah was out of the picture.
56
Anthony
Jada was alone in her office, kneeling on the floor surrounded by matching textured cushions and floor tiles. Behind her, a wall of digital wallpaper alternated, offering changes in patterns and colour. Her eyes were hidden behind virtual reality glasses. The room’s decor couldn’t be more at odds with Anthony’s preference for minimalist styling. Jada had once described it as organized, colourful chaos. He envied her vibrant mind.
She was unaware of him standing beyond the glass doors to the entrance, quietly watching her. Sometimes he recognized traces of Jem Jones in his wife, from the way her nose crinkled when she smiled to the line between her eyebrows that appeared when she frowned. But since Jem’s death, the similarities were becoming clearer. Or perhaps he was searching for them more frequently. Because if pieces of Jem were alive in his wife, it might go some way towards minimizing the impact of her death on him.
‘Bright summer morning,’ Jada spoke. She was giving an instruction to the glasses to visualize a room she was planning. ‘Now give me a dark winter afternoon.’
‘Hi,’ Anthony said and knocked on the wall as he approached her.
‘Jesus!’ she yelped and removed her eyewear. ‘What are you doing here?’
It was a valid question given they’d barely spoken in a fortnight. Anthony tried and failed to remember the last time he had visited her interior design business: another example of his neglect.
‘The calendar said you had a meeting in New Birmingham today?’ she continued.
Anthony cleared his throat. ‘I lied to you, I’m sorry. There was no meeting.’
‘Then where were you?’
‘At home, emailing my resignation letter to work.’
Jada rose to her feet. ‘You did what?’
‘I quit my job.’
‘Without discussing it with me first?’
Anthony nodded.
‘Why?’
‘There’s a new project I’ve been asked to work on that in good conscience, I cannot be a part of.’
‘Couldn’t they move you to something else?’
‘It doesn’t work like that. We don’t question orders.’
Jada bit her lip. Jem did the same when she was perplexed. ‘I thought you’d be pleased?’ Anthony continued. ‘It means
I can spend more time with you and Matthew. We don’t have to wait before we move to Saint Lucia. We can go whenever we want, this month, this week even. Let’s just put the house on the market and book our flights. What’s stopping us?’
‘Anthony, baby, slow down. I am pleased, I’m just confused, that’s all. You keep reminding me we only have three more years to wait before you can retire and now you’re saying that’s it, it’s all over.’ Jada moved towards her husband and entwined her fingers around his. It felt good to be touched by her again. ‘Are you okay? Are you in trouble?’
‘No, it’s not like that. I’ve done things in my job that I’m not proud of. And stuff has happened recently that’s made me realize that, for too long, I’ve been fighting for the wrong side. Last week when I said I was going out for a run, I went to a Freedom for All meeting.’
Jada’s eyes opened wide. She didn’t know the details of what his career entailed, only that he was a Government employee. ‘You can’t be doing that given who you work for!’
‘I had to. And it made me understand something I haven’t been ready to admit. The Marriage Act destroys as many lives as it makes. And I’ve been a part of it.’
Jada held her index finger up to his lips. Her hands were long and slender like Jem’s. ‘You know you can’t be talking about this to me.’ She pointed to her watch.
Anthony gently pushed her finger away. ‘Aren’t you sick of living in fear, Jada? Because I sure as hell would be if I were you.’
‘We knew we were going to be monitored when we upgraded. But without the Act and the new business tax breaks, I couldn’t have started all this.’
‘And is “all this” worth not being able to speak your truth? Of constantly self-editing? Because I don’t think it is. It’s wrong and I’m sorry for what I’ve done to you.’
Tears drizzled down his cheeks as they had on hearing Arthur Foley’s story at the FFA meeting. They took Jada by surprise: she had never seen him cry, not even at his mother’s funeral. ‘Babe,’ she said and tried to put her arms around his waist. He took a step back.
