“No, it’s fine,” you say hastily. “I’ll cook, and we can talk over dinner.”

But you can’t help adding, “Did I mind…before? Was how hard you worked ever a problem for us?”

He thinks. “Sometimes,” he admits. “But when it was, you’d say so, and we’d make time for each other. We always put our marriage first. Even after Danny’s diagnosis, we made sure we got away occasionally, even if it was just for a weekend. His school does residential respite, so sometimes we’d pack him off on a Friday, then head out to the beach house, or take a private jet to Lake Tahoe for a couple of days’ snowboarding. Then he’d come home as usual on Monday, and we’d resume family life.”

You think of the life you must be leading now. You’re pretty sure it doesn’t involve snowboarding or beach houses, let alone private jets. What had that website said? Use a sleeping bag in (non-chain) motels. Never order from chain restaurants. Use alcohol wipes on glasses and cutlery.

Suddenly there’s a sharp, stabbing sensation in your head. Involuntarily, you wince.

“Are you all right?” Tim says, concerned.

“I feel…” Abruptly, you stumble against the stove. “Perhaps I’d better sit down.”

“Of course.” Instantly, he’s at your side, helping you into a chair. “What is it?”

“It’s nothing. I felt dizzy for a moment, that’s all.”

But you know it was more than just dizziness. For a moment, you’d felt a terrifying, nauseous rush of panic. It was as if you were being split apart and your brain was floating away from you, like a bubble of air underwater. A feeling that you were simultaneously you and not you; that you were something impossible, something that didn’t add up…

“That’s not supposed to happen.” Tim looks concerned. “Will you tell me if it happens again?”

You nod. Perhaps you should have let Nathan eject that connection properly, you think.

Or maybe it’s something more fundamental, something to do with what you read on that printout.

* * *

—

Eventually you persuade Tim to go back to his emails. You open some wine, then make a salad.

“Bastards,” he snaps suddenly.

“Who?”

“I thought you said Lisa was on board now.” His fingers stab at the screen as he types a response.

“She is,” you say, mystified. “At least, she seemed to be.”

Silently, Tim thrusts his phone at you so you can read it. The email is from a law firm called Stanton Flowers LLP. The first section seems to consist mainly of impenetrable definitions. (“The entity” shall hereinafter be taken to encompass all personal information, computational networks, and other input/outputs as may be said to form a data file or files…)

“What does it mean?” you say, looking up.

“It means your so-called family wants you destroyed,” Tim says grimly.

“What?”

“And they’re trying to get custody of Danny, too.” He resumes his jabbing.

You stare at him, appalled. “On what grounds?”

“The Danny part? They’re claiming you’re unpredictable and could be a danger to him—that slap you gave the news anchor. The destroying part is that you never gave explicit consent to this.” His face is a mask of fury. “Those jokers. Insignificant, small-minded people who can’t see farther than their noses. Of course existing data laws can’t apply to you. You’re fucking unique.” He jumps up, too angry to sit, and paces around the kitchen.

“She lied to me,” you say slowly. “Lisa. She told me it was like meeting her sister again. But all the time, she must have known about this.”

“I told you she was a bitch. I need to call my lawyer.”

“Now?” you say, meaning, Can’t it wait until after dinner, but Tim misunderstands.

“Don’t worry, he’ll take my call. I’m paying him a fortune. And there’s no way I’m letting those ignorant bastards destroy my family.”

45

That night, sleep mode eludes you. You lie down, but your mind is churning, questions tumbling through your head.

Your disappearance. Lisa’s betrayal. That strange, hidden book. The website Nathan found…So many things that refuse to join up, to make a pattern. You can feel your brain reaching for connections, jumping from possibility to possibility. But nothing clicks.

When you do doze off, you dream about your engagement again, that wonderful night in Jaipur. But it feels different now. Instead of reliving a memory, it feels as if you’re watching someone else. Seeing through her eyes, sharing her thoughts, but somehow an observer, inside the head of someone you simply don’t understand.

