“How old were you then? Were you involved in the business quite young?”
“I suppose I was.”
“And then you took over and ended up looking after people like me.”
She smiled. “Nobody is like you, Laura.”
“Really, though? There must have been others in the programme, apart from me and Alfie?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think it’s healthy for you to think too much about that, Laura. Let’s just be grateful we have you. Shall we put some music on? You can choose.”
I grinned. “Madonna! ‘Like a Virgin’?”
The car started playing and Miss Lilly joined in. “I know this one!”
Soon we were both singing and then she said, “Wait, listen, you’ll love this – play Madonna, ‘Vogue’.”
I’d never heard the song but it was unmistakably Madonna. “I love it! Can we play it again?”
We put it on loop and Miss Lilly said, “I’m going to teach you the moves.”
She started framing her face with her hands and posing as she sang. She was completely different away from work – funny and cool and relaxed. Her posing face was hilarious – I was still laughing when the car said, “We have reached your destination. Would you like me to park?”
Miss Lilly said, “Obviously. Yes.”
The car turned into a tiny gateway in a narrow street and pulled into a space.
“Shall we?” Miss Lilly said.
We were near The Lanes. I’d been there before. It looked exactly as I remembered – a jumble of shops, too many people staring in the windows and not paying any attention to where they were going, including me. We passed a shop that specialized in vintage clothes. I was shocked to see the window display full of clothes I’d dreamed of owning before I got ill. A dummy wore a short grey ra-ra skirt with an off-the-shoulder white T-shirt and a black studded belt double-wrapped around its hips. My cool was today’s vintage.
I lingered by the window and Miss Lilly said, “We can go in if you like?”
I shook my head. I needed to work out what was cool now. “Can we go to the high street and see what they have there?”
She tucked my hand through her arm and said, “Your wish is my command.”
As soon as we emerged from The Lanes, heads began to turn. People pointed and whispered. Miss Lilly kept a tight hold of me and then a girl about my age stuck her arm out towards us.
“OMG, Miss Lilly! I love your Super Skin – it smells so nice – will you sign my arm – I think you’re amazing…” She practically pushed a pen into Miss Lilly’s hand and said, “I’ll get a tattoo over it so I never lose it!”
Someone else shoved between them with a small slate and held it up like that guy had done at the clinic. She took a picture of herself and Miss Lilly and showed her friend. People seemed to gather from everywhere. Then they noticed me.
“It’s Sleeping Beauty!”
“It’s Laura, the frozen girl.”
They pressed in closer and closer, and I started to panic. Someone tugged at my hair. I twisted round. All I could see were faces coming at me and hands grabbing and clasping. I shrank back but they were behind us, in front of us – everywhere. We were surrounded. I couldn’t breathe and then, from nowhere, half a dozen huge people in suits slipped between us and the crowd.
I clung to Miss Lilly, gulping for air. Her arm was around my shoulder like a lifeline. She was apologizing: “I’m so sorry. How stupid of me. I’m so sorry.”
We were shepherded back to the car by the suited people. They formed a barrier between us and the crowd that had followed. We were practically shoved into the back seat and one of the suited hulks got in the front.
Terrified, I asked, “Are we being kidnapped?”
Miss Lilly shook her head. “He works for me.”
The hulk reversed the car out of the little parking space. The others held the people back but they were still there, waving scraps of paper and mini-slates. A few of them followed the car – I could see them through the back window – but eventually we were away and driving out of the city.
I said, “What…why…what…?”
I couldn’t even form the question. We had just been mobbed. I stared at Miss Lilly. She wasn’t just well known. She was truly, madly, properly famous. Benjie had told me, but seeing it, being in the midst of…that – it was mad.
Miss Lilly pressed her fingertips to her eyelids and said, “I’m a fool. It’s been so long since I went out like that, just out, walking down the street. I’d forgotten what it was like. I thought I’d been so careful, that I’d managed the press. I forgot about people in general.”
“It was like they wanted a piece of us – of you.”
“I put you in danger. I am so sorry.” She swallowed and her eyes welled with tears. “Do you see now though, why I think you need to be in a place like Whitman’s?”
“But wherever I go people will know me, won’t they? Or think they do…”
“Probably.” She smiled. “But you’ll have people like Giles to help. And my security team. And at Whitman’s, most pupils are used to mixing with high-profile people. You won’t be that unusual amongst the more elite of society.”
We drove on in silence. I stared at the back of the man driving, then I realized something. “You told the guard not to come, so how did they know where we were?”
“Somebody didn’t take no for an answer. I shall probably have to promote him.”
I calmed down and began to feel a bit flat that our afternoon out had been snatched away.
As if she sensed it, Miss Lilly said, “Why don’t we get the beauty spa to clear some appointments for us? Hair, nails, skin – the lot?”
“At the clinic?”
She nodded, smiling. “It’ll be fun.”
“Can they do my teeth?”
She laughed. “Okay – I can see the teeth thing is a big deal. You can have some UV lightening but no bleach. You’re too young – they’d shut me down.”
When we got back she said, “You go and check on Batfink while I organize everything.”
