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  I hung my head, though her Tiny still wasn’t looking at me. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s going on with me. I need to come home where you can keep an eye on me.’

  She made a doubtful snorting noise.

  I felt my vice vibrating in my pocket, informing me of an incoming call.

  ‘Jenny. Love. I know I’ve screwed up here, big time. I want to try and make it up to you. It’s our anniversary next week. Forty years, did you remember?’

  Silence.

  ‘Well, I’ve been meaning to buy you something special. I didn’t want to tell you, I wanted it to be a surprise.’ The vice started vibrating again. ‘But I’d like to go get it for you, now, so I can bring it back to show you. We could both do with some time to breathe and cool down. Please, it will mean a lot to me. It must be, what, 7am back home? You need sleep. I’ll lie your Tiny down in my bed, nice and warm, and cover its eyes with something. You’ll feel much better after a rest.’

  ‘I’d feel much better if I could trust my husband!’ The Tiny’s glassy eyes swivelled madly until they finally found me. ‘If I could trust him not to lie to me, not to flip me off so he could go watch fucking ice hockey at some fucking bar! If that was even what you were doing.’

  ‘I’m sorry! But you must agree you could do with the rest...’

  ‘Oh no you don’t, Carl. You’re not leaving me again for some other stranger to pick me up and fondle me. You’re not leaving my sight unless you want this marriage to end right this minute.’ I heard her wheezing through the Tiny’s speakers – she sounded like she was in pain, or maybe she was crying. ‘And book a flight to Sweden! You owe me that if nothing else.’

  ‘Shh, okay, okay,’ I reached over and patted the Tiny’s head. If it had been the real Jenny sitting there she would have recoiled. ‘We’ll go to Sweden.’

  I turned away so that my back faced her, and switched my vice to active. I opened the holo-board only, hoping that from her angle Jenny wouldn’t notice the shimmer. I sent a hasty message to Madam Bellarina, telling her that I still intended to meet her, I just wasn’t sure when.

  THERE’S SOMETHING STRANGE that happens inside your conscience when you cheat on your partner. You take the bit of the lie that’s true and focus on that until all the rest of the story seems inconsequential, just superfluous detail. You admit to yourself some lesser crime, something you know you shouldn’t have done, and then you wallow in the shame of it. You roll around in that shame until you’re covered in it. And only when you’re covered, dripping, and stinking with the smell of it do you feel justified, like you’ve somehow paid your dues. And then you move on.

  The real crime, the big, fat, ugly, thorny fact of my infidelity, I easily ignored. It was too massive and dark to see while I was shining a torch with practiced precision on the petty detail in the foreground. I drank. See, that was the problem. That was always the problem. Because, I reasoned with myself, if I didn’t drink none of the rest of it would ever happen.

  Jenny caught me only once. It nearly ruined us, and I made a pact with myself afterwards to never again have an affair with a woman inside New Zealand. At the time I’d recently secured a senior position in a new Wellington-based firm. I was only thirty-five and my salary had suddenly doubled. I commuted, while Jenny stayed in Auckland with Rach, and tried to sell the house.

  I was out after work with my new colleagues. One of their sisters was an artist, and it was her exhibition opening that night. We were all dragged along. The art was average, but the booze was free. That’s the good thing about art exhibitions: they never fully disappoint. I’d been there an hour and had had just about enough of staring at pastel-coloured squares on sand-textured backdrops when a woman in emerald stockings and knee-high scarlet boots walked through the door. Her blonde hair was pulled up into a beehive, and her leopard print blouse was pulled tight above her black mini-skirt. Needless to say, I stayed longer and downed at least another three free wines. Her kitchen floor tiles dug deep grooves into my buttocks that night.

  Her name was Jasmine. She was interesting, charismatic, and sexy as hell. She ran a bed and breakfast in Roseneath, overlooking Oriental Bay. She’d eat her toast and morning coffee naked on her porch. I saw her too many times. After a year she called Jenny.

