TWICE

by Susanna Kleeman

  A nurse took pity on me one night, looked things up for me on her phone, read out slow-loading pages in monotone. No mention of Flora and her family being dead. No mention of my kidnapping, of me here. Nanocams: did not seem to exist. The Isle of Man did have a thriving tech and space industry, was the fifth most likely nation on earth to launch a spaceship. The Great Pyramid in Giza did have the same latitude in metres as the speed of light. Real Chris: the standard bio, no mention he was Don’s son. His various concerns and philanthropies, his still-churning social media. Yes to the Icelandic volcano.

  No mention of mad twin Sean that the nurse could find, we didn’t know his last name: Sean Thabbet? Sean Kipp?

  A rare business mag profile of Don Thabbet, that well-known venture capitalist and philanthropist. A far-sighted titan who had shaped our age. Current age: ninety three. The youngest scion of a Midwestern steel and banking dynasty. Early fascination with technology. Relocation to the west coast, immersion in the early personal computing revolution. A recluse. A quiet, commanding, behind-the-scenes visionary even at his advanced age. A gimlet eye for opportunity and talent. Intensely private, rarely mentioned, wholly necessary, vast wealth, commanding vision, gentle guiding hand, ruthless business instinct. The man behind the men—no women here. A passion for fine food, opera and sailing. Had found happiness with his third wife, a Norwegian model. A son who’d died in a boating accident years ago. One photo, the one I’d remembered: fat ancient Don in big sunnies and white cap on a yacht, cracked skin, perhaps looking like an old fat wrinkled Chris. Hard to say.

  I begged but that was it. And she wouldn’t do it again and neither would anyone else, even my friends on loud speaker. No one wanted to encourage my ‘research’. Calm and rest, everyone said, so I could get out quick. Then I could search all I liked.

  No way I could go back to Vengeance Street, sorry. Me and fake Chris had broken into private property, me under duress but still. No info on the owner of the house could be provided to me at this time, suffice to say it wasn’t Alan’s. Sorry, the Victim Support lady said, even if closure on Barrow and its contents was the only way I could begin to recover or believe their story. Vanished houses, poor thralled me. First-love vulnerability, being extra-susceptible because I had no real family, a heady brew, the ache of old wounds. All to be unpicked by proper professional counselling which wasn’t to be confused with Victim Support which was a quite different thing. A crazed imposter had dreamed up a pack of nonsense, I shouldn’t blame myself. Some huge paranoid opera I’d got suckered into. Perfectly normal given the circumstances. Now rest and letting go, walks in nature, the therapist said.

  The helmet and tubes came off. They put me in pyjamas, wheeled me to a private room full of plants and flowers for the last few days before my release, made me practise walking. Still no internet, the servers were down. I did physio, ate brown food, looked at my pale thin face and shorn hair in the mirror, clutched at the sink. I felt bad: dizzy and groggy. I puked and puked.

  The labyrinth in my inner ear, my bone labyrinth and vestibule, did I know about them? the doctor asked. The ear did hearing, it also did balance, she explained. The bone labyrinth and vestibule of my left inner ear had been damaged due to the Vengeance Street fall or the blow to my head. Not permanently, they hoped, but for now I had labyrinthitis, a condition which could cause loss of balance, a sense of vertigo, nausea, permanent dizziness and queasiness, a ringing in the ears, the feeling that the room was spinning. I might find my sense of time was affected. That’s why when I looked into the mirror my reflection seemed to lag and even smile at me. It would pass eventually, they hoped: it could be two weeks, it could be more, it was very unlikely to be permanent. Treatment meant a combination of medicine and physio. In a sense I had to retrain my whole body to walk and move about, much of it was about eye coordination. She showed me eye exercises: blinking and jerking I had to do while walking up and down in straight lines. A relatively minor ailment with relatively major symptoms. Studies had shown that recovery was very much linked to positive attitudes and psychotherapy. The condition could be caused by traumatic events. I needed calm and rest.

  My door opened onto the ward corridor, the nurse’s station directly opposite, nurses eager to help whenever I stepped out. The other patients were very old, shuffling up and down in dreamworlds, no one I could connect with. The doors at the end of the corridor were opened by staff passes I didn’t have. There were no windows in the corridor or in my room. I yearned for natural light. I was unsteady on my feet, needed help at all times.

