I checked my mobile. One message from Jimmy, asking if I wanted a drink tonight, one from my neighbour telling me there was a parcel waiting at her flat for me. Two emails from work that I ignored. Then I turned on the Wi-Fi on my other phone – the one I used for Artemis-related business, and was alerted to new messages with a string of beeps. Nine from Pete. Scrolling down, one was a message telling me that I had to find out what system the hub was on. I could ask Lacey to get that information. The next few were links to articles about smart doorbells which had been hacked and then there was a message asking where I’d gone and a photo, which when I clicked on it, showed Pete in front of a mirror. His head was cropped out of shot, but his tracksuit bottoms were pulled down and I could see his penis, held up to the camera like a special offering. Why do men send unsolicited pictures of their dicks? I am not friendly with many women, but I feel confident that I could answer for most of my sex when I say that nobody wants to wake up to that. Especially from a barely legal teenager with too much pubic hair and a sad case of chest acne. I felt simultaneously depressed by having to see it and sorry for Pete, who obviously thought it was an obligatory rite of passage when talking to a girl. I saved the photo, and sent it to my real phone. Might as well keep it in case Pete had a crisis of conscience. I messaged him back gently asking if we could take this all a bit slower. I hope I struck a note which made him feel more than a little self-conscious, while still giving him hope that there’d be some sort of reciprocation at a later date. He’d never get anything back from me of course, but I wouldn’t feel too bad for the lonely teen. If you strike up a friendship based on hacking, you deserve to get scammed. In fact, you should expect it.
*
As soon as my package had arrived, I took it up to my room, unboxed it and read the instructions. I wrote them down in an abbreviated form on a small piece of paper, and then rolled up the plug and put it in a small toiletry bag along with the money. It was pretty compact now, and would fit in Lacey’s pocket without causing any concern if Janine saw her coming back from the walk. Next door, I took out another 500 euros, added it to the bag and walked down to the promenade, seeing Lacey appear in the distance. She was in a better mood today, clearly she’d spent time planning how she’d use the money. Or perhaps Janine had been extra vile that morning and Lacey just wanted to take back some agency. Probably it was a little of both.
I gave her the money and told her what she had to do. ‘There are instructions in the bag too, if you need them. And my number, so please text me when it’s installed and give me the brand of the hub, and the serial number on the side. It’ll be sixteen digits.’ She nodded, and told me that Janine would be going away on Friday. I reassured her that we’d turn off the listening mode while she was gone, and only activate it again on her return. I wondered whether Lacey kicked back when Janine was out of town, painted her toenails in the cushion-stuffed lounge, smoked in the kitchen, had long baths in Janine’s tub. I hoped so, but she was probably too scared in reality.
‘We only need a week or so of audio – that should give us enough examples of this kind of shoddy behaviour. Then you can remove the plug and throw it away OK?’ She nodded again, and bent down to stroke Henry under one ear.
‘I do this for my family, and so that other women don’t suffer like I do with a bad boss. It makes me feel good to help someone.’ Henry was busy trying to bite her fingers, and I suddenly felt a tiny pang of guilt. She wasn’t helping anyone except me. And she’d be out of a job too, soon enough.
‘What’s your surname, Lacey?’ I said suddenly. She looked up at me, deeply suspicious. Henry looked suspicious too, but that was normal for the little fucker. ‘I promise it’s not for anything but my records – I won’t use it anywhere.’ She still looked uncomfortable. ‘If the story gets sold globally, you’d get a cut of it,’ I said, trying to think on my feet. That worked, money usually does.
‘It’s Phan,’ she told me, spelling it out. I thanked her, and made her promise again to send me a text later that day when she’d installed the plug. She looked solemn and told me she would. We parted, and I walked back to my hotel to wait.
Four hours later, after I’d completed an online workout, had a bath and spent an hour going through Bryony’s back catalogue of videos on Instagram, my phone pinged. All done, the message read. It’s installed, blue light blinking. Make on box is Henbarg. Code is 1365448449412564.