Who—

Can’t be Carla. He checked his watch. The seminar still had half an hour to run, and anyway he’d had the thought before he knew what time it was. As their separate work schedules chewed off more and more of the time they used to spend together, they’d fallen out of the habit of checking in with each other for anything other than pure necessity.

The telephone rang.

He watched it stupidly, holding the whisky, thoughts locked up.

Work would have used the datadown. From habit and from the manual. There was a Shorn directive against talking shop on unscreened lines.

The phone rang.

Erik, ringing to back down from the ludicrous sulk Carla had described when Chris got back from the north. Chris grimaced. That particular Viking? Not likely.

Just answer the fucking thing, for Christ’s sake.

He crossed to the terminal and thumbed the accept. The blue background blipped out and a picture sank into place.

For a curious moment, Chris wasn’t sure what he was looking at. He made out dark glossy hair and a profile, seemingly pillowed on twin cushions that ...

Moaning gusted through the air from the speaker.

The profile turned, mouth open.

A hand appeared, enamel red-tipped.

Adrenalin bubbled abruptly through Chris’s head as the picture made sense. He was watching a slice of holoporn, downloaded direct to the phone link. A heavily made-up woman with long black tresses was crouched over an equally painted blonde partner, sucking and nibbling at a pair of breasts so large and so perfectly rounded it was hard to believe they were physically attached to either participant.

Chris sank onto the arm of the sofa, watching.

The shot dilated a little and background detail emerged. The two women were sprawled on what appeared to be some kind of exercise bench and wore nothing beyond a few studded leather accessories that served only to lift and separate curved areas of flesh. The blonde half of the duo was on her back and upside down, hair trailing to the floor. The other woman had somehow contrived to straddle her partner but leave her own backside raised high in the air like the top of a child-drawn heart. The twin mounds of buttocks mirrored the silicone-enhanced globes of the woman below so that a bizarre kind of vertical symmetry was created. You could almost believe you were looking at a single hourglass-shaped creature with the incidental appendages of limbs and faces added after the event.

Chris felt the blood stirring through his stomach and puddling into his prick as the two woman faked their way towards a mutual climax. The dark-haired performer was evidently cast in the role of dominatrix and she worked the other woman’s flesh with much snarling and flashing of purple-painted eyes, while the blonde beneath her moaned and rubbed semi-convincingly at her own improbable breasts.

The dominatrix—

The thought skated almost casually across the rink of his mind, replacing something else he’d been going to think.

It was Liz Linshaw.

He leaned forward uncomfortably over his erection. Confirmed, the recognition sent a small shiver up his spine. Liz Linshaw had aged a few years since the footage was shot, but behind the purple eyeshadow and the dyed black hair, the face was unmistakable. It was the same line of cheekbone and nose, the same long, mobile mouth. The same slightly crooked teeth.

Chris’s eyes flickered from the face to the exposed flesh below it. Six weeks ago, at the Tebbit Centre studio, he’d seen the steep curve of her cleavage loaded into just-glimpsed lingerie under an open-necked blouse. He’d fallen asleep that night thinking about it and - he only admitted it to himself now - he’d looked for it on the morning Prom and App bulletins since.

Now, here it was laid out for his perusal at leisure, and it was, he noticed, the same steep curve. Liz Linshaw’s breasts were not of the same epic proportions as those of her performing partner, but they were still cosmetic-standard enough to defy gravity without external support. The nipples, now being forced mock-sadistically into the blonde woman’s mouth, were large and dark and blunt. If there were scars where the implants had gone in, they were lost in the all-over tan.

Chris was rock hard.

He watched as the blonde woman’s mouth dragged and smeared down the length of Liz Linshaw’s body to the juncture of her thighs.

The panting and moaning grew mutual as the two women got into the inevitable top-to-tail clinch and filled their brightly taloned hands with bronzed flesh. Chris’s hand moved unwillingly across the buckle of his belt. Semi-convincing or not—

White lights splashed across the window and drenched the curtains. The Landrover crunched up the drive.

Chris leapt up and snapped the phone off. The liquid sounds of orgasm evaporated into stillness. For a moment he stood over the unit, glaring at it. The message option pulsed, download message, dump message, replay message, download, dump, replay, download, dump replay, download—

He stabbed the screen and the copying bar filled from left to right like a tiny, unrolling carpet in mauve.

The Landrover’s engine stilled. A door clunked, open and closed.

He stabbed the eject button and snatched the minidisc as it emerged. It fell from his fingers, hit the floor and rolled.

Footsteps on gravel.

He cast about, tiny triphammers in his temples. The disc glinted silver from under an armchair.

Carla’s recognition tag scraped on the lock.

He bent and grabbed the disc, buried it in his pocket on the way out of the lounge. He heard the front door open as he reached the study. He made it to his seat.

‘Chris? I’m home.’

‘Just a minute.’

The erection, he was relieved to find, had melted in the panic. His jeans felt almost loose. He swivelled on the chair as Carla came in and kissed him on the cheek.

‘Work?’ There was just a hint of weary resignation in the single word as she glanced past him at the screen.

‘That’s right.’ He returned the kiss, feeling as if he fitted badly into his own skin. The words were jumbled and overlarge on his tongue. ‘It’s some stuff I’m digging out for Michael.’

‘You eaten?’

‘Yeah, the rest of the curry. You?’

‘On the way.’ She grimaced. ‘Kebab.’

‘Yeah, I can smell it.’

‘Yeah. Sorry.’ She stopped abruptly and leaned back a little, holding his head between her palms. ‘You okay? You look a bit pale.’

‘I’m.’ He gusted a sigh, pushing out some of the tension. Jerked his head at the screen so she had to let go. ‘It’s just some of this stuff. We’re looking at the North Andean Monitored Economy. I’d forgotten the shit they get up to in police cells out there.’

She moved away. ‘No worse than what’s going on in Cambodia, from what I hear.’

‘We’re leaning on them to stop that,’ he told her.

‘Yeah?’ There was a dull disinterest in her voice as she walked out of the room, a coat of detachment they had both started to evolve as an alternative to the rows there was no longer time or energy for.

He went after her. Back into the lounge, where the phone terminal stood in the corner. He remembered with a jolt through the stomach that he had not erased the original message.

‘Carla.’

‘What?’

He moved up close to her and put one arm on the juncture of neck and shoulder. The gesture felt clumsy, unaccustomed. It was weeks since they’d fucked. She looked at him out of suspicious eyes.

‘What, Chris?’

He ran his fingers up into the hair behind her ear and tugged through until his hand was clasping the back of her head. It was a caress that invariably set her cooking, but it still felt awkward. He closed the final gap between them, relieved to find that his erection had returned in force. She felt it pressed between them and a thin little smile appeared on her lips.