  I lay in bed and looked at the peeling grey walls. I did my exercises but felt worse. The me in the mirror lagged and once winked at me, I was sure. They gave me pills. Release and friends’ visits were delayed. I couldn’t leave or see people. No devices till I was better. To get better I had to get fit. I walked long straight lines with African nurses up and down the corridor, jerked my eyes round like they showed me.

  My new room had a new TV, fixed up in the corner in the same place. I found, by fiddling with the interactive button of its new remote, that this TV had a crude internet browser for clunky surfing as one of its features. Laborious text input via the remote, a small price to pay. At last: my solo spree. Flora and her family’s death: still no mention, my kidnap: ditto. No missing houses in the Brechfa Forest area, some landslides due to larch-blight. Chris, Don, Sean: no new info. I needed Sean’s last name which no one would supply. My current location: Barrow General Hospital, on the outskirts of Barrow-in-Furness, rated Satisfactory. My ten thousand unread emails, the concerns of friends and colleagues. Social media chugging on. Normans, chalk, electromagnetism, west Britain, the isles of Man and Manhattan, Britain’s metal. The goofy dragon, the horse of the North Sea, the Baltic stag: all kind of, if you squinted. 9/11, moon landings, lizard kings, Illuminatis, the sacred geometry of Washington DC. I searched at night, mentioned my secret access to no one.

  I found a page listing every ship that ever docked in Barrow. I guessed dates, went methodically through each ship looking up images and info, expecting nothing.

  There it was.

  An unforgettable image: grey hulking lines, so ugly it was stylish. The container ship from the docks. The Skidblad, it was called, built in South Korea, registered in Cape Verde. One of the largest container ships in the world.

  The lawyer brought news of ‘approaches’. The family were hoping there might be a way for things to be kept under the radar. Admission of guilt, a settlement, with me and Flora and Rhodri’s families. Sean was already locked away, serving time for previous incidents in a secure environment, was too ill currently to face trial. If things could be kept private it might be more healing for all concerned. No need to drag things out in front of a court.

  Who was making these approaches? What ‘family?’ I said. Real Chris? And murder, kidnap, were criminal offences, no way this could be kept out of court.

  ‘Yes and no,’ the lawyer said. Sean wasn’t really fit to stand trial. And there was an argument—looking somewhere beyond me—that I’d consented, been party, gone along with Sean of my own free accord. Or at least that argument could be made: me the duped co-adventurer on a deranged quest, swept away into madness by the apparent return of my lost love.

  ‘Fuck off,’ I said.

  And then there were Rhodri’s drug connections. Yes, things were murky on the Rhodri front. Gangland slayings, a bad temper, might be quite unconnected, what had gone on with poor Flora and the kids. Might be nothing to do with Sean after all. In which case the only real crimes apart from my ‘kidnap’ had been the stealing and breaking into Vengeance Street, minor offences. Charges could be dropped, things smoothed out, in the circumstances. If I’d work with them.

  ‘Think about it,’ the lawyer said. As he understood it the family were prepared to offer quite a bit of compensation. Computer people, California-based, venture capitalists, very private, didn’t want this getting out. Plus other considerations: I’d been party to stealing, br
eaking and entering, CCTV footage existed showing me very much going along. I may have been drugged and duped but it didn’t look like I’d been acting under duress. Not good for my lawyering career. Plus, as he understood it, there was a suggestion that the name I called myself, my entire identity, wasn’t exactly the name and identity I’d been born with. It seemed some people were suggesting I’d grown up with real Chris in Scritchwood Covert Motorhome Park under a different name.

  ‘That’s not a crime.’

  It might well be, he said, as I should know as a fellow lawyer, if I hadn’t gone about my name-changing via legal routes. If, for example, I’d purchased new passports, IDs, for substantial sums in dodgy places, had been purporting myself about the world on bought papers, received qualifications under fake names. I’d be struck off and worse: major implications for my future life, potentially. Plus the suggestion of nuttiness: disappearing homes, secret kings.

  And were ‘they’ threatening all this would get out?

  The lawyer shrugged and shook his head. ‘Take it,’ he said. They were generous people, what was the point? They’d already been so generous: my private room, my private treatment, my new clothes, soft towels. Who did I think was paying for all that?

