by Claire Merle
Because if he wasn’t drugged he’d have been labeled with paranoid persecution disorder, or something along those lines. Not schizophrenic and depressive.’
‘These next two are female,’ Cole said. He scroled past 229
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them, to stop on the only one remaining: Scott Rutherford; 11.05 p.m.; admitted to Three Mils.
The diagnostic impression was schizophrenic with gran-diose persecution disorder; admission involuntary. That made sense. If Jasper had been struggling against his admission, if he was trying to convince the assisting psychiatrist of the truth – there were always two present to sign in any admission – then this could easily be a preliminary diagnosis.
If she had managed to acquire fake ID so easily, she imagined the Wardens or whoever had incarcerated Jasper could have done the same. Skimming along the rest of the admission details, her gaze settled on the psychiatrists’ signatures at the end.
Her heart bumped to a stop. The room swam before her eyes. She reached out to steady herself on the bed’s foot-board, but missed and plunged towards blackness, reality shredding around her.
Miliseconds later she regained consciousness. She lay on the floor not moving. Lila panicked. Cole lifted her up and drew her limbs into him, so her head lounged against his chest.
‘I’m fine,’ she murmured.
‘Get some water,’ Cole said to his sister.
‘I’m absolutely fine.’
Cole and Lila fussed until Ana forced herself to sit up and told them to leave her alone. She spent the next hour by told them to leave her alone. She spent the next hour by the curtained window, watching the twilight turn to dusk, dusk to night, staring at the driveway and the street beyond.
Cole and Lila packed away the remains of supper, pushed the beds together – Ana would sleep on one side, Lila in the 230
middle, Cole on the other side. They cast furtive glances in her direction, which she felt rather than saw and wholy ignored. She thought of nothing; her father’s signature had burnt a hole through her mind.
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19
Three Mils
Hours later, Ana woke with a start to find the numbness had passed, replaced by an intense headache. She roled off the edge of her bed and crept to the window.
Outside, the world had spun into the deepest centre of night. Nothing moved in the pitch blackness.
Stil dressed in jeans and one of Lila’s borrowed T-shirts, she slipped on her pumps, puled Cole’s brown jumper over her head and borrowed his puffa jacket.
She lit a candle and tiptoed towards the door.
The corridors between their room and the steps outside were frozen and eerie. She fumbled for the latches, leaving both doors resting against their locks so she could get back in. The crisp air burnt her throat as she crept out into the night.
On the porch, she gazed at the stars. Once there’d been On the porch, she gazed at the stars. Once there’d been so much light polution in London you wouldn’t have seen the stars, even on a clear night. But now hundreds of glinting, silver flecks spangled the sky.
Ana shivered and hugged her arms tightly around herself.
The cold chased away al remnants of her earlier unconsciousness and lethargy. She sat down on the curved steps and begun rubbing her hands.
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A scuff sounded from inside. She twisted towards the noise and saw Cole’s six-foot frame in the doorway.
‘Hey,’ he whispered.
‘Hey,’ she whispered back.
He came and sat beside her. ‘Couldn’t sleep?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Sorry, I borrowed your coat. Do you want it back?’
‘No, no, it’s fine, you keep it.’
‘Thanks.’ Ana squeezed the jacket around her waist and dipped her chin into the colar.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ he asked.
The pressure in her head moved down to sit on her shoulders as wel. She cleared her throat.
‘My father,’ she said, ‘programmed me into thinking joining with Jasper Taurel was the only way I could have a safe and happy life and then he . . . he discovered Jasper was going to expose his dodgy research and he Jasper was going to expose his dodgy research and he got rid of him. Incarcerated him in a psych dump under a false identity. Then he had the gal to promise me that if I just sat tight, we’d get Jasper back.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Everything I thought was wrong. Everything I’ve valued
. . .’
‘It wasn’t your fault.’
