Your Father Sends His Love (22 page)

Shirelle was already in the ambulance when Deanna linked her. Sirens and ticks and hums and beeps surrounding her. Declan, her friend with the calming hands and soft Belfast accent, sitting beside her. Deanna linked the first of the missed heartbeats. They all linked the missed heartbeats, they all linked the slow, slow realization of death. They revived her, they lost her, they revived her, they lost her. Then the link went down. The link went down and the music began to play. Something orchestral. Something specifically composed. Something written to amplify emotion. The credits rolled and Deanna dropped the link.
The messages from Joy and Rita and Ella began to flood her timelines.

Deanna woke early with thoughts only of David Collins. She messaged her boss to say she would be unable to work. She changed into her running shorts and T-shirt before realizing her usual routine would expose her. She linked an Ethiopian runner instead, a spindle of a man punishing a dewy track at dawn. She linked his slow-twitch muscles, his thin spikes entering the rubber, the steady heart rate and the rhythmic breath. She lasted twenty minutes. She had a message from her father, concerned for her well-being. He asked if she was all right, he'd heard she was ill. She told him not to worry, that she would be okay after some rest.

Deanna went back to the uLINK, added credits and accessed David Collins' profile. Usually, she didn't bother with profiles. There was too much posture in them, too much selling. David Collins had filled out the bare minimum of information. The accompanying video was the standard hour-long interview, but David Collins did not push himself in his answers. He looked disinterestedly into the camera and gave his brief, almost brusque replies.

He was twenty-nine. Unmarried. No lovers. Sex three times in his life, with three separate women. Not much of
a drinker. Not a smoker. No drugs of any description. His mother and father were no longer together. David Collins answered the questions in much the same way he'd constructed the coffee maker: effectively and with the minimum energy expended. The interview was designed to provoke emotion and memory, to flesh out a character, to give them motivation, to give them a sense of narrative. But David Collins offered nothing.

‘Why are you here?' the interviewer asked last of all. Collins paused. He tapped his fingers lightly on the kitchen table in front of him. He took a sip from his small beaker of water.

‘To be certain that I am here,' David Collins said. He smiled without humour or sadness. ‘Isn't that why everyone's here?'

Deanna added further credits and booted up his ‘selected recorded experiences' – an edited highlights package of what to expect from David Collins. It was the standard three hours, put together from the previous month's feed. She hit the link and settled down. She linked him walk the same eight flyblown and dusty streets, his pace slow and steady; linked him eat at the same cafe day after day, his over-salted lunches and dinners taken without enjoyment; linked him swim in a municipal swimming pool, his stroke rhythmic and
concise; linked him selling faded-plastic heirlooms, his posture poor on a wood and wire chair; linked him heading to his small apartment each evening, his nightly routine of teeth brushing, showering and bed at a sensible hour. She linked him and felt absolutely nothing, not a thing.

But then Sunday – there were people outside the small church, their clenched fists and clutched Bibles – she linked him walk to another small apartment, a man opening the door, Collins' father, clearly, and the man inviting him inside. At the moment of the father opening the door, Deanna felt something shimmer. Not the
basso crescendo
when someone's emotions are fully engaged; something more like a click. An errant pulse, perhaps. She linked David having a drink, eating at the table, then getting up to leave. The next week was exactly the same. The streets, the cafe, the office, the pool, the apartment, and then the Sunday visit; the same every week.

The father, Paul, opens the door. David experiences the shimmer and walks inside. They enter the kitchen and Paul pours a glass of beer for them both. A shepherd's pie browns under the grill.

‘So, how are you, son?' Paul says. ‘Winning?'

‘Fine, Dad. You?'

‘Fine.'

They say the same thing each week. The same three lines and then David drinks from his beer, as though grace has been said. Lunch is served. They talk. About their week, their work. David loads the dishwasher while Paul wipes down the surfaces and table. They shake hands at the door, a handshake that turns into an awkward embrace.

Deanna had promised herself she would only go through the profile and experiences. She had been clear with herself. She would not waste her day, a day to herself. She would not stay on the uLINK. She would do something else instead. Read a book. Take a long bath. Call her father. But she clicked the live link anyway. Without thought or self-justification.

David Collins was standing in the kitchenette. She linked him as he replaced the cracked screen and processor board of a mobile telephone. It was painstaking, delicate work. She linked him holding his breath and releasing it. The repair took almost two hours, his fingers thin and the screwdriver tiny, like a jeweller's. She linked him complete the job, put the telephone in a box and turn out the light. She linked his every thought as he walked through to the small bathroom.

I have enough food for the next five days. The recycling must go out tomorrow. My swimming shorts are drying in the bathroom.

