Annie Courrèges

Annie Courrèges is an English neoprimitivist curator whose absence becomes an instrument of investigation in future London. Travelling by ship to Brazil and unable to attend Daedra West’s gathering in person, she is represented there through a peripheral operated by Flynne Fisher, while Wilf Netherton uses his prior connection to Annie to make that impersonation credible. The role places Annie at the hinge between a real professional identity and a carefully manufactured social persona, allowing the investigation to approach a gathering linked to Aelita West’s murder.

Identity and Professional Position

Annie is identified as an English curator despite her French name. Netherton describes her as a neoprimitivist curator and later supplies the more formal designation “Associate Curator Annie Courrèges, of the Tate Postmodern.” That title is not merely a label: he uses it when an attempt to establish his own professional connection meets an institutional response that there is no record of him. Annie’s name and position thus function as recognizable credentials within a world where identity can be checked, challenged, and performed.

Her fieldwork is directed toward neoprimitives, also described by Netherton as technophobics. Before setting out, Annie has had her phone extracted; the work may keep her among them for a year or more. The detail gives her absence practical grounds as well as professional purpose: she is not simply unavailable for an evening, but about to enter a long period of fieldwork without ordinary phone access.

Connection to Daedra West

Annie’s connection to Daedra is mediated by Netherton. He says Daedra met Annie at a working lunch at the Connaught, where he had arranged the introduction. He had also persuaded Annie that she held a flattering theory about the artistic progress of Daedra’s career. The account reveals Netherton’s social tact as a kind of advance work: he has shaped what each woman may believe about the other, making a future meeting easier to arrange while planting a story he can later use.

When Netherton proposes that Daedra meet Annie again, he describes Annie as shy in Daedra’s presence out of excessive admiration. This is another piece of the cover he has constructed, not an independently confirmed account of Annie’s feelings. The distinction matters: Annie is a real curator, but the version of her who is expected to appear before Daedra has been partly authored by Netherton to make an impersonation plausible.

Absence and the Journey to Brazil

Annie cannot physically attend Daedra’s party because she is aboard a ship bound for Brazil. The ship has already departed three days before the discussion of her absence, making the separation immediate rather than hypothetical. Netherton presents her as regretting that she cannot be there and offers a peripheral as the means by which she could accompany him; in practice, the peripheral is to be operated by Flynne, not by Annie herself.

The proposed arrangement carries an acknowledged ethical weight. When its consequences are raised, the response is that it concerns someone’s life and that Annie will be sent on her way; the question of where is answered with Brazil, where the ship is already headed. Annie’s travel therefore supplies both a logistical opportunity and a limit: her departure makes the borrowed presence possible, while the distance means that the person appearing in London is not Annie in her own body.

The Impersonation and Its Stakes

Flynne and Netherton use Annie’s identity to approach Daedra’s gathering at Edenmere Mansions, the residence associated with Aelita and the place where Flynne had apparently seen her murdered. Netherton accepts Daedra’s invitation in the name of the arrangement, saying that Dr. Courrèges will accompany him peripherally. The gathering’s purpose and tone are not given in the invitation, so entering it under Annie’s name is a way to obtain access before its significance is clear.

The plan is explicitly a masquerade. Netherton is instructed to take the peripheral on an outing, walk to Hyde Park, answer Daedra’s questions as well as he can, and sustain the impersonation long enough for her to make an identification. Annie’s absence is what makes this possible, but the operation depends on more than her name: Netherton must perform the social relationship he has described, while Flynne’s remote body supplies the visible presence. The arrangement leaves Annie herself offstage even as her credentials and imagined manner shape the encounter.

Cultural Stories and the Cover’s Limits

Netherton also gives Daedra a story about Annie’s supposed familiarity with Daedra’s work. He claims that Annie owns a complete set of miniature facsimiles of Daedra’s pieces, which are made from complete epidermis works extending from toes to the base of the neck and reflecting the artist’s life during the period of each work. He further says that Annie cannot afford the miniatures on her salary. When Flynne asks why Annie would own them, Netherton admits that she does not: he made the detail up for Daedra.

The invented collection marks the boundary between Annie’s actual professional identity and the richer character assembled for the cover. Her career in neoprimitivist curation is supported by the account; her possession of Daedra’s work is not. In the investigation, a true name and credible appointment are made to carry fabricated intimacy. Annie’s narrative significance lies in that tension: her absent identity opens a door, while the ease with which others can add motives, tastes, and relationships to it exposes how fragile the performance remains.