A Calculated Life (22 page)

There had to be at least one overlooked treasure, she thought, as she pushed open the door of the antiques shop.

“Hello. Need any help?” A slight woman wearing red, dark hair scraped back.

“I’m looking for a small birthday gift.” Excellent. No resident Freda; too small an enterprise. Something was bound to be undervalued. That’s how it worked. Antiques shifted from one source to another, from jumble stalls to junk shops, to general antiques dealers, to specialist dealers, and then the auction houses. Just like a food chain: everything progressively consumed by bigger and bigger beasts with larger appetites and tighter niches. But anyone with know-how and tenacity could make money by ferreting around in shops such as this.

“Does your friend collect anything in particular?”

“Not really. I’m hoping something will catch my eye.”

She made a broad sweep of the room anticipating that something would jump out. Her purchase had to be small so she looked to the random collections of objects on horizontal surfaces. Would these objects normally sit together in a home, she wondered? On a small bamboo table by the side of the woman, she saw a pot—simple and matte, almost pewter colored, just twelve centimeters high, a truncated cone with two angular handles attached at the rim and halfway down the slope of the cone. It was an Upchurch pot,
hand-thrown, Arts and Crafts, early twentieth century, worth the equivalent of one month’s salary for Dave. She looked at the base. Yes, it was Upchurch but valued correctly, unfortunately.

She moved around the room recognizing and then rejecting each fairly priced and each over-priced object in turn. There were five potential purchases she had to reject; they were too cumbersome, too fragile or too difficult to sell-on. This was not as easy as she’d imagined. Had she allowed sufficient time? In the corner of the room, farthest from the entrance, she noticed a tangle of jewelry crammed together as though the shop owner conceded that no single item had any particular merit. Jayna poked around among the tacky oddments.

“I have regulars who always buy a bit of something from that pile. You might find a present there. It’s all costume jewelry but it’s fun.”

“This is sweet,” said Jayna. Her heartbeat leapt. The brooch, thanks to decades of grime, merged easily with the neighboring tat, but there was no doubt: square, cut corners, with cobalt and white enamel stripes, a narrow checkerboard border. And, on the reverse, the impressed monogram, WW, just discernible: Wiener Werkstätte. There was little intrinsic value in the enamel or its copper base but Jayna had learnt that the lowliest materials could be transformed into an object of desire. She could see the hand of the designer (she was sure it was Josef Hoffmann) and she imagined him checking the brooch, handling it, turning it over, making sure it matched his intentions. Dave would survive for three months on this. Jayna walked to the counter. “I’ll take it.”

“I’ll knock a bit off for a new customer.” And she dropped the brooch into a small paper bag.

“Thanks. I’ll be sure to come again.” She slipped the tiny packet into her pocket. Perfect. Wiener Werkstätte—so easy to miss and so very easy to sell.

Reaching the edge of the terminal piazza fifteen minutes too early for her shuttle, she sat on the front edge of a bench that was already burning hot from the morning sun. She held the brooch in her pocket and breathed deeply, steadily; impatient now. People criss-crossed around her. Their pace was relaxed and they wore less formal clothing than during the week. As she sizzled in the sunshine, her eyes were drawn to an elderly man standing incongruously at the center of the piazza. He wore a pinstriped suit that would surely have been his most expensive item of clothing at some time in the past. The jacket hung slightly off center, making his shoulders appear inadequate and she imagined how twenty years ago his frame and bulkier muscles would have better matched the suit’s size and former elegance. And with a sharper haircut and polished shoes, he’d have projected the image of a confident, even strutting, corporate executive.

He removed a bag from his trouser pocket and dropped seeds at his feet. The signal was detected and an army of sparrows and pigeons massed around him. There he stood, unflinching, as the birds clambered over his feet in their frenzy. The simple fact that he dropped the seeds, instead of throwing them a few feet away, marked him out. He let the birds scramble across his shoes; feathers touched the fabric of his shiny suit. It didn’t take much to delineate madness. She felt edgy. And for a few seconds, she re-read the scene before her. No longer was the man demonstrating an act of kindness towards pathetic beggars. No, these birds had merely broken their carefree flight across the metropolis on an impulse. They probably were not even hungry. The solitary male figure needed them far more than they needed him. It was all a matter of perception. Passers-by checked him out. A group of teenagers sneered and, in the next instant, he was banished from their thoughts.

With five minutes to the shuttle departure, she set off towards the terminus, crossed the concourse, and strode towards the platform. Much as she longed to see Dave once again, she was equally
eager for the shuttle trip. In fact, the journey would transform her mindset into a perfect state of readiness for meeting him. The open spaces, the big horizons. Anyone witnessing so much sky, she thought, must experience…must actually feel free, alive, physically. She felt it now; it was a tingly and light sensation. But this quickening was soon arrested as she took her seat in the grungy carriage. These long-horizon feelings were a trick, she decided.
Our emotions kid us that life is better than the sum of its unremarkable parts
. She cast her thoughts back to the old man in his weary suit.
Our delusions are our best defense
.

