Anonymity Jones Read online

  Then it was Friday night, and Anonymity took great care over her outfit. If the thought that she might soon be complicit in something shameful or damaging or illegal crossed her mind, it didn’t take pause on the way through. In fact, as she turned in front of her mirror to check the back of her dress, where it fell and flared smoothly into the curve of her calves, she allowed herself thoughts of a rather different nature. She saw Chris slipping his arm around her waist as they leaned forward to more closely consider an image, or subtly tickling the palm of her hand with his fingers as they chatted with the photographer. She felt him touching her face, or lightly brushing the red silk flower she’d slipped into her hair...

  ‘Where are you going?’ her mother asked as Anonymity came downstairs.

  ‘Out.’

  ‘Somewhere special?’

  ‘To see a friend.’

  ‘Do you need a lift?’

  ‘No. I’ll get the train. And your licence is still suspended.’

  ‘You look nice. She looks nice, doesn’t she, John?’

  She hadn’t seen John reading on the other side of the room. He said nothing for a moment that lasted just one beat too long. ‘Yes, she looks nice,’ he muttered. ‘Am I allowed to say that?’

  Corinne offered Anonymity a placating, ‘don’t mind him’ kind of smile. ‘What time will you be home?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Not too late?’

  ‘No. Anyway, it’s not a school night.’

  ‘Still. Call me if you need a lift. John can come and–’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Have you got your phone?’

  ‘Yes, Mum. Can I go?’

  So many questions, so much looking after. And yet despite the revelation she’d made to her mother about John, still he sat there, reading a book in her living room, passing petulant judgement on her daughter’s appearance. The irony almost made Anonymity’s head hurt.

  She found the gallery easily enough. It was on a corner a couple of blocks down the hill from the station, in a tight street lined by gaudily painted, single-storey terraces, with their blunt, humble façades crowding the narrow footpaths and rugged sandstone kerbs. She tightened the grip on her clutch purse, checked the position of the flower in her hair, and made her way through the small gathering of smokers out in front of the gallery.

  Inside was the beginning of a crush, but in spite of this her photographer’s eye immediately caught the stark, direct, simple lines and tones of the gallery space. The honey-coloured floorboards, the white walls, the tracks for the overhead spot-lighting. And of course the dark rectangles of the pieces themselves, checkerboard against the walls.

  ‘You made it.’ She felt Chris’s hand on her shoulder. ‘A drink?’

  She turned, and he presented her with a glass of orange juice.

  ‘I like your shirt,’ she said, extending a hand far enough to rub the fabric between finger and thumb.

  ‘This? Thanks. OK, now that you’re all here, I’ll introduce you to Mark. I’ll just grab the others.’

  Her smile froze. ‘The others?’

  ‘Olivia, Rick and Emma. Prue and Juliet couldn’t make it.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a shame.’

  ‘Yes. Anyway, here’s a catalogue. Have a quick look around while I gather the others together, and then we’ll have a bit of a walking tour. There are one or two things I’d really like to show you all. Mark has some great pieces here that might really help you all with your major works.’

  And he was gone, slipping shoulder-first away through the leather jackets and scarves and champagne glasses in search of his photographer friend, while Anonymity jammed the catalogue deep into her purse and pretended to look at the images, through stinging eyes.

  And later, after meeting the artist, and hearing Chris’s voice but not his words as he discussed various aspects of the exhibition, they all went for the promised bite to eat. It was at a small café near the station, and Anonymity ordered a latte and sat sullenly, listening to Emma and Olivia trying to outdo one another with embarrassing wankery about leading lines and complementary tones and asymmetrical matting.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ she said suddenly, cutting Olivia off mid-sentence, and she stood up and pushed her chair in. ‘I’ll see you all on Monday.’

  ‘Hey, wait up!’ Chris followed her outside and onto the footpath. He put his hand on her arm, but she pulled it away. ‘Just wait for a second.’

  ‘Oh, did you want me to pay for my coffee?’

  ‘What? No, it’s fine. I’ll get it.’

