Sweet Harmony Read online

  “For the sex!”

  “Was that it?”

  “And the apartment. Jesus, I’d have shagged him for sex and the apartment, but he’s still an arsehole.”

  “He told me he loved me.”

  “Fucking men.”

  “When it was good, when he was . . . when he was kind it was . . . and when he wasn’t I desperately wanted him to be kind again, for it to be good again, for him to be pleased. And when he was, it was such a relief. I was so grateful that he was kind to me, it was a buzz, like – does that make sense?”

  She is drunk; it is fantastic. She is swollen with food, bloated and vulgar, she is repulsive and stuck in a shitty little room near Streatham Hill, wherever the fuck that is, and is almost dizzy with the relief of it, she might fly; she might soar up through the ceiling. As soon as Jazzy is gone, she’s going to strip off naked and wobble round the flat waving her arms like a child, flapping a pigeon-flap to see if she can soar just by dreaming.

  “Jazzy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I didn’t think, I mean of everyone down the office – I didn’t think you were kind. I didn’t think that was who you were.”

  “Darling, you’ll make me go all soppy.”

  “I mean it. You’re so . . . You’ve got all the upgrades, you’re so confident, you’re so – like, you make every choice for you, not for anyone else, and you’re so good on it, you look so great but like, it’s this greatness that if you didn’t have the upgrades feels like you’d still be amazing, you know? I’ve had a lot to drink. This feels, I mean, this feels . . . ”

  Her voice trailed off into the sugary occlusion of her empty glass.

  For a long time, Jazzy was quiet, staring up at the sloping, shallow ceiling as if she could see through to the surface of the moon. Then she murmured, her voice the softest, most human thing Harmony had ever heard, “It makes me feel good to be beautiful. It makes me feel confident. It makes me feel like who I am inside is reflected on the outside. I like the way people look at me. I like that it gives me choice. I can choose to say yes, because the option is on the table. I can choose to say no, because it’s my body, my life. The power of that – of being able to choose – is a rush, it’s the greatest drug, it’s . . . Most people can’t, you see. They think they can choose, but all they’re doing is deciding between one fuck-up or another fuck-up, trapped in their little hourglass lives like that’s all there’s ever going to be. I know what I am. I know what I want. Fuck if anyone will ever tell me how to live, or to be someone else. This is me.”

  She rolled the stem of a champagne glass between her fingers, head drifting back over the arm of the cramped, blue sofa pressed against the wall barely a foot from the end of Harmony’s bed. “I’m great at my job. I’m going to be promoted very soon. I choose this. It’s my choice. It doesn’t have to mean anything. Not unless I want it to. I was hired by men. The people who promote me are going to be men.”

  They sprawled across the room, silent a while, Harmony belly-down on her new bed, while upstairs Hailey and Phuong hollered commands at each other – “Switch to sniper, switch to sniper, YEEEESSSSSSS!”

  Finally, Jazzy swung her legs off the sofa, using the momentum to pivot herself upright, depositing the glass down in a single swoop of long, perfect limbs. Without looking at Harmony, she said, “You’ll need to turn more of your upgrades back on if you want to continue at the office. They’ll pretend you won’t, but you will. You’ve already paid for them, so might as well. Forget the stupid shit Jiannis was pumping you with. You made good choices back in the day. You did all right. Come into work Monday looking fabulous, and you’ll change the story. Not the little crying girl, but the woman who came good. That’s what they need to see. You need to make it happen. That’s all. That’s my advice.”

  “Thanks, Jazzy.”

  “Whatever. Tell any of the boys I helped you and I’ll rinse you.”

  “Got it.”

  Rising to her feet, a single, uncurling, slightly stooped figure beneath the beams of Harmony’s roof. Jazzy nodded at a distant thought just beyond Harmony’s head, once, then turned away. “Good night, Harmony. Try not to fuck up again.”

  Chapter 25

  This is Harmony Meads, twenty-eight years old, alone at last in her bedroom in Lambeth, choosing who it is she will be.

