by Claire Merle
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In the dining room, Ana hurried through her lentils and mashed potato, wondering what had happened to Helen.
She hid her bread rol in a fold of the blanket Tamsin had given her. The orderlies prowled up and down the aisles between the tables. Once Ana had finished her meal, she waited for an orderly to pass before rising and folowing in the same direction. As she moved by Tamsin, her arm shot out and snatched Tamsin’s half-eaten rol. In a flash, Tamsin’s hand clamped over hers.
‘There are six of them out there,’ Ana whispered.
Tamsin studied her for a moment, then let go. Ana tucked the rol away. She walked the aisle behind the orderly, appropriating the rols of every girl in Tamsin’s posse.
Back in the yard, she handed out the bread. After checking on Jasper and getting him to eat a few crumbs, she searched for Helen. She eventualy found the girl tucked into a far, dark corner of Studio 3, sniveling and muttering to herself.
‘Helen?’ Ana said, walking towards her.
The girl screamed and lashed her arms in the air, as though fending off a monster.
Ana took a step back, crouched down and talked to her in soothing tones.
in soothing tones.
‘Remember me? I was in the tanks with you. It’s OK.
You’re OK now.’
Crying and trembling, Helen held up her fists like she was stil expecting some kind of attack.
Ana inched forwards, keeping her movements smal and unthreatening. ‘Are you hungry? I bet you missed lunch.
Not that there’s much to miss. Overcooked, mushy lentils.
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Old mashed potato. I have bread. Do you want some bread?’
Helen’s raised fists sagged. Her eyes finaly seemed to focus on Ana. Ana broke off a piece of the rol Jasper had barely touched. She held it out. Tentatively, Helen took it, clasping the bread in shaky fingers for several seconds, as though waiting to see if this was a trick.
‘It’s OK,’ Ana said.
Helen brought the bread to her lips and nibbled. When Ana didn’t stop her, she pushed the whole lump into her mouth. Ana held out more. Helen looked at the bread, then at Ana. Her eyes filed with tears, glistening in the semi-darkness.
‘Why are they trying to kil me?’ she whispered.
Ana shook her head. ‘They’re insane,’ she said. She crouched down near the girl, breaking off bread and crouched down near the girl, breaking off bread and passing it to her until the rol was finished.
Several minutes later, when she rose, Helen trailed after her into the courtyard, sticking to her like a shy shadow al afternoon, as Ana sat keeping vigil over Jasper.
Jasper stirred back to life at around 4 p.m. He rambled about a country house his parents had owned when he was a child; about crowding into the family car with his golden retriever and driving two hours to the rustic retreat with its outside toilet and log fires; about his brother Tom teaching him to snare rabbit and pitch a tent. Speaking about his childhood seemed to help him.
Ana listened, an aching sadness occasionaly sinking her heart. He’d never opened up to her like this before. It made her happy and miserable and guilty, at the same time. Because he didn’t know who she 293
was. Because while she was with Jasper, sitting beside him, holding his hand, al she could think of was Cole.
Several of Tamsin’s posse helped Jasper to supper. Ana let Tamsin take charge, not wishing to draw any more attention to herself and Jasper than she already had done.
When the orderlies rounded them up before returning them to their studios for the night, Ana saw Jasper go with a feeling of relief. He’d be safe until the morning.
And she wouldn’t have to look at him any more and think, I’m in love with someone else.
Helen returned to her alocated Studio 3 to sleep. Ana returned to her own studio, and discovered Tamsin’s group was also in there. They’d bagged the best-placed mattresses behind the studio door where the air was fresh, but the draught didn’t reach them. Tamsin had saved Ana a place beside her.
saved Ana a place beside her.
Night orderlies waited for the girls to settle, then roamed the compound, checking through the ajar door every half hour or so, to make sure no one was trying to hang themselves with bed sheets or slit their wrists with blunt supper knives. Endangering the girls’ lives was obviously a privilege the psychs liked to keep for themselves.
*
At daybreak, orderlies stomped across the compound, troleys rattled, studio doors ground back, and McCavern and her coleague appeared, flanking the nurse who began to distribute everybody’s meds.
