Haterz (39 page)

I’d not used the internet for a while. I didn’t dare log into Facebook. But I did check Twitter from a terminal in the lobby. I’d cracked. I immediately wished I hadn’t.There was something I had to go back for.

A
MBER AND
G
UY
had a Lego-themed wedding. Oh, God, I know. The whole thing was so lamely two-thousands, or what people who aren’t quirky think is quirky.

The wedding invite was made out of Lego: ‘You are cordially invited to the wedding of Guy Hammond and Amber Dass,’ photographed in little coloured bricks.

The wedding cake was made out of marzipan Lego bricks. There were little Lego figures on each place-setting. A Lego train laden down with brick-encrusted cupcakes wound around a table. As it was the evening do, some people had come in Lego costumes.

Everyone was wearing the same tired-at-the-edges smile that Lego people wear.
I am always happy because I live in a land where the firemen never have to put out a fire and people always come out of hospital with good news and where there’s no such thing as a Lego cemetery. Or maybe my frantic smile is because I’m bursting to go to the loo and there’s no such thing as toilets in Legoland?

Of course, I was going to despise the wedding, ridiculous theme or not. The woman I loved had got married to my best friend. And I’d not been invited.

To be fair, though, I had been on the run, so maybe the invite hadn’t reached me. Yes, that was definitely it. Not that they didn’t want me around. So I went anyway. It was reasonably easy to sneak into the reception. I dressed in a ‘could be waiter, could be guest’ dinner suit.. Amber’s band played at the wedding, even though they were a big thing by now. They were all (hilariously) dressed as Lego pirates. Quite a few of Amber’s aunts were there, splendidly failing to mask their disapproval.

Everyone was dancing. Children were taking the table ornaments apart. Aunts aside, it seemed a happy place.

Amber was, of course, everywhere. It’s odd that people obsess about having a wedding so much. It seems like electing yourself to be a crisis-laden CEO on an away-day where all your staff are drunk. People kept on coming up to her, patting her, taking pictures with her, and laughing. Just standing there and laughing. Which seemed odd, but people are really odd at weddings. The ultimate prize is getting me-time with the bride. Which, let’s face it, if she really is your BFF, then it’s something you get to do pretty much every week.

I’d only come here to see Amber. I had no reason to see Guy, and wanted to make sure he didn’t see me. He’d defriended me on Facebook. If we met he’d only go and do something Alpha Male. I’d run through scenarios in my head, and all the possible outcomes ended either in “Listen, mate...” or a threat of violence.

Anyway, it was Amber I wanted to see.

Amber who I couldn’t get to.

I hung back against the wall and waited. I’d done it enough in bars and clubs. I was good at being a wallflower. It taught you a lot of decent skills.

For example, and I say this trying my best not to sound like a stalker, it teaches you that everyone needs to go to the bathroom eventually. It’s the one point when they can pretty much be relied upon to break out of their social groups.

Turns out, it’s not quite true of a bride at a wedding. When Amber eventually headed for the Ladies, there was a small trail who followed her, buzzing and laughing like a royal escort. Amber’s big smile tugged a little at the edges. She’d reached the point where she just needed a break. And then she saw me.

I’ll give her credit. That smile didn’t quite go.

To give her even more credit, she didn’t say any of the things that soaps tell us people are supposed to say, like, “What the hell are you doing here?” or “You have a nerve!” She just stopped, looked me up and down, and then turned back to her gaggle.

“Hey, Michelle,” she said, “I just need to go and talk with this guy.”

“But—” said the pinkest of the bridesmaids, looking alarmed.

“It’s cool,” insisted Amber.

And suddenly we were in a lift, and away. Just for a moment she relaxed, a little huff of air coming out of her. “They are exhausting,” she said, more to herself than to me. Then she turned.

“Hello.”

“Hello,” I said.

O
DD GOING INTO
the bridal suite with the girl you really fancy on the day of her wedding to not you.

A little tingle of trespass went up and down my spine, stepping into a room I had simultaneously no reason and every reason for being in.

“This is nice,” I said.