  Jazzy is right – she’s already paid for the upgrades. The hospital shut most of them down, altered their start-up sequence to prevent glitching, but the list is still there, waiting. She can’t believe how long it is. She can’t believe that this is what her life became.

  Several are already running. Dermaglow, Powerful Poise – the hospital left them active for fear of unexpected and distressing consequences if they were shut down after so long in her system. She also re-engaged a couple of minor tweaks, a bit of boost for her hair, something for her teeth. After thinking about it, she didn’t re-engage her anti-toxin, anti-bloating, anti-alcohol screens.

  She would simply say no.

  This is Harmony, standing in front of her tiny bathroom mirror in the house where the pipes sing like a robotic Christian choir, learning how to smile again.

  It’s hard, at first.

  Old muscles around her mouth are saggy and slow to respond after so long on Dazzling Smile, and the time she spent without her dental upgrades has made her gums bright red, and oddly swollen.

  She tries grinning, and the pain around her eyes and ears is intense.

  She tries smiling a smaller, demure flash of lip, hint of tooth, and it seems like a girly simper.

  She tries relaxing her face, and then thinking of something funny, but it’s hard to think of funny things right now.

  She puts on a few videos she’s always liked from YouTube – kittens, a comical panda, stuff like that – and sort of does begin to smile a bit.

  It’s hard and slow, but she’ll get there.

  She’ll get there.

  On Monday, she goes back to work.

  Chapter 26

  This is Harmony Meads, back in the Bermondsey estate agent, doing OK.

  She’s going to be OK.

  She’s not what she once was. It’s hard. Her body adjusts slowly to the loss of so many upgrades. Her smile hurts. Sometimes she cries at night. Sometimes she’s manic, can’t stop talking, her brain a fizzle-pop of ideas, sounds, sensations, all of which are very, very important and need to be said right now!

  And though she hasn’t yet broken and called her mum, and though she’s now living in a crappy little room in Lambeth, the debt is OK.

  If she’s careful.

  She sits down and does a bit of maths. Not the scary maths, not the numbers that reveal the truth of what her life is, has been, will be. Just a bit of in–out, balancing the books. Taking back control.

  Her minimum monthly repayments to the credit card companies are £263. If she pays that amount every month, on time, and doesn’t get any more overdrawn, she’ll have paid back everything by 2055. The total cost of her repayments on her £11,000 debt will, by that time, be around £119,928. If she can pay it back faster, she’ll pay less.

  She scrolls through her phone. Dozens of upgrades are still listed as purchased, still being paid for. The termination fee is usually seventy-five per cent of the overall cost. She checks her bank balance, and doesn’t have the money to pay a termination fee, not after putting down a deposit on her bedsit. It’s not cheaper, but it is easier just to let the contracts tick on, until they run out, and simply not renew. One by one they’ll vanish from her phone. Upgrades for wobbly thighs, for calves that squelch in tight trousers. Upgrades for perfectly carved ankles, to prevent having a runny nose when it’s cold, or to erase moles from her body. Upgrades for feeling happy, upgrades to smooth out knobbly knees, or to stop her bum getting spotty and red from too long sat in the office chair. Movie stars don’t have spotty red bottoms.

  Until they lapse, and even with a decent salary, she’s still spending two hundred pounds a month more t
han she can afford.

  In the end, she sold her TV. She didn’t watch TV much anyway, and could stream most things on her laptop. That got her about £180. If she didn’t go to the pub with the office and was careful with her shop – she could squirrel another £30 or so back from her weekly expenditure. That gave her £210 in hand, enough to terminate a couple of the more expensive upgrades, claw back that monthly outgoing. It didn’t feel as good as spending it on something necessary or saving it for a rainy day, but she knew that spending it now would save money later.

  She stared at the list for a long time, adding up termination fees.

  K-blast and Zenblood.

  She juggled numbers around, sometimes factored her mum’s upgrades in, then immediately factored them out. Thought of phoning Karen. It would be easy – so very easy – just to tell her mum, “Hey, yeah, I’m in some difficulty . . . ”

  It would be hard, impossibly hard, to phone her mum and tell her the truth.