  ‘Because that wasn’t made very clear, back when we...’

  ‘No, I said it’s fine. I’ve got it. Consider it my donation to your ridiculously-expensive-camera fund.’

  ‘Good. Thanks for that. See you Monday.’

  His hand was on her arm again, and even in that light she could see the veins below the skin, the fine hairs on the backs of his fingers, the bitten-down nails.

  ‘I’ve really got to go,’ she said.

  ‘OK, fine, but before you do, I want to ask why you’ve been so damn snooty all evening.’

  ‘Snooty?’

  ‘That’s what I said. You weren’t like that the other afternoon.’

  How she wished she could say what she was thinking. But she couldn’t, so instead she made a conscious effort to soften her face. ‘Look, forget it. And thanks for introducing me to Mark.’

  ‘That’s OK.’

  ‘I found him interesting.’

  Chris almost chuckled. ‘He’s a bit old for you, don’t you think?’

  ‘His work. I liked his work. I’m going to call him.’

  ‘You are?’

  ‘Yes. I want to pick his brains about his photography. He’s a real artist.’

  ‘Right. Good. Have you got his number?’

  ‘I’ve got the catalogue,’ she said, patting her purse. ‘It’ll be on there.’

  ‘Organised. Well...’

  ‘So I’ll see you Monday.’

  ‘Yes, you will.’

  Apart from a man in a suit and headphones watching TV shows on his laptop and a couple talking too loudly about someone called Darrell, her train carriage was empty. Outside, beyond the interior reflection, the lights made very little sense, except when they crossed a bridge and she saw the lines of headlights and tail-lights streaming beneath her, or when they swept past brightly lit shop-fronts of semi-familiar suburbs, or stopped at stations that were largely empty. The station staff peering back and forth along the train, holding out their flags, blowing on their whistles, doing what they did every day. No surprises for them. They saw people getting off trains, people getting onto trains, saw those trains arriving and leaving as per the timetable. No surprises. Perhaps that was a job for her.

  She walked home from the station, and smiled wryly to think about her mother even daring to suggest that John might come and get her.

  On the nature strip, puddles of streetlight gathered at the base of the poles like shallow pools overgrown with pale algae. She passed dark houses, and homes with a blue television glow flashing through the cracks above the blinds. She saw a warmly lit, frosted window at the end of one house, and for a brief, crazy moment considered crossing the damp lawn and pressing her face against the glass, just to hear the scream from whoever was in there, showering or shaving, or taking a long, languid bath, or squeezing the angry-headed pustules on their adolescent face. She considered it carefully, equally mindful of the penalties and the rewards. Being chased, being recognised, being arrested. Or hearing that scream, exactly as any reasonable person might expect.

  In the end, she didn’t approach the bathroom window. Of course she didn’t. Instead, she lowered her head and kept walking, clutching her purse tightly and wishing she’d never found out why the dog behind the tall white house on the corner barked and yelped so much.

  She let herself in, went straight to her room and closed the door, kicked off her shoes, flicked off the light and lay across her
bed, shuffling through her iPod. And a minute later came the knock, pushing past her music.

  She took her earbuds out. ‘What?’

  ‘It’s me, your mum.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I want to talk to you.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Open the door and we can talk about it.’

  ‘What’s to talk about?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when I come in there.’

  ‘I’m tired. I want to go to sleep.’

  ‘Can’t I come in? Just for a moment?’

  Anonymity sighed. ‘Sure, fine, whatever.’

  Corinne came in and sat on the bed beside her, before looking around the shadowy room. ‘John and I had a chance to talk tonight. Properly, I mean.’

  ‘About?’

  ‘What you said he did.’

  ‘About what he did, you mean.’

  ‘Right. Anyway, he explained it.’

  ‘He did? Again? And how was this version different, Mum?’

  ‘It wasn’t. He says he was just trying to be a friend. To be a supportive friend. That’s all. Nothing dodgy.’

  ‘So if he’s sticking to his story, why tell me?’