“Yeah.” Amber didn’t even look around at the room. She marched over to the desk, sweeping a lot of rose petals and heart-shaped chocolates off of it. She perched on it. “Damn dress means I can’t sit down properly.” She paused. Clearly it was my turn.

“Happy Weddingsday,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “It is, thanks.”

“Good.”

Another pause.

“Where the hell did you clear off to?” she said. It would have been nice if she was shouting it. Or crying. She just seemed mildly annoyed.

“Oh... well, you know... travelling.”

“Yeah, right. Seems like one minute you were kissing me, the next you’d run away.”

I was going to try out a lot of truth here. “You seemed happy with Guy. And actually, it’s a little more complex.”

“Are you going to tell me you’ve been having a tough time recently for personal reasons? ’Cause I love hearing that one.”

“No...” I coughed. “It’s a bit more than that.”

“Oh, do go on,” Amber yawned, leaning back against the elaborate mirror. “I’ve got all the time in the world. It’s only my wedding day.” Casually her hand dipped into a silver bucket at her side, and then, as though surprised, pulled out a bottle of champagne. “Bubbles?” she said. “Personally I’m so full of them, but, you know, hospitality.”

“No, it’s fine—”

“I insist,” she said, uncorking the bottle. She poured us two glasses. “Here’s to Happy Ever After,” she said.

“You really are a cow,” I said.

We clinked glasses.

C
ONSIDERING SHE’D DECLARED
herself full of champagne already, Amber sank two of them remarkably quickly. “I worry all the booze is trapped in my cleavage by the corset,” she sighed. “And when I take this bloody thing off I’m just going to die.”

“This is nice. You seem really relaxed,” I said.

She shrugged. “Just cold. It’s so easy to let life’s little disappointments screw you up. So when it pisses me off, I let it really piss me off. Then freeze it.” She smirked, a little tipsily. “Frozen piss. That’s not quite what I meant. But anyway. Not mad at you. Just cold.” She flapped a hand vaguely in my direction. She did, all of a sudden, seem a little drunk.

“Right.”

“Yeah,” she narrowed her eyes in a cartoon squint. “So spill. What made you run away?”

“Er...”

“Come on.”

“Well, it’s like this. I was framed. It’s really hard to explain, but basically I’m a suspect in a suspicious death because... well, and you won’t believe this, but I was set up by a vast international conspiracy.”

“A
vast international conspiracy
?” Amber did air quotes while holding her champagne glass. She was laughing openly at me.

“Yes.” I finished lamely. “I know how that sounds.”

“You’re sure about this?”

“Yes, they sent me messages on MySpace, they provided me with cash to carry out missions...”

“Missions?” Her eyes were wide.

“Erm... well, yes. Er. Nothing bad. Not really. I mean, Jackie, you remember from that night—”

“Jackie Aspley?”

“Yes. She was one of them. I had to make her happy.”

“Uh-huh.”

“That sort of thing.”

“You were being paid by a secret cabal to make people happy?”

Amber kept on looking at me. Distantly I could hear, of all things, ‘Agadoo’ playing.

You know how, sometimes, you think about something, you agonise about it, and you examine it, and then when someone talks about it, you realise it’s a bit odd?

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes.”

A
MBER SLID TO
the floor, kicking off her shoes as she went. “There’s something I need to show you,” she said, padding over to her luggage. It seemed to be mostly underwear. She pulled from it a folder and handed it to me.

“I need to show you this and then I need you to really politely get out of my life,” she said. “I brought it along. Just in case.”

I opened the folder and the world took a little tip. The pineapple was pushed and the tree was shaken.

I stared at the top sheet of the folder. And then back at Amber.

“A vast international cabal,” I repeated.

“Hi,” said Amber. And waved.

I
STARED AT
the folder in horror.

“You knew all along?”

Amber nodded. “From that evening in the bar. I saw what you did. And... well, I knew Danielle. I’d always thought Guy could do better.” She smiled and the room filled with the silent sound of my heart breaking. “So, you see, when I saw what you were doing, I really couldn’t blame you. I thought about phoning an ambulance, but I was drunk. So I just pocketed her phone and then went home.”

