The Perfect Wife

It wasn’t long before someone pulled on the gloves and started hitting the larger of the punching bags. Then they stopped, surprised. The punching bag had cried out, as if in pain.

The puncher hit the punching bag again. “Ow!” the punching bag yelled. The puncher laughed, and rained a series of blows, Rocky-style, left-right-left. Each time, the punching bag yelled and hollered.

Someone else joined in on the next punching bag. But they only landed one blow before they stopped, embarrassed. The second punching bag had also yelled out, but in a woman’s voice.

So we tried the third punching bag. This time it was a child who screamed.

No one wanted to go near the punching bags after that. We all agreed it was a much less successful art piece than the firebot. That had been fun, we decided. This one was making some kind of statement. It felt na?ve and mean-spirited and a little bit obvious.

25

You stumble out of the beach house blindly, almost tripping over yourself in your haste to get away. You have no idea where you’re going. You just know you can’t stay there, in your house—the place where you got married—while your husband has sex with another woman.

Questions tumble through your mind. When did this start? Is Sian his girlfriend? His mistress? Have there been others?

How long was he even celibate for, after your death?

When you get to the security barrier and the fork in the drive, there’s only one way you can go. Turning right would take you to the highway. You have to go left, down toward the ocean.

Unlike the drive leading to your house, this road is old and potholed, zigzagging down a steep incline. You pass houses—not grand, ultramodern properties like yours, but smaller, older vacation homes. Most are in darkness. At the bottom, overlooking a rocky beach, is a ramshackle old diner. The windows are boarded up, their frames corroded from salt water.

You go and stand on the boardwalk, holding on to the rusty rail for support, staring miserably out to sea. Not for the first time, you find yourself wishing you could cry: anything to release these pent-up emotions. Instead you yell, something shapeless and wordless, your agony and despair flung out at the endless ocean, the wind ripping the sound from your mouth almost before it’s formed.

The waves churn and roil, their crests collapsing onto the sand in a crash of phosphorescence, only for that to be swept away in turn. Even through your misery—perhaps because of your misery—you can appreciate how beautiful that motion is. It feels like the waves must have a pattern to their endless movement; something almost unfathomable but deeply harmonious—

v = f ? λ

The wave equation. You don’t know how you know, but it comes to you with yet another clunk.

“Danny used to stand right there and watch the sea like that,” a voice says behind you.

You whirl around, startled. A man of about sixty is standing a few yards off, watching you, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his waxed-canvas jacket.

“I hope I didn’t scare you,” he says conversationally. He nods toward a house a little way up the hill. “I saw there was someone down here and thought I’d take a look. We don’t get many night visitors. Not since your husband installed the electric gates.”

“You know who I am, then.” You almost stumble over that who. But the stranger only nods.

“I saw you on the news. Don’t worry. I won’t tell any journalists you’re here.” He holds out a hand. “Charles Carter.”

“I’m Abbie,” you say as you shake it. You can’t help adding miserably, “At least, I was. I don’t know what I am now.”

He nods calmly. “The news item mentioned that, too.” He turns, putting his own hands on the rail as well, so you’re both looking out to sea. “You used to surf out there,” he observes. “All hours of the day. Nights, too, sometimes. It cleared your brain, you said.”

“I know. That was what I was doing the night I disappeared. Surfing.”

“So they say.” His tone is still conversational, but something makes you turn your head and look at him. He’s a handsome man, you realize: His hair may be silver, but his jaw is rugged and the skin creases attractively around the corners of his eyes.

“What do you mean?” you ask.

“Oh, I didn’t mean to imply anything. Just a lawyer’s natural caution of speech.”

With a sudden flash of insight—not like the way the wave equation came to you, but equally sure and certain—you think: There’s something he’s not telling me.

He probably thinks you’re Tim’s creature, you realize. He thinks you’ll report back anything he says.

“So you’re a lawyer?” you say, to break the tension. “What kind?”