  ‘Because I don’t want to fight.’

  ‘We’re not fighting.’

  ‘This hostility.’

  ‘I’m not being hostile. I want to sleep, that’s all. I had a shit night.’

  ‘Where did you even go?’

  Anonymity paused, mentally leafing through the playbook, choosing the play which would be the most testing, would reveal the most. ‘I went on a date with a teacher,’ she said at last. ‘At least, I thought it was a date.’

  Corinne smiled. ‘A date? With a teacher? No, seriously, where did you go?’

  ‘It’s true. A teacher invited me to a gallery show. The artist’s name is Mark Heinman. He’s a photographer.’ She pulled the catalogue out of her purse and handed it to her mother. ‘See?’

  ‘So you went with your art teacher, Mr Moffat?’

  ‘With Chris, yes. And I even thought I might get to sleep with him, but unfortunately he invited the rest of the class as well. And he couldn’t really sleep with all of us. That would be just creepy, don’t you think?’

  ‘Oh yes. What a shame.’

  ‘Do I look like I find this amusing?’

  ‘So it was an excursion, then.’

  ‘As it turned out, yes.’

  Corinne smiled. ‘You’re a drip.’ She ruffled Anonymity’s hair, before removing the flower from beside her ear and placing it on the bedside table. ‘Only you and your overdramatic mind could turn a school excursion into a date with a teacher.’

  ‘Mum...’

  Serious, now. ‘No, this is the thing, can’t you see? A perfectly innocent interaction between you and someone else becomes, in your mind, a completely different situation. Something that bears no resemblance to the truth.’

  ‘Mum...’

  ‘Maybe you can’t see it, but it’s very plain to me.’

  ‘Mum, he did what I said he did.’

  ‘You’re talking about John?’

  ‘Who else? Look, I really need sleep. I’m tired. Like I said, I had a shit–’

  ‘But I think you’re being unfair,’ Corinne interrupted.

  ‘And I think you’re in denial, Mum. So do you mind?’

  As soon as her mother closed the door, Anonymity turned her computer on and sent her father an email.

  Hey, Dad. I hope ur having a great time. You’d better be behaving. ;)

  You know what I am, Dad? I’m an idiot. Seriously. I did something really stupid tonight. It’s OK, I didn’t go ahead and get pregnant or anything. But I acted like an idiot. Someone invited me somewhere, and I went thinking it was one thing and then it turned out to be something completely different. Is this how you felt when you found out that the girl you were with was actually a lesbian?

  I love you, and I miss you. Everything here is such crap.

  But as tired as she was, sleep was slow in coming, and after an hour, perhaps more, she accepted that it might not come at all. There was too much in her mind, like chatter. Not crazed voices, but recollections, and dark waves of anger and shame that made her blush, even in the darkness of her bedroom.

  Then, much later, after the crack of light under her door had gone, after the footsteps and voices in the house had died away, after Sam’s soft footfalls back and forth along the hallway had ceased, and long after the tap in the bathroom and the cistern of the toilet had fallen silent, Anonymity slid her feet from beneath the covers and sat up. She didn’t want to feel too proud of her new and brilliant idea yet, because there was no guarantee that she could make anything more of it than a simple concept. But the idea stirred and buzzed like static before a storm.

  She opened her door and checked that all the lights were off and the house truly was silent, and she walked the short distance to the spare room. Computers hummed and the tiny green lights on the modem winked. Closing the door behind her, she flicked on the lamp and sat, ready to wreak havoc.

  John’s computer was password protected, just as she’d expected it might be, but it took her a mere four attempts to get in. impala1960 failed. impala60 failed. chevyimpala failed. chevyimpala1960 was met with a brief, thoughtful blink by the screen, followed by a desktop photo of a lean, wide, red convertible very much like the one that had taken over Raven’s car’s space in the garage.