  I think if Rach had been just a few years older Jenny would have left me. Instead she dragged my great-grandmother’s antique hope chest into the middle of our lawn and built a fire inside it. She was good with fires, and it was winter at the time. She screwed up the balls of newspaper and packed them tightly inside, then took our hatchet and chopped a small stack of kindling. After she’d lit the paper, she waited calmly for the fire to grow hot before she added the firewood. Rach had run up into her room, and peered like a ghost from her window. My shirts, ties, books, childhood paintings, chessboards, tennis racket, bicycle helmet, wallet, favourite mug, every belonging I seemed to own, were one by one sacrificed to the flames. Jenny had drilled holes through the denser objects to make sure they burned. I just watched. I knew by then that Jenny wasn’t going to leave me, realised that this was my punishment, so I felt miserable – yet relaxed. For probably two whole years after that Jenny wouldn’t let me touch her.

  Six years later, Rach read the wrong email and blackmailed me. She was sixteen. I bought her a second-hand Honda, and then two months later paid for a weekend holiday to Sydney for her and her best friend. I told her that if she brought it up a third time her inheritance would go to Oxfam. Jenny, unaware of the deal that had been struck, was furious. She told me that I was just encouraging Rach’s difficult behaviour by spoiling her.

  ‘NO, I DON’T WANT YOUR postal address!’ I snapped. I could feel my blood pressure rising. For all the tens of thousands of dollars I’d spent on those damn Tinys, you’d have thought they could have spent some of it training their call centre staff. I took a deep breath. ‘I am coming myself, delivering it to you by hand. And I need it fixed immediately. Whatever the cost.’

  ‘If you are local, sir, then I’ll be pleased to order a courier—’

  ‘No, I am not local! Jesus Christ, don’t you people keep a record of your calls? My name is Carl Edmond. Both my wife and I have called you numerous times within the last 24 hours. My wife’s Tiny has malfunctioned. She is trapped inside the stupid thing and is severely distressed. Now please, tell me where I can take her Tiny to be repaired. I will be arriving first thing tomorrow morning, and will be leaving by late afternoon.’

  Eventually, when a physical address had been sent through to my vice, I called Michel. He wasn’t overly impressed by my timing, but didn’t make an issue of it. To my relief, Jenny perked up a bit. She told me she’d made herself a cup of green tea and she was lying in our bed back home with the curtains drawn. It was another beautiful early autumn morning. She could hear the school kids walking to school. The mail lady had just dropped letters through the door. I asked her again if she’d like me to cover her Tiny’s eyes, but she told me she wouldn’t like the heaviness on her face. It would be suffocating.

  I was slowly stroking her Tiny’s little forehead and speaking to her softly about the baby squirrels I’d seen hopping through the trees on Mont Royal, when the hotel phone rang.

  ‘Just a moment, love,’ I told her, and tapped it to my vice, opening the holo-screen. The hotel receptionist’s well-shaven face appeared.

  ‘Mr Edmond, you have a call. Will you take it now?’

  ‘Sure,’ I answered, believing it must be someone from the Auckland office. I searched inside my pocket for my headphones.

  The screen disappeared, which surprised me. Most people consider it rude to turn off your visuals.

  ‘Hello Carl.’

  Madam Bellarina’s voice poured into the room like mercury. I jumped from the bed like I’d been bitten, yanked my headphones from my pocket and slammed them into the side of my vice. Shit, holy hell. Heart thundering, I strode to the bathroom and closed the door.

  ‘You can’t call me here!’ I h
issed. ‘I’ve told you I’ll meet you later. Tomorrow – no, the next day, it’ll have to be. There’s been an emergency back home, quite serious. Look, I’ve really got to go.’

  ‘My girls have been very busy today,’ she said. ‘They called every hotel in town until they found you.’

  ‘I’ll make it up to you, I promise. Just not right now.’

  ‘You missed our date.’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ I whispered. ‘But I’ve had one hell of a day. And now I have to fly to Sweden tomorrow morning, because my wife is sick—’

  ‘Mr Carl Edmond, CA BCom (Hon),’ she cut me off. ‘I am not a prostitute. If I was, I would charge you for your visits. For your many visits, all of which I have welcomed. I have good friends who will be very unhappy to hear of a man who came uninvited to my home, used me, then skulked away like a thief without saying goodbye. My good friends have good friends all over the world.’

