The Paper Eater

WELCOME TO HEAD OFFICE

The white, blind-windowed skyscraper of Head Office had dominated the Harbourville skyline for as long as I could remember. It was famous. The two silent forcies who’d driven me there whisked me quickly through a maze of glass and bar-coded me into a high crystally dome of sprinkled light, with men and women milling about at floor level. A neon Bird of Liberty shone above, huge and pulsating. I was as familiar with the Bird as any other Atlantican, I guess. I’d never given it a second thought. FREEDOM: THE DREAM THAT CAME TRUE, it said underneath. There were others dotted about the walls, in different colours: SERVING THE CUSTOMER, PUTTING YOU FIRST, GIVE AND TAKE.

At the reception desk, a barrel-shaped guard scanned my paperwork and led me into an elevator, which shot upwards with the force of a rocket, and next thing, we were on the umpteenth floor, treading on milky-green carpeting, past potted ferns and eye-high aquariums of fish with bulgy tumours. It had the same thin atmosphere as the malls I’d go to with Gwynneth, the kind where you could be trapped all day, muzak in the background, hunting for the right thermos or a certain make of lilo, fuelling up at the food court and shoving change into some gonzo experience simulator. We turned a sharp left and the guard nodded me into a large room with a desk and two chairs, which I guess you’d call minimalism because it could’ve done with a carpet.

– Wait there, the guard said, and bowled off.

I stood by the window, trying to fight off the fear of what came next. Harbourville spread far below, glass bits and architecture prinking in the sunlight. The air-crystals were bigger at this height; gritty, flat snowflakes of light. Seeing the trams zigzagging far below like drugged spiders across the web of tracks, I began to connect what I could see with the street map in my head, and inch my eyes towards South District. I’d feel at home if I looked there. I’d feel –

I must have felt her presence because all at once something made me turn.

I’m Hannah Park, she said.

She was small. Maybe thirty, thirty-five. Wispy fairish hair tied up with a rubber band, and her body lost somewhere inside a huge cardigan, which she hugged around her like a sleeping bag. Odd-looking. And those thick glasses – they made her eyes bulge. They weren’t flattering.

She held out a hand.

– Welcome to Head Office, she said, looking away.

We shook hands awkwardly. Hers was small, like a bony little bird, and she pulled it away quickly, as though I might be a sadist who’d enjoy crushing it. Welcome to Head Office? I thought. What is this stuff?

– Over twenty-five thousand people work for the Liberty Corporation, she said, still not looking at me and handing me a brochure. It was as though she ran on rails, or had rehearsed what she was going to say to me. – This’ll fill you in, if you have any questions about us.

Questions, about Libertycare? Why would I want to ask questions? They were always telling us stuff about themselves. They had information diarrhoea. So I didn’t look at the brochure, just crammed it in my pocket.

– Let’s sit down, she said, and we pulled out chairs.

– So what is all this? I said, looking round the room. What’s the plan?

She cleared her throat, a small worried noise.

– If you read our brochure, you’ll see that our brief is very clearly laid out. She was still on her rails, no eye contact. – And you’ll be familiar with our mission statement? Now, tea or coffee, er – Harvey? She indicated the vending machine. – Or there’s fruit tea, cup-a-soup, hot or cold Ribena, Frooto, Diet Coke… She stopped, and made a helpless gesture. Our eyes met.

– Just tell me what the fuck’s going on, I said. Please?

The word fuck must’ve thrown her off beam because she blinked and shrank deeper into her cardigan, looked shivery. Then she lifted a few pages from the desk in front of her, waved them at me. There was a laptop and some discs, too. I watched her neck as she swallowed.

– It’s just research. I was working on Munchhausen’s before. Now it’s Multiple Personality Disorder.

That threw me.

– Disorder? I echoed. I haven’t got any fucking disorder!

She flinched.

– The Hogg family is the product of a mental process known as proxification, she said, opening up the laptop. Then she slid the papers across to me, and a pen. – Proxifiers project their own state of mind on to other people. We think that’s what you’ve done in your own – she hesitated – pathology.

– Pathology bollocks, I said. I felt indignant. They were trying to put some – label on me. – That’s complete bollocks! The family – they were –

– They were what, Harvey, she asked quietly. Her glasses flashed. The eyes behind were blue, and distorted by the lenses. She was clicking the mouse.

I felt stupid now. Sheepish.

– You wouldn’t understand, I said.

– What the questions are aimed at, she said, is establishing your feelings about your family.

– My feelings?

I felt a lurch. Years of work, constructing them so lovingly. And suddenly boom, bang. It was there, when Hannah Park said that word – feelings – that it hit me. My relationship with Mum, Dad, Lola, Uncle Sid, and Cameron was polluted for ever. We’d been a private concern. Going public – it would kill us.

As for telling this woman – well, she was a complete stranger.

I looked out. Down below, the city, the flat roofs of entertainment parcs, the high spinning windmills, the glass bubble-domes, the churches, the estuary fanning out to sea. The customers going about their business.

I guess I’d never experienced loss before, not really. Gwynneth and Tiffany moving out of Gravelle Road three years before was a surprise, but it was really the end of something that’d begun to go wrong a long time earlier, giving it a feeling of au naturel, to quote Gwynneth’s moisturiser. My own real parents, well, they’d never been there in living memory. And what you’ve never had, you can’t mourn. But now –

My eyes searched for the comfort of the purification zone, but Hannah’s voice drew me back to the room.

– I’m here to do a job.

There was a sort of scary energy passing between us, like we were a couple of kids who’d been shoved in a room and told to come up with something. I grunted. It came out like a pig’s snort. There was a patch of silence, and when our eyes met, hers slid away. Mine stayed on her.

– We analyse the members of the family one by one, she said. You answer the questionnaires. The resulting data will be fed into the system. For analysis.

I was about to ask more, but she put up a hand.

– Now. If you’d like to select a beverage from the vending machine, we can make a start on the questionnaires. Her mouth jerked into a small, hesitant smile. – So. Tea, coffee, Frooto?

And it was on that civilised note that the nightmare began.

– Have you ever dreamed you were drilling to the centre of the earth? I ask John suddenly, remembering those hopeless, helpless days I spent at Head Office, filling in Hannah Park’s humiliating paperwork. But you couldn’t make any headway because your drill-bit was blunt, and then –

– A chasm opens up and swallows you, he interrupts uncannily. He’s sewing again.

– Yes!

– No, says John. Never.

There’s a silence for a while and we think our thoughts. As I chew and spit, I’m remembering Hannah. So different from all the other women I had ever known. The effect she had on me, right from the start. The way I thought about her more and more, even when she wasn’t there. The way the feelings virused their way in through a back door in my heart.

But John’s mind is elsewhere.

– Which would you prefer, he asks. Being executed by electric chair on global TV, or being stuck for the rest of your life in a cabin with a bloke who spits grey cud?

For the first time, there’s a shake to his voice.