The Artificial Wife

by Rachael Eyre

  “C’mon,” Summer murmured. She deliberately barked his shins against the skirting board when she could. His sharp bony feet were slowly losing colour.

  Somehow we managed to haul that bag of dead meat across the landing and into his bedroom. The bed with its rumpled, biscuit crumbed covers was unbearably intimate; I couldn't bring myself to make it. Instead we dumped him on top of the covers, as though he'd had a restless night.

  The family portrait was face down. Had he knocked it over in temper, or was it us, barging into the room? There was no way of knowing.

  This done, we could lock the door behind us and pretend he had never existed. We slid to the floor, exhausted.

  “What now?”

  “I don't know about you, but I need to sleep.” She rubbed her eyes like a little girl. “Later, once the neighbours have gone, we’re going to CER.”

  She sounded so assured, I thought I must have missed something. “What's at CER?”

  “Vivaan’s wife.”

  I understood, or thought I did. “Sweetie, I know he hurt you, but is it worth it? We’re meant to be keeping a low profile, getting out of here. What can she possibly do?”

  She shook her head irritably. “You don't get it” - and to be honest, I didn't. But fretting over it wasn't going to help, so I followed her back up to the attic and slept.

  ***

  If anything, we overslept. It must have been eleven when we woke, a cosy tangle of arms and legs. As soon as our eyes met, we remembered.

  She wanted to clean the house top to bottom, but I talked her out of it. It'd seem more natural if someone came to look; more like a home than an aftermath. We washed, scrubbed away any traces. We wore the clothes from the pawn shop, creased but clean enough. By twelve we were ready to go.

  “One more thing,” Summer said. I rolled my eyes and told her to be quick. She ducked in and out of the study, nursing a secret smile.

  Leaving was easy this time. None of that painful, pushing, contracting and faltering - we passed straight out into cold drizzle. Summer refused to look back, but I couldn't help it. You couldn't tell from the house’s gaunt, blank face what lay inside.

  I wondered how long it would be before someone missed Robert and raised the alarm. Other than Vivaan, he hadn't a friend in the world. Thinking this, I almost pitied him.

  ***

  I'd expected another frantic chase across Lux, but CER was only a few blocks away. I guess it makes sense - all the brains tend to club together.

  Unlike Robert’s scruffy wing of academia, CER reeked of money. Emerald green and rudely shaped, it boasted more windows, workers and functionals than any building I'd seen. Standing in the foyer, watching the fountain gush over patently fake rocks, I felt exposed. Surely the humans would look at us, know us for what we were? And if not them, one of the functionals whirring past, like so many drones. Might they claim kinship?

  “I’d like to see Thao Huynh, please,” Summer said politely. The receptionist didn't ask for any identification, only gave her directions and waved her on. It'd be criminally easy for spies and saboteurs to sneak in. Again I cursed myself for my lurid imagination.

  Thao had an office to herself, which surprised me. I hadn't realised she was that important. As we took the lift up three floors, Summer silent and perfectly cont8ained, I wondered what she would be like. I knew what I thought of Vivaan, but that was the sour fruits of experience. She presumably loved him, shared her life with him. Would she be a creature of prey too?

  “Are we doing the right thing?”

  “I'm sure of it,” Summer said. She gave my hand a quick squeeze.

  The lift stopped, decanted us. Thao’s office was directly opposite. The door was already open, offering a glimpse of the room beyond.

  It was messy, but not in the stale, frigid way of Robert’s house. This was a temple to chaotic creativity: easels bursting onto the floor, blueprints tacked up, half finished models everywhere. And sitting in the centre, watching us intently through chunky dark glasses, was the woman herself.

  She was short - at a guess, an inch or two shorter than me. Her hair was choppy and multicoloured; she wore a string vest, canvas cutoffs and a gallery of tattoos. Frankly I'm amazed she fancied Vivaan, or men at all, but there you go.

  “Can I help you?” she asked. She hadn’t the faintest idea what we were doing there, and to be honest, neither did I.

  It was like we'd swapped places. Summer asserted herself, I hung shyly back. “My name is Summer and this is Elle.” Her voice was loud and impeccably clear. “We’re arties.”

  “Summer!” I exclaimed. So much for passing.

  “Nice to meet you.” We'd clearly interrupted something - her wrist was dotted with ink and her eye kept flitting to the clock. “What brings you to CER?”

  Summer must have been rehearsing, it came out that swiftly and smoothly. “We used to belong to Robert Percival. He mistreated us, so we left.”

  Thao wrinkled her nose. To our utter astonishment, she burst out laughing. “Good one! Viv, are you hiding somewhere? Come out, you daft git!”

  Her voice was so affectionate and admiring, as though Vivaan was a lovable scamp whose greatest offence was a practical joke. I ached for her. They were genuinely happy together. We were about to destroy that.

  “It's not a prank,” Summer said. She had seen it too, and bitterly regretted her mission. “Robert was unable to find a girlfriend to his liking. Your husband said he should get a robot wife, but he didn't really mean it. He was trying to be funny. Robert thought he was serious.”