“You went home drunk and set up a vast international conspiracy?”

Amber laughed a lot then, shaking her head. “Well, along with my friend Michelle. She was in the bar with me. It was quite easy, really.”

“I don’t believe you,” I told her. My voice was broken. Shaking. So many questions.

“You were Duster?”

Amber nodded. “Always figured there’d be a use for MySpace. You were such a sucker—turns out, if you tell someone you’re watching them all the time, they pretty soon believe it.”

“But... I...” I was blushing. Odd reaction, but there it was. Utterly humiliated and I could feel my cheeks blooming like I’d wet myself at a childhood birthday party.

Amber laughed, and it wasn’t a very nice laugh. “Don’t say you loved me. You don’t really know me at all!” Well, that was certainly true. “Come on, Dave! I know every bit of your life for the past few months. You’re so screwed-up it’s untrue. First there was that boy in the bag, then there was Jackie Aspley...”

“It was you! You told her my real name!”

“Guilty,” nodded Amber. “I was feeling jealous-slash-pissed-off. No, I’m not consistent, but people aren’t. Surely you’ve learned how petty we are?”

A big question appeared. One that was much easier to talk about than feelings.

“Where did you get the money from?”

“Crowdfunding,” said Amber.

“What?”

“I crowdfunded the whole thing. On Kickstarter—well, not Kickstarter, but something with a few less, you know, morals. Turns out there are loads of people out there who want to get annoying idiots bumped off. So, we sorted out your assignments based on who really pissed people off...”

“What the hell? I mean...”

Amber sorted through the print-outs. “It’s all here,” she said. “Seriously.”

“But no-one talked about it?”

She laughed. “We talked about it all the time. To each other. There are even t-shirts. The thing is... well, we’re not what people were looking for, were we?”

I sat down on the edge of the bed. It all seemed so thoroughly, poisonously unlikely. I’d been wrong. Henry Jarman had been wrong. There was no giant power moving the pieces across the board. At the best I was working for a charity. At worst I was working for a lot of drunk students, hipsters and bored web designers. No-one had even noticed.

“You’re a meme,” said Amber. She sounded both proud and sad.

It suddenly meant nothing. None of it did. None of it ever had. The only things
I’d
done, the only things that had ever had any meaning... like saving Amber’s band, or not killing Henry Jarman... I’d cocked up.

I was a failure. I was a t-shirt.

Then I had an idea.

“But what... what about the Ninja?” I said.

Amber looked at me. Startled. I knew it. I
knew
it. She was a catspaw. I tried telling her this.

Which was when Guy walked in.

I
THINK, IN
hindsight, there was something absurd about being beaten up by a man in a morning suit while a woman in a wedding dress tries to break things up by throwing bags of sugared almonds.

No one came to help. Of course no one did. Hotels are used to hearing loud noises coming from bridal suites.

In the end, Guy ran out of energy. I’d tired out his fists.

He just slumped at the side of the bed, panting.

“You’re an idiot,” he said.

“Yes, yes I am,” I agreed.

T
HAT WAS THE
last time I saw him. I picked up my folder, smiled brokenly at Amber, and left.

Sat on a nightbus going who knows where, I didn’t even care about showing up on the CCTV. It didn’t matter anymore. Nothing did. I glanced through the paperwork.

Then I checked my phone. The Ninja. That was it. That was the last hope.

I watched the clip. The clip of the Ninja threatening my cat. I had to find her. Somehow I had to find her. The impossibly cool, glamorous woman like a video game heroine.

You’ve worked it out, haven’t you?

The video clip just showed me, picking up my cat. And placing her in the microwave. Talking to myself.

That was what the Ninja had been all along. How I’d wanted to appear. The person I could blame when I just went too far.

A non-existent assassin working for a non-existent conspiracy.

It was all utterly meaningless. There was no big war room full of sinister people controlling my every move. If you’d gathered them together, they’d be a bunch of people in amusing t-shirts drinking green tea and lattes.

The whole thing was a lie.

I
SAT BACK,
going through Amber’s paperwork. And then I spotted something.

All Knowledge Good.