Second Life by S. J. Watson

end.
    There’s another smiling face, this one with its tongue hanging out.
    I hesitate. The cursor blinks, waiting for me to decide what to type, how far to
take this. It feels surreal; me in London, him in New York, separated simultaneously
by thousands of miles and nothing at all.
    – I’m imagining that’s what you’re wearing now.
    I don’t reply.
    – I’m thinking of you wearing nothing at all . . .
    Still I don’t say anything. This isn’t what I wanted to happen.
    – I’m getting hard here.
    I close my eyes. I shouldn’t be doing this. I’m a voyeur, I am sampling my sister’s
virtual life, my dead sister’s private life. I’m a tourist.
    I should stop, but I can’t. Not now. Not until I know for certain that it isn’t him.
    Another message arrives.
    – How about you? You want me?
    I hesitate. Kate would forgive me, wouldn’t she? I type:
    – I do.
    – Good, he says. Tell me you remember. Tell me you remember how hot it was. The way
you described your body. The things you did.
    – I remember.
    – Tell me what you want, right now.
    – You.
    – I’m kissing you. All over. Your lips, your face. I’m going down. Your breasts,
your stomach.
    Again something within me tells me this is wrong. He thinks he’s talking to Kate.
He’s imagining having sex with my dead sister.
    – You like that?
    My hands hover over the keyboard. I wish I knew what to say.
    – You like feeling my tongue on your body? You taste so good . . .
    What would Kate have said?
    – You want me to go lower?
    What can I say? Yes? Yes, I do? I can tell him I want him to go lower, I don’t want
him to stop, or I can ask him what he’s told the police, where he was in February
on the night of Kate’s death, whether he murdered my sister. Even as I say it in
my head it sounds ridiculous.
    I grab my machine and stand up. I don’t know what to do.
    – Are you ready for me?
    The ground beneath me opens. I begin to sink. My heart is beating too hard, and I
can’t breathe. I want to stop my mind from spinning, but I keep thinking about what
Kate might’ve said, what she might’ve done.
    I look at the machine in my hand. For a moment I hate it; it’s as if it contains
all the answers and I want to shake them loose, to demand the truth.
    Yet it won’t. It can’t. It’s just a tool, it can tell me nothing.
    I slam it closed.
    Hugh comes home from work and we eat dinner, the three of us, at the table. Afterwards
he packs his suitcase, occasionally asking me where a shirt is, or if I’ve seen
his aftershave, then goes upstairs to finish off his speech while Connor and I sit
in the living room with a DVD. The Bourne Identity. I can’t really concentrate; I’m
thinking about this afternoon, wondering whether the guy Anna messaged – Harenglish
– had got back to her. I’m thinking about cybersex, too, which I guess is really
no different to phone sex. It makes me think of Marcus; there were no texts back
then, no emails, no instant messaging services, unless you include pagers, which
almost no one had. Just the voice.
    Connor leans forward and grabs a handful of the popcorn I’ve made for him. My mind
drifts.
    I remember the first time Marcus and I had sex. We’d known each other a few weeks,
we spoke on the phone, we hung around after the meetings drinking coffee. He’d started
to tell me his story. He came from a good family, his parents were alive, he had
a sister who was nice, normal, stable. Yet there was always alcohol in the house,
forbidden to him, and he was drawn to it. The first time he got drunk was on whisky;
he didn’t remember anything about it, other than the fact that he felt some part
of himself open up, then, and that one day he would want to do it again.
    ‘How old were you?’ I’d asked.
    He’d shrugged. ‘Dunno. Ten?’
    I’d thought he was exaggerating, but he told me he wasn’t. He started drinking. He’d
always been good at art, he said, but the drink made him feel he was better.