by Claire Merle
Frank flipped up the second layer of his ridiculous glasses and grinned. ‘A conspiracy,’ he said.
She wanted to slam her foot into his stupid mouth and smash that smile. Instead, she smoothed out her face and relaxed her body, the way she’d always done with the Board.
‘Just cal my father and let him see me with his own eyes.’
‘Wel, I’m sure that would be a fascinating encounter.’
Ana was worried now. Frank was too certain of himself.
He knew something. She trembled, cold in her flimsy He knew something. She trembled, cold in her flimsy robe.
‘You see,’ Frank said, bending over to gather up the papers, ‘the eminent Dr Ashby Barber was Emily Thomas’s physician at Seven Sisters for the five months she was there.’
Ana’s mouth popped open. She couldn’t stop it. Clearly someone had fabricated Emily Thomas’s psychiatric history because there was no way the real Emily Thomas could have been treated by her father. He’d had al of a dozen patients while he trained to become a psychiatrist as part of his research into schizophrenia. But why would Cusher bother? They had plenty of other, much better ways to torture boys and girls. An invented file to break down a patient’s delusion seemed far too subtle for any of the off-the-wal psychs at Three Mils.
‘Not so verbose now, are you?’ Frank said.
Ana managed to close her mouth. She kept her facial 304
expression blank, but she knew if he looked close enough he’d see the fear.
‘Wel,’ Frank said, stretching. ‘Now I’ve got your attention, I’d like to show you this news clip I found on the net this morning.’ He waved a hand in front of his chest and his interface booted up, projecting coloured light into the air in front of him. From his suit pocket, he extracted a wireless speaker and set it down on the oak sideboard beneath the mirror. Then he turned Ana’s wheelchair to face the parlour door. He stood behind her, the light from his interface automaticaly focusing on the white surface ahead.
the white surface ahead.
A reporter stood outside the iron gates to Ana’s home.
Frank pointed his finger over the virtual arrow key and the reporter began to speak.
‘Ariana Barber, daughter of Nobel Prize-winning geneticist Ashby Barber, was returned to her father’s home in the Highgate Community early this morning.’
The image cut to a limo door opening in the dusky half-light. A tal girl emerged. Her long hair flicked out beneath the coat she was using to shield her face. Ana’s father took the girl’s arm and guided her away from the cameras, towards the house.
Ana stared at the screen. She couldn’t think, couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.
One time, years ago, when Tamsin watched al the old films she could get her hands on, they’d seen a 1950s thriler about a private investigator who was afraid of heights. During the film the investigator was forced to climb up a tower. When he looked down, the camera zoomed in and puled away at the same time, making the 305
building’s perspective shift unnaturaly. Ana’s head felt like that now, simultaneously expanding and contracting as she attempted to grasp what she was seeing.
‘Dr Ashby Barber and al of the smal Highgate Community are deeply relieved by this unexpected turn of events,’
the reporter concluded.
the reporter concluded.
The image flickered and vanished. Ana looked at the space it left behind, the gears of her mind locked down.
Frank wheeled her chair around. Triumph lit his face.
‘It’s something of a conundrum, wouldn’t you say, Emily?’
Ana gazed straight at him, though she barely saw him now. Why would her father pretend she’d been returned home?
It came to her like the slow forming image of a photograph dipped in developer. He knew where she was. He planned to leave her in Three Mils. Just like Jasper. Her limbs seized up. Excruciating pain sliced through her chest.
Her organs felt as though they were colapsing.
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25
Tamsin
Ana lay on a mattress. Around her people spoke. But she didn’t care about words. They prodded and snapped fingers. But she was too tired to tel them to stop.
Sometimes others lay down too. Sometimes it hurt to breathe.
Al the time she felt a crushing emptiness.
The earth turned from the sun in tiny jolting fragments.
She began to believe it would never turn back.
Then a bel hurtled through time towards her. And something changed. The people stopped coming.
Her body unfurled from its bal and found its way inside the main building. It dragged her upstairs. It bumped into things. It sat down. The hand paddled a plastic spoon through brown liquid. Something scorched her throat.
She let out a cry. A spoon clattered into watery soup.
She blinked and looked down in amazement. She hadn’t even realised she was eating. A bread rol lay split in two by her bowl, large air holes gaped through the dough.
She pressed a finger into the crust. It was as solid as dry earth. She wondered how she’d managed to halve it.
Girls and boys around her muttered to themselves, chairs scraped, mouths moved behind scabby hands.
Everywhere there was staring, crying, lost and empty looks.
307
After lunch, she returned to Studio 8. Sat on a mattress in the dark. Watched grey phantom girls wander in and out, vanishing into the blackness each time the hazy sun dipped behind cloud, reappearing in the doorway, silhouettes haloed by afternoon light.
She became aware of burning sulphur tickling her nostrils. Tilted her head towards the smel. Saw a flame in the darkness. A pale, patchy hand held a match.
She folowed the flame as it glided back and forth. A black vine tattoo flittered in and out of the light. Close by, so close she could feel warm breath on her ear, Tamsin so close she could feel warm breath on her ear, Tamsin spoke.
