Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Part Two
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by James Smythe
About the Publisher
Laurence Walker presses play and the video begins.
On it, he is standing in a seemingly blank room. He is looking straight into the camera lens, or the facsimile of him is; a broken version, created from photographs and screen grabs. It looks like him, but only barely. There is something about the version of his face that the software has created – so blank and expressionless – that makes him feel sick to his stomach. Behind him he can see similarly wrong versions of his family, of his wife and daughters. This created version of him isn’t looking at them, his body language barely even acknowledging their presence. He wonders why they are so scared. Deanna and the girls are huddled together, clinging onto one another, terrified, backing away from him. Their faces are approximations of what that would actually look like: twisted and distorted and not at all real.
In the background, he hears a noise, a rustle that he cannot put his finger on; and then another noise, quieter in the mix. Sobbing. And then, finally, he notices that the version of him is holding something.
It’s a gun. He knows the thick black metal. The digital version’s thumb is on the trigger. The screen version of Laurence seems to shudder. More than a shiver: it seems uncontrollable.
Then the video cuts to black and a noise rings out that he knows can only be one thing: the crack, solid and sharp, the sound of a bullet leaving the chamber of a gun. The sobbing stops and turns into a scream, ringing through the darkness.
Deanna wakes up. She lies perfectly still at first, because she loves these moments of being awake, of being in control of everything for just a second, before the day allows itself to interrupt. She can hear Laurence breathing, a harsh snore that’s developed over the past few years into something akin to a growl. She can feel the slow rise and fall of his chest travelling through the mattress. After a while she rolls over and looks at him. He’s still propped up as he was when she was falling asleep, his back against the giant pillows that they have taken to using as a headboard. His reading glasses are hanging off his face and his tablet is on his lap, his hands clutching it. He doesn’t move much when he sleeps these days, she thinks, not since he became a senator. He tends to sleep so heavily that he stays perfectly still. The world could shift around him and he would somehow stay static.
She doesn’t want to wake him yet – the alarm isn’t set to go off for another half an hour, and he needs his sleep for today – so she turns away from him and slides to the edge of the bed. The floor is freezing cold on her feet, the house so draughty, always carrying a breeze up through the floorboards. She pads to the bedroom door and he doesn’t even shift slightly as she opens it and sneaks out.
She heads downstairs, turning the lights on as she goes, straight into the kitchen. The glass along the back wall, looking out into the backyard, is darkened and she flicks the switches on the counter to bring it back to a clear state; no glare from the rising sun, just the light pouring in. She loves the feeling of the warmth of it coming through the glass, heating up the kitchen while she makes the coffee, selecting pods for the machine – they each take a different flavor, and she has to do nothing past setting the thing going. She stands at the counter, both hands on the marble, propping herself up; and she basks for a few seconds. All is silence.
Laurence wakes up as she comes back into the room, because she’s not trying to be quiet now. He feels his glasses on his face and swats them away, a knee-jerk reaction; and then he opens his eyes and looks at Deanna front on. He sleepily smirks at her. This isn’t the first time it’s happened.
‘I slept like this?’ he asks.
‘You did.’
‘I’m so tired. I was so tired. You know.’
‘I know,’ she replies. ‘You need to get dressed. The car will be here soon. I’ll get the shower going for you.’
‘You let me sleep, curse you.’ He reaches for her and pulls her close, kisses her. ‘I wish they’d let me drive myself,’ he says. ‘I feel like such a prick in that thing.’
Staunton is a small town, and Laurence has worked hard to win its people over. He came from the city but Deanna grew up here. When they left college, Deanna pregnant, they came back here at her behest, and he did his best to persuade the townsfolk – who knew her, who had known her parents before they moved away, before he got her knocked up and forced a retreat, law degree between his legs – that he was a good man. He’s spent the best part of the last seventeen years earning their trust. The showmanship of politics sets that trust back a good decade, he thinks. Because New York City is drivable, if there’s ever a TV show appearance they send tinted-window town cars, and that always makes Laurence embarrassed. Every time Deanna has to remind him that he has to get used to it; that if he gets what he wants from his career, he’ll have an armed escort everywhere he goes. Soon he won’t be allowed to drive anywhere by himself. He rubs his face and clambers out of bed. He stretches. ‘What tie, do you think?’
‘The lemon one.’
‘Lemon? Jesus. You want the crowd to turn on me? Start some riot about fence-sitting with my colors?’
‘It’s smart. It’s bright. You want potential voters to think you are as well, don’t you? At least, until they know you as well as I do.’
‘Ha ha.’ She kisses him as she leaves the en suite, and he strips his boxers off. She looks back at him: slightly looser around the edges than he used to be, but not totally out of shape; love handles, a slight belly, a sagging of his chest. It’s only the effects of age, of a more sedentary lifestyle, of being comfortable. ‘You want to come in?’ he asks. ‘I might not wash myself properly.’
‘I’m sure you’ll manage,’ she