‘I just accepted what I was told. After I realised what happened when you asked questions . . .’ She remembered the awful morning in the Head’s office; the first time she met the Board. It seemed like a milion years ago. How she’d regretted writing to the Guildford Register’s Office for her mother’s death certificate.
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Cole sighed.
‘That’s the way it’s been set up,’ he said. ‘It’s dangerous to ask questions. Instead we have the Board, the fix-it-al pil, the endless bombardment of new distractions. It’s just the same in the City. It’s like a magic trick. Our attention is directed one way, while a sleight of hand conceals what’s realy happening.’
Ana drew her knees to her chest and rocked herself.
‘Al these years I’ve been carefuly watching myself, ter-rified of when, or where, or how I might crack. Now I’m finding it hard to believe there’s nothing realy wrong with me.’
Cole squeezed his hands together and blew on his fingers.
‘You’re not the only one,’ he said. ‘Look how many people out here are convinced they’re sick. Most people believe and trust those in authority. We’re conditioned to as kids and we don’t expect them to lie to us.’
Ana breathed out, watching the white cloud of breath just visible before her eyes.
‘The morning after my mother gave in to my father and started taking the Benzidox again,’ she said, ‘I woke up realy early with this terrible feeling.’ Her mouth grew dry.
She’d never told anyone this before. For years, the memory had been hazy and broken, buried beneath the lies she’d told the Board. But seeing Cole’s mother had brought the morning flooding back in excruciating detail.
‘I went to find my mother but she wasn’t in her bedroom.
I passed my father’s study and saw the light on beneath his door. He was always up reading half the night and faling 234
asleep on the sofa. I searched for my mother downstairs and then I went outside.
‘I could hear an engine running. So I crossed the overgrown lawn to the barn and I stood outside, listening. My father rationed the petrol. When he went off to London for the week, he left the spare car with just enough fuel in it to drive a couple of miles to the nearest neighbours in an emergency. So the engine being left on like that wasn’t just weird, it felt deeply wrong. And I could smel the fumes.
They leaked under the double doors. I tried opening the doors, but couldn’t. I ran back to the house and got my dad.
He made the girl that was with us at the time keep me inside, while he went to see what was going on. I heard him chop through the door with an axe.
‘From the kitchen window, I saw him carrying my mother, limbs dangling, to his car parked at the side of the house. I broke away from the girl and ran to them.
He laid my mum on the back seat and closed the car door. He told me she was fine. “She’s had an accident, Ariana. You’re not to worry. I’m taking her to the hospital.” I never saw her again; never got to say goodbye.’ The grief settled over Ana like an ache, like flu.
Cole took her hand and held it between his own. His palms felt warm. She liked their roughness, it made them seem solid and reassuring. She felt him watching her.
Staring through the shadows at his hands cupping hers, she brushed a finger across his wrist.
She had a plan. It was the only way forward. The only path open to her.
‘I need proof Jasper realy en
tered Three Mils as Scott 235
Rutherford,’ she said. ‘I’m going to get myself committed.
If he’s there, I’l find out what he’s done with the research evidence and I’l get him out.’
‘That’s the most insane thing I’ve ever heard,’ said Cole.
She could hear a smile of disbelief in his voice. ‘Anyway, he won’t stil have the evidence. If your father didn’t take it, the orderlies wil have frisked him. It’s pointless.’
‘Jasper knew he was being folowed. He could have hidden the disc before they took him.’
‘Listen.’ Cole’s grip tightened around her hand. ‘Even if he’d managed to hide it, he’s been institutionalised for almost a week. They have ways of extracting information.’
‘My father isn’t affiliated with Three Mils. He wouldn’t have been able to go back there to interfere with Jasper’s treatment, especialy if he thought someone might start asking questions about Scott Rutherford’s background.
Perhaps he thought it wouldn’t matter if Jasper had hidden the disc. Because Jasper was the only one who knew where, and who would he tel? Who would believe him?’ Vocal-ising her argument increased Ana’s certainty. Posing as a patient was worth the risk.