As the shuttle picked up speed through the inner suburbs, she imagined the homely interiors that streaked past. Some, no doubt, would be even more beautiful than the Slaters’. She imagined themes for different living spaces and she scattered through them, on the thinnest of floating glass shelves, many of the antiques she’d just seen and touched, creating multiple fantasies of domestic perfection. What would her favorite theme be, she wondered? As though her mind were stuck in a groove, she was drawn once again to the accoutrements of coffee making—starting with an array of traditional grinders.
I’d collect coffee cups whenever I went on holiday. Even better, I’d photograph interesting cups of coffee served to me in spectacular settings, or photograph Dave drinking coffee. And, definitely, cups of coffee shot from above—before and after—showing the perfect frothy milk toppings next to the drained cups with their subtle staining. They’d look pretty restrained. I’d hang the photos on muted gray walls. I can just see it…too much of one thing though. A sub-theme to act as a foil; not a complete contrast, just something that picks out one aspect of the coffee idea and inverts it in some way. Something that contrasts with the harsh shiny surfaces of crockery, more textured and battered—driftwood or old furniture. Or perhaps I should offset the mass-produced character of the crockery with hand-made earthy ceramics. The Upchurch would be so perfect. Then a couple of textile pieces to soften the overall ceramic concept. I can see myself in the room. I’m
wearing chalky-green, baggy trousers and a frayed, white T-shirt and I’m a foil myself to the crisp aesthetic of the photographs. Just so.

She awaited the sharp transition between the suburbs and farm territories and when the shuttle crossed the boundary she gaped. And she continued to gape as the shuttle passed through the first enclaves. Less shocked this time by the squat, featureless townscapes, she noticed more clearly the emergence of citrus groves that she knew stretched westwards, out to the Welsh mountains. She tried to name the varieties but the speed of the shuttle smudged her attempts into guesses. Who would have thought, she mused, that citrus would find a home, here, so far from China? And two sentences of prose trickled across her thoughts, written thousands of years before:
The baskets were filled with woven ornamental silks. The bundle contained small oranges and pummeloes
.

C. medica (citron), C. grandis or C. maxima (pummelo), C. reticulata (mandarin/tangerine), and C. aurantiifolia (lime). There are just four ancestral genetic species for the entire gamut of citrus that spread across the globe from China and South East Asia. The lack of any sterility barrier between varieties has resulted in countless wild and cultivated hybrids.

She listed some of the crossings: citron and lime crossing to become the lemon; pummelo and mandarin forming both the sour orange and the sweet orange (an odd fact, she thought); then, the sweet orange combining with its progenitor, the pummelo, to make the grapefruit, and with its other progenitor, the mandarin, to form the tangor; grapefruit and mandarin crossing to make the tangelo (the variant Jamaican tangelo known unkindly as the Ugli fruit); mandarin and lime forming the Chinese lemon…

A vast and intimate family, she thought, or total breeding chaos.

Dave lifted his arm and spread his palm wide in salutation. The thrill of recognition sent needles shooting down from her neck, through her arms and her hands, and out through her fingertips. She offered a handshake as he approached, and gestured backward with her head in the direction of another passenger who had alighted. “Keep it formal. Just in case.”

“Okay, but tell me, Jayna,
what’s
going on? That’s all bank account stuff in that file, isn’t it?”

Ignoring his question she said, “My friend Veronica was taken away on Friday.”

“Who? Is she…same as you?”

She nodded. “Let’s walk through the market and then we’ll be okay to go back to your place.”

He brushed his hand against hers. “Jayna, what are you up to?”

She looked across the expanse of derelict car park towards the housing blocks. She would attempt to explain everything before they reached the packed streets. “Things aren’t looking good. We could be on the verge of a complete recall. The Constructor must be getting nervous…At the very least, random checks might start and I reckon I’d soon come to their notice.”

“Why’s that?”

“It sounds stupid but my stick insects are a bit of an anomaly. And our canteen assistant might decide to say something.”

“What about?”

“That I’m more interested in the food than the other residents are.”

“Doesn’t sound like much.”

“I know. But it could be enough. And, I lied to my friends about last weekend and that may be picked up if the Constructor really starts checking.” She pressed on. “So…I’ve been siphoning money from several bank accounts, buying shares. It’s all detailed in the Sarcophagus file.”

“Jesus!” He barked a laugh. “How much?”

“Plenty.”

He picked up a stone and threw it, with all his strength, high into the air.

“Dave, don’t attract attention.”

“Can you get away with it?”

“Please, Dave. Listen. I know it sounds impossible but I have to disappear, away from the city. I want to hide out in the enclaves, permanently.”

“What, with me? Wouldn’t they make the connection? You visiting today…”

“No. I don’t want to implicate you in any of this. I’ll disappear somewhere else and when it’s safe, if you want to, we can make contact.”

“But where, Jayna? You don’t know your way around.”

“I’ve got some help…He’s already set up a safe house.”

Dave stopped, and turned to her. “
He
? Who’s
he
?”

“Another simulant. Sunjin, from C6. He works for the Metropolitan Police and wants out. He’s the one who told me about Veronica; found me on Friday and he’s really upset. He took a huge risk approaching me.” She hoped this would placate him. “And Sunjin even told me the address of his safe house. But you can see, Dave, if he’s already figured me out then others will too.”

He fell quiet and kicked, or rather stubbed, a stone upwards. It followed a steep arc and fell into the center of a discarded tire. “This is getting fucking complicated. Can you trust this guy?”

“I think so. I have to now.”

“Look, Jayna, I’ve had enough of Mayhew McCline. You know that. And if you can pull this off…with the money…”

“I’m getting bio data from Sunjin, for the bank accounts. What about—?”

“It’s okay. I removed the Sarcophagus file from Mayhew McCline. I’ve deleted the file from the tower. I didn’t want to keep it at home either so I’ve found a safe place—”

“Don’t tell me for now.”

“Right.”

“It’s all happening quicker than I expected.”

“So when are you…?”

“It’s unbelievable…but I think soon. It’s just too risky to delay. Sunjin and I will have to disappear at the same time. So Saturday, ideally. And then, after a while you can join us, if you decide that’s what you want. Or, we’ll come and find you.”

“I’ll just walk out of Mayhew McCline?”

“I’ve thought about that. You should get yourself sacked for bad time-keeping. Or pick an argument with someone like Hester. She’d demand dismissal.”

“Yeah, that would work. They’d just forget about me then.”