‘Oh good,’ she said. Her words formed slowly. ‘You are there. I was beginning to wonder.’ The flame loomed towards Ana’s nose. Suddenly, it withdrew and extinguished, leaving behind wisps of smoke. ‘It’s easy to tel which ones are going to fal to pieces in here,’ Tamsin continued, stil speaking slower than normal. ‘Almost always happens within the first twenty-four hours.’
Tamsin sat cross-legged on the mattress beside Ana, though Ana had no idea how long she’d been sitting there.
‘That’s when they get a taste of what they’re realy in for,’ Tamsin said. ‘Psychs know they got to start the therapy fast. Just to groove you in, make sure you know where you stand. You listening to me, Barber?’
Ana observed the spectral figures in the doorway.
Ghosts had it better off than these girls. Here, bodies were trapped in loony dump hel, while their spirits were broken into pieces and scattered in the past.
‘You, though,’ Tamsin continued, ‘you come back from 308
your first time in the tanks as though you’ve just been on an invigorating jog around the block.’ She grinned. ‘You always were a bit odd. That’s part of the reason you and I became friends – me the poor girl in the Community with parents who were barely able to scrape by and you, the quiet, motherless country girl. I used to wonder whether, if you’d had normal parents and hadn’t spent your first eleven years home-schooled in the middle of nowhere, you’d be like al the others. Now I know. You nowhere, you’d be like al the others. Now I know. You wouldn’t. You’re different, Ana. In the whole ten-year history of the Pure test, you’re the only person who the Board has ever retested
– except for the batch that they had to do after your dad got off the hook. And when they found out you were a Big3 Sleeper they gave you a reprieve until your eighteenth birthday and officialy broke the rules of Pures and Crazies so that you and Jasper could be bound. And then you get yourself committed here looking for him.’
Tamsin laughed.
‘And I thought of the two of us, I was
the wild one! ’
She peered at Ana, waiting for a response. ‘The important thing is to get through the therapy,’ she said.
‘Once you’re through that, it’s not so bad here. As long as you don’t get addicted to the pils.’
Ana tried to move, do something, say something, but it was like the life had been sapped from her body.
‘Hey, remember that time we cat sat for a friend of your dad’s, and we locked ourselves out of her house? We had to break in through the letter box to get back in.’
A vague sensation fluttered through Ana. A feeling she’d almost forgotten. The simple pleasure of hanging around 309
in the Community with a friend she could trust, a friend who made her laugh.
‘Or that summer evening we snuck into the Highgate golf course, stripped down to our underwear and swam across the lake to see if the rumours were true; to see if across the lake to see if the rumours were true; to see if there was a way out of the Community without going through the checkpoint?’
Ana remembered the stench of stagnant water. The echoes of their laughter rang in her ears.
‘It’s things like that which keep you going in here.’
No, she thought. It’s things like that which make this place unbearable.
A cold hand gripped her chin, twisted her face so she was looking into Tamsin’s brown eyes.
‘Ana, please. Don’t give up. Otherwise you’l drift away.
I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it happen a hundred times. The special therapy is the worst bit. You only have to get through a couple more days.’
Ana blinked. She suddenly thought of Helen. Helen would have faced the tanks alone this morning.
‘Is Helen back?’
Tamsin let go of Ana’s chin. ‘The girl trailing around after you yesterday?’
Ana nodded.
Tamsin shrugged and angled away.
‘What?’
‘No,’ Tamsin said. ‘She won’t be back today.’
A hard bal of trepidation appeared in Ana’s chest.
‘Why?’
‘Rumour has it she totaly flipped out when she got to 310
the tanks. The lovely Dr Cusher put her under anyway. I heard they had to resuscitate her, so I guess she’s been taken to hospital for overnight observation. You’d be amazed how often that happens around here.’ Tamsin struck another match against the floor. ‘Or maybe not.
They normaly return, though. Eventualy.’
Ana stared at her old friend. It was hard to believe that this was realy the same girl she’d thought about and missed more than anything, for the last seven months.
The girl she’d once spent every waking minute with when they were fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old.
‘You disappeared,’ she said.
Tamsin’s free hand began to trace the tattoo vine on her neck.
‘Not on purpose,’ she laughed. But the bitterness in her voice was like a seam of hard metal through rock. ‘One day, not long after your dad packed you off to the country for the summer, I snuck out of the Community. I always wanted to go to the cinema. Remember?’ Her pale lips rose in a genuine smile. ‘Remember how I dreamed of being an actress? Anyway, I was in East Finchley, buying toffees from one of those pick-and-mix stals and this two-year-old kid came by with his mum.
Started crying cos he wanted sweets and she couldn’t afford any. Fel on the pavement, kicking, screaming, thumping his hands. Just a tantrum. But the Psych Watch turned up. The mother began to panic. Soon she was turned up. The mother began to panic. Soon she was kicking and screaming too. Some big bloke arm locked her. A guy in a white coat stuck her with a needle.