  Thao’s smile faded. “That sounds like him.”

  For the next ten minutes Summer described what her life had been. You know the details, I won't repeat them. But this was news to Thao. I've never seen anyone age so much over the course of one conversation. She was convinced. We had her.

  We could have left it at that. But she had to ask, “Did Viv know about this?”

  “I …” Faced with destroying a stranger’s happiness, Summer couldn't do it. The words rattled in her voice box, stilled.

  Thao was a good woman. She deserved to know the truth. It was still the hardest thing I have ever had to do.

  “Your husband assaulted Summer,” I said. ‘Your husband’ was a convenient label - a legal construct, nothing to do with the man who made her lunches or cuddled her on the sofa. She was staring at me, stupefied; I felt like I was shouting. “He nearly raped her.”

  She shook her head, wetted her lips. “Viv’s not like that, whatever Robert might be.” Anger flashed across her face. “You've had your little laugh, now you can fuck off.”

  I started to shuffle out, defeated, but Summer had a hidden weapon. “It was a month ago. The eighteenth?”

  You rarely see someone fall out of love. Watching the facts line up, Thao’s horror and disbelief, I felt like an intruder. We had no right to witness something so private.

  Evidently she thought the same. “Can I have a moment?”

  We stepped out into the corridor, guilty and chastised. We couldn't hear her cry but she blew her nose a few times. We didn't speak, only held hands. I knew what she was going through, having suffered betrayal myself. I've never felt as low.

  I'd counted two thousand diamonds on the carpet when she called us back in. Her face was blotchy, her nose inflamed, but she spoke calmly and levelly. You couldn't help admiring her.

  “Thank you for telling me. Is there anywhere you can go? Anyone who can help you?” she asked.

  “We can't go back where we came from,” Summer said feelingly.

  She nodded, expecting nothing less. I wondered if we were the first artificials who had come to her for help. Somehow I doubted it.

  She pulled a piece of paper out of her desk drawer and scrawled across it. “Take this. It should cover the costs of anywhere you need to go, no questions asked.”

  We gaped at the cash tot. It was more than generous - it was positively lavish. “You don't have to do this,” Summer said.


  “I want to.” It wasn't motivated purely by kindness. She wanted us far away - somewhere she wouldn't be reminded. “Make your own lives, set yourselves free.”

  “We’ll never forget this,” I said.

  “No.” Her composure cracked; she turned so we wouldn't see her cry. “Neither will I.”

  Vivaan: The Beast of Brotherton Row

  There are days you never forget, no matter how hard you try. My mother’s death from a massive stroke, sitting in her favourite armchair. The day I flunked my degree, meaning I couldn't be an engineer. But most relevantly, in the interests of this story, the day my marriage ended.

  It was strikingly like that evening with Robbie months before. I left work early, stopped off at a bar. I expected the usual banter from Thao: “Another one? Are you sure you're not a full blown alchie?”

  She flew at me the instant I let myself in. No kissing, no teasing. She was so furious I couldn't make out the words.

  “I told you not to hang out with that degenerate. I warned you. But …” She burst into tears, knuckled her eyes. “How could you do this to me? To her?”

  My blood slowed. I knew what this was about. I wanted to die.

  “Don't weasel out of it! She gave me the date, the eighteenth. Those scratches - that was no mugger. That was a woman fighting you off, mid rape!”

  “Thao, I -”

  “Don't lie to me!” she screamed. “Don't you fucking dare! I had to stand there and listen to a pair of arties tell me you'd raped one of them. Have you any idea what that's like?”

  I tried to hold her but she pushed me away. “I can't touch you. I can't look at you. You disgust me!”

  I was in tears. I couldn't bear it. “Please, Thao. We can work through this -”

  “No, we can't.” She was rational now, and that's when I knew it was over. “You want to know why? I'll always be wondering. If you could do that to something that looks like a woman, what's to stop you from doing it to one of my nieces? To me?”

  “It's not the same. It was a victimless crime -”

  “It is. You wanted that artie, you hurt her because she said no. I can't live with someone who thinks like that. I definitely can't love him.”

  There was no point arguing. She had decided as soon as she had heard, before I'd walked in the door.

  “You should go,” she said. “I want to make this as quick and painless as possible.”

  ***

  I spent two nights in a filthy bedsit, drinking mediocre wine and watching Spike prowl the scorched carpet. I'd smuggled her out in my suitcase as a consolation prize.

  I didn't deserve this. It was all Robbie. His moronic scheme had ruined my life, destroyed my marriage. The drunker I got, the more I pictured him, his passive aggressive superiority. I yelled and broke glasses. My neighbour banged on the wall.

  Even once I'd sobered up, I wanted to see him. Why should I suffer the consequences of his actions? Why shouldn't he feel my pain? He was on sabbatical, he'd gloated about it the last time we'd met. He'd be at home, forcing the two bots to do goddess knows what.