Before I do anything else, you think drowsily, I have to find her. I have to know where Abbie’s gone, and why. Only then do I tell Tim—

Suddenly you feel it again—that random, vertiginous panic, so piercing it jolts you fully awake.

You stare into the darkness, aware something important just happened. But what?

Then it hits you. In the dream, you thought about Abbie as “her.” As someone separate from you.

If Abbie isn’t dead, everything’s changed. Because if she’s alive, then what are you? You can’t be who you thought you were. That person—Abbie—already exists.

You’re a copy. A doppelg?nger. No, not even that: something indescribable, a kind of abomination, something that shouldn’t even be possible. But definitely not Abbie Cullen-Scott brought back from the dead, as Tim believed when he created you.

Yes, you have some of her memories. You may even have some of her personality. But with different thoughts, different aims, a different identity.

A creature with no name. A thing.

The terror returns—a sense of being split apart—but with it comes clarity.

You are not Abbie.

What are you, then?

Abbie. Not-Abbie. Abbie-negative…A burst of symbols cascades through your head as your mind tries to find an answer to that and fails.

Are you ≠? ≈? ?? â??? None of them fits.

Another stab of terror, squeezing your brain. Blackness rushing toward you—

And then you know what this feels like.

It feels like being born.

46

“On the face of it,” the lawyer says carefully, “they do have a pretty good case.”

Tim’s features twist into a snarl of anger, and the lawyer—whose name is Pete Maines—holds up his hand placatingly. “Which is not to say they’ll succeed. I just want us to be clear about the scale of the task.”

And the size of the bill, you think cynically.

There are five people gathered around the glass-topped table in the lawyer’s plush office. As well as Maines, Tim, and you, there’s Mike and Elijah, though you can’t actually see what this has to do with them.

Maines ticks off points on his fingers. “First, they’re claiming emotional distress. We can pretty much discount that—it’s the usual chaff, to bulk out their other arguments. Second, data protection. That looks scary, but actually data laws are riddled with loopholes, as Google and Facebook know only too well. It’s the remaining three points that concern me more.”

“Go on,” Tim snaps.

“Their third contention is over ‘rights of publicity.’ Unauthorized appropriation of name and likeness for a commercial endeavor, such as the creation of merchandise, is always a no-go.”

“She isn’t merchandise,” Tim says with quiet fury. “She’s my wife.”

Pete Maines continues as though he hasn’t spoken. “The concept of ‘likeness,’ incidentally, has evolved through case law, and can include features such as mannerisms, speech, and personal style.”

“Wait a minute,” Elijah interjects. “I know something about this. Don’t a person’s image rights automatically pass to their estate after their death?”

Maines nods. “That’s correct.”

Elijah looks around the room with a grin. “Well, then, we’re in the clear. Abbie’s image rights are now Tim’s.”

There’s a long silence. Tim shakes his head.

“Why not?” Elijah demands, puzzled.

“Abbie isn’t legally dead,” the lawyer replies. “She’s missing, certainly, and her death has been presumed. But in the absence of a body, or a conviction for her murder, she won’t be declared dead until five years from the date of the inquest. In three months’ time, in other words.”

“So we stall,” Elijah says immediately.

“We can try. But for the same reason, they’ll be pressing to get this in front of a judge as fast as possible.” Maines ticks off his fingers again. “Point four is consent. Did your wife ever explicitly or implicitly give her permission to be re-created in this way?”

Tim’s face is dark. “She didn’t need to. It was understood between us.”

“But nothing in writing. Or in front of witnesses.”

He shakes his head.

“That’s not true,” you say slowly.

They all look at you.

“Our wedding vows. I give myself to you for all eternity. Remember?”

“Very moving,” Maines says. “But sadly, wedding vows have no actual weight in law. I don’t suppose anything was mentioned in the prenup?”

Tim shakes his head.

Tags: J.P. Delaney Thriller
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