Ana had slept off and on through the night, woken often by the cold and the aches and pains in her body. She was 294
wrapped up in her blanket on the bed, head under the cover, meds lining her stomach, when the bel alowing them to leave the studio rang.
Tamsin sprung up. ‘Move it!’ she shouted.
The girls from her group dashed to the door. Alarmed, Ana jumped up and tore after them, blanket flapping behind her. Out in the courtyard, she saw Tamsin sprinting towards the wash-block. She ran hard to catch up. Patients swarmed the building from al sides, rushing to get there first. The closer studios were at an obvious advantage.
Tamsin’s group linked hands and began pushing through the narrow entrance. Ana ducked under a couple of guys and bumped aside several teenagers to grab a dark-and bumped aside several teenagers to grab a dark-skinned girl’s wrist – the last of Tamsin’s posse. In a chain, they veered from the main toilet queues down a left-hand corridor. The corridor led to three large cubicles, each with its own yelow door. As they arrived, two doors slammed closed and locked.
‘Come on,’ Tamsin said. Seven of them bundled through a swing door into the remaining cubicle. They pushed out three stragglers who’d arrived first. Tamsin leant back against the door to stop others from entering, while the dark-skinned girl swiveled a flat bar into place top and bottom. Locked inside, the girls cheered.
Dazed and breathless from the run, Ana took a few seconds to register what was going on. The dirty shower cubicle was similar to the one Cusher had interviewed her in. The girls weren’t wasting any time. They’d al stripped off and were now hanging their gowns on hooks at either side of the door. Ana fumbled to remove her robe. She re-295
trieved the bar of soap stored in her gown pocket. The showers came on automaticaly. The girls leapt into the tepid spray, scrubbing hard at their bodies, rubbing soap in-to their hair. Ana copied, thankful her hair was short.
After two minutes, Tamsin shouted, ‘Time!’ and the girls turned their attention to cleaning soiled knickers and grubby bras.
After three minutes the showers cut out. A wooden hatch scraped open in one of the side wals. Six smal threadbare towels appeared. Tamsin handed out the towels to her girls, excluding Ana from the count. The youngest-looking girl offered Ana her towel. Tamsin watched with a look of amusement.
‘She’l probably be back in the tanks today,’ the girl said defensively.
Ana shivered, partly at the thought of being strapped down underwater again, partly because the wash-block wasn’t heated and it was freezing. Winter at Three Mils had to be hel. Hurriedly, she patted herself dry and returned the towel to the youngest girl.
They left the damp rags in the hatch, donned their robes, shoved wet underwear in their pockets and gripping each other’s hands, returned the way they’d come, pushing through the shoving hordes. Ana glanced back and saw a dozen boys pack into the shower cubicle they’d just exited.
A girl who’d been swept into their midst, struggled to break free. Ana turned to help, but the dark-skinned girl puled her back. ‘Lost cause,’ she muttered.
They entered the main corridor, where there were stil more crowds. ‘Sorry, folks,’ the dark-skinned girl said, 296
‘you’re too late. The water’l go cold on the next one and run out on the third.’
To Ana’s surprise, their group didn’t return
to the courtyard but veered the other way, down the corridor towards the faeces-smeared wals and the boys’ toilets.
‘Hold tight,’ Tamsin warned. A group of boys whistled as they jostled past. They fel into a door on their right.
A second set of girls’ toilets. Situated past the boys’
block it was obviously seldom used. Ana had been in block it was obviously seldom used. Ana had been in there last night, when an orderly escorted several of them before lights out.
Inside, the girls let go of each other. Two of them headed straight for the motion-sensor hand driers at either end of the row of sinks and began to dry their underwear.
Tamsin and the rest of them disappeared into the cubicles. Ana heard them throwing up. She glanced around and saw a fixed camera high in a far corner.
Shutting herself in the last toilet, she checked for hidden cameras, then stuck her fingers down her throat.
When she came out, Tamsin was leaning against the doorjamb.
