The New Uncanny (27 page)

I started going out with Peter in Year Eleven. I suppose he was upset when his mum walked out but we were going off to university so what did it matter. We went to Manchester, both of us, together. New street names, new music, new food, new conversations, Manchester was as fresh as Ghana to us back then. We neither of us gave a thought to home till that first Christmas on the train home. As soon as we got north of Preston, Peter started fidgeting and staring pointedly out of the window when I was talking to him. It didn’t phase me. I said, ‘I’ll come to yours if you don’t mind. Before I go home. I fancy a stroll along the prom.’

You could tell he was pleased with the idea from the way he said, ‘Whatever.’

When we got there, Andrea was there. His dad’s new bit. Tanned, toned, and twitchy. She kissed Peter with her glossed lips and smiled all over him with her whitened teeth. I think about her now, the way she’d altered her appearance to please Peter’s dad. Just as I altered my past to impress Adé. How we girls do chip away at our own reality.

She was thrilled to meet me at last, by the way, she’d heard so much about me. She even took my bag upstairs for me. She put it in Peter’s room, at the foot of his bed and winked, ‘You two will be nice and cosy in here, I suppose.’

I must have blushed or something because she said, ‘Oh. If you don’t then...’

‘No, no. We do,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

Peter and I laughed about it afterwards. ‘I can’t believe I told her we were having sex.’

‘I can’t believe she got that out of you.’

‘I thanked her. I thanked her for providing sex facilities.’

Peter’s dad breezed by, wrapped in a towel and smelling of aftershave. ‘Hi there,’ he said, as opposed to ‘No visitors in the bedrooms,’ which was what he used to say.

‘This place has changed a bit since Mum was here.’

When we looked up little Ruthie was in the doorway, staring at us. I can still remember the way the light fell on those thick brass curls. She would have been eight.

‘Hey Ruthie,’ I said. And held out my arms to her. She didn’t budge.

‘I didn’t know you were home,’ said Peter. ‘Why didn’t you come down and say hello?’

‘I prefer it upstairs now. Are you going away again?’

‘Not till after Christmas. It’s Christmas holidays.’

‘So you’re going away again.’

‘After Christmas. Have to go back to uni.’

‘Can I come?’

‘You’re not old enough. Plus you don’t have any A-levels.’

She went back to her room.

Peter shrugged. ‘What d’you want me to do?’

I followed Ruthie to her room. Ruthie’s room had changed. The Angelina Ballerina wallpaper was still there but the shelves were groaning with personal electronics – a TV, a PlayStation, a phone, a PC, a DVD player, even a popcorn machine. It was like a girly branch of Comet. ‘Woah,’ I said.

‘Dad took me out and bought all this,’ she said. ‘Then two days later she moved in.’

‘Right. Well... she seems nice enough.’

‘I can’t even play these games. I don’t understand the instructions.’

‘What have we got?’

We had pretty much everything to be honest. It was me who chose Sims. That’s the one where you have a family to look after. The Sims. You have to satisfy their needs – nutrition, exercise, hygiene – nurture their development – reading, hobbies, conversation and help them fulfill their aspirations. Stuff keeps happening that you’ve got no control over – they get visitors, they get flooded. Sims get hungry and bored so you have to keep ahead of the game, keep them fed and entertained. Sometimes it seems like they have a will of their own. The trick is to master that will and get them to do what you want.

‘How do you win?’

‘You don’t win. You just keep it going. Some people keep their Sim families going for years.’

‘Do they die?’

‘They can die. They can walk out on you. You have to keep them healthy and keep home interesting.’

‘How d’you do that?’

‘Just make sure the Aspiration Meter is filling up.’

You can design your own family but that first night we played with the default family. Are they called the Newbies? Ruthie found it all a bit emotionally draining at first. When Mr. Newbie started hitting his own thighs in fury, she almost burst into tears. ‘I’ve given him a good job and a lovely supper. Why is he so ungrateful?’

‘He needs the toilet.’

‘Oh.’

But mum was hitting her thighs too by then. ‘Lack of appreciation. You need to give her a hug.’ I showed her how. ‘It’s non-stop Ruthie. It’s called “Continuous Manipulation”.’

Once she’d calmed them down, she was thrilled by her own power and their pliability. She hugged, cooked, tickled, bought presents. In the end I fell asleep in her bed. The idea of an Andrea-sanctioned sex session had lost its appeal by then in any case.