“Large-scale corporate mergers and acquisitions, mostly.” You must look surprised, because he adds, “We used to have a big house in the city as well. But after my wife passed, I decided to relocate here. I can work from home, mostly.”

“I’m sorry about your wife.”

He shrugs. “It was eight years ago.” His eyes drift toward a boat, a thirty-foot sloop standing on the slipway below his house. There’s a name painted on its prow. MAGGIE. “You don’t forget, but you do come to terms with it, eventually.”

You don’t say anything. You suspect he’s thinking the same thing you are. Tim never came to terms with it.

You realize something else. You feel strangely comfortable around this man, almost as if you’re resuming a conversation you started a long time ago.

“Did I…Did I know you well?” you ask bluntly. “Before, I mean?”

Again you get the sense that Charles Carter weighs his words carefully before answering.

“After your husband bought the land here and built his own house, he wanted to get rid of all these other properties just as soon as our leases expired, to increase his privacy. Naturally, some of us weren’t too happy about that. Things got a little heated…It was you who persuaded him to let us stay. Beaches shouldn’t be private, you said.” He nods at the building behind you. “It was too late for Sally and Joe’s diner. But the rest of us were grateful to you. It’s a small community here, but we treasure it.”

“I’m glad I could help.” Once again, you feel like an imposter using that I, taking credit for something your former self did.

“Well, if there’s ever anything I can do in return.” He pauses. “Even if you just want to talk.” Again he gives you an appraising look.

There’s a shout from the beach. “Abbie! Abbie!”

It’s Tim, gesturing up at you from the shoreline. “Abbie, stay there!” he calls. “I’ll come up.”

“I’d better go.” Charles Carter nods at you. “Good night.”

Tim runs along the boardwalk. “Abbie,” he says breathlessly. “Thank God. I thought—” He throws an anguished glance at the ocean.

He thought you were going to walk into the sea, you realize. Having told you last night that it could destroy your fragile electronics, he was scared you might have come down here in despair to let it do just that.

Yet, strangely, it never even crossed your mind. Because no mother, surely, could abandon her child like that.

Charles Carter has walked off without speaking to Tim. Tim casts a hostile glance after him but says only, “Come on. Let’s get you back.”

“Tim, I know about Sian,” you say miserably. “I saw you together.”

“Yes, I realized,” he says quietly. “I saw you were gone when I went back to my room. We’ll talk about it back at the house.”

26

Sian’s in the kitchen, dressed and drinking coffee. She looks at you, but it’s Tim she speaks to. “You found her, then.”

“Yes. Go back to bed,” Tim says curtly.

“Wait…” you say. “Tim, I need to know…Is Sian your girlfriend?”

Sian looks at Tim expectantly, and you realize she wants to hear the answer to this, too.

“No,” Tim says after a moment. “She’s someone I had sex with, that’s all.”

You note that had.

“Thanks, Tim,” Sian says sarcastically. “Nicely done.”

“Abbie’s upset,” he says tersely. “Right now, that’s my priority.”

“Abbie’s upset?” she says incredulously. “The robot’s upset?”

“She’s my wife,” he snarls.

Sian must know the warning signs by now, but she doesn’t back off. “So if she’s your wife, what am I, exactly?”

“I could give you a word,” he says curtly. “But you might not like it. Why don’t you go upstairs and pack?”

She stares at him. “Are you firing me?”

“Restructuring. Your services are no longer required.”

“Because I slept with you?”

“No,” he says calmly. “Because Abbie can take over your duties with Danny.” He turns to you. “If that’s acceptable to you, Abbie.”

“You cannot fire someone just because you slept with them,” Sian snaps, at the same time as you say, “Tim, wait a minute. We need to think what’s best for Danny here.”

“There’ll be a generous payoff,” he tells Sian. “I suggest you go and think about just how generous you’d like that to be.”

She doesn’t reply. You can almost see the numbers turning in her brain.