  Until then I hadn’t thought about it but now I did it was clear that my room and whole hospital set-up weren’t standard NHS. Private room, ensuite bathroom, long chats with doctors, therapists. My new soft pyjamas. Quinoa salads, posh bread. All the books and magazines, my new pants and toiletries.

  I got up, opened the drawers of my small room, saw clothes, cashmere, cotton I’d never seen before, that hadn’t been in the drawers the last time I opened them. A black wool coat with fancy silver lining hung from a peg on the door. The fluffy dressing gown I was wearing.

  All from real Chris, the family, where did I think they came from? the lawyer asked.

  Snitching clothes, stitched with what art? And where was the lawyer from? Who was paying his bills?

  I screamed, tore my clothes off, tried to run out of the door. Nurses and the doctor came, new injections.

  ‘It’s OK,’ the therapist said when I woke.

  I wanted to get out right now, I said in a quiet voice. No more lawyers, no more her, paid minions. I wanted the police, right now. I wanted my real friends. I couldn’t stay here any more. What date was it, were they drugging me? Was that why I was so woozy? I wouldn’t eat or drink anything they gave me, no more medicines, fuck labyrinthitis, I’d rip out all the tubes. I wanted to see the sky, go outside. It was my right.

  My stomach heaved, I felt the room lurch.

  I got up, went to the bathroom, puked again, cleaned myself with snitching towels. They’d dressed me again: clothes I’d never seen before, soft comfy sweat pants, jersey top. Who’d dressed me, seen me naked and conked out?

  The me in the mirror winked at me again.

  The therapist came into the bathroom to comfort me. It had been a major trauma. There was lots to process. Everything was going to be OK.

  ‘I’m going now,’ I told her. I wanted to see the sky, go outside, get some fresh air.

  I was lost inside my head, she said next to me at the mirror. This was a dangerous time for me, my recovery depended on not succumbing to whirlwind thoughts, I had to keep things clear. She’d walk with me, down long hospital corridors. I needed to walk in straight lines. I’d soon feel better, get rid of those crazy Scritch riddles clogging my head.

  ‘I’m in this with you,’ she said. ‘I’ll help you, every step of the way. You tell me everything, we’ll work it all out together. I’ll take the leap and believe you, how about that? You tell me about Scritch, every last word, I’ll write it all down for you, we’ll go through it together: all the games. You know what? I’ll even go along with you and believe the missing house.’

  ‘Who pays your salary?’ I said. ‘Real Chris, right?’ I was leaving this so-called hospital right now, I told her. I was fine. Let them send the police to arrest me with their syringes. Call the lawyer.

  I went out of the bathroom, put on the coat. Who cared if they were all science clothes? I couldn’t leave naked, all I cared about was getting out. I’d reshave myself later, steal new clothes, tie on the plastic bags, suck roots.

  She came out after me, we stood in my room. The room lurched again. I stumbled, she stumbled too. Books on the shelves fell on their sides. Not just in my head: the whole room was moving.

  I pushed past her, opened the door, stepped out into the corridor. She followed. Just us, no other patients and the nurse’s door was closed. The ground swayed, we stumbled. I ran, she came after me. I got to the end of the corridor, pushed against the ward doors which opened. I ran down a new empty grey corridor, found spiral metal stairs, started to climb.

  Up and up, round and round, the chime of the metal, holding the banister, looking for an exit, a window. After three or four floors I found one: a round window, a set of round windows.

  I ran and looked out.

  No Barrow, no hospital, no shops, no land, nothing. Just sea, grey wrinkled sea under grey clouds, white churn. I was on a ship, I knew its name. Sad Asian pop played.

  27

  The therapist, who’d told me her name was Ramona, manhandled me back down the stairs with help from three burly men dressed as hospital porters.

  ‘Are you going to inject me?’

  ‘If we need to.’ I’d had a troubling day, she said, who knew what I might need. Lots of old fears and repressed memories bubbling to the surface. The very best thing for me was going to be trusting her, telling her everything, all those old stories of Alan’s rattling around inside my head, that seemed to be mixing me up, delaying my recovery so. And after that sleep, which my body and mind so needed to heal, after all I’d been through.