When I woke up the next morning, she was still playing.

‘Have you been at it all night?’

‘You can design your own family, look. Did you know that? Look you can make their eyes bigger, give them muscles, whatever.’

‘I know.’

‘If you make the eyes big, that looks good because they look like babies. Babies have big eyes. But if you make them too big, that’s horrible. Because that’s like insects pretending to be babies. When they look weird, that’s called the Uncanny Valley. It’s all in the manual. And d’you know what? If you don’t want them to, they won’t get any older.’

‘That sounds good.’

‘Doesn’t that sound good?’

She came downstairs with me for breakfast. I could see why she’d mostly stayed upstairs. Andrea had redecorated. The place looked like the reception area of a graphics company – simple lines, everything white, with aggressive splashes of colour. When Ruthie walked in with me, Andrea purred with pleasure.

‘Terry looks who’s here for breakfast.’

‘Hello, Ruthie.’

‘Look, look what we got for you yesterday.’ There was a big shopping bag over by the Aga. Andrea reached in and pulled out a white shift dress. Beautiful, simple lines, with a bold splash of blue across the shoulder. A dress that coordinated perfectly with the kitchen. A dress that would turn Ruth into fixtures and fittings.

‘Thanks,’ said Ruth.

‘We can go again today and get you something for Christmas morning, what d’you say?’

Ruthie didn’t say anything. What she did was hug her dad. He looked astonished. ‘What’s brought this on?’ he said, flushed with pleasure.

She didn’t answer. She said, ‘Dad, what’s the offside rule?’

‘What?’

‘In football, what’s the offside rule. I asked Sue but she didn’t know.’

‘Why would you want to know that?’ asked Andrea.

Ruth didn’t reply and by then her dad was already building a three-dimensional diagram of the offside trap out of Weetabix and milk cartons.

‘Yeah,’ said Peter, ‘Why would you want to know all that?’

‘It’s all in the manual,’ I whispered.

When I went up to collect my bags, Sims was still running on the screen. It was the smoothest running game I’d ever seen. The little figures were reading, exercising, cooking. Improving themselves, enjoying each other. And the family was all her own design. There was a mother, a father, a teenage son and an eight year old girl. All rubbing along happily in the same house. They were called Mum, Dad, Peter, and Ruthie Dillon.

Video games don’t normally make me cry. But the next few days I thought a lot about the tiny pixilated family inside the computer monitor, living the life that Ruth wished she was living. I thought at the time it was her version of the way things used to be, before Andrea.

I didn’t go back over to the house on the prom till Christmas day. The plan was midnight mass with my family, open presents with my sisters, then over to the Dillons’ for Christmas lunch. The Dillons’ plan was Christmas lunch all together, then Ruthie’s mum would come and collect her and take her over to her grandmother’s. Peter and I might go too.

We sat in the immaculate dining room while Andrea served hors d’oeuvres. I asked Ruth what she got for Christmas, ‘I...’ she struggled to remember.

‘She got a Carlisle United away strip,’ beamed her Dad. ‘And... a season ticket.’

‘Wow, Ruthie.’

Andrea’s muscley arms were tensed. ‘She also got a pony. Which is what she’s always wanted.’

‘Oh. Yeah. Forgot about that.’

Ruthie leaned into me. ‘Want to see what my family got each other? Shall I show you.’

‘Not now, Ruthie,’ smiled Andrea. ‘We’re about to eat.’

All through the meal, Ruthie said nothing out loud. But I could see that the unsatisfactory people round the table were less real to her than the family upstairs. She was talking to them in her head. When Andrea went into the kitchen to sort out the Christmas pudding, Ruthie dragged me upstairs.

There was the other Dillon family, gathered around a poorly animated Christmas tree. ‘It doesn’t seem right to leave them on their own while we’re down there eating,’ said Ruthie. She must have got some kind of expansion pack because the tiny dad was doing magic tricks for his children. When each trick finished they would throw their heads back to an angle of ninety degrees and applaud – their hands a hummingbird blur of appreciation.

‘Look. Look what the dad got the mum.’

She must have bought some sort of expansion pack. I’d never seen branded products in Sims before. Dad had bought Mum a bottle of perfume. Charly.

‘You know that’s a really cheap perfume.’

‘I know but it’s what she was wearing the day he met her.’

‘They don’t even make it any more.’

