Chapter 33 Lucinda

Chapter 33

?Lucinda

Lucinda settles into her seat and takes a fortifying sip of coffee before opening the first file.

Person P: Kidney disease, transplant incompatible, degenerative. Palliative care.

Current estimated life expectancy: -3 months.

Person P has clearly exceeded the expectations of their doctors and lived three months more than predicted. Lucinda reads on, and it's clear from a quick glance at their medical information that the condition is now, finally, deteriorating rapidly.

She is used to this. She has seen a lot of these files.

All the non-consensual participants, like Maria and the ones before her, were chosen this way. Each person chosen for the house was the sole remaining next of kin of a terminally ill relative.

This was how they found them, their participants: they were people specifically selected as least likely to be missed within a certain demographic.

Lucinda is sent the data, and she researches the solitary next of kins to find the perfect fit. The potential participants would not be Persons P, Q, or R. They would be their remaining next of kin.

Lucinda knows what she's looking for, what the remit is, and she reports back her findings on her chosen candidates with suggestions on how to package them as participants and suggestions on room and game content.

What she is looking for is simple: candidates must have no remaining family after their bereavement. They have to be unconnected, they have to be able to slip between the cracks.

She is sent patient information and then she further researches the remaining relative, the potential candidate.

From this research Lucinda cherry-picks the cream of the crop. Women are more popular, and those between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five are the preference. Once a male guest was tried, but the results had generally been considered unsatisfactory, with only one room having been completed. Testosterone it seems is a hindrance in this particular set of circumstances.

Lucinda scrolls down to Person P's next-of-kin information. And there she is: female, twenty-six, a management consultancy senior partner from Connecticut. The job doesn't seem an immediate draw for potential clients, but Lucinda latches onto the fact that this young woman has already reached senior partner at twenty-six. Such a level of ambition and application will definitely garner interest with clients.

Lucinda tries not to think of the woman who made it all the way to her kitchen earlier that day. Of how she survived so much. Of all that intelligence and application and the extraordinary mind-boggling waste of it all.

Instead she scrolls down to the photo attached to the twenty-six-year-old senior partner's file. She stops abruptly as the young woman's image fills the screen. She tries to take her in objectively, as she always does.

Her name is Claire. She is pretty, with the first flush of youth on her, and an enviable cascade of glossy red hair teamed with that shrewd unflappable look of confidence that Lucinda has come to search for in candidates' eyes.

Claire looks like she has a lot of fight in her—and that seems to be, from Lucinda's limited experience, exactly what the clients are after.

Lucinda opens her medical records. Fit, healthy, low BMI, strong heart and lungs. She will certainly be physically capable of at least two rooms—though it's always impossible to judge how far participants can be stretched mentally. But then she understands that this is the draw of the enterprise. The thrill of the unknown. How much fight there is in the dog, so to speak.

Yes, Claire looks like she has fight.

Lucinda marks a double star against Person P's file and moves on.

Person Q: Car accident. Non-responsive. Life support.

Current estimated life expectancy: No prospect of recovery, advised terminating life support.

Lucinda scrolls to the next of kin. An older woman, at least by their limited standards, at thirty-five. Her medical records read well. She too leads an active life as a marine biologist in New Zealand. Her name is Krista, single, travels regularly for work, no financial, or familial, ties except her now incapacitated father.

Krista's job has the edge over Claire's, her backstory carrying more cachet, more packaging options; her rooms could offer more visually and psychologically rewarding options. Though her age might put the clients off.

It has occurred to Lucinda before now how similar this world and the commodified world of app dating are. The built-in misogyny and stratification of it. In a sense, she sees herself as the matchmaker from hell.

Lucinda scrolls down to Krista's picture and quickly triple-stars her. Beating out Claire easily.

Krista has clear visually bankable qualities.

Person R*: Late-stage lymphatic cancer. Hospice recommended.

Current estimated life expectancy: + 2–3 weeks. Rapid deterioration.

Lucinda had already noted the asterisk. She skips ahead; Krista will take a lot to beat.

Thirty-four, single, Cambridge University English literature professor, Cambridge, United Kingdom. The daughter of John Stanley Hepworth, the British public intellectual, polymath and she is an author in her own right of several well-respected academic texts.

Lucinda feels her mouth fall open. She recognizes thatname. She knows who he is, what the connection is to the house, to all of this…

She swallows hard. His daughter, in his house?

She scrolls back up the file, the asterisk staring back at her. It's not a mistake; it's a preference. An order from the top, and she knows who the top is.

She licks her lips. It's unexpected for sure, but Lucinda feels the same frisson of having found something incredibly rare as when she had first learned of Maria's backstory in the Darién Gap.

This woman, Nina Hepworth, is at the older end of the scale, but her pedigree is impeccable, the premium undeniable. Clients will want her, she knows the market well enough to know that. They will find viewers for that package without a doubt and at a high premium.

Her name is Nina Hepworth and she gets the full four stars.