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“See you there.”
“Er—er…But what’s your name?”
“It’s Polly.”
She smiles as she lets the shop door bang shut behind her.
ELEVEN
AFTER LUKE’S HARSH words, Jessica finds it hard to return to the soft place in which she’d woken up. The emotional connection that they’d experienced the night before feels diminished, foolish almost. Instead, she and Luke proceed in a companiable and workmanlike fashion, constructing and installing bookshelves, breaking off for burgers and fries, messing about, throwing around playful insults, sexless teasing, brother-and-sister stuff. And then it is time for Jessica to leave, and when she closes Luke’s door behind her and heads into the dank October afternoon she wonders if she just blew her life down the wrong road.
Malcolm is waiting on the street outside her building when she gets there at ten past five. He has his hood up and is bouncing from foot to foot, holding a manila folder in his hand. He springs toward her when he sees her approach and waves the folder wildly. “My report! Here!”
He tries to force it into her hand, and she backs away from him. “Stand down, dude. We’ll look at it upstairs.”
In her office the heating has been off all day, and she can virtually see her breath in the air. “Shit,” she says, twisting the thermostat up to seventy. “Shit.”
She throws some coffee into her machine, leaves it to brew, then returns to her desk. “So,” she says, rubbing her hands together to warm them up. “What you got?”
He passes her the folder, and she slides it away. “Just tell me.”
Malcolm’s face falls. “I worked on that all day.”
“Yeah. I’ll add it to the dossier. Great work. So, what did you get?”
“Well, it was kind of a weird night and, yeah, I totally get what Mrs. Randall is worried about. Those twins, they’re sort of amazing, you know. I mean, they’re kind of beautiful, obviously. But they’re really…out there? Like on another planet. And I think, even if I hadn’t been looking for it, I’d have seen it? So, anyway, we did our boxing class, and they were freaking incredible. The boxing instructor kept praising them, saying, ‘I don’t know what you kids have been doing this summer, but keep doing it.’ And this girl turned to me and hissed, ‘Steroids,’ in my ear and I said, ‘What, really?’ and she said, ‘I dunno, but they’re doing something, they both sucked last year.’
“So I went up to them after the class and I told them how freaking awesome they both were, and then I just kind of finagled the whole Akinesiz thing into the conversation, and then I mentioned my grandmother’s house in London and how my dad represented all these famous footballers—and I could tell that they were warming to me, you know, but I genuinely was not expecting them to just say, ‘Come back to our place.’ I mean, I know I’m good, but I did not know I was that good. So out of the gym and into an Uber, penthouse apartment, elevator doors open out straight into this colossal hallway. This dude Jefferson came over too. We ate sushi—you ever had sushi? I mean, I have, but this stuff was next level, seriously like nothing I’ve ever eaten before. And so we were talking at the table, and the upshot is that when they were in the UK, they were hanging out with this kid named Belle whose parents live abroad somewhere. They said she lived with, like, a caretaker, goes to boarding school, is sixteen years old, that was it. I tried to push for more, but that was as much as they gave me.
“I said, ‘You guys have the most incredible complexions, what’s your secret?’ and they both just kinda smiled at each other and said, ‘Soap and sunscreen,’ like it was some kind of inside joke. And I said, ‘Seriously though, I’ve never seen skin like that before. Can I touch it?’ And, Jessica, they let me touch their skin and it felt like…glass? And I said, ‘Whoa, it doesn’t even feel like skin—are you sure you guys are real?’ And they looked at each other again and said, ‘We’re perfectly real.’ And they both said it at the same time. It was so weird.”
Jessica realizes that Malcolm is not going to pause to catch a breath, so she leans back and lets him do his thing.
“…and the dude, Fox’s friend Jefferson, he threw me a look as if to say, ‘Back off,’ you know. And then when the twins left the room he said to me, ‘What do you think of them?’ I said that I thought they seemed cool. He sort of shrugged and said, ‘I guess,’ but then he said, ‘You don’t think they’re kind of weird?’ I said yeah, they seemed a little unusual. He said, ‘Ever since they got back from England, they’ve been like this.’ So I said, ‘Oh, what do you think happened in England?” to which he answered, ‘No idea, they won’t talk about it. But something went down out there, that’s for sure.’ He started telling me how Fox’s gotten taller since summer, and how his grades have gone through the roof, like he was never a straight-A student before, but now he’s acing everything. Then he said how he and Fox used to game all the time, but now all Fox wants to do is watch old movies from the eighties. And listen to old music. He kept playing this on a loop….”
Malcolm presses play on a phone video and beneath the chatter of teenage conversation Jessica can hear the outline of a song.
“Listen to the lyrics,” Malcolm urges.
Jessica listens. Something about eyes reaching out in vain and then there, she hears…She’s got perfect skin…she’s got perfect skin.
“I googled it,” says Malcolm, “and it’s a song from the eighties by some British band called…” He reads from his phone: “Lloyd Cole and the Commotions? I dunno. So I asked this Jefferson dude, ‘Have you asked them what’s going on?’ and dude says, ‘Tried, but he won’t talk to me. Just keeps saying everything’s perfect, zen.’ And then the twins walked back in the room together, kind of in sync, you know. Marching, like crazy giant Aryan soldiers or such.”
Malcolm shakes his head in wonder.
Jessica blinks at him. “And?”
“Well, that is kind of it really. Except, oh, I snuck into their bedrooms, took a load of photos. Things on their walls and whatnot. I can text that to you, see what you can find. And check this out….”
He swipes on his phone then and turns it toward Jessica. It’s a selfie of him and the twins, Fox on the left, Lark on the right. They’re all smiling.
“Okay?” Jessica peers at the picture on the screen, then notices something and zooms hard into the image, toward the kids’ eyes. “Look,” she says, pointing at his screen. “Look at their eyes. And look at yours. See how you can see the lights reflected in your eyes, but not in theirs?”
“I know, right?” says Malcolm, taking his phone back. “It’s weird, and I think there’s something there. I‘ve been doing some research, into, like, the latest filter technology. Specifically, AI technology. Deepfakes. Lensa. All of that. I wrote it all up for you.” He jabs at the file folder on the desk, impatiently. “It’s all. In. There.”
Jessica sighs. “Explain it to me like I’m five.”
“Well, I mean, it’s hard to explain really. There’s a lot going on in the world right now, and every day the tech is getting crazier and crazier. I didn’t find anything definitive, but I did look into the area where the twins were. You said Essex, right?”
