by David James
Sarah sighed with relief, she hadn't realised how tense she had been until that moment.
'Thank you,' she said wearily.
'But Sarah, I would advise you to use the time wisely. There won't be another reprieve.'
As Sarah turned and left the room, closing the door behind her, it was with a mixture of exaltation and dread that she returned to her desk.
As Sarah closed the door behind her, the director started to read through the journals.
He was glad he was alone. If someone had seen his reaction as he started to read Emily’s journal then he would have found it difficult to explain. He finished it and put the journal down on the desk and leant back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling in contemplation.
He eventually lowered himself slowly forward until he was upright again. It just seemed like a young girls fantasy story, almost a fairy tale, but something about it made him feel uneasy. He wondered if Sarah had picked up anything from it. He felt uneasy enough that he reached across and picked up the mobile phone. He found himself leaning forward in concentration as he pressed the speed dial.
‘Hello, yes, it’s Robert, fine thanks. Listen I thought you should know that one of the children has started to communicate. No, not like that, but she has started to write a, well, fairy tale in her journal.’
Sort of like a family aren't we.
The phrase was still in the director’s mind from earlier.
‘Sarah? She seems to be getting closer to the children; they seem to be forming a bond, almost a family bond.’
The director noted that Sir Terrence seemed to suddenly be more interested.
‘Yes, they seem to be becoming more closely knit. I mentioned the change of treatment as you suggested.’
There was a long pause as the director listened intently.
‘Yes, I’ll get the copies across to you today.’
He put the phone in his pocket and let out a deep sigh.
Four days.
As Sarah sat back down at her desk. She knew that she would need to speed up the treatment. The price of failure had been starkly explained to her by the director.
She placed her hands over her face.
‘Everything going okay Sarah?’ said Helen.
Sarah wondered for a moment if she should confide in Helen, maybe it would make her feel better.
But no, her problems were her own.
‘Just a bit tired this morning,’ she replied.
Helen nodded sympathetically. ‘Have we got much on today?’
Her simple question caused Sarah to stop and think. She had become so reliant on the journals that she hadn’t planned any more sessions.
‘Just a bit of catching up,’ she said.
‘Okay, if you need a hand just let me know,’ replied Helen.
Chapter Seventeen
Sarah awoke in a daze. It was hard to tell if she was actually awake or just in a dull dream where she was dreaming of lying in bed.
She had taken the tablet the director had given her to help her sleep. But she found it hard to work out if it had actually worked or not. She had flashbacks of the previous night, but she couldn’t decipher if they had been part of a dream or not.
Sarah wondered, not for the first time and unlikely to be the last, if she was really up to all this.
She had no clear idea what she would do today. She could hope for some journal entry that would be a breakthrough. The children might write something that she could take to the director and say 'Look, I'm making progress.’
But barring that she would have to come up with something of her own.
She began her carefully scripted morning routine and soon she was sitting in the front room, slice of toast in hand, still wondering what she should do with her precious – and diminishing – time.
She looked down and realised that she hadn't done much of a job tidying up from last night. There were still old newspaper cuttings lying around the floor. Her eyes wandered from headline to headline.
The village where the children had first appeared certainly seemed to have got a few mentions, at least at first. Later on the word “village” seemed to have been replaced by the word “institute”.
As far as she could see the village looked perfectly ordinary.
She leaned forward and picked up the page. The village looked almost picture postcard perfect.
There was something about one of the people that had first seen the children. But she hadn't given any interviews. In fact no one who had first seen the children had given any interviews. Sarah remembered that when the press had tried to interview them on the television they had shied away from the cameras. Which had seemed strange to Sarah at the time. In this day and age people seemed only too ready to grab the nearest camera to appear in front of. In fact they had seemed positively angry that so many questions were being asked. She wished that she had been present when the children had first appeared. Maybe they hadn't been so reluctant to speak when they had first appeared? Maybe they hadn't put their guards up at first? For a tantalising moment Sarah wondered if they had spoken then.
Slowly, but surely, an idea began to form in Sarah's mind. By the time she was clambering into her car, it was almost fully formed and by the time she was driving through the press at the institute she had a clear idea of what she would do today.
Sarah looked across the office. Helen was of course already here and busying herself with preparing for the day ahead, she looked up and offered a half smile to Sarah.
'Morning,' beamed John. 'What have you got planned for us today boss, anything as interesting as the other day?'
'If you give me ten minutes,' the average time it took Sarah to devour her first cup of coffee in the morning, 'then we can get together and I'll let you know what we will be doing today and what we would like to achieve,' said Sarah.
John and Helen dutifully left Sarah alone to drink her coffee.
After they deemed that the coffee had done its job and it should be safe to approach her again, they reappeared at her desk.
