Silent Treatment

by David James

  Sarah replied 'One word for it. But I would welcome both your comments.'

  Helen spoke quickly to get ahead of John. 'I actually think that initially we were making some progress. At one point I even thought they were about to speak to us.'

  'And then it all went pear shaped,' said John helpfully. 'Why do you think that was?'

  Helen leapt in again 'Maybe they recognised something. You know, from the village they appeared in?'

  'Or someone?' said John.

  'So perhaps they really felt they were back at the village they were found in,' said Sarah hopefully.

  'And the illusion was so strong that they reacted badly to it?' said Helen.

  'I’ve never seen Nathan react like that,’ said John, ‘he almost looked terrified, as if he thought you were going to harm him Sarah.’

  ‘When you held out your hand,’ said Helen, ‘it seemed as if Nathan thought you were going to lead him somewhere. Somewhere he didn’t want to go.’

  ‘And then he recoiled,’ said John quickly.

  Sarah nodded. They were all valid comments.

  No one spoke for a few moments. Until John said in an unusually quiet voice 'Makes you wonder what happened in that village before they were found.'

  Helen and Sarah fell silent.

  Sarah was now convinced that she needed outside help, away from the institute. She knew what she must do next. She stood up to indicate the meeting was over and

  Helen and John dutifully stood up and left the room.

  Sarah stayed in the meeting room, busying herself with shuffling some paperwork pointlessly around the table. She didn’t want anyone questioning what she would do next.

  Chapter Twenty

  Sarah spent the rest of the day frustratingly occupying her time. When the office clock ticked round to the end of the day, she packed up quickly and headed for the exit.

  As she walked out of the office, Helen appeared as if from nowhere. Sarah almost bumped straight into her.

  'Everything alright Sarah?' said Helen, with a concerned expression on her face.

  Sarah toyed with the idea of being honest with Helen. To tell her about the director' s ultimatum. But she half suspected that Helen would approve of the drug treatment.

  'If you feel it would help discussing the children’s treatment, then I would be happy to listen,' said Helen.

  And at that moment, wearied by the past few days, Sarah thought ’Why not?’. Perhaps she would feel better if she unburdened herself on Helen. She began to open her mouth to speak.

  But before she could, John appeared from somewhere and said loudly 'Anyone up for a drink?'

  Helen shot him a glance that could freeze hell, but he didn't seem to notice.

  Sarah stood there with two offers – a heart to heart with Helen, or a drink with John.

  She chose the option of being alone with her thoughts.

  'Thanks both, but I really must get home,' said Sarah and with an attempted smile she carried on out of the building.

  She slumped into her car and gratefully set off away from the institute. As she approached the gaggle of reporters and cameras she paid more attention to them than she usually did. She scanned their faces and was almost surprised to see that they looked like perfectly normal people. They had seemed like an indistinguishable mass before. But she didn't see what she was looking for and disappointed she pressed the accelerator and sped away from the institute.

  Sarah was sitting on the floor in her front room with the furniture pushed to the side. Spread out in front of her were the printed out copies of the children's journals. For good measure she also had added in a smattering of the newspaper headlines of when they had first been found. As she looked at the mass of paper stretching out in front of her, she was convinced that somewhere in here was a clue to what had happened to the children. Or at least a clue as to where to look for answers.

  She had tried organising them in chronological order, starting with the headlines in the newspapers as they arrived in the world, followed by the journal entries. Her head scanned back and forth across the room. As she sat there in her night clothes, with her head bobbing and weaving around; she had to admit that she looked like someone that should be a patient in the institute. She had made sure that the curtains were firmly shut; she didn't want the world outside intruding.

  It was no good, the harder she tried to make sense of it all the more confused she became. At one point she tried to screw her eyes half shut to see if she could detect a pattern. This just gave her a headache. She slumped back against the sofa in exasperation.

  Well, she had tried, and she had to admit that she was going nowhere with it all. It was time.

  Rising slowly from the floor, she made her way across to her computer. She sat there with an empty screen in front of her. Considering that she had been mentally preparing to send this email all day, she was remarkably unsure what to type now. She had a couple of false starts, she wanted to get the tone right, after all she didn't want to scare him. It had been years since they had last spoken and she was aware that she had left quickly at the end of her course. She looked around the room at the papers strewn across the floor which seemed to mirror precisely her own confused state of mind. She realised that he could be her best hope. She owed it to the children to at least try.

  And she began to type.

  After a few minutes she looked at the completed email and grimaced slightly. She had tried to make it quite light, having not spoken for so long, and she hadn't left in the best way the last time they had met. He might not even want to receive an email from her anyway.

  Her finger hovered over the send key. Maybe a few more changes to the wording would help. But she knew herself too well for that. She would prevaricate until she would finally change her mind and convince herself that she would do it at some later date. And she never would.