‘I know. That’s why she’s so surprised, look.’

Tiny Mum really was very surprised. She had her arms in the air and was more or less spinning with pleasure.

Tiny Peter by the way got all kinds of stuff for his bedroom – a multigym, a double bed, coffee making facilities. ‘It’s like a flat. So he can be happy,’ said Ruthie. ‘And look how happy he is.’ His Aspiration Meter was twitching away at the top of the dial.

Real Mum came half an hour later. I hadn’t seen her since the split up. She gave me a hug and asked about uni. I got my coat and said we’d all come with her and Ruthie. But in the kitchen, Ruthie was slumped across the table, groaning about having a temperature.

‘What’s wrong with her?’ asked her mum.

‘Nothing. She’s fine. She’s been having a great time.’

‘Having a great time? She looks half dead.’

Peter tried to put her coat on her. ‘Come on, Ruthie, we’re going to Grandma’s,’ he said.

‘Too hot,’ said Ruthie.

There was a massive row about how Ruthie had got so ill without anyone noticing. It was obvious that she wasn’t going anywhere but new arrangements could only be made after grudges and resentments had been aired at high volume. In fact things were only really settled when Andrea walked out, slamming the door behind her.

I watched her go from the window. I said, ‘Temperature. She really did read that manual, didn’t she?’ At the time it seemed funny that Andrea stood in the drive and beat her thighs in fury, for all the world like a Sim that’d wet itself.

And later when I sat around the tree with Ruth and Peter and their mum and dad, I thought it was sweet that her game had come true for a moment.

Mum opened her present, almost dropped it in surprise, then threw her hands up in the air. ‘Charly!’ she gasped. ‘How did you remember?’

‘You know I’m not sure.’

‘They don’t even make it any more. Where did you get it?’

‘The internet.’

‘But why?’

‘You know, I can’t remember.’

She kissed him. She kissed him on the lips. Ruthie was watching them, as intently as a child playing a computer game.

Two days before the start of term, I went round to sort out the travel arrangements. ‘Big news,’ said Peter. ‘Andrea has gone.’

‘What?’

‘Completely gone away and never coming back.’

‘How’s your dad?’

‘Fine I think. He just keeps smiling.’

Peter just kept smiling too. He carried on smiling as he told me he wasn’t going back to university.

‘You’re not what?’

‘I’m not going back to university.’

‘What are you talking about? Why aren’t you going back?’

‘Why would I want to leave here? Look.’

He gestured towards the endless winter mud flats. I remember a scribble of geese drawn on the sky.

‘It’s mud,’ I said. ‘And geese. Even the geese can’t stick it all year.’

‘It’s home,’ he said.

‘OK so you’re not coming back. OK. Fine. Thanks for telling me. You could at least try and not smile about it.’

Because he was smiling. A wide, blank smile.

‘Why are you smiling?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

So Peter’s mum and dad got married again that Easter. I came home for the wedding. I was happy for them. Really I was. I got changed in Ruthie’s room. When I came in, she paused her Sims game. I watched them on the monitor as they subsided into their chairs, all smiles. The mother was in a wedding dress.

During the afternoon, I tried to talk to Peter about uni. ‘Come back,’ I said. ‘Everything’s worked out here. They won’t miss you. You could start again in September.’

At first he seemed to struggle to know what I was talking about.

‘Manchester. Come on. Come back with me. It’s good.’

Then his eyes brightened, as though he’d remembered something good.

‘Manchester!’ he said, and he sounded just like his mum had sounded when she said, ‘Charly’! Like he’d recovered some forgotten treasure. I really thought he was going to say yes, but then he span on his heel very suddenly, almost involuntarily, and walked away into the party, passing his blandly smiling parents. Passing Ruthie, who was frowning until she caught my eye. Then she smiled too.

The sudden spin on the heel; the sentence bitten off in the middle; the involuntary quickness of it all made it seem less than human. It troubled me then. And it troubled me afresh when I saw it again ten years later.

The thing is, it wasn’t the only time I saw it that day. Later in the afternoon, I was walking back along the prom. Cars from the party were parked all the way back to the town. A figure came jerkily up the steps from the shore, pausing on each step as if each step was an effort of will. An angular restless figure. Only when it turned to face me, did I recognise Andrea. It wasn’t that her face had changed, but her deportment had. She moved like something mechanical and remote controlled.