A Ghost in the Machine Read Online Free PDF Page A

unquote.”
    â€œDid you?” Andrew couldn’t take his eyes off the pin. The lump looked to him like the glossy turd of a small mammal fed entirely on butterscotch.
    â€œWhen that poor old man told us he’d recently lost his wife and you offered to help him look I didn’t know where to put myself.”
    â€œI misunderstood—”
    â€œRubbish. I know you think you’ve got to be the life and soul of every party but this was a funeral, for heaven’s sake.”
    â€œA funeral !!?”
    â€œDon’t start.” She took the hat off. It was a black, gauzy affair, built rather like a flying saucer with a riot of strangely coloured vegetation dangling from the rim. “I don’t see why we had to drag ourselves there in the first place. She was Dennis’s client, not yours.” She laid the hat carefully on a gold Dralon sofa the size of a barge. “He won’t think any more of you.”
    For a fraction of a second Andrew lost it. “I don’t give a monkey’s arse what he thinks of me.”
    â€œLanguage,” cried Gilda, delighted.
    â€œYes, well – that’s what I use when I wish to communicate. Call me old-fashioned—”
    â€œIt’s not as if you need to tout for business.”
    Tout? Ah well, common is as common does.
    â€œAnd who do you have to thank for that, Andrew?”
    â€œYou, my little bonbon.”
    â€œAnd what do I get in return?”
    Automaton man, that’s what you get. A smiling skull. A mind full of loathing that’s always somewhere else. Mechanical sex. If you were a human being you’d know the difference.
    He murmured, “Gilly…” Her bottom lip pushed forward, full and shiny like a scarlet sausage. “Gill eee …” He crossed the room, bent down and kissed her cheek. The skin was dry and slightly pitted. Her hair smelled of dead flowers. “Why don’t you go and put those tooties up? And Drew will bring you a nice G and T.”
    â€œYou think that’s the answer to everything.”
    To her husband it was the answer to everything. Without it he certainly could not have got up in the morning, forced down his greasy breakfast, transported himself to the office and sat there most of the day, let alone dragged himself home. He said: “What would you like then, angel?”
    Without a trace of affection or even interest Gilda told him what she would like.
    â€œAnd a good one this time. For once.”
    She walked off, holding her glittery lace coat between two fingers, trailing it across the carpet like someone on a catwalk. All sorts of people had seemingly once told her she should be a model. She had even done a course but then Daddy put his foot down. Andrew had sympathised, shaking his head. It seemed to him Gilda would have made an excellent model. Twelve stone lighter, thirty years younger plus a million quids’ worth of plastic surgery and Kate Moss would have been throwing herself off Beachy Head.
    He selected a tumbler, iced it, gurgled in the gin. Then took a long swallow and waited, gauging the effect. Balance was all. Happiness on the head of a pin. He was aiming for the point at which faith arose. That exquisite, almost mystical moment offering a powerful convincement that only good times were round the corner and the future was shiny with hope. Another swig. And a third. Why not? Why fucking not? One thing was certain – he could never give her a good one sober.
    And yet, and yet…
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    Once upon a time, and that barely a decade ago, Andrew Latham had imagined, in marrying Gilda Berryman, he had landed himself the bargain of the century.
    Starving people are prepared to cope with anything as long as food is part of the deal. Andrew had never been starving, of course – he’d never even been really hungry – but he had been minus all the things that, to him, made life worth living. His own home, a decent car, really