  ‘What? You know it’s not like that! I... I care for you, Madam Bellarina. I didn’t use you.’ I felt out of breath. The bathroom light was too bright. It didn’t make sense; I’d always left Madam Bellarina before she awoke. I’d never wanted to impose on her, never wanted the awkward breakfast conversations.

  ‘I’m going to buy you that car,’ I said. ‘I was always going to. Look, I’ll leave right now! I’ll meet you at the car yard in thirty minutes.’

  ‘Idiot man. I am already on my way to you.’

  The quality of the sound changed and I knew she’d disconnected the conversation.

  I stood, sagging against the bathroom sink. She was on her way. There. To my hotel room. To Jenny. I looked into the mirror and shook my head at the reflection. What a loser. A joke. A pathetic, slithering thing. A mosquito maggot wiggling whitely in a pond. A tape worm.

  I ignored Jenny’s silent Tiny on my pillow, and sat down on the hotel’s hard, slippery couch to pull on my shoes. I hoped that between my three personal credit cards and my work card I could cover the cost of a car. I squeezed my temples between my palms, trying not to groan out loud. Surely Madam Bellarina would understand my position. I couldn’t buy the newest, most expensive car with no warning. I stood up, shakily, and grabbed my briefcase.

  ‘Jenny,’ I said.

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘Look, I need to go out for an hour.’ I said, looking down at the little doll that looked like my wife. ‘I need to do this, trust me. But then I’ll be back, and I’ll explain. It’s not as it seems.’

  There was a knock at the door.

  I felt the blood drain instantly from my face. My hands went numb and I dropped my briefcase.

  And then I panicked.

  I went straight to the room’s kitchenette and flung open the solitary kitchen drawer. Hotel kitchenettes are notorious for being under-equipped, but this was the first time I’d actually cared. In the drawer I found both types of bottle opener – beer and wine – but the sharpest knife I could find was a butter knife. I grabbed both the knife and the wine bottle opener, and hurried over to the bed.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Jenny cried, as I snatched her from my pillow. ‘You’re squeezing me too tight!’

  ‘I’ll pay for a new Tiny,’ I gasped, setting the Tiny on the bench and tearing off the little Tiny clothes. ‘This is ridiculous. You can’t stay in there. I’m going to get you out.’

  There was another knock on the door, louder this time.

  ‘Hang on!’ I screamed. ‘Just give me one damned minute!’

  I hesitated, my hand hovering over the knife and bottle opener. Should I saw, or should I puncture? I chose the bottle opener because it looked sharpest. I prodded at the Tiny’s chest, trying to feel for the battery. Jenny was crying.

  ‘I’ll do it quickly,’ I said. Sweat dripped from my nose on to the bench beside the Tiny’s head. When I lifted the bottle opener into Jenny’s view, she screamed. A long, drawn-out static hiss.

  I raised my fist, then slammed it down, smashing the point of the bottle opener into the Tiny’s chest as hard as I could. The Tiny’s skin, tough as leather, didn’t even dent. I could hear Jenny gasping and coughing, probably rolling about in pain on the other side of the world, while the Tiny lay motionless on the bench. Swearing, I stepped backwards and nearly fell over my briefcase.

  I still can’t explain why I did what I did next. Why, in that moment, my mind flew to such a solution. In the court hearing I told them it had been Jenny’s idea. The whole thing. They had all the recordings from when she’d called the Tiny helpline, they knew how desperate she’d been to get out of the damn thing. I actually wasn’t going to lie, but Rach convinced me. She said we could do with the money.

  I upended the contents of my briefcase, and snatched up my small roll of cellotape. It was ancient, gone yellow, barely ever used. I savagely attacked it with my nails until I found the where the tape began, and then I took Jenny’s Tiny and I rolled it, rolled it, rolled it until the entire body and head were covered. I was panting. My hands shook. But she was covered. Silent. Blind.

  I opened the door. It was the hotel attendant who had brought me my coffee. He handed me a large bouquet of flowers, then held out his hand expectantly. I shut the door.

  The card on the flowers read, ‘To Jenny. We all hope for your speedy recovery. Michel and Team.’