  She was a coper, after all. The Meads didn’t get in trouble; they didn’t crack under pressure. They coped.

  Eventually, she called up Fullife and terminated a bundle of medium-cost upgrades, watching the money vanish from her account as quickly as it had appeared, and the purchase list on her phone grow a little shorter.

  That left her with £28 spare a month. She’d be fine.

  She’d be fine.

  Chapter 27

  It wasn’t blackmail in the end.

  Blackmail is such a wicked word.

  Jiannis just put up some old photos of her he had. He’d liked taking photos of her, a bunch to celebrate each upgrade, even the upgrades that were . . . intimate.

  OH WOW, IS THAT YOUR EX? SHE IS HOOOOOTTTT!

  Jesus, what a slut.

  Get a load of that!

  She only heard about it three or four days after he started posting. She’d blocked him, lost his number, his email address. It took a friend of a friend texting her with, “Don’t know if you know, but your ex is doing something shitty on Facebook. You should check it out.” for Harmony to discover the truth.

  She called him that evening. “What the fuck are you fucking doing?!”

  “Oh, so you can call me, can you? I’ve been worried about you. I’ve been sick with worry.”

  “What the fuck are you doing with my pictures?”

  “I’m just posting some photos, remembering the good times. You want to meet up sometime?”

  “No, I do not want to meet up. Take those fucking pictures down right now!”

  “Uh, no, it’s my Facebook page.”

  “It’s my body.”

  “Given how much time I spent working on it, I’d say it’s our body.”

  “I’m going to report you.”

  “Babe, there’s no need to be like that. I miss you, OK? I’m in pain, and I miss you – I’ve been so low without you, you don’t understand how low I’ve been. I was angry with you at first but I’m not now. I understand that I did things that you think hurt you. There are things about me you don’t know. There’s been real trouble in my life. Meet me and I’ll explain it all.”

  “I just want those pictures gone.”

  “Forget the pictures, OK? Forget the fucking pictures. Come over tonight.”

  “No.”

  “Listen, I forgive you, OK? You don’t have to be frightened. I forgive you for everything. I love you.”

  “Please. Please. Just . . . just get rid of them.”

  “Babe, babe, you’re not listening to me. You’re not listening to me. Babe . . . ”

  She hung up, and for the first time in a while cried, and it made her ugly and weak.

  She reported him to Facebook.

  Facebook sent an automatically generated response saying they’d look into it. She couldn’t reach anyone human to talk about it.

  Oh WOW, I didn’t know they let you post pictures like this . . .

  Mate, you should sell this stuff, seriously, this is gold.

  I’d do that ass, yes I would.

  Jazzy came to her, when the boys started avoiding her gaze.

  “Sweetheart, Harmony, seriously. Girl to girl, heart to heart – everyone’s seen them and you need to get him to take those fucking photos down.”

  Harmony needed a drink, and her £28 in hand at the end of the month vanished.

  She met Jiannis for a cup of coffee. She insisted on it being a public place.

  “Jesus, Harmony, I don’t know why you’re so stiff about this!”

  They met on the South Bank, at the concert hall, while below children galloped through purple light and blue spinning splotches of colour, and the river reflected shards of sodium, neon and LED red off spinning black waters.

  She was shaking when she arrived, and Jazzy came along, sitting one floor up, back turned to them, pretending to read a book, left hand locked around her mobile phone.

  Jiannis pulled his chair too close to hers, grabbed her hand between his and whispered, “Babe, I love you. You know I love you; you can feel it. I know you can.”

  “I just want it to stop.”

  “I’m nothing without you. I’m going to die without you. Come home. You need to come home. I’ll look after you. I’ll buy whatever you want.”

  “No. I want you to take the photos down. I’ve spoken to a lawyer.”

  “I only posted them because I’m proud of you, of who you were, of how beautiful you used to be. I’m just proud.”