Deanna linked him until the feed went down. She went to bed and slept as long and as dreamlessly as David Collins.

Her father was dressed as though their lunch was important: slacks and a pressed shirt, polished shoes. Deanna was there already, which surprised him, and she waved – she had practised this – across the restaurant. He waved back and weaved between the round tables. She'd chosen the place because they'd once eaten there, years before, and she remembered the food was good, or the atmosphere was good, or was it the chairs? Something about it, whatever it was, was good. And sitting there in the late afternoon sunshine, crunching ice from her iced water, a thick cloth napkin and two perfectly transparent wine glasses in front of her, something about it was good.

‘Well hello,' her father said, leaning down to kiss her. ‘You look wonderful.'

‘Thanks,' she said. ‘I was trying to remember, though. When was it we came here? The two of us?'

‘You and me?' he said, sitting down and placing his hands flat on the table. ‘Just the two of us?'

She nodded. He picked up the menu, the paper rolled into a horn.

‘I don't remember. Years ago, must be.'

‘I remember there was something good about it. Something was good.'

‘The fish is good here,' he said. ‘Maybe that's what it is?'

‘Possibly,' she said, though it didn't seem likely. It occurred to her that her father had no recollection of eating in the restaurant with her. She wondered what it would be like to link her father. What memories he would have, and how many would cross-check with hers. Her father smiled and held his hand out across the cream tablecloth, past the floral centrepiece.

‘I just wanted to say—'

‘Don't, Dad,' she said. ‘You don't have to. Let's just have lunch. Just the two of us, a nice lunch. I'm going to have wine. Treat myself.'

‘In that case,' he said, ‘so will I.'

He talked of his job – he worked for the land registry – of lunches he had eaten, of the people from her past he had seen. She was encouraging and kept the conversation going. They shared a starter.

‘I've met someone,' she said, halfway through her main course salad, interrupting her father's recounting of an intra-office feud.

‘You have?' he said. He put down his cutlery, took a small sip of wine.

‘Yes,' she said.

‘Well, that's great, love. Great. What's his name? How did you meet?'

‘I don't want to talk about it,' she said. ‘I just wanted you to know. I just wanted to tell you.'

‘You look happy,' he said picking up his knife and fork, his face slightly pinked from the wine and excitement. ‘I saw that as I came in through the door. You look . . . contented. I can't tell you how happy I am for you.'

Deanna swilled the wine in her glass and looked at her father. Steely hair brushed carefully to a parting, an open-neck shirt, a small shaving nick under his left earlobe. She had expected to feel something as she told him. Happiness at the joy she'd provoked. Excitement at the sharing of a confidence. A cruel sense of deception. But she hadn't. What she'd said had been a simple statement of the facts. Or at least an iteration of the facts. Her father's reaction was not important to her. She might as well have been David Collins telling his father there was a buyer for a Dyson vacuum cleaner. The delivery was the same. The same distinct ambivalence.

Her father ordered another glass of wine. She ordered one too but did not drink it. She let him talk. She let him describe meeting her mother, the old story coming out again. His long, sorry romantic tale. She let him talk. She let him get to the tears in his eyes, let him wipe them
on the thick cloth napkin, let him excuse himself to the bathroom.

Deanna told everyone she was going to the south of France. They wished her a pleasant holiday. They said it was a good thing to get away. She nodded and locked the door to her apartment and spent the next fourteen days with David Collins. Going to work, swimming, reading manuals, eating at the cafe, taking out the rubbish. She woke with him and slept with him, their two bodies in constant contact. She noticed a scar on his inside leg for the first time. She linked him change his energy supplier and buy a new pair of work trousers. She linked him talk to his father on the telephone and go to his father's house for lunch on Sundays.

That last Sunday, a message popped up on the interface.
David Collins has moved from basic rate to premium level one. Please add credits to continue.
She added the credits and continued. She linked him in his apartment, showering, the same as every other day. Soon she was leaving his apartment and walking to his father's house. But Deanna was unsettled by the message. The uLINK people had clearly seen she was hooked. They were going to extort her. They were going to punish her for loving David Collins.

David's father opened the door. David experienced the shimmer and walked inside. They went into the kitchen and Paul poured a glass of beer for them both. A shepherd's pie browned under the grill.

‘So, how are you, son?' Paul said. ‘Winning?'

‘Fine, Dad. You?'

‘Fine.'

Deanna linked him watch his father wipe the surface and table with a dishcloth. Usually he did this after the two men had eaten. The counter tops always stayed dotted with potato and meat until after lunch. She linked David watch Paul drink half of his beer in one lunge. She noticed Paul had also forgotten to put the ketchup and brown sauce on the otherwise-laid table. David took a sip of beer.