  I dropped the flowers on to the bench next to Jenny’s mummified Tiny and left. On the elevator down I sent a message to Madam Bellarina’s number, informing her that I’d meet her outside the hotel. As I passed through the hotel’s foyer I saw her, standing next to a taxi outside. She looked old and haggard in the daylight.

  TWO HOURS LATER AND a good deal poorer than I’d have liked to have been, I sat on the toilet in my hotel room and slowly unwound the cellotape from Jenny’s Tiny. Through the thick yellow cocoon she looked like a sleeping pixie, her features smudged, hard to define. The cellotape’s colour reminded me of a condom. When I was down to the last few winds the tape stuck in the Tiny’s hair, and I had to tug hard to get it off.

  ‘Jenny?’ I asked, hoping like hell that she wouldn’t reply.

  And, she didn’t. I prodded the Tiny’s chest hard, but not a sound. She was gone.

  The Tiny was still disconcertingly warm. I reminded myself that it wasn’t Jenny that made it warm, it was the fact that it was turned on.

  I thought of calling Jenny, or at least sending a message to her vice, but decided against it. I’d be home in four days. Four days till the shit hit that fan, four days to prepare myself. I wondered which vessel she’d choose to burn my things in this time. I cringed, thinking that my newest golf set was likely to cop it first; titanium-infused steel wouldn’t deter Jenny. I made the decision to take some time off work, take her somewhere nice. We went to Fiji for our twentieth anniversary, stayed in a resort run by a local village. I couldn’t remember the resort’s name, or even the name of the village, but figured it probably still existed.

  I AVOIDED RACH’S CALLS for two days. Either she was calling to chastise me, and perhaps blackmail me – I wouldn’t have put it past her to suddenly bring up my older crime, 24 years later – or she was calling to inform me that all of my possessions had been expertly destroyed. I even imagined her there with Jenny, the flames illuminating their faces orange, cackling as they once more reduced my life to ash. But eventually she sent me a text message.

  ‘Mum is in a coma,’ is all it said.

  I flew straight home. I waited outside the terminal for twenty minutes before I finally made my way to the taxi stand. I’d told Rach my flight details; I thought she might come. When I arrived at the hospital she was there, swollen eyed. She’d spread a colourful blanket over the hospital bed, and Nico was curled up on top of it, beside Jenny’s knees, sleeping. I gave Rach a hug but I wanted her and Nico to leave. I wanted to be alone with my wife. I pulled another chair in from the hallway and sat, silent. Watching Jenny’s chest rise and fall.

  In those first few weeks the doctors thought Jenny might soon come out of the
coma. She still had flecks of paint beneath her nails. She still smelled of soap and washing powder. Her grey-auburn hair spilled across the pillow. Her brown eyes were closed, but seemed like they could open at any time. Life-sized eyelids. Life-sized lips. When I arrived back at our house, the night after I’d come home to Auckland, I found my Tiny in the bed, next to where she’d been lying. It was wearing pyjamas.

  I held Jenny’s dry hand, while doctors rolled in and out, giving me conflicting hypotheses about what had happened. Some believed that although her body hadn’t suffered any physical damage the brain had believed that it had, and so had shut itself down. Others, as far as I could tell, believed that sheer fright had made her mind turn off.

  ‘What did you expect?’ one nurse asked me. She was overweight and her shoes made sucking noises on the floor. ‘Putting things into your head? Transmitting images into your mind? It’s not natural. I’m surprised things like this don’t happen more often.’

  FOURTEEN MONTHS AFTER her admittance to hospital, I won the settlement and had Jenny installed in a luxury suite overlooking the Parnell Rose Gardens, where she now lies in plush comfort on a king-sized bed, receiving therapeutic, aromatic massages each morning.

  The day she was transferred there I was due to fly to Sydney, and before I left I propped up my Tiny next to her hospital bed, against a blue vase. I should have bought her some flowers, but I didn’t think.

  That was two years ago. And so far, there’s been no change to her condition. Her nurses humour me by always keeping the battery charged on my Tiny, always keeping it switched on at Jenny’s end. I switch myself on most nights, to check on her.