  With an effort of will she moved her hand suddenly towards the keyboard, almost as if she was trying to surprise herself. And her finger pressed the send key. She slumped back against the chair and wondered if she had done the right thing.

  Ben shut the front door behind him, threw his brightly coloured but rather tatty coat on the floor and headed towards the kitchen. It had been a long day, no time for food. He located the beer in the fridge, took a deep, long draw on it and headed towards the front room.

  As he dropped into the chair, he switched on the news channel.

  Watching the news for him could feel like homework. He would sometimes find himself getting annoyed if he saw a news item and say out loud 'I could have got that one'. He could have been the anonymous source of the story. It didn't help that he had spent the past two days achieving precisely nothing.

  At some point he had been out to the institute, just to see what was happening and to catch up with the people there. The benefit of the size of the children's story was that all the people that he needed to speak to were all gathered in a small area.

  But it hadn't helped and he had left early and pursued a possible story, which had led to precisely nothing.

  He watched the news for a while, but it all seemed to be washing over him, so he turned it off and grabbed his computer and started to scan through his emails.

  It was the usual stuff, the delete key took a bit of a pasting, but there was the occasional one that he needed to respond to.

  Delete. Delete. Del – .

  His finger hovered over the key as he looked at the email address it was from. Generally if he didn't recognise the address it was a candidate for deletion. He didn't recognise the address, but part of it grabbed his attention.

  Sarah.

  He immediately wondered if he knew more than one Sarah, but he couldn't remember any.

  Could it be her? If it was then why on earth would she be contacting him?

  He cast his mind back to university.

  He had thought she had been very studious and very serious about everything. The complete opposite to Ben. As they had got to
know each other a little he had often wondered if she was viewing him as a worthwhile subject for psychological analysis. He supposed he should be flattered, but several of their conversations had seemed like examinations. Despite this he had actually quite liked her. Perhaps the fact that she was so different to him had been a sort of attraction.

  They had never dated. There had never really seemed any suggestion that they would.

  Maybe that was why they had been relaxed in each other's company, neither of them having to worry too much what they said to each other.

  She had disappeared pretty quickly after university had finished. Whilst everyone else said their goodbyes and made promises about keeping in touch, which they all knew they wouldn't keep; Sarah had just disappeared.

  There had been rumours that she had been called away by her father on some psychological work. But people's attention soon moved on.

  And now sitting in the middle of his screen was an email from her, possibly.

  His journalism head began to kick in as he realised that this was almost too good to be true.

  The email also confirmed that he was right. It had been Sarah that he had seen in the photograph.

  He had begun to concoct all forms of clever ruses to get in touch with her, without making her suspicious of his motives.

  But none of these would be necessary now.

  She had sent him an email.

  With a sense of excitement and a slight trepidation he clicked on the email.

  Hi Ben,

  Hope you are well.

  I know it's been a long time since we last met.

  It's Sarah here from university, we had the same modules sometimes. Just in case it's so long that you have forgotten!

  So much has gone on since we last spoke, how have you been? How's journalism treating you?

  I seem to remember that things seemed to be so much simpler at university. Especially for you, are you still going out to the pub all the time?

  I'm working as a clinical psychologist at the moment. So at least all the classes at uni' weren't wasted.

  Anyway, you are probably wondering why I am contacting you after all this time, I know I would be wondering!

  The thing is, I've got myself involved in something at work and I can't think of any other way to put it, but I feel a bit in over my head.

  Sorry to be so dramatic, but I feel I could really use some help. Which is where you come in!

  I know that all sounds a bit serious, but everything just feels so serious at the moment.

  Perhaps we could meet up somewhere? Maybe a pub you know?

  It would be great to see you again, but I would understand if you thought it had been a long time ago and you didn't want to get in touch.

  Sarah

  Ben leant back in his chair. He wasn't entirely sure what he had been expecting, after all it had been years, but it was immediately clear to him that it was the Sarah that he remembered. She had never been one to feel comfortable expressing emotions. As he re-read the email he could see her struggling to sound relaxed when she clearly wasn't. It was also very clear that this email had been a real effort to send. He wondered what had driven her to send it. He would like to think that she had just spontaneously decided to get in touch with him, but he could see that something had driven her to do so and it wasn't just his natural charm and scintillating company that she remembered.

  And then the next thought was that he finally had his chance at his big break. A contact inside the institute that was treating the children was almost too good to be true. There were scant details available about the children; the institute had done a surprisingly good job of keeping things quiet. And here was someone who worked there asking for his help.

  Ben could see that he would be involved in a personal battle of his own when he replied to the email.

  He began to type his reply, unsure which side of him was writing it; the old friend or the journalist.

