The Transition. Luke Kennard

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       5

      THEY SPENT THE NIGHT painting over Blu-Tack stains with Tipp-Ex. Then Genevieve scrubbed the floor with a hard brush and a cartoonish bucket of soap suds and Karl asked her why she was bothering.

      The next morning a black 4x4 was waiting for them outside their eviscerated bedsit.

      The driver leaned out.

      ‘Transition?’ he said.

      It felt like they were gliding over the potholed roads. It was an auto-drive, so for the most part the driver sat with his hands behind his head, watching the blue orb move up the map. Now and then he took the little steering column to fine-tune the car’s decisions, or put his foot down to override its obedience so that a stern female voice said speed limit exceeded. They were driven through urban clearways and bypasses, across double roundabouts and out-of-town shopping centres which had been absorbed into the town, past the football ground.

      They were entering a rougher part of the city, but the high-rises had been freshly painted porcelain white. They looked at them and thought of a tropical island hotel rather than Findus Crispy Pancakes and canned cider; although Karl disliked neither, now that he thought of it. A building site promised a forthcoming swimming pool and multi-gym.

      ‘All that,’ said the driver, ‘that renovation – paid for by The Transition. I grew up around here.’

      The car turned before a railway bridge and crunched over a gravel drive before entering an industrial estate. Corrugated-metal warehouses with big numbers and little signs. They passed a car mechanic’s, a boxing gym, a company called Rubberplasp whose name bounced around Karl’s auditory centre. Further in, the lots turned hipster: a craft brewery, a Japanese pottery, a vanity recording studio. Karl expected The Transition’s headquarters to be another identical shack, but when they rounded the last corner they were at the foot of a hill from which emerged four shiny black obelisks connected by footbridges, a letter H at every rotation. Each obelisk was roughly as tall as an electricity pylon, but only broad enough to contain a couple of rooms.

      As they stepped out of the taxi the shiny black surface of the four towers turned blue, and brightened until it almost matched the sky. A film of a flock of birds flew across it, disappearing between the towers, which faded to black again.

      ‘This is …’ said Karl. ‘Wow.’

      ‘Hmm,’ said Genevieve.

      A young woman was standing at the door of the first tower they came to. An earpiece stood out against her short, fair hair. They gave their names.

      ‘You’re married – that’s so sweet!’ she said. ‘Everyone is on the mezzanine. Floor 8. Here are your tablets.’

      She gave them each what looked like a giant After Eight mint: a very thin square touchscreen computer in a protective sleeve.

      ‘Pretty,’ said Genevieve.

      ‘I was told this was a pilot scheme,’ said Karl. ‘It looks …’

      The towers went through the sky sequence again.

      ‘… fairly well established. We’ve been going for eleven years,’ said the woman with the earpiece. ‘We try to stay under the radar.’

      The lift opened on a wide balcony full of couples. Instantly shy, Karl stood to admire a giant hyperrealist painting of a pinball table, Vegas neons and chrome. He stared at the electric-pink 100 POINTS bumpers and the matte plastic of a single raised flipper. He felt Genevieve take his hand. She did this rarely.

      ‘What a waste of a wall,’ she said.

      ‘I like it.’

      ‘You like pinball? You like bright colours?’

      ‘I like the painting.’

      ‘You’re such a boy. Boys love bright colours. Like bulls,’ said Genevieve. ‘That’s why underwear is brightly coloured. Do you remember that bag I had, the one with the Tunisian tea advert with the sequins? Grown men stopped me on the street to say they liked my bag. I told Amy and she was like, what they mean is I like your vagina.’

      Karl paused to make sure Genevieve had finished her train of thought. She had barely said a word for the last two weeks, but today she had opinions, theories. It was like she had been recast. It had taken him three years of marriage to learn that it was best to let her recalibrate without too much comment. Get a little depressed, then a little high in inverse proportion. Balance the ship.

      He looked at the reflection of the pinball table’s garish surface in the painting of the large ball bearing that dominated the right-hand side of the canvas. It was so convincing he expected to see a reflection of his face peering into it. As you got closer you could almost make out the fine brushstrokes.

      ‘I just think it’s incredible anyone can paint something that looks so much like a photograph,’ he said.

      ‘Yeah,’ said Genevieve, ‘but on the other hand so fucking what, you know?’

      A brushed-silver bar served free cappuccinos and muffins in three flavours: banoffee, apple and cinnamon or quadruple chocolate.

      ‘Quadruple? I can’t choose!’ said Genevieve.

      ‘Have one of each,’ said the barista.

      Handsome boy, thought Karl. Slightly wounded expression. An RSC bit-player face.

      ‘Really?’

      ‘Three muffins, Genevieve?’ said Karl.

      ‘Don’t listen to him,’ said the barista.

      ‘I never do.’

      She sounded too grateful. But then everyone Karl could see wore the glazed, winsome expression of the all-clear, the last-minute reprieve. The hundred or so young couples, the other losers who had accepted The Transition in lieu of some unpayable fine or term of incarceration, looked up from checking the impressive spec of the free mint-thin tablets they’d been handed at the door to admire the sun-dappled view over the city from the 360-degree window: Really? And they looked at each other, too. A preponderance of attractive, well-adjusted young people of every creed and orientation. They were athletic or willowy, at worst a kind of doughy, puppy-jowled fat which spoke of donnish indolence rather than profligacy. Inconspicuously smart or very casual – torn jeans, neon T-shirts – because they were good-looking and could get away with it. The couples were casing the joint, talking, making one another laugh. You wanted them as trophy friends. Thirty-somethings who could pass for teenagers.

      Gradually, the lights dipped.

      ‘It’s СКАЧАТЬ