‘You needn’t have bothered,’ she said. ‘Yours were placebos today.’
‘What?’ Placebos were fake pils, used to make a patient or someone on a drug trial believe they were receiving medication. What was Tamsin talking about?
‘You can always tel,’ Tamsin continued, ‘cos they’re just one colour and they’re bigger.’
‘Why would they do that?’ Ana asked.
Tamsin shrugged. Ana moved to a sink and washed out 297
the sides of her mouth. Then she took her toothbrush and toothpaste from her robe. The young girl who’d given her a towel came and stood beside her. At first Ana was too distracted to notice, but then she saw the imploring look, the extended hand holding a toothbrush. Ana squeezed out toothpaste on to both their brushes and began cleaning her teeth, barely noticing as the girl skipped away.
Had Cusher reconsidered? Did she believe Ana might be who she said she was? Had she cut out the medication as a temporary precaution, until she’d verified Ana’s story?
But then why maintain the farce of giving her the medicine at al? Perhaps she’d wanted to conceal her uncertainty.
Ana felt a thril at the possibility of having got under Cusher’s skin.
Tamsin came and stood beside Ana at the sink. She spoke quietly, dipped over the sink, the water running so no one overheard.
‘What the shite are you doing here, Ana?’
‘Jasper was abducted. A friend helped me track him to Three Mils.’ Ana blushed as she said the word ‘friend’, but Tamsin had her head down and didn’t notice. ‘I thought I could confirm it was realy him and the psychs would let me out after the twenty-four hour test.’
‘They don’t let anyone out – not until right before your nineteenth birthday.’
‘Why nineteen? And what are you—’
‘Shhh . . .’
Two of Tamsin’s posse joined them, chatting about hair-styles and plotting to get their hands on a pair of scissors.
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Tamsin caught Ana’s eye in the mirror reflection above the sink. Ana wiped a rogue tear and moved away.
the sink. Ana wiped a rogue tear and moved away.
They were late to breakfast, which meant by the time they entered the white-padded TV lounge they’d missed the national news. Desperate for information about Cole, Ana became agitated and annoyed and kept to herself as they separated into groups to be taken back to their studio dorms.
As the orderlies rounded up the first group of boys, she caught sight of Jasper. Her shoulders dropped a little. It was good to see him walking about with a bit more colour to his face. She shuffled towards the doors with a cluster of girls.
McCavern stepped forward from the row of orderlies and stuck out her truncheon.
‘Not you, missy,’ she said. ‘You’re to wait here. You’ve got a special appointment today.’
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24
Dr Frank
McCavern trundled Ana, who was strapped down in a wheelchair, past the river and therapy stages towards a huddle of nineteenth-century town houses. Ana tried to worm her hands from the cuffs but it was no use.
‘In some places,’ McCavern said, ‘getting noticed might be a good thing. Not here though,’ she laughed. Ana’s stomach churned.
They stopped before an open front door. McCavern pushed her through a salmon-papered halway and pushed her through a salmon-papered halway and dumped her in a parlour room furnished to fit the Victorian setting.
The door slammed closed. Ana turned towards it and caught sight of her reflection in a gilded mirror hung above an oak sideboard. One large grey eye and one hooded purple eye stared back at her. The last of the brown gel contacts had dissolved. She looked a wreck.
The parlour door creaked. A man in his mid-twenties with long sideburns and layered glasses, one layer currently in the up position, entered.
‘Good morning, Emily,’ he said. His voice crashed against the stilness. ‘I’m Dr Frank.’ He undid the strap around Ana’s waist but kept her hands cuffed. Then he sat down on the edge of an armchair and folded one leg over 300
another, trying to get comfortable. He shifted to balance his clipboard on his leg. Unhappy with his position, he got up, perched on the arm of the chair and peered down at her.
‘Let’s see, Emily,’ he said, unable to stay the excitement in his voice. ‘Yesterday, you told Dr Cusher that you were Ashby Barber’s daughter. How do you feel about that today? Stil think you’re Ariana Barber?’
‘Time doesn’t change who we are,’ Ana muttered. There seemed to be no shortage of idiot psychiatrists at Three Mils. She wondered where Cusher was.
