The Paper Eater

GOOD MORNING

– Good morning, Voyagers! That’s Fishook on the tannoy, sounding perky. – We are now approaching Atlantican waters.

My heart sinks.

– In five days’ time we will dock in Harbourville.

As the music crackles in, I reach for the transcript of another call to the Customer Hotline. They’re all the same. I’ve chewed thousands, so I know.

They all taste the same too.

I knew Jed Hawkes.

He arrived on board the same day as me, after we were all rounded up in the Mass Readjustment. A rough-and-ready sort of bloke, but likeable. He suffered from seasickness. He wasn’t resilient. He didn’t have the particular grim kind of humour or the hostile-from-birth attitude to the system that you need to survive here without coming unscrewed. Unlike many of the Atlanticans, he wasn’t prepared to kid himself that he was actually guilty – if not of the charges against him, then of something, at least.

A lawn mower, misapplied to a rockery.

He killed himself last year.

– Man Overboard, went the cry.

So then what, goes John. We’ve been silent for an hour. Me chewing, him sewing, both trying not to think. The needle flashing in the light.

I sigh.

– Well, I was allowed home after that. Under house arrest. They tagged me with this sort of ankle-bracelet with an alarm system. (John nodded knowledgeably.) – They’d gutted the place by then. My family photos, the lot.

I gulp, remembering how grief-stricken I’d been. How bereft.

– Anyway, it didn’t feel like home any more, without the family there, I said. It was like they’d never existed. And then to cap it all, Keith buggered off.

– Keith?

– The cat.

– Where’d he go?

– Next door. With Mrs Dragon-lady.

– Who’s she?

– Neighbour woman. It’s what Tiffany used to call her, as a kid. Anyway I guess Keith went round to her place because he was getting old, and he could read the writing on the wall.

– He could read?

Is he stupid or what?

– No, you dork. What I mean is, they’re intuitive, aren’t they, cats. He must’ve sensed a downward spiral. He did come back, though, just the once.

– What for?

– To be sick on the carpet. I laughed, remembering. – I yelled at him at the top of my voice. He shot out of the cat-flap so fast it rattled for ages.

– What happened to him?

– I didn’t see him again for a while. He went back to Mrs Dragon-lady. She fed him that addictive dried stuff.

– How d’you know?

– I inspected his sick.

John’s mouth twisted.

– And so then what did you do?

– I just mooned about the house. I had cabin fever. I microwaved these horrible meals that Gwynneth’d left at the back of the freezer, pasta bake and that bollocks, way past their eat-by date. I didn’t have any appetite.

I remember pining for the Hoggs, and getting all stir-crazy. I remember thinking about what Tiffany had said at the forcie station. Just the thought that she wasn’t my real daughter turned my stomach. It explained why Gwynneth had kept Tiffany away from me like her own private doll. Why she’d asked if I wanted her to keep the baby. Could it actually be that she thought I knew? Another question kept nagging me too and I didn’t have the answer to it. Would I have been a dad to Tiff, if I’d known the truth? Everything was roiling about inside me. But no need to tell John all that.

– Then after two days, I said, the phone rang.

John looked up, a tiny purple sequin poised on the end of his huge finger.

The meeting took place in the Snak Attak. Pike had suggested it on the phone.

– You go there, as I understand it, from time to time, he went. For spring onion and noodle soup, and to read the news online?

I wondered how long I’d been under surveillance.

– All right, I said. No problem. Come and see the criminal in his natural habitat. A rare species of white-collar fraudster. Won’t bite.

He must have liked that, because he laughed. His voice was strong, meaty – like a movie star’s.

– See you there at four.

It was one of those hazy summer days when the air was more clogged than usual, but the peppermint felt fresh, carried on a light breeze. You could still feel the buzz in the air from the Festival – a sort of success aura, I suppose you’d call it. The people I passed were smiling. I went there on foot, skirting the rim of the purification zone. I’ll miss this place if I have to leave it, I thought – and although I didn’t reckon it would come to that, because I was naive and I wasn’t thinking straight, I felt a big pang of hurt just at the idea. Like everyone, I’d found over the years that the zone had grown on me, until one day I’d realised I loved it. I loved the white watchtowers, the clean perimeter fence, the sudden dark hole of the crater itself. I loved its lines, its angles, I loved the way it was high-tech but without screaming at you. It was like a very high-class toilet, I suppose – but I mean that in a positive way. You could see why it’d won so many awards. As for the rumours about Marginals ending up there – well, there are all sorts of urban myths, aren’t there? Like the stories about reclaimed land getting over-stressed and caving in on itself. All countries have their Chinese whispers, but on an island they’re worse. On an island, there’s nowhere to run. Things get trapped, and fester.

I was on Tarre Street by now. I must have sensed Pike before I saw him, because something made me look up and squint through the mist.

And there he was, outside the Osaka Snak Attak, just thirty metres ahead: a tall figure standing on the pavement with his back to me, pretending to look at the plastic replicas of the food in the window. He must have sensed me coming or seen my reflection in the glass because suddenly he swivelled and shone his round face on me like a receiver dish. It was completely blank. As I came closer, I focused on his tie, for some reason – perhaps so as not to look at his face. It was silk, bright yellow, with curious black dots and squiggles on it.