  “You’re not,” she snapped. “You controlled my body and my world. You’re not proud. I want them gone.”

  He leaned back, releasing her hand, flinging it back into her lap, lips curling. There were tears in his eyes, and she realised with a moment of sheer, mind-boggled bewilderment, that he meant it. That he knew himself to the be the victim. That he knew she was wrong. That even if tomorrow he met the next most beautiful woman in the world and married her and was happy for ever after, he would still look back on this moment, this second in time, and know that everything he said was true and absolute, unchanging as the mountain high.

  He didn’t shout, except once, when he threatened to kill himself and roared that she was an unfeeling bitch.

  Then people turned to stare, and Jazzy left her seat on the floor above to come to the balcony’s edge, peering down, face white and teeth bared. That seemed to make Jiannis feel better, as the shame of staring, accusing eyes on Harmony’s face made her burn – how profoundly crimson her skin blazed as her body adjusted to a life without Control My Blush – and, sitting back down again, he snapped, “Looking after you was very expensive. I spent a lot of time and money on you.”

  Harmony had wondered if this would come up. Technically it was true, but as much as he had spent on her, she had felt compelled to spend in excess of what she had, pulled into a lifestyle that she couldn’t afford, and wasn’t even sure, looking back, she had enjoyed. Perhaps she had. Perhaps wanting to find it magical had made it so.

  “I can . . . I can pay you back,” she stammered, and it was a lie, but it was the only thing left. The only way to take control. “I can . . . ”

  “I don’t need money.” Not even looking at her, a dismissal, powerful again, made powerful by her offer.

  “Towards the rent, or something, like . . . two hundred pounds?”

  “Babe, that’s less than a week.”

  “Five hundred?”

  “You can’t buy me back.”

  “I just want us to be . . . for things to be fair between us. Settled. I want to . . . close things off.”

  In the end, she promised him £700. He didn’t need the money; that wasn’t the point.

  Most of her credit cards were maxed out, but there was one which extended her overdraft without her even needing to talk to the bank. She just needed to click on a box on her online banking, and that was that.

  Jazzy exploded. “YOU GAVE HIM MONEY? Now he thinks he can fucking control you! He can control you! You think the photos are going to go away? You think this make
s it better? HE OWNS YOU NOW!”

  At first, she thought Jazzy was wrong.

  The photos vanished from Facebook, and stayed vanished for three weeks, and she didn’t pursue her complaint with the company.

  Then they began to return, along with missed calls from an unknown number.

  She texted him:

  Take down the photos and stop calling me.

  He replied:

  I don’t know what you mean.

  She got a lawyer to send him a letter. That cost £240.

  A moderator finally saw the images of her naked flesh paraded online and removed them. Didn’t shut down the account – that would have been a bit much – but sent Jiannis a warning over inappropriate content.

  Jazzy said, “You just have to ignore him. That’s all that’s left. I’ve got a friend in the police; she says that if they haven’t broken the law, that’s all you can do. It’s all you can do.”

  And in the end, it was.

  By then it was too late.

  Chapter 28

  The pimple on her chin was the first sign that the debt was out of control.

  “Are my nanos malfunctioning? Do I need to go to hospital? Is there a programming error? Are they . . . doing things?”

  “ . . . so there are a few boosts that will be shutting down in the next twenty-four hours, including Rise and Shine, Fresh and Perky, Powerful Poise . . . ”

  “So, Harmony. This office, it’s . . . well, it’s a very specific clientele we deal with, and our people, they’re the brand. The boys in Enfield are great; they’re really . . . ”

  Jiannis stopped trying to contact her three months after the Enfield move. No one at the office knew any of Jiannis’s friends, so they hadn’t seen the photos, didn’t know every detail of her body.

  Not that they would have believed it was her, not that sexy, lithe, writhing athlete in the pictures. Not their chubby, spotty Harmony Meads with her flaking skin and thinning hair. Not that goddess.

  “When you’re better, when this is . . . better,” Ibrahim said, “you can come back. There’ll always be a place for you here.”