  After reviewing the email to make sure he got the tone right, he realised that he could see the battle between his two sides being played out in the email. He just hoped that it wasn't as obvious to Sarah.

  He hit the send button.

  His evening had been planned around research about a story seemingly going nowhere. But that had now all changed.

  He opened a draw in his filing cabinet and thumbed through the oddly well organised folders until he located the one marked children. Surprisingly for someone of his age he still had a healthy respect for printed newspapers. He still liked the tactile feeling of the old style print. He relied on the internet as much as the next journalist, indeed he couldn't live without it in his line of work. But when he wanted to get an overview of a story, to step back from it as it were, he liked to spread out the rather dogged newspapers.

  After a few minutes he had all the papers spread out in chronological order.

  The headlines started out almost hysterical with excitement; calming down slightly as time passed until lately they had become rather more reserved.

  It still got his journalistic juices flowing just looking at them, even now. If he could just spot something, something to discuss with Sarah. He scanned across the headlines. The story unfolded. The excitement, the incredulity that the children had seemingly just arrived from nowhere. The speculation, endless speculation. He could tell when the papers had run through all the more obvious explanations – plane crash, lost on a school trip were some of them. With the lack of information they had then moved onto more wild explanations. Reality show, hoax were just a couple of them.

  Then the children had moved to the institute for treatment and there had been a fresh bout of speculation about the institute. There had been profiles of the senior people working there – no mention of Sarah, Ben noticed.

  And then, and to someone in the trade it was easy to spot, there had been a subtle tailing off of coverage. It was always around in the paper somewhere, every day. But other stories would push it down the page and eventually into the inside of the newspaper. Ben was in no doubt that it would come hurtling back out onto the front page if there was a breakthrough. And as he looked at the end of the papers, he hoped that it would be him that was responsible for that.

  Like someone watching a slow motion tennis match he scanned left to right and back again, trying to discern any pattern or meaning behind the headlines. If he could just come up with something useful then he could impress Sarah. As he scanned back and forth, almost sending himself dizzy, he wondered if he was trying to impress her for journalistic reasons or personal reasons.

  Nothing leapt out at him. Slightly exasperated, he sat back against the sofa. There was nothing for it, he would have to just play it by ear when he met her. He just hoped that she would get in touch with him again soon.

  Sarah,

  Great to hear from you after all this time.

  I think about our university days as well, not entirely sure how I survived to be honest!

  Still, I'm still here and journalism is treating me reasonably well.

  Glad to hear that you are doing the job you really wanted, not everyone has managed to do what they want. You remember Chris? The one with the piercings doing all sorts of cool stuff with lasers? Well, he's an accountant now!! He has a fancy name for it, but it's really basically accountancy by another name.

  A drink sounds great, don't worry, I don't drink as much as I used to nowadays so you will be safe!

  How about meeting at the Blue Dragon on the high street, it's near where you work I think. How about tonight, is that too soon? Say about eight o'clock?

  We can catch up on old times and what we are both up to now.

  It's been so long since we saw each other I wonder if I should wear a red rose or something so you recognise me? Don't worry I won't! Unless you want me to of course!

  Anyway, let me know if this is okay.

  Ben

  Sarah was busy rearranging her furniture into a semblance of normality when the email arrived. As soon
as she heard the notification she hoped it was Ben. As she looked and saw it was, she felt both excited and a slight feeling of dread. She immediately opened it to stop her from prevaricating.

  She read it through and felt immediately relaxed. He had always been able to do that. And she was relieved that he hadn't lost any of his sense of humour. She started replying immediately.

  Hi Ben,

  Good to hear from you as well. The pub sounds fine, no it’s not too soon. I will trust your undoubted experience in that field!

  See you there, and no, the red rose won't be necessary.

  Sarah

  She sent it immediately.

  Amidst the excitement of seeing Ben, there was the slight trepidation of what he might expect to see, after all it was university when he saw her last. She wasn't sure how much he would think she had changed. And there was a slight feeling of guilt about using him in this way. He obviously thought it was just a casual meet up between old friends. A chance to catch up. But she hoped it wasn't obvious that she needed help. But if you want to find out things, maybe in a slightly clandestine way, who better than a journalist?

  But she knew she had to. She had a strong feeling that the fate of the children may well depend on what she did next.

  Chapter Twenty One

  Sarah headed to her bedroom to get ready to meet Ben. As she opened her wardrobe she realised she couldn't remember the last time she had bothered dressing up to go out. Maybe to a psychology convention or something similar, but that was easy, just a business suit. As she stood looking at the rather meagre collection of clothes available to her, she wondered what impression she was trying to make. It wasn't a date after all; more of a reunion. She looked again at the clothes.

  She couldn’t see a reunion outfit. Clothes had never been a major part of her life, she suspected that most people who knew her would say that was quite obvious.