Within twenty minutes we were walking into the spa. It was amazing. The walls seemed to be made of bubbles that cycled through different shades of blue. Open archways led to different areas, each with a neat white sign: Georgian Steam Room, Infrared Room, Celestial Relaxation Room, Ice Chamber. I stopped dead. Miss Lilly followed my gaze. Her hand flew to her mouth.
“It’s not what you think! It’s a beauty treatment to prevent ageing. It’s not…” It was the first time I’d seen her really flustered. “You just sort of dip in the ice, it helps regenerate damaged cells. Oh, Laura, can you forgive me? I am such an idiot.”
She took my hand and pulled me towards another archway. I could feel the chill curling round my legs as we passed that ice room. Who on earth would freeze themselves for a beauty treatment? Were they mad?
We walked into a softly lit area that smelled of lavender. Miss Lilly had arranged for us to have calming massages side by side. The spa was otherwise empty and the stress of the visit to Brighton slowly faded into a surreal bad dream.
My new life was so different from my old one. It wasn’t just the change in time and place; it was all the craziness that went with being Laura Henley, the girl from the past. Miss Lilly smiled and held her hand out to me. I took it, so grateful that I had her to look out for me.
Later that evening, we sat in the living room to watch the telly. There were two big white squishy sofas but we sat together, and Batfink, having flung herself around the room like a mad thing, had fallen asleep between us.
The news was on and I wondered if what happened to us in Brighton would be reported. I was relieved when it wasn’t, but then the reporter said, “Finally, Stacey Flowers has defied the court order limiting her interactions with the Crisp Estate by once again applying for a freedom of information request.”
They cut to a film of a woman coming out of a police station holding a slate up in front of her,
completely hiding her face.
“Miss Flowers, who served sixteen years for the fire that almost destroyed Blackhurst Clinic in 1989, will appear in front of Brighton Magistrates on Monday.”
I froze. My jaw dropped open and I turned to Miss Lilly, who very deliberately didn’t look at me. She stroked Batfink’s head.
“What’s that all about?” I asked.
“You don’t want to know.” Her voice caught on the words. She looked up at me, her violet eyes tremulous with tears.
“But maybe I should,” I whispered. Something terrible had happened and it involved two of the only people left in the world who I cared about. I had to know.
“Please tell me.”
Very softly she said, “There was a fire here. That’s how I lost my parents.”
“What?”
“It was arson.”
“Stacey? Stacey did that?”
She pinched her lips together and nodded. I was shaking my head without even meaning to. I wanted to crawl away. How was it possible that someone I knew so well – someone I loved – could do that? Selling a story was one thing – maybe she’d been pressured into it, maybe she’d been tricked – but starting a fire where people got killed?
“Was it an accident?” I managed to ask.
“The courts didn’t think so.”
“But why? What was she doing here? Oh God, no… It was because of me, wasn’t it? She was here because of me! Your parents died because of me.”
I felt sick but Miss Lilly shook her head.
“No. Don’t ever think that. The cutting edge of science has always had its critics and some are prepared to do anything to stop progress. Your friend Stacey got mixed up with a group of activists. Blame lies entirely there.”
A tear landed with a soft splash on her blouse.
I didn’t know what to say.
“They’re like cults, those organizations,” she went on. “They manipulate your thoughts to get you to do what they want. They probably used her connection to you to get your friend even more involved.”
I shuddered as a memory surfaced. Stacey had once shown me a leaflet about bears being farmed for their bile. The bears were alive but they had tubes stuck in them to suck out whatever it was the farmers wanted. Stacey had been so upset and angry.
“How could people do that? We don’t even need the bile! They can make, like, fake stuff that does the same job.”
I agreed with her that it was grim but I wasn’t thrilled when she dragged me into town to meet the people who were handing out the leaflets. I signed their petition but I didn’t like them much. They were a bit, I don’t know, intense. Those bear pictures haunted me for months.
Stacey, though, she’d been a zealot about it. She liked one of the guys from the group, but I thought he was a creep. That had fizzled out after a while, but maybe she stayed involved with the group. Maybe it was them who attacked Miss Lilly’s clinic?
Miss Lilly said, “I admire people with conviction, but their methods…” She bit her lip.
The worst thing was I could imagine Stacey getting caught up in the drama, the passion – especially if she was angry about what had happened to me.
I said, “I’m so sorry.”
Miss Lilly smiled sadly. “It was a long time ago now. There’s no point in being bitter. Apart from losing my parents, the worst thing was the damage to the cryo-pods. So many failed in the heat. It was awful, so much loss. If my father had lived, he’d have been devastated. Those poor people – they’d put their trust in us and we failed them.”
“You didn’t fail them! You didn’t start the fire.”
She gave me a sad smile, full of such intense sorrow my heart ached.
“I feel like we did. My parents should have designed a better evacuation plan. The pods were too big to move and there was no way to protect them from the water used to put out the fire. The support systems crashed in almost every pod and we had no way to save the people in them. I think about it every day. You survived by sheer fluke. There was an airduct over your pod that diverted the water away. You were the only one not affected – the last link from my father, a human legacy and our last chance, Laura. I was terrified we’d fail with you too.”