'I've booked the meeting room and we can go through a few things before we get started,' said Sarah.
They all filed into the small meeting room and Sarah beckoned for them to sit down.
Sarah opened her files and produced a collection of newspapers, or at least the front pages of newspapers that she had hastily gathered from her own room floor, and spread them across the desk. As she looked across the table she could see that she had John and Helen's attention.
'Just a reminder of how our charges came to the world's attention and how they ended up here,' she said.
She spread the papers across the table in a pre-determined order. The headlines told the story quite succinctly. There were the headlines relating to the sudden appearance of the children. Followed by the headlines since they had arrived at the institute. She allowed John and Helen a few moments to look at the papers. After she felt that she had allowed them enough time to absorb the headlines, she reached out and pointed at the first few headlines.
'I'd like to concentrate on the very beginning of the story. When the children first appeared.'
Sarah cleared away the other papers so as not to distract them.
John looked slightly disappointed. The most fantastical and speculative headlines were in the ones she had cleared away.
'Don't worry, we will visit the others at a later date.'
John smiled. 'You read my mind boss,' he said.
'We have been concentrating on trying to get them to talk about themselves, but maybe there is something important in how they appeared. It wasn't just out of thin air.'
'Maybe they landed from somewhere,' said John excitedly.
Sarah looked at John, 'Please tell me you don't mean from a space ship?'
John looked slightly sheepish as he said in a low voice 'That would explain why they aren't speaking, they haven't mastered our language. They might want to communicate, but they don't know how to speak.'
&nb
sp; Helen interjected in her usual cool manner. 'They managed to write in the journals.'
'Oh yes, forgotten about that,' said John, his manner somewhat deflated by Helen's cool rationalism.
'I was thinking more about where they arrived as well.'
Sarah shuffled the headlines and spread them out in front of John and Helen, who both leaned in.
The headlines were liberally enhanced with images and they concentrated on the location that the children had appeared in.
Sarah took a deep breath. 'We're going to take them back to the village they appeared in.'
John and Helen looked at each other before Helen said 'Are we allowed to take them out of the institute?'
'I was speaking figuratively Helen, we can't actually take them there. But we can do the next best thing.'
Helen and John exchanged further glances.
Sarah continued 'I'd like to recreate, within reason, the village location where they first appeared.' She allowed time for this to sink in, before continuing. 'I am hoping that this will jog their memories, take them back to that time mentally. I think it's important.'
Sarah put the relevant newspaper cutting out for John and Helen to see.
'You can see that there was one main person who seems to have met them initially,' said Sarah.
John looked at the papers and said 'I can't see any direct quotes at all from her.'
Sarah nodded. 'I know, she seems to have refused to say anything much about it.'
John looked disappointed.
'But, we do have some “reliable sources” and eye witnesses that have talked,' said Sarah.
She pushed the relevant cuttings in front of John and Helen.
'I think we can work out from their comments roughly what happened as they appeared. And maybe, just maybe what was said.'
Helen had been quiet, but Sarah could tell that she had been thinking deeply and waiting to formulate her question.
She began to say slowly 'Do you think that they said something when they first appeared?'
'It's a possibility,' said Sarah, impressed with Helen's thinking.
'And they stopped talking when they reached the village and were found?' said John.
'I really can't be sure about that. But if there is a possibility, then we need to explore it. To tease it out of the children,' said Sarah.
John nodded slowly, before saying 'How far do you want to go in recreating it? I mean, we would need a lot of material to faithfully recreate it.'
Sarah said, 'I know we are a bit limited, it just needs to be representative of the place they appeared in. After all, this was their introduction to the world.'
'Perhaps they chose this place deliberately?' said Helen slowly.
Sarah and John looked at Helen.
'That's not something I had considered,' said Sarah. And it was an intriguing thought.
John picked up the thought. 'So they chose to appear to the world?'
'But why?' said Helen.
John's mind was clearly working overtime as he said 'Unless they are waiting for something to happen, and then they will do what they planned?' replied John.
Sarah hated to blunt John's enthusiasm, but felt compelled to say 'I'm not sure we can jump to any conclusions.'
'And no white coats hey boss,' said John smiling.
'No white coats,' replied Sarah.
As John and Helen left the room, Sarah couldn’t help wondering if under the pressure of the director’s deadline she wasn’t just grasping wildly at anything. She picked up the papers and headed out of the room.