  Feeling especially proud of herself, and resisting the urge to whisper ‘Bingo!’, Anonymity headed straight for John’s inbox. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, and it was no surprise when she found nothing terribly alarming: a number of emails to John’s brother, who lived in South Africa; the usual spam advertising pills to make him longer, harder, more popular; a few emails about swap-meets and car parts for old American cars; plus all the usual blokey dirty jokes and pictures of sports stars breaking their legs and crashing into cheerleaders.

  Next she went to John’s web browser, and its bookmarks, and its history. Again, no surprise. The sites he’d been surfing were something of a dual compendium of car sites and pictures of naked people, in a couple of cases both. Some of the girls on the porn sites looked alarmingly young. Perhaps not illegally so, but still too young for someone like John.

  Finally she ran a search on the hard drive, seeking images. The little magnifying glass circled around, and then, in an avalanche of characters, a long list, with thumbnails, began to scroll down the screen.

  Anonymity sat back in the chair and bit her lip, as the tiny green hard-drive light flickered busily. This was what John did when her mother was getting an early night? These were the pictures he looked at? This was what he used to make himself feel young and sexy? But it wasn’t youth and sexiness she saw when she imagined him hunched over at the little desk in the spare room, but an old man, a lech. It was power, and possessiveness, and the thought of his eyes wandering leisurely over those young, porcelain curves made her stomach turn.

  Like a hardened detective she kept searching, scanning for those photos from the airport. There they were – the collection of shots of her and her sister waiting for the boarding call to take Raven away. Shots taken from the other side of the shelves in a duty-free shop. Meaningless photographs of two girls sitting with hands linked, in a moment of sadness and envy and hopelessness. Opportunistic images. A social voyeur at best, something far darker at worst.

  She found more. Events they’d attended as a kind of ad hoc family. The times John had tagged along to be the supportive de facto, the stepfather, even though no one wanted him in that role. But there his presence was, unseen, behind the camera. The pool party was the one that bothered her most. So many photos of herself and Raven and their friends. The friends who were girls, almost exclusively, and she wondered why he would need to go to such lengths to get shots of a few teenage girls in bikinis when a visit to any of the sites in his history file would have presented many more, dressed in far, far less.

>   It was the appeal of the familiar, she decided, and was relieved to learn that Tina’s joking prediction of spy cameras hadn’t yet been shown to be true.

  But once again, there were very few shots of Corinne.

  She sat back, swallowed her queasiness, and allowed herself to mutter it again. ‘Bingo.’ But it gave her no pleasure: everything she’d hoped to find, and was repulsed to find, was right there before her. She smiled. No longer the detective, she’d become the detained suspect with the big three: the opportunity, the motive, the means.

  Anonymity opened the web browser and went to the bookmark for Netbook. Clicking on John’s profile, she was let in immediately. It was clear that he’d never expected anyone to try to intrude, certainly not to elbow their way past that terribly clever password protecting the front door.

  Upload photos. This was too easy. Create an album. Too, too easy. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. What to call it.

  A few of my favourite things.

  A faint red, wiggly line appeared below favourite, reminding her to type in American. What would John do? Did it even matter? He’d protest that the album wasn’t of his doing anyway, but would he be quick-witted enough to point to the forensics of a misspelt word?

  He drove an American car, and listened to Elvis and Neil Diamond and Don McLean. For what it was worth, he probably would use American spelling, she decided, so she changed it.

  A few of my favorite things.

  From there the rest of the task was easy, and hard. Easy to find pictures to include, hard to decide. So many from which to choose. She started with a couple of shots from the airport. Raven in a souvenir shop, holding a scarf below her coquettish eyes. Raven and Anonymity walking ahead on the travelator.

  Next she moved on to some of the other times John and his camera had accompanied them. Both the girls in a rowboat at a fun park, puckering their lips at the camera. Anonymity remembered that moment well – Corinne standing beside John while he called out for the girls to blow their mother a kiss – and it chilled her to consider the thought behind the request. There was Anonymity wrestling with Sam on the living room floor. Raven dressed up ready to go out, poking her tongue at the camera. Anonymity wondered if John had any clue that she probably wasn’t doing it with the good humour he imagined.