‘What’s the Harmony Gauge?’ Lindy asked. It sounded familiar but where had she heard it before?
Adam, she noticed, was recoiling slightly. ‘It’s the thing for monitoring the mood in the house,’ he muttered. ‘It was in one of the early Monteray promos we had on the channel.’
Oh God, a memory of Max came back to her. He was speaking to camera, reassuring an unseen audience of kids that in Monteray Valley ‘Mom and Dad are always happy because the Harmony Gauge makes sure that every fight is resolved by third-party intervention before escalation’. He’d had trouble with the word ‘escalation’, she recalled.
‘The Harmony Gauge, as I’m sure you remember, takes the emotional temperature of the relationship and we’ve seen some concerning results in the last six weeks—’
‘I’m sorry, how exactly are you getting these results?’ Lindy knew there’d been something about this in the contract but the particulars escaped her, though it couldn’t have been that alarming if she’d signed.
‘Well, it’s a cumulation of different data: how many meals are the couple sharing at the dining table versus on the couch; vital signs; frequency of coupling versus onanism – that kind of thing. At Monteray, we see the success of our citizens’ marriages as a reflection of our entire community, our way of life. We want to keep our Monteranians on track – we want to keep you two on track.’ Esme smiled encouragingly.
‘Often,’ Pierce picked up the thread of explanation, ‘by the time a couple realises they’re in trouble, it’s too late for reconciliation. The Harmony Gauge helps us see the early signs of rot.’
‘So the house is telling on us?’ Lindy replied. ‘Great. Like a poltergeist but an overly interfering one that only wants the best for us.’ She rolled her eyes.
‘Lindy, I know this process can be very confronting – we’ve had quite a few marriages requiring the Monteray arbitration already this summer. It’s not easy, I know.’ Esme, to Lindy’s horror, tilted her head to forty-five degrees.No! The international symbol for pity. I do not want this pristine waif’s pity, Lindy wailed internally.
‘But you have options,’ Esme carried on, evidently undaunted by Lindy and Adam’s lack of enthusiasm. ‘We have all the usuals: couples therapy, reflexology, sex courses. But even better, we have the Monteray Marriage Pause – a place to take stock and get perspective.’
‘Wait. A place?’ Lindy perked up.
‘It’s a cluster of replica homes for spouses to retreat to during troubled periods.’
‘What?’
‘Yes!’ Pierce beamed. ‘It’s so no one has to leave Monteray, even if things are less than perfect in the marriage. It’s temporary, until the couple coalesces. And the Marriage Pause is discreet. The cluster is accessible via the subterranean network, so any signs of marital fray are undetectable.’
‘And what if the pause needs to be permanent?’ Lindy asked, sensing Adam’s sharp glance in her direction.
‘Well, that really doesn’t happen.’ A slight frown rippled across Esme’s earnest expression. ‘The divorce rate in our other Monteray developments is non-existent. Monteranians stay together.’ She flicked a finger over the screen of her tablet. ‘Especially Monteranians under contract to sell the lifestyle,’ she added, a subtle, steely edge creeping into her voice.
Aha.Lindy felt her rage reignited. Never not thinking about the bottom line, any of them. She turned to Adam. ‘Will we do rock paper scissors to see who has to go to Exile Valley?’ she spat.
‘Lindy,’ he glanced tensely at Esme and Pierce and then back to her, ‘we don’t need to be hasty. No one needs to go anywhere. We can work on our, eh, coupling and stuff here, together.’
Lindy was so sick of him, she was going to tell him what she knew whether Esme and Pierce were there or not – she was past the point of caring. Even if she waited till they were gone, they would no doubt receive an update within hours. ‘Adam, I know—’
‘Before you two start getting into things, let me direct you to the marriage-rescue app, Monteray App-ily Married.’ Pierce was tilting his tablet to show them the icon. She could see his notes off to the right of the screen: ‘subjects are subdued’; ‘body language suggests serious dearth of intercourse’; ‘subjects have been reminded of their contractual obligation to embody the Monteray ideology’.
After agreeing to ‘explore their options in the app’ just to get them off her back, Lindy managed to edge Esme and Pierce back into the hall and eventually out the door.
Christ. Where does it end?Lindy thought, leaning back against the closed front door.
‘They’re right – we need to coalesce.’ Adam had appeared in the doorway to the living room, adopting what he presumably thought was a reasonable tone. ‘I’m willing to move past the dinner-party stuff.’ He clearly thought this was an incredibly charitable gesture.
‘No.’ She walked towards him and he started to shuffle backwards into the living room. ‘No, no,no,’ she repeated in time with her steps.
Adam was clearly wrong-footed by her fury, but only for a moment, then he seemed to be about to speak again. Before he could, she felt the dam she’d used to shore up her grief burst. ‘You’re going to speak to me?’ she shrieked – it hurt her throat but it was so satisfying to savage him. ‘Howdaaareyou think you have the right to say anything to me. You sit down right now and you explain to me—’ she paused and then hissed the next words between gritted teeth, her knuckles white as she clenched her fists ‘—youexplain tomehow you can be such a cold, conniving, cunty fuck.’
He did sit down then, on the sofa, and slumped back, his head flopping against the headrest. It might have been a posture of defeat, but he looked to Lindy like a fed-up teenager.
She slammed her fist on the sofa beside him. ‘You look at me! You look at what you have done. Look what you have ruined.’ She was dry-eyed and grateful for that. She never wanted him to see her crying over this, over him. She glared down at him and felt nothing but disgust. No love and no pity. She leaned down and pushed her face right up to his to bellow the next words: ‘I hate you. Ihaaateyou. You are pathetic.’ She pushed each word out with a deliberate, potent force. He looked terrorised and it was darkly satisfying.
She stood up and retrieved the large white envelope from her bag. ‘It’s all there. The way our split will go. And it’s all on my terms. I’m giving you joint custody because it’s better for Max, but if you so much as quibble about thegrammarin this letter, I will annihilate you. I will screw you. Or rather you’ll have screwed yourself with your stupid little video. What an ego, Adam, you can’t even have sex without filming yourself. Be terrible for that to get out there. That whole thing with the tail is pretty embarrassing …’
Adam’s entire body froze except for his eyes, which were darting in a frenzied fashion, clearly trying to process what she had just said. In a matter of seconds, however, he’d obviously metabolised the news that she knew everything and was recalibrating his argument. ‘You wouldn’t, Lindy. It would wreck Max’s life too, you know.’
‘You meanyouwould wreck Max’s life. Sign that agreement. Do not be a bigger prick than you already are. We are not getting into costly court shit. Patrick says this can be settled between us as long as you don’t fight it. And if you do … well, you know what’s coming.’