‘Apparently you asked Dr Cusher to contact Ashby Barber,’ Frank said. ‘You wanted us to get in touch with him and tel him his daughter was in our care.’ Ana felt a him and tel him his daughter was in our care.’ Ana felt a jolt.
Her guard went up. Was Frank offering her an opportunity, or a trap?
‘Did you contact him?’
‘I’m curious,’ Frank continued. ‘If Dr Barber was here, what would you say to him?’
‘I wouldn’t have to say anything,’ she answered warily.
‘Why not?’
‘Because he would see the mistake with his own eyes.’
‘Tel me about this “mistake”, as you put it.’ Frank leant back, enjoying the sound of his own voice. ‘Didn’t you come here of your own free wil?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘Tel me about what you do remember.’
Ana concentrated. She had to make this plausible. This is what they’d tel her father, if they folowed up her claim.
‘I woke in a strange room in a block of flats,’ she said.
‘My head hurt so bad I couldn’t think straight. I just needed 301
something to stop the pain. So I went to the nearest Mental Health Centre I could find and they sent me here.’ She wondered if the MHCs kept records of their visitors. Unlikely. Besides, they’d never know which centre to check up with.
centre to check up with.
‘And why did you sign in as Emily Thomas?’
‘That was the name they said was on my ID.’
‘You didn’t remember your own name?’
‘I was confused.’
‘Wel, how do you suppose you got this ID?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘There is no mention of headaches on Dr Dannard’s form when you registered.’ Ana pursed her lips. The story had holes, but it was the best she could do. ‘And now you’re not confused?’ Frank continued. ‘And you want me to cal Ashby Barber because you think he’l take you home?’
It was a rhetorical question, but Ana answered anyway.
‘Yes.’
‘So tel me how you got to the strange room.’
The puffed up bits of her eye itched. She tried not to scratch.
‘I think I received a message,’ she said.
‘A message . . .’
‘Asking me to meet someone who said they knew wh
ere Jasper was. They said they would tel me at a price. I thought they wanted money.’ Frank frowned for a moment and then his face broke into a wide smile.
moment and then his face broke into a wide smile.
‘Ah, Jasper,’ he said, delighted with the extent of her delusion. ‘You mean the man Ariana was supposed to join 302
with, the abducted Taurel boy? And what did they want in exchange for this information?’
Ana bristled. ‘How old are you?’ she asked.
Frank shifted position and flipped down the second layer of his glasses. ‘Continue,’ he said.
‘You look a bit young. Are you even qualified? You grew up in the City, didn’t you? You’re a Carrier – one of the lucky ones alowed to study to become a doctor or a lawyer or a psych. Carefuly ironed shirt, a cheap suit, an esteemed psychiatric post. You’re very pleased with yourself because you think you’ve realy cut your way in the world.’
Frank snorted and clipped the lid on his pen. Ana smiled, relishing his discomfort.
‘You’ve struggled,’ she continued, ‘and now you think you’ve made it. In a couple of years you’l realise that there’s no satisfaction in talking to a bunch of neurotic teenage Crazies. You’l grow bitter and that faint light pulsing at your very core wil go out for ever.’
‘Enough!’ Frank shouted. He pounded his clipboard on a coffee table with filigree legs. One of the legs snapped.
The clipboard slid off, papers spiling loose on to the floor.
‘Forever is a very long time,’ Ana said.
‘Forever is a very long time,’ Ana said.
‘Emily Thomas,’ he snarled, ‘admitted to Seven Sisters’
Mental Rehab Home in May 2031 after the death of her parents in a house fire that left her catatonic.’
Ana tried not to alter her body language, but instinctively she sat up straighter as the alarm bels began to go off.
That was an extremely unlikely coincidence. A decade ago the Mental Rehab Homes were only starting up, like the Communities. The chances of the real Emily Thomas 303
having been institutionalised as a child were slim to none.
She stared at Frank.
‘What do you have to say?’ he asked.
‘Dr Cusher is more creative than I gave her credit for.’
