There were bells and whistles these days, of course. Extra complications. The spyware had to be in place, and some nasty malware alongside it, so I could watch my targets, intercept their emails, ghost my own so they looked like they were coming from someone else, disappear and kick over the traces if I had to. There were all the targets I had to keep tabs on, their lives and their friends and the lives of their friends. There were all the identities I needed for the bank accounts, the identities I needed for the social media accounts and the identities I needed to rent the place I was living in and go about the various daily lives I went about. There was so much stuff that it took a decent spreadsheet or an extraordinary brain to split reality from the false worlds I’d created and keep each of them in place.
I didn’t like the idea of putting it all down on a spreadsheet, so it was a good thing I had an extraordinary brain. And it was worth it, because unlike the change-of-address scams with their hours standing outside waiting, the invoice scams didn’t take me out of the house, and the rewards could be sizeable. If I picked the right targets and played my hand well, half a dozen a year would be enough to keep me going.
I logged out and gave Simon five minutes, which turned into half an hour on the Falcon. We were at a delicate stage, but I was enjoying it almost as much as he was. I relished these difficult phases, these fragile moments which could set back hours of hard-won construction under the wrong amount of pressure, that moment of stepping back, hand in hand, to observe what we had created.
I knew my scams took money off innocent people and I wasn’t self-righteous enough to convince myself I was teaching them a useful lesson. But playing with Simon wiped me clean. Half an hour with him meant I could log back in with a smile on my face.
I logged back in and took a look at Graham. For Graham, I was Anna Simons, and Anna Simons was almost the right me. Less wrong than Lisa Atkins, at least. Graham was an old reality, one I’d tried to shake off, one I had shaken off, I thought, and twenty seconds scanning his Facebook profile didn’t make me wrong.
But Graham knew even more than who I’d been when I’d been Anna Simons. Graham knew about Penny Haslam.
And right or wrong, Penny Haslam was where I’d begun.
4: 1988
I LIE IN the front room, on the big, dirty sofa that’s as familiar to me as my own skin. Mummy sits beside me. Daddy sits on the other chair, the uncomfortable one with the cushion that flattens when you perch on it, that presses back against your bottom as if it were trying to tell you to get off. We sit and lie in silence, the only sound the hiss of passing cars sending the water in plumes onto the pavement. I squeeze my eyes as tightly as I can and try to picture those plumes, to imagine them green and purple and pink, to see in them anything other than grey and black and sodium-orange. I cannot.
They think I am asleep.
Up until twenty minutes ago, my head rested on Mummy’s legs, but she shrugged it off when she stood to refill her glass. She didn’t move it gently, my head, the head she’d told me earlier this afternoon was the most precious thing in the world. She shifted her legs and glanced down at me as I watched her through narrow slits, and then she just stood, and my head rose and fell onto the cushion, unheld, uncaught. Maybe I’d done something wrong, but if I had, I didn’t know what it was. She returned a minute later, glass in hand, and sighed as she sat down beside me, and the silence enveloped us again.
I don’t mind the silence, not really. It’s better than the noise that came earlier.
I’d seen her before Daddy had. I’d heard the sound of the key in the door while I was sitting on the kitchen floor, playing with the old toy soldiers that Daddy had told me were from a war a long time ago and had belonged to his daddy’s daddy, and were very valuable and in no circumstances to be lost or broken or treated with anything but respect. I’d remembered the sting of his hand on my bare legs the last time I’d broken something – a grey, coffee-stained mug that was already chipped. I’d remembered the handprint that had taken minutes to fade away, and the dull aching throb that had taken longer still. I knew I’d have to be careful. So I’d lined them up and counted them, and then I’d marched them up and down the kitchen, up and down, up and down, avoiding the pile of dirty clothing that had sprung up along one wall, counting them and checking them in one by one as they completed their journeys. I’d heard the key in the lock and frozen, and then I’d remembered Daddy was upstairs in bed, and I’d frozen some more.
After a moment I’d unfrozen and crawled towards the front door, casting nervous glances back at the soldiers, terrified lest they desert while my back was turned. I knew that word, “desert”, I’d heard it a lot, since Mummy had left, and I’d been confused because I’d thought it was something you ate, but when Daddy said it he didn’t sound like he was talking about cakes and chocolate. I crawled around the corner and arrived in sight of the front door as it swung open, and there she was, my mummy, the deserter herself.
She stood there and took a deep breath, and then stepped inside. She had a small plastic bag in one hand – I looked at her other hand, and behind her, for the suitcase she’d left with, but I couldn’t see it. She wasn’t smiling but she didn’t look sad, either, and I tried to see inside her head and find out what she was thinking and how she felt, but her mouth was closed and her eyes were hard, so I couldn’t get in. She turned from side to side, taking in the walls and the corridor in front of her, and then down, so that she finally spotted me looking up at her and the strange expression on her face shifted in an instant. She smiled, her eyes burst to life, and she reached down to me and lifted me up and pushed her hand through my hair, which hurt, because Daddy hadn’t brushed it the whole time she’d been gone, and said “There it is, that precious head, the most precious thing in the world, there it is and here I am. Mummy’s home, Penny. Mummy’s home.” She held me there for a long time, her face in my hair, her face against mine, her hands squeezing my arms and my legs, her grip so tight I couldn’t turn my head to look at her, so when she shook, suddenly, I didn’t know if she was laughing or crying. “Don’t you look thin?” she said, and I nodded, but I couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
I could smell her breath, though, even turned away from her. She smelled of whisky.
Eventually she put me down and took me by the hand to the kitchen, where I watched her see the toy soldiers and the pile of washing and go hard again, for a moment, her whole body still like the dead bird I’d found by the pond that time. She reached into the plastic bag, and when her hand came back out again, instead of a bottle there was a cake in it. She hummed to herself as she washed up some plates and a knife, and she gave the kitchen table a quick wipe with a rag she’d found in the pile of washing, and then we sat down at the table and ate cake. I finished the piece she’d given me, and looked at her expectantly, still hungry – I’d been hungry most of the time she’d been away – and she cut another slice for me, and I finished that, too. All she said, the whole time we were eating, was “It’s OK. Penny. Mummy’s home now.”
Daddy came down before we’d finished the cake. I don’t know if we’d woken him, I don’t think we had, because I hadn’t shouted or screeched – he always told me off when I shouted or screeched, they both did, so I was careful not to when they might hear – and I didn’t remember Mummy shouting or screeching either. We heard his footsteps on the stairs, the creak, the steady plod as he descended, and I watched Mummy turn to stone. When I looked from her face to the doorway he was standing there staring at her.