Like a dart through my chest, I realized what that must mean. Alfie died because of that fire. Because of what Stacey, or at the very least her activist friends, had done. The horror must have shown on my face, because Miss Lilly said, “I shouldn’t have mentioned anything. I’ve ruined our lovely evening.”
My jaw was so tight with anger I had to force the words out. “No. I had to know. And you have to know, you are not to blame. None of it was your fault.”
I hugged her and we cried together. I didn’t know what to think about Stacey. It should have been utterly unforgivable, but I couldn’t quite believe she’d have deliberately done anything to hurt either of us. I needed time. Maybe I needed to talk to her.
Miss Lilly patted my back gently and said, “Well, I sure know how to put a downer on a day.”
I sat back and wiped the tears from my eyes. She was so kind. So generous. And we shared so much history. What had happened had cost the lives of her family and mine. I wouldn’t let it ruin anything else.
There was a celebrity dance show on the telly. I pointed at the screen. “Okay, subject change. How many of those people have been here?”
She laughed out loud. “Pretty much all of them! See her in the silver tassels? How old do you think she is?”
I shrugged. “Twenty-five?”
“Forty. She’s one of mine.”
“No way.”
She winked. “Way. Tummy tuck, rib removal, butt lift and so much stuff to her face I’ve lost track. She’s actually an ambassador for our skincare range.”
“Wow.”
“It’s the product range that made us famous really – skincare, scented candles, aromatherapy oils.”
“What is aromatherapy exactly?”
“When you use certain scents to help your mood.”
“Is that why it always smells so good around here?”
She smiled. “We have an entire wing for celebrities who are suffering burnout, addiction, stress, that kind of thing. It can help keep you calm. Anything that aids their recovery is important.”
“Who was the man I met in the corridor?”
“A minor celebrity who I suspect was deliberately planted here to try and get some footage of you. He won’t be returning.”
“I’ve caused you a whole lot of trouble, haven’t I? You’ve been so kind to me, letting me live in your house and everything. I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you.”
“You repay me every day you get better. You’ve been part of my life for so long, silently waiting to be cured and revived – there hasn’t been a day when I didn’t think about the moment I’d be able to talk to you. I can’t begin to tell you what you mean to me. In a way, you are the only family I have. Believe me, Laura, you have nothing to repay.”
In lots of ways, that evening marked the beginning of my new life. The apartment began to feel like home and the days passed quickly in a blur of clinic visits, playing with Batfink and sessions with Giles trying to teach me how to use Instagram. One day we put a picture up of me smiling with my new UV-whitened teeth. I hoped I’d get loads of nice comments and I did – but one person wrote, Nice try, Tombstone Teeth and my new-found confidence was ripped from under me. After that, I only let him put up pictures of Batfink. She always got lovely comments.
In the evenings, I watched movies with Miss Lilly to fill what she called “gaps in my cultural knowledge”. Some of them were quite good. I liked Forrest Gump (I loved how he just kept going even when things were so confusing – maybe because things were so confusing) and The Martian (bit of a theme here; that guy just wasn’t going to die however bad it got) and More of Me (yeah, yeah, same again; that girl had an even weirder history than me). In return, I made her watch ET. I couldn’t believe she’d never seen it. When it
got to the classic line from the film, I insisted we pressed our fingertips together and croaked, “Phone home.”
Those evenings on the sofa were the closest I came to contentment. I knew they weren’t going to last, that I’d be going off to school, and it gnawed at my insides. One night, as if she’d read my mind, Miss Lilly said, “I’m going to miss you when you’re at Whitman’s.”
I’d never actually agreed to go there, but it seemed like somewhere along the line I’d just accepted it. And I was going to miss her too. And my team. And Batfink.
“I’ll call you,” I said.
“You’d better.” She held up her finger for me to press. Together we said, “Phone home…”
The morning we left for school, Benjie came to the apartment to remove the cuff from my arm.
“Promise to report to the school nurse so she can keep an eye on you.”
“I promise.”
My arm felt naked without the cuff. It was a bit scary – the beginning of doing things on my own. Miss Lilly seemed to understand. She’d helped me painstakingly choose my outfit – denim shorts, baggy white T-shirt tied at the waist – all pretty plain and anonymous. I hugged Batfink within an inch of her life and gave detailed instructions to Annie on her likes and dislikes. The car was packed, I’d said my goodbyes, there was nothing else to do but leave.
Miss Lilly and I sat in the back with two security people in the front. She wasn’t risking any kind of repeat of our last outing.
In no time we were passing through the streets of Brighton and driving along the coast. The sun burned white off a flat calm sea as the school I’d seen on the internet appeared on top of a cliff up ahead. In real life it still looked like a giant block of vanilla ice-cream with a caramel-wafer roof.
As we approached a pair of large ornate metal gates, I spotted a couple of photographers outside.
“How did they even know we’d be coming today?” Miss Lilly said. “I deliberately didn’t bring you on the first day of term.” She reached for my hand.
The driver slowed as if unsure what to do.
Beauty Sleep Page 10