‘I’ve been such a bad, bad husband to you,’ Anthony wept. ‘I’ve lied to you and I haven’t allowed you to be who you really are.’ He closed his eyes and thought about all the ways he had manipulated Jem too. He couldn’t control his chaotic relationship with his mother, but he could dictate the parameters for everyone else in his life.
‘The Audite isn’t monitoring our conversations, it never has been,’ he revealed. ‘We are exempt because of who I work for.’
Jada hesitated before her hands fell to her side.
‘That isn’t funny.’
‘I know, but it’s true.’
‘Are you saying that for three years you’ve let me believe that in any given moment we could be recorded but, in reality, it was never going to happen?’
‘Yes.’
Censoring Jada was up there with some of Anthony’s biggest regrets. He had fallen for her the day he’d watched from the audience in the hall as her university debating team argued why bioengineered meat made from animal cells should replace farm meat on campus menus. She was a skilful orator, using wit and wisdom to put forward a case so compelling, he hadn’t eaten meat from a slaughtered animal since.
Throughout their marriage he had enjoyed deliberating with her over everything from politics to movies. But when his relationship with Jem had escalated, he’d realized how much her needs were going to overtake his life beyond that office. And he’d feared Jada would not sit silently by as his career took him away from his family. Upgrading their marriage, however, might offer a solution, he’d thought. They could afford a larger home and she could set up the business she had always dreamed of, all under Big Brother’s ear. At least that’s what he’d led her to believe. Because the sensitive nature of his job meant his home was exempt from being recorded. Jada’s name translated to God’s gift, which is exactly what she was to him. And now he risked losing her.
‘Why would you do that to me?’ asked Jada.
‘Because I’m not a good person. Because I’m not employed to do good things. Because I thought what I was doing for the country was more important than my own family. Because, when you want to confront me about how I’m failing as a dad and a husband, it’s easier to silence you than to admit you’re right.’ He stopped short at telling her about his relationship with Jem. She wouldn’t understand the complexities of their role in each other’s lives or how much he missed her.
Jada began to pace the office, shaking her head. ‘I have a voice and you didn’t want to hear it,’ she said. ‘My voice, Anthony, my voice. My husband, the father of my child, decided he did not want to hear what his wife had to say.’
‘I know I did wrong, but that’s all going to change,’ he continued. ‘We can be like we used to be, you can say anything now.’
‘Now you want us to talk? How magnanimous of you to allow me to be heard.’
‘Please, Jada, you have to believe me, I’m sorry. I want to make things better between us.’
‘Well, maybe I don’t because maybe you’re not the man I married. Maybe I can’t look at you right now without wanting to hit you.’
Jada’s attention was suddenly drawn to the office Audite.
‘It’s not recording us,’ said Anthony.
‘Then why has a light just flashed around the circle of the rim?’
‘I think you’re mistaken.’
‘Don’t you dare tell me what I am or am not again,’ she growled.
‘Then it’s probably a software update.’
Anthony’s head turned towards it. The light circled the device for a second time and then a third. It definitely hadn’t done that before. ‘I don’t understand,’ he muttered and examined it more closely.
‘You just told me we weren’t being recorded. What the hell, Anthony?’
But before he could respond, Anthony’s watch and Jada’s phone pinged. They had both received the same Push notification.
‘Good evening, Jada and Anthony Alexander,’ the voice began. ‘After careful consideration, Audite has decided your marriage has reached a stage where it might need assistance. As a result, Level One constant monitoring has now been automatically enabled. Please access your Smart Marriage Guide for further information.’
57
Roxi
‘Antoinette,’ whispered Roxi. ‘Antoinette? Are you okay?’
She knew it was a rhetorical question before the words fell from her mouth. Her husband’s mistress was clearly dead. She was lying on the floor, her head bent at an unnatural angle. The nape of her neck rested on the lip of the first step of the staircase, her chin was pressed down, as if in horizontal prayer. The life had drained from the woman’s eyes, leaving a glazed, sterile expression in its place.