‘Besides, how else wil we know if it realy is Jasper?’
‘There are other ways. Anyway, Jasper obviously hasn’t been able to get out, so how do you think you’re going to?’
‘After admission, there’s a routine evaluation that has to be done within twenty-four hours: an interview with one be done within twenty-four hours: an interview with one of the resident psychiatrists and a sanity test of a hundred questions. If you pass, you’re released.’
Cole withdrew his hand. ‘And if you don’t pass you’re 236
kept for another month of involuntary treatment before the next assessment.’
‘I’l pass,’ she said.
‘Nobody passes. If you’re too normal they think you’re abnormal. If there’s nothing apparently wrong, then it’s deeply hidden and that’s even worse.’
‘I’ve taken that test ever since I was fifteen,’ Ana said.
‘My father coached me on it. I know exactly how to respond. I can’t fail.’
‘There are other things that could go wrong. It’s too risky.’
‘What about you?’ She turned to face him. ‘This minister you’re helping has information that backs up Jasper’s, right? Something that proves the government and Novastra came up with the idea of Pures before my dad even began his research. What’s going to happen if the Wardens know about the minister? You’re taking the same risk. I saw the way you said goodbye to your mum.’
Cole stared at her. She angled away to face the street.
Across the road, the blue LED street lamp softly shaped the iron railings of a park.
‘You’re in shock,’ he said finaly.
‘You’re in shock,’ he said finaly.
She shook her head. ‘You’re the one who thinks I’m part of al this. That I have something to do with disproving the Pure test.’
‘Not by getting yourself locked up in a loony dump!’
‘What then?’
Cole’s eyes narrowed, his face compressed.
‘What did you see?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know how to explain.’
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‘Try.’
He turned away as though it hurt him to look at her. ‘I saw us.’
‘What were we doing?’
‘Kissing,’ he said.
Ana’s stomach flip-flopped. Nerves fizzled inside her.
For a moment she thought she was going to laugh. She pressed her fingers together and tried to continue breathing.
‘Wel, that was part of it, anyway,’ he said.
She nodded.
‘The better part,’ he added.
Her hands shook. She had no idea how to respond. Her heart felt like it was going to pump itself so hard it would burst through her chest. She glanced at him and saw he was grinning.
‘You’re joking?’ she said.
‘I’d never joke about kissing you.’
Heat rushed to her cheeks. Thank goodness he couldn’t see her properly. She shot to her feet, trembling.
‘I’ve never realy kissed anyone,’ she blurted, instantly wishing she’d kept that piece of information to herself.
Idiot, she thought as she scampered quickly back inside.
In the bedroom, she kicked off her shoes and lay down beside Lila. Cole returned a minute later. She heard him stretch out on Lila’s other side. In the darkness, she imagined she could hear him smiling.
*
Three Mils was formerly part of a group of tidal mils on Three Mils Island. Vehicles could access the psych dump 238
from Sugar House Lane, a long, isolated road to the north.
Pedestrians entered by a street to the west which had been closed off to cars. Beyond the first bridge, on the left, a row of brownstone houses led up to a blue gate, which dated back to the mil’s conversion into film studios. On the right-hand side stood a pretty, industrial mil with a clock tower.
‘This time tomorrow morning,’ Cole said, holding Ana’s shoulders, fixing her gaze, ‘you get on at Bromley-by-Bow and go to Whitechapel. From there you take the train to Forest Hil. You go straight back to the room.
You wait for me, until I come for you. The room’s al paid up.’ Ana nodded. But every time she looked at him, she thought of them kissing.
They were standing outside a boarded-up Tesco on the edge of the long pedestrianised lane.
‘This is crazy,’ Lila said for the hundredth time.
‘If the psychs don’t give you back your money, jump the barrier and get on the Tube without a ticket. No one wil stop you.’
Had he been teasing her about his Glimpse?
‘Ana, concentrate. What I’m teling you is important.’