– They’re punctuation marks, he went, by way of greeting. He smiled, a big fat semicircle, but I didn’t know what to say, and just gawped at the tie like an idiot. – Quotation marks, brackets, asterisks and so on… Somewhat stylised, of course, he said.

And he held out a hand for me to shake. The way he did it was like he was someone important. Someone charismatic. Embarrassingly, I felt turned on. Don’t ask me why. Nerves, I guess. When we went in, he held the door open for me, like I was a girl.

The Snak Attak, proprietors Mr and Mrs Najima, stinks of soy sauce, and there’s nothing to see through the window but retail outlets and electric trams. It’s clean enough inside, but Pike wiped the red plastic bench-seat before he sat down, like it was seeping infection, and I began to feel tacky, for being the type of person who’d come here for noodles. I could be a salesman from the hi-fi superstore up the road, having a late lunch break. Pike could be one of the bosses from headquarters. Firing me.

Defensively, I ordered tea, sushi, and vegetable tempura from little Mrs Najima.

– Nice have a friend today, she said, her eyes sizing up Pike. You could tell he impressed her; he was the type women find attractive.

Pike ordered coffee, but when she brought it, he took one sip, winced, and pushed it aside. And when my order came his eyes moved away while I chopsticked in my nosh. As I thought, a man of class. And dangerous too. Straight off, I clocked him for the sort of bloke who starts his career at the age of three, doing five-hundred-piece jigsaws, moves on to brain-teasers and crosswords, excels at bridge, plays poker like Fu Man Chu, and reaches his peak in the egghead world of people-management. There was a tiny metal Bird of Liberty clipped to his lapel, but apart from that there was nothing to show he was from Them.

– It’s always interesting to get out of Head Office from time to time, he grinned. Meet the customers. Catch the vibes. See what’s cooking on the streets. Meet characters like you.

– Characters, I grunted. So I’m a specimen, eh.

I kept on eating. He kept on watching.

– Now let me guess something, Harvey, he said after a while in his smoothie voice.

Straight away I knew I didn’t like that idea. So I grunted again, in a way I hoped was discouraging. It didn’t work.

– You experienced some kind of trauma, around the age of nine? he went.

I sat back in my chair a bit then, folded my arms, tried to look weary and cynical.

– A bullying incident, perhaps? he said all soft.

For some reason the words sliced right into me, and I felt a ball swell in my throat from the memory of the Welcome Centre. I looked out through the window: a silent tram slid past. The people on it all know where they’re going, I thought. But I haven’t a clue, thanks to this bastard.

– A bullying incident, goes Pike, in which you were reminded forcibly of your orphan status? Your ineligibility for fostering?

Craig Devon. The biology pond. How did he know?

– After which your family, he says, the adult members first, suddenly appeared? And offered you a solution?

Christ, he was a fucking mind-reader!

– And then, as a teenager, you discovered they might have financial possibilities? Is that how your little family network started?

– It wasn’t little, I snapped.

He didn’t reply to that. He just watched me, while I ate, which was all I could do, to buy some time, to collect my thoughts. I tried to do it slowly, but I was nervous, gulping big bits of snaily mushroom whole, getting all bejonkered with the chopsticks.

– Families are marvellous organisms, he went. He stopped and smiled, as though remembering something. And he was. – I myself had a mother who was a large and very important influence on my life, he said. My father being absent from the picture. (He had a fond-memory face now.) – My mother died, sadly, when I was quite young. Like yours.

– Well, I don’t remember her, I said. End of story.

– End of story? he said, smiling. I tend to think it’s rather the beginning.

I didn’t like that idea, so I concentrated on my plate while he went on.

– Losing one’s mother is a terrible shame, he said. A terrible shame for you, never to have known yours.

– What you don’t know, you don’t miss, I said.

– Do you really think that, he said. I don’t. My mother, for example – even though she died when I was young – taught me some very important lessons. (He leaned forward, almost like we were mates. Lowered his voice.) – It was at her suggestion, for example, that I joined the Corporation, said Pike.

– What, I went, puzzled. How come? It didn’t exist then.

Pike leaned back. His face had suddenly gone all faraway.

– She knew she was dying. But she was something of a strategist. She could see what lay ahead. She left me a sort of blueprint. An elaborate flow-chart, he smiled. She knew what interested me, and where my talents lay. And she recommended that, when I was an adult, I should join a large organisation which I respected. He grinned. – Wasn’t I lucky?

– You sure were, I said, and I take my hat off to your marvellous mother. Just think, without that blueprint of hers, you wouldn’t be here, would you, watching a fraudster eating sushi.

He seemed to like that.

– No, he laughed, I probably wouldn’t.

When I’d finished the sushi, and swished it down with bitter tea, he smiled again. Then with a sudden swift movement, like a magician, he leaned forward and whisked my backup disc from my shirt pocket. I know it seems crazy, but it felt like he was actually taking out my heart.

And he smiled. When he put the disc into his own shirt pocket, I felt tears of rage pricking my eyes. It seemed so unfair. It was only a backup, after all. Couldn’t I have kept just one thing? For old times’ sake?

– That had sentimental value, I said.

He acted as though he hadn’t heard me.

– You’re to be our guest at Head Office, he said.

– And if I say no?

– Then let me outline your options, Harvey, he smiled.

That’s when he drew a big zero in the air with his forefinger. A zero which framed his fake-apologetic face, a halo between us. And he smiled again, that same unreal smile, and I began to realise I was in deep shit.