She placed her fingers on the woman’s wrist then neck to search for a pulse and, when that failed, she tried to locate a heartbeat. ‘Antoinette?’ she asked again, this time more out of desperation than expectation. But there was, predictably, no reply.
The only person Roxi had ever watched die was her friend Phoebe at the hands of her violent husband. That had been a long and drawn-out death, not like this – if Roxi had blinked, she might have missed it. People only died like this in movies. It was why she was struggling to accept Cooper was no longer alive.
Panic beat its drum inside her head. She heard nothing else until the chiming of a grandfather clock distracted her. She turned quickly to look at it: only eight minutes remained before her device would recognize she had illegally bypassed the system and went back online, leaving a digital record of where she was.
She had to act fast, but what to do first? She had no experience to draw from and could hardly search the phrase ‘How to leave a murder scene without getting caught’ online. Besides, it wasn’t murder. She hadn’t deliberately hurt Cooper. But who would believe her? Was doing the right thing and calling for help worth losing her career over? Especially when it involved a woman who had been making her life hell? If Cooper hadn’t been trolling Roxi and sleeping with Owen – and she had near enough admitted the two were in a relationship – Roxi wouldn’t be staring down at her lifeless body now.
Assuring herself their fracas hadn’t been recorded by an Audite became her priority. She must ensure she would not be a victim to a system she so frequently championed. Cooper wasn’t wearing recordable technology but it didn’t mean there wasn’t any somewhere in the house. The clock was ticking. So she hurried from room to room, opening each door with the sleeve of her jumper and touching nothing else. She glanced at framed family photographs on the landing walls of a younger Cooper with three children, two boys and a girl, who grew older with each frame she passed. The last was a more recent shot, of her holding the hand of a young girl, likely her granddaughter. A man appeared in some – her late husband, Roxi assumed. There was also a framed Order of Service with the name David Cooper on it dating back two years.
Roxi looked to a digital clock by the side of Cooper’s four-poster bed. Six minutes remained. She ran back downstairs, carefully stepping over Roxi’s body again and scanning each room until finally she reached a downstairs office. Roxi hadn’t considered that Cooper might be a professional woman. This room contained an armchair and a large chesterfield-style leather sofa backing onto bifold doors and a lush green cottage-style garden. Its only technology was a laptop computer and a Smart watch lying next to it. She suddenly recalled Cooper’s admission she was a widow and realized the woman would not be subject to random recordings if she lived alone.
There were more picture frames in here although they contained certificates and were in her husband’s name. He had apparently been a university Professor in Sociology. However, only the last two were made out in Antoinette Cooper’s name. And they were enough to take the wind from her sails. Roxi clamped her hands over her mouth, parting them only very slightly to whisper the words, ‘Oh fuck.’
She might have got this very, very wrong. She had to make sure. Cooper’s laptop, a basic and outdated model, was still switched on. Roxi hurried towards it, pressing a key to disable the screensaver mode. It required a thumbprint recognition. With little choice, she ran with it to Cooper’s body and placed Cooper’s still-warm digit on the pad. The screen opened instantly and amongst the many alphabetized files, Roxi recognized a name.
She glanced at the grandfather clock again – she had to leave right now. She took one last look at the body, being careful to avoid Cooper’s eyes, and reassured herself that this did not resemble a crime scene. Instead it would appear as what it actually was, an unfortunate, fatal accident. Police would assume Cooper had simply lost her footing and landed badly.
Roxi opened the door and peered outside to find the street empty. She closed it behind her, wiping the knocker with her sleeve, then with her head down, she made her way back to her car and climbed inside before setting it to autonomous mode and programming it to drive itself towards a gym that had recently offered her free membership. She would spend the morning there, just in case an alibi was ever required. The burner phone absorbing her data revealed she had a little over a minute left before she would need to hang up and it reverted to her phone. It would be enough to get her far enough away from Cooper’s village.
