New Orbit Magazine Online: Issue 03, June 2018

*
“Well holy shit. The weirdest thing.”
“What, my love?
“You don’t have a younger sister, do you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, you know I don’t! This
from the man who blames all my issues on onlychild
syndrome!”
“No, no, of course. Well, I guess it’s true then.
We all have a doppelganger somewhere.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Her. This girl.”
Alex gasped as Luca showed her his phone
and zoomed in for a grainy close-up.
“My God.”
She wanted to be excited, to enjoy the thrill
of the bizarre, but a ball of nausea deep in her
belly told her a truth she could not accept. She
was looking at herself.
*
Sandy’s dive was perfect. She parted the water
with no splash, barely a ripple. Her hair slicked
into a dark rope behind her as she emerged at
the other end after only three strokes and a
single breath. She leaned over the infinity edge,
as she loved to do, meditating on the horizon
and merging, from Henry’s perspective, with
the deep, silent, navy lake behind. He had not
allowed her to abandon her talent as Alex had
done. She could have been an Olympian (Sandy
too, if such a public profile had been possible)
but Alex had chosen her NGO calling instead.
Over everything she could have had, all that she
could have been. Sandy’s gifts were not to be
cast aside so easily. Nor cut short like Alex’s
hair, for the practicality of travel, and playing
doctors and nurses in some godforsaken
refugee camp.
Diving practice was daily, lessons came weekly
– Sandy’s schedule was carefully controlled. She
had no idea this was so, or that it was unlike any
other woman’s. He was no tyrant, however. She
had the freedom to work and she had chosen to
keep working for him (it would have been
criminal to let that brain go to waste.) She
engineered medical robotics as part of a small,
hand-picked team that was located off-site in a
biometrically secure lab, two miles from home.
Between the lab and the villa was a shopping
mall, a cinema, a bowling alley, a holocourt, but
Henry had arranged for her to shop and play
out of hours with her bodyguard, Delilah,
whom Sandy thought was her best friend.
Delilah was not the only security. There was a
more visible presence to throw Sandy off the
scent of that particular subterfuge. His darling
understood (ever since the staged kidnap
attempt) that precautions were necessary.
Henry smiled at the memory of his performance
that night, as he’d dropped to his knees before
her to apologise for such appalling trauma on
his account. This was the curse of being with a
wealthy man, he had told her with bitter regret,
a man with sensitive government contracts. He
would understand, of course, if she wanted to
leave. Of course, she had not.
Why would she? They went to dinner in
restaurants he owned and filled with actors. He
threw lavish parties at home, where phones
were collected together with coats at the door.
Sandy had personal masseurs, beauticians and
fitness classes in the pool house gym.
She remained under the care of the therapist
he’d arranged for her after their first date (a
champagne hoverglobe tour of the canyon
during which Henry had feigned deep shock
and sadness when learning that her parents had
died the year before in a freak shuttle crash.)
He was excellent value, that charlatan shrink
who remained completely clueless, especially
about the fact that every session with her was
recorded.
Sandy was a passable twenty-six (ten) when
Henry had orchestrated physically ‘bumping’
into her, with precision timing to make this a
physical actuality. Her mortification about the
coffee she’d spilled down the boss’s pristine
shirt impelling her to accept a date, despite her