  They mangled me down the humming corridor.

  Back to the ward, my old room—what seemed to be my ward and old room or cabin? But what did I know: grey empty identical floors, corridors of closed doors.

  The room seemed the same: books and toiletries strewn in the exact mess I’d left them and even, from the bathroom, the same linger of vomit. But it seemed brighter, no peeled paint, and there were new elements: a large print of Alan’s Chinese map up on the far wall and below that the old white Ickthwaite chest of drawers. On an easel: Alan’s pinch chart: a drawing of a human palm with letters and numbers at each point and knuckle line. On the table: a thin silver laptop, a thin silver phone, two books and what looked like the green welly box. The books seemed to be the Alphabet, last seen in the blue Ford Fiesta in Ickthwaite, and A Little Key To Drawing, last seen in Vengeance Street with brailed newspaper tucked inside. And next to the shelves: a new white door, seemingly to the next cabin, with a small black panel where the handle should be.

  ‘Let’s pick up from where we were,’ Ramona said. ‘Your books. That you’ve been making such a fuss over?’ Good news: real Chris had wangled them from police evidence lock-ups, for me to work through with her, tell her everything Alan had ever said about them, every last Scritch.

  Whoa, I said. Real Chris, that fine fellow, so very cold he’d really let them do this to me to squeeze out Scritch stuff? Really and truly? I knew Chris had morphed into something awful, I hadn’t realised it was this awful. My old chum, selling me down the river so they could find out what? Ancient mysteries Alan had buried in us? That meant so much they’d go to all this trouble? Bunch of freaks. Why not—I didn’t know—hypnotise real Chris, inject him with their nanocams to film his memories—real Chris already knew all the Scritch stories, had grown up with them too, if he really was real Chris. Or was he Don or some other clone or triplet gone bad? Could Ramona be sure? Could she be sure of me? Maybe I wasn’t me. Perhaps I was duping her, perhaps we all were. And where was this so-called real Chris? Aboard? Was Don here too, peeping in? Any other Chrises? How about a Sean? Did they all ever appear together, a high-kicking Chris chorus, Don in the middle leading the tango? How about the babies and toddlers, a Chri
s crèche? A virus of Chrises, dragons preserve us, each as displeasing and dishonest as the next. Could I talk to them all? I’d tell them everything. No need for me to transact with the likes of her, whoever she was, who was she? Young, black, beautiful, stylish, cropped hair, silver hoops, slight West Indian lilt.

  ‘Chris is on annual silent retreat, you don’t remember?’ He’d explained in Barrow, just before I came onboard, during my breakdown when he visited, Ramona said. Didn’t I remember my breakdown, the visit of real Chris? Worse than she’d feared, they’d have to up my meds, reconsider electroshock. Chris had sat by my bed, held my hand—she said—explained it all: how he had to go off with his guru to the snowy forests of north Norway, he went each winter, a business-critical head-clearing. I didn’t remember? What a state I’d been in. How worried everyone had been for me. How lucky I was to have friends like real Chris with the means and connections to get me aboard the Skidblad, the very best place on earth for long-term trauma recovery, healing at sea. Compassionate real Chris, who’d be coptered here post retreat with his clear head to sort me, who’d got her onboard too, for continuity of care. Whatever it took, for as long as it took: that was real Chris’s pledge to me. How was I feeling?

  Better, I said, with the passing of the labyrinthitis, just sea-sickness and their ploys to deal with.

  She nodded. ‘You’ll soon find your sea legs.’

  ‘And you,’ I said: where did they find the likes of her? Stooging on the high seas for the world’s secret rulers: was she hired or one of them, born to it? What did they look for in recruits, what was their approach? And that army of extras: the grannies and lawyers and doctors and nurses? Part-time actors paid in bitcoins or some other currency I had no ken of? Did they tell their secrets all at once or did you worm your way up, earn their trust? I was flattered, I told her, that they’d gone to all this trouble for me, got in such a quality interrogator. I spat at her, she slapped me lightly, men dressed as porters strapped me to the bed, she warned the helmet could return at any time. From a new fridge under the bedside table she cracked open a Coke can containing green juice she tried to force me to drink, foul stuff I spat back at her till they forced my teeth apart with an orange plastic funnel and poured the juice down me dregs and all.