‘Get on the Tube without a ticket,’ she said. Her heartbeat accelerated as she imagined jumping barriers and riding through London alone. She should be more worried about a night in the psych bin than Cole’s Glimpse and ticket evasion, but that part of what she was doing seemed too alien to even contemplate.
‘Lila’s going back to the Project,’ Cole said. ‘But I’l be there for you tomorrow night.’
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Ana unfastened her interface from the silver chain around her neck and gave it, along with her real ID, to Cole. ‘If I don’t get out,’ she said, ‘I want you to send this to my don’t get out,’ she said, ‘I want you to send this to my father and tel him where I am.’
Cole took the ID and interface dubiously. She could see he was thinking that if her father was capable of putting Jasper in Three Mils to protect his reputation, he was probably capable of leaving Ana there too. But Ana knew Ashby Barber wouldn’t let his daughter rot away in a loony dump. He would come for her. His pride, if nothing else, would insist on it.
‘I’l see you tomorrow night then,’ she said, the uncertainty in her voice leaking through.
‘Tomorrow night,’ Cole repeated. He held her gaze.
Ana longed to reach out for him, but she only smiled.
‘Besides,’ she said, ‘you’ve seen the future. And we haven’t
. . . you know.’
Cole smiled back, then reached out his fingers to lightly touch the short hair at the back of her neck. She closed her eyes, wanting to engrave the feeling on her memory –
the tingling sensation where their skin met, the electricity that flowed between them, setting her on fire.
Lila shook her head. ‘Madness,’ she said, kicking a fizzy drinks can and sidling off to examine a poster on the boarded-up Tesco shop front.
‘I want to understand,’ Ana murmured. ‘What makes you so sure this Glimpse wasn’t a trick?’
Cole’s hands dropped around the curve of her shoulders, down her arms. ‘Don’t you ever just know something?’
down her arms. ‘Don’t you ev
er just know something?’
he asked.
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Ana searched his eyes. No, she thought, not really. Ever since she’d been told she was a Big3 Sleeper she’d questioned everything, especialy herself.
‘But it happened so long ago.’
‘Yeah. I was only sixteen.’
‘I barely remember things that happened before I moved to the Community. Sometimes, I think if I didn’t have a photograph, I wouldn’t remember what my mum looked like. What makes you think I’m the girl?’
Cole dug his hands in his pockets and took a deep breath.
They stared at each other for several seconds, until Lila came and stood between them.
‘Just for the record,’ Lila said, ‘in case anyone is actualy listening, I think Ana voluntarily getting herself committed to a loony dump is a realy bad idea.’
Ana tore her eyes away from Cole and hugged Lila. It was the first time she’d initiated physical affection with anyone since Tamsin disappeared. She drew back embarrassed, but Lila puled her close.
When Ana let go, she absorbed Cole’s presence one last time, memorising the iceberg blue of his irises. Then with nothing but the fake ID stick and forty pounds cash, she strode, head down, towards Three Mils.
strode, head down, towards Three Mils.
Her legs trembled as she crossed over the footbridge towards the clock mil. She stopped by the gate. A security guard appeared out of nowhere.
‘Got an appointment?’ he said.
Ana alowed her fear to express itself as a general nervousness. She scratched beneath her hair at the back of her neck.
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‘Er, the Mental Watch Centre sent me.’ In her mind she recaled the signatures of the psychiatrist who’d admitted the John Doe patient on the same night as Jasper. Culen, or Cohen perhaps. ‘They told me to ask for Dr Culen.’
‘You must mean Gudden,’ the guard said.
‘Oh.’ She nodded and ducked her head.
The security guard backed up to the last house opposite the clock mil, once the home of a foreman or a factory official. He disappeared inside then reappeared behind a latticed window, holding an intercom phone. A moment later, the blue gate opened. Ana shuffled through. As it closed, she glanced behind and caught sight of Cole and Lila. It was too far to see their faces. But their bodies were stil and she could tel they were both watching her.