Chapter Eighteen
Gary Carter was not exactly what you would call a career minded person. He wasn't a shirker, not by a long chalk, indeed he had worked almost all his life. It was just that he had the view that work was just a means to an end. At the age of thirty five he hadn't tired of enjoying himself in the simplest of ways. Parties, drinks with friends, concerts. He looked at people who apparently had “careers” and just saw a lot of stressed out people laughing at the bosses unfunny jokes; sitting in meetings trying to stay awake and working stupid hours in the desperate hope that they can become a senior something or other. He, on the other hand, had never made any attempt to ingratiate himself to the management. If a joke was funny, he would laugh. If it wasn't, he wouldn't. It didn't matter to him who was making the joke. Okay, so this attitude meant he had endured some pretty dull jobs. But if he didn't like a job, he would just move on, it was as simple as that.
As he stood there strategically hiding outside the institute, he realised that he was in danger of accidentally drifting into a career. He had been here over a year now and he had to admit that he, against his better judgement, had enjoyed it.
He had even, god forbid, managed to get some of that strange feeling of “job satisfaction”.
It was a worrying turn of events. I mean, his was a menial position, he was in no doubt about that. As an orderly at the institute he didn't get invited to boardroom meetings, no one had ever canvassed his opinion about the future direction of the institute. But the work was varied in the way that none of his other jobs had been. And he found himself getting interested in the patients. That was a first for him – being even slightly interested in the job. It made him feel at once elated and slightly worried. If he actually enjoyed a job then there was the chance that if they let him go he would feel some sense of regret. And that meant that in caring about the job it made him feel almost vulnerable.
He took a last drag on his cigarette, thinking to himself that he really should give them up. Then immediately thought 'Oh god, now I'm worrying about my health.' Where would it all end? Pensions and a house? A very real shiver went down his spine as he made his way back inside.
There had been many interesting patients that he had dealt with. Most of the people here for treatment seemed just like normal people. When he had first started, he had found himself chatting amiably to someone in the corridor about the usual stuff – sport, politics, state of the world etc.– and then they would suddenly announce that they had to go for their treatment session, but they had enjoyed their little chat and they should do it again sometime.
And then they had arrived. And things had got a whole lot more interesting.
Even the top brass had looked anxious. Prior to their arrival, the atmosphere had been pretty relaxed, considering the type of place it was. But now there was a palpable tension in the air. Not helped by the daily running of the press gauntlet outside. Everyone was just that bit more on edge. And the gossip, oh the gossip had gone into meltdown. Some of the theories that were around. A theory would flare up in the morning, then by a series of Chinese whispers would be a fully formed 'fact' by the end of the day. Only to be discounted and replaced by another one the next day. He often wondered if he should write them all down – there was bound to be a few decent novels and a Hollywood film in amongst them. Though some of the theories were so ridiculous that even Hollywood would reject them; probably.
He had tried talking to them of course, I mean you would wouldn't you? Nothing heavy, just the usual stuff – sport, politics, state of the world etc.
Nothing.
No response at all. It was a good job he wasn't the sort of person who took things personally.
What amused him was the thought that wouldn't it be funny if the children talked to him instead of all the highly qualified and highly paid professionals? The thought made him smile. But sadly it hadn't happened. Not even close.
Today promised to be especially strange in amongst all the other strangeness that the children had brought upon the institute. He had been given strict instructions about what he should do. He had received his instructions from Sarah and had helped set everything up with her two assistants. It had been stressed that he needed to follow them to the letter. He didn't mind admitting that he had felt slightly more important, more involved than normal and he had liked it. Next step a mortgage.
He looked down at his watch, it was time. He mad
e his way to the area where the children were being housed. It was important to the institution that it was clear that it was not a prison. They were here to help people. As Gary turned the key in the lock of the main door, he wondered how successful they had been. Perhaps that was unfair. Apart from the locked door, the rest of the accommodation looked more like a hotel. Not one of the best hotels, but one of the cheaper ones where everything is okay but not particularly luxurious.
As he approached the area where the children were staying, he remembered hearing about the discussions that went on when they had first arrived. He may only be a lowly orderly, but he was as plugged in to the gossip as anyone. Now he thought about it, at his level he probably had more access to the institute gossip than the senior people. When they had arrived there had apparently been a major disagreement about how to house them. Whether they should be in separate rooms or all together. He knew there had been a disagreement because he spent the best part of two days moving beds from single rooms into a single larger room; then moving them back out to the single rooms; and finally moving them back into the larger room.
But they had finally settled on a single room, which at least made life easier for Gary.
His working life with the children had taken on a series of rituals. The first was perhaps the strangest of them all. He had been told to always knock before he entered their room. He guessed that it had been done to give the children a bit of privacy; a semblance of control perhaps. God knows what had happened to them before they had arrived here. The only slight problem was that the children never spoke. The first time, Gary had knocked and waited for a response, hand poised over the handle. He didn't mind admitting that he felt a bit of a fool as he waited outside the room to be ushered in. After what had felt like an hour, but what was probably only a minute, he had left the door unopened and gone to find Sarah to ask her what to do.
He well remembered what she had said.
