Free Upgrading by Simon Brooke

Wheatley. He picks up a couple of pieces while I get the rest.
    “There you are,” he says, handing them to Sami very slowly and looking her in the eye. She says nothing but lets him past and then gets in the lift. I follow.
    I spend most of the day drifting off, thinking about Marion, our night together, our very enjoyable sex, her house, her champagne, her car. I find myself visualizing the way she pouts, her soft lips, the way she opens her eyes wide when she is surprised or amused by something I’ve said. I smile to myself as I think about her strange questions, her interest in my ordinary life. I’m probably as alien to her as she is to me. Am I falling for her? I’ve almost forgotten what’s that like.
    But, shuffling my papers around my desk, as I’m paid to do, I realize that perhaps I am.

six
    h arvey Nichols shimmers in the heat like a mirage over the Knightsbridge traffic as thousands of horsepower throb and fume impotently. I look across at Marion, who is sitting next to me on the back seat. She is furious. I touch her hand and she looks round quickly. I smile and her face softens slightly.
    “Can you believe this fucking traffic?” she hisses.
    “There’s not much I can do, madam,” mutters the driver. Marion says nothing. His neck looks very exposed, for a moment I wonder if Marion is about to leap forward and rip a chunk out of it like a lion at a gazelle. I’m sure she doesn’t mean to take it out on us, it’s probably just her frustration at being kept from consuming.
    “We could get out and walk,” I suggest and immediately realize that this is not an option.
    “Just what the fuck do these people think they’re doing?” she snaps. “And look at all these fucking buses. They should keep buses out of town.”
    After a couple of lurches and a little rolling forward up to the bumper of the car in front, we get within a hundred yards or so and Marion decides we can walk.
    “Try and park as near as you can, like Reading or someplace and I’ll call you when I want you,” she tells the driver.
    We get out and head for Sloane Street. Walking quickly past a couple of shops, she suddenly looks in the window of one, mutters something and ducks inside with me following closely behind. The arctic air-conditioning hits me like a cold shower. A heavy, dark-haired woman in black moves forward and says in a thick foreign accent, “May I help you?” It sounds as if she is guarding her territory rather than offering any assistance.
    Without looking at her, Marion counters with, “I don’t know yet” and begins to look at the only rack of clothes in the shop. I find a chair by the front door under a blast of cold air and sit down.
    Marion called me on Sunday night and asked if I wanted to go shopping on Monday. She didn’t specifically say she would be buying anything for me, but why else would she invite me? I was actually quite nervous about this. The last woman who took me shopping for clothes was my mum when I needed a new school blazer. And that wasn’t a very pleasant experience, needless to say. Will it be easier with Marion? Or will I get bored and look like a berk hanging round rails of women’s clothes? Or like a shop window dummy as she holds things against me and says, “That’s so you!”
    Even more unnerving is the situation at the office. I’ve told them that a water pipe had burst in the roof (they do have pipes in the roof, don’t they?) and that during the night I’ve been up and down stairs with buckets and the plumber hadn’t turned up so now I was waiting for another plumber but the place was absolutely soaked and didn’t know whether it would ever be the same again. I tried to make it sound funny, you know, sort of farcical, with me at one o’clock in the morning drenched and covered in plaster, but the little turd who picked up the phone when I rang—new guy, I don’t know his name—didn’t laugh and just said, “OK, I’ll tell Debbie.”
    When I got to