Chapter 17

Gretchen sat on a wooden bench at the side of the brook. Throwing all caution to the wind, she’d contravened her own rules and decided to read another page from the Notebook. And now, she was broken.

Confused? Numb? Frustrated? Yes, all these emotions both in tandem and simultaneous. She felt an almost imperceivable tremor ripple throughout her skin whilst her jaw clenched into stone. It can’t be, she thought.

‘Didn’t you always know?’ chided the voice. ‘I mean, deep down, surely you knew.’ Gretchen shook her head stiffly from side to side yet her eyes stared fixedly at the babbling current of the brook. Now she knew who Lezka Ivkam was. A therapist, yes, but not a person. Not a woman, disappeared or otherwise. She was code. Artificial intelligence. Was it enough? Maybe so.

Maybe being human; being alive was overrated. And then the words rushed forward again. “The Gretchen patch”, “glitching”, “Gretchen isn’t. But she’s close enough”.

The rage erupted out of her in hot, unstoppable, vitriolic surge. She screamed – a stream of fury and agony – that finally, cracked into tears. She took a breath and then:

‘DON’T YOU DARE! I’M A PERSON. I’M ALIVE. I EXIST!’ With the final word, she hurled the Notebook into the brook and watched as the current carried it away like a small raft. Within seconds, it had disappeared too.

She crouched onto the path, feeling a pain so deep, she thought she would never heal again. The Broken Man’s words came back to her again: “She seems calm. The anger hasn’t risen, but I fear it will come.”

And so it had. Was this what the Broken Man feared? Was her temper so terrible? So destructive? Counting to 10 was never going to work, didn’t he know that? What had the anger done that made him broken? That caused the dried blood on the guitar case.

And then Gretchen realised that she’d said: ‘the anger’ and not ‘her anger’.

‘I am real’ she sobbed, but it didn’t sound convincing anymore.

She slowly walked to the tearoom. There were hikers as usual having coffee and chocolate eclairs and the same old woman was sat at the bus stop outside. No Maja though. She hadn’t reappeared. It would seem that when you’re gone, you’re gone for good.

But he was there. Sitting in the corner, glancing nervously around. Gretchen pushed open the door and they looked at each other. So this was the Broken Man in person. Not a serial killer or a wife beater, just someone lost. Someone whose world changed in a heartbeat and since then, has never stopped trying to go back. To retrace steps. To erase the truth. ‘Do I look like her?’ Gretchen wanted to ask, but the words died in her throat. Too soon. And then she noticed it. The Notebook, open in front of him. She recognised his handwriting. He followed her gaze and looked down at it too, then gave a decisive nod of the head and tore out the page. He handed it out to her, so she walked forward and took it.

After all this time, there were so many questions, so many points to discuss with him, so many answers that she needed but Gretchen said nothing. In the end, there was actually nothing to say.

There was a silent explosion in her head; a sudden expulsion of air that felt like she’d been sucker-punched and she was in the Underpass. A dark, long tunnel but there was light at the end. There was noise too – voices, lots of voices, different languages, sirens – but it was muffled and far away. She remembered the page. It was still gripped in her hand and although it was dark, Gretchen knew it was time to read page 10.