  That morning I called in sick, doing the obligatory croaky voice. I'd never done it before and I could tell Amro didn't believe me. Who cares what he thought?

  Having washed, dressed, and eaten, I set out for Robbie’s. I took a longer, lopsided route where I wouldn't run into anyone I knew. It was deliberately timed for eleven, when he would knock off for his first tea break of the day.

  I strode up the drive, clattered the brass lion head. Nothing. But he liked to dawdle, to be infuriating. I waited.

  Four minutes. This was getting ridiculous; no one takes that long to answer the door. And wouldn't he get Summer to do it anyway? It wasn't like her to shirk her duties, even if she had guessed it was me.

  The house was oddly still. All the curtains were drawn and the windows shut. I wandered down the alley to peer in at Robbie’s study. He always had his lamp on, whatever the time of day or year.

  Nothing. A chill was beginning to creep down my neck; I tried to reason it away. He'd gone for a walk. He was picking up his newspaper. He was visiting someone. But who did he ever see, other than me?

  I climbed over the garden gate and went to the back door. There was a red clay pot filled with soil, like a plant that never bothered to grow. I rooted in the dirt - as I thought. The key to the back door, in case Robbie had done something senile with his keys. I fitted it into the lock and let myself in.

  “Robbie?” I called.

  A second or two, then the smell hit me. It was unbelievable, dark and putrid. If I'd still believed he was alright - having a nap, lost in a book - that thought fled. Nothing living stank like that. I had to get help.

  “Emergency,” I gabbled into the speaker stick. “I'm at a friend’s house - I have a key. There's this terrible smell … I think something's happened.”

  The power of a posh address! The police arrived in five minutes - two tall women, not bad looking in a strapping sort of way. The younger one nearly gagged; the older one creased her nose. “Do you know where he might be?”

  “I didn't want to look, to be honest. He's not in his study.”

  They split up, the blonde one searching the ground floor, the brunette going upstairs. I hovered after the blonde, finding her attractive, but she wasn't interested. She was very thorough, checking the unlikeliest places.

  Something lay on the desk in the study, pride of place. A crisp white manuscript, freshly typed. “The Artificial Wife,” she read. “Writer, is he?”

  “He was an academic.” This was it for Robbie. He was an academic, he had been my friend.

  She riffled through the pages - evidence, I suppose - and let out an involuntary gasp. She slammed the pages down as though she had been stung.

  “Known him long, had you?” Her tone and manner had changed. She was cool, wary.

  “Since uni. He was my oldest friend.”

  “Jess, I need you,” the other one called from the landing. Jess left me, mumbled apologies, and hurried upstairs. They were speaking to each other - the older one said, “We’ll have to force entry.” Jess hissed, “He was writing a book, Pam. I read some of it. What a fucking nut.”

  A crash, the sound of wood splintering. The stench, kept at bay until now, spilled out in sickening waves.

  “Bloody hell,” Pam breathed.

  “How long do you reckon he's been there?”

  “Dunno. A few days?”

  “What, and gone off that quickly?”

  ***

  I lost control of events after that. He was pronounced dead on the scene, in an advanced state of decay. The autopsy revealed he had been struck on the head with a blunt instrument. He had fallen from a height, possibly down stairs.

  The stepladder, it must have been. Even before the police had gone up there and surrendered the attic’s secrets, I saw how it must have been. Discovery, a struggle. It was probably the little one, lashing out to protect her lover. Summer didn't have it in her.

  The second day they searched the attic. Sympathy for Robbie, already scant, plummeted to zero. One woman had been imprisoned up there, possibly two. They found a mound of clothes: the beaded evening dress, the red silk gown, several of the wacky shirts I'd given him for a laugh. This, combined with the book, painted a picture of an abductor, a predator.

  The woman next door began to talk. Zelda Leibniz, seventy two, pawn shop proprietor. She had lived next door to Robbie for three years. She'd never liked him - he was surly, arrogant, didn't mix. She’d thought he was normal until she saw the young women in his garden. They only came out in the day time, when he was at work. One was tall, fair and extremely pretty. The other was dark, plump and attractive. Both were obviously being held against their will.

  You can imagine the furore, the more Ms Leibniz said. Fact was left standing, speculation flourished and took on a wild life of its own. Artists’ impressions, excerpts from Robbie’s book, sensational headlines. The tabloids gave him a nam
e, as they do with all the sex criminals: The Beast of Brotherton Row. They dug out the most unflattering snap they could find: Robbie giving a lecture, eyes flashing and teeth gnashing. This was him in the public eye: a monster, a devourer of women.

  I had to resign from the workshop. As soon as Amro read the papers and asked, “Isn't that your mate?” it was over. My bedsit was besieged by reporters, wanting me to describe the man I had known. “Mr Khatri, did you have any idea? Mr Khatri, do you have anything to say?”

  The one person who could have intervened and said they were only artificials was Thao. But she never said a thing.