I couldn’t just stand there and watch—’ Tamsin broke off.
In the dim light Ana saw tears in her friend’s eyes. ‘Been 311
here ever since. No word from my family . . . The Watch took my ID. I heard they can sel a Pure ID for a fortune in certain circles. At first I tried to tel the psychs, but it was useless. The more I insisted, the more they put me into special therapy.’
Of al the strange things Ana’d imagined about Tamsin’s disappearance, nothing had come close to this.
‘But what did they do with your parents and your brother? How did they stop them from going to the Wardens?
How did they make them leave the Community?’
‘Leave?’
‘When I came back at the start of term,’ Ana explained,
‘your whole family had gone. Someone was running your dad’s shop. I asked just about everybody where you al were and the only answer I got was that your family had relocated.’
Tamsin pushed a palm hard against her forehead. ‘I always wondered why nobody came,’ she said. Her lips began to tremble. She plugged her hands over her mouth began to tremble. She plugged her hands over her mouth but a sob broke through.
Sadness rose over Ana like the tide. Her cheeks itched and she realised they were wet with tears.
Tamsin gulped down air in spasmodic gasps. She sniffed, hopelessly trying to pul it together. ‘Does your dad know you’re here?’ she asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘Oh shite.’
Ana laughed and cried in the same breath. She reached out and took Tamsin’s hand. They sat side by side, no longer trying to hide the gasps and sobs that racked their 312
bodies. After a minute, Ana rubbed her nose with the back of her free hand.
‘I’m going to get out of here,’ she said.
‘That’s the spirit.’ Tamsin sighed, letting go of her last tears.
‘Next time they take me to the tanks,’ Ana continued,
‘I’l make sure they drown me.’
‘OK, it’s official. You’re mad.’
‘Wil you look after Jasper for me? If I make it to one of the City hospitals, I’l find a way to contact his mum. I’l get you both out of here.’
Tamsin inhaled deeply and shook her head. ‘Not that I don’t appreciate the offer, but that’s totaly mental.’
don’t appreciate the offer, but that’s totaly mental.’
‘Wil you keep an eye on him for me?’
‘Ana, you could kil yourself trying to do that.’
‘I’m not like you. I won’t survive here.’
‘Everyone feels like that at first.’
Ana shook her head. Tamsin looked away, bit her top lip, considering. Finaly, she spoke.
‘On one condition.’
‘OK. What?’
‘If you make it, you don’t do anything stupid or dangerous to try and get me out.’
Ana frowned and folded her arms over her chest.
‘You have to promise me, Ana. You risked too much coming here for Jasper. I won’t have you doing anything so risky for me.’
‘But you can’t stay here.’
‘Maybe Jasper’s worth it, but I’m not.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
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‘He’s the son of the executive director of Novastra. His brother mysteriously died three years ago and now he’s supposedly been abducted by terrorists while his dad’s in the middle of negotiating a major deal with the government for BenzidoxKid. Get him out. Get him to government for BenzidoxKid. Get him out. Get him to talk. Concentrate on the big picture.’
Ana shook her head. The tears weled up al over again.
‘You always knew it, didn’t you? Even when we were fifteen, you knew there was something weird about the Pure test.
You never bought into it.’
‘You have to promise me you won’t take any stupid risks trying to get me out . . . Promise.’
Ana stared at her friend. The devastation she’d felt seven months ago as every effort to discover Tamsin’s whereabouts failed, came thudding down on her. She finaly nodded, then reached over and clutched her best friend in her arms. ‘I missed you,’ she choked.
After a moment, Tamsin hugged her back. The two of them held each other as though it was al that kept them from being torn
away into oblivion.
*
The folowing morning after breakfast, Ana waited anxiously for the orderlies to cal her name. Of the thirty or so girls who slept in Studio 8, she was one of only four summoned for extra ‘treatment’. Eyes on her feet, butter-flies in her stomach, she offered her wrists to be cuffed.
Once Orderly McCavern had linked the girls together, she led them out into a mild, late March morning.
Ana stopped short, blinking at an expanse of summer-Ana stopped short, blinking at an expanse of summer-314
blue sky. Sunshine warmed her hair. Spring had arrived to say goodbye. The chain tugged Ana’s wrists, propeling her across the yard. Once again, they passed through the wash-block and came out near the empty car park. They crossed the cattle bridge and turned towards the riverside warehouses.
Reaching the door to the hangar with the tanks, McCavern removed Ana’s cuffs. Ana lurched forward, ducking under the roler-shutter before McCavern could jab her with a truncheon. Inside, she heard a click and a buzz of electricity, folowed by the clattering descent of the shutter. The tanks glowed dimly in the darkness. Ana stood absolutely stil, worried the slightest move might make her throw up. Eventualy, a far door opened. Soft-soled feet scurried across the studio. The nurse from Ana’s previous trip to the tanks appeared at her side, cautiously reaching to remove Ana’s gown. Ana limply submitted.
Dressed in the bra and knickers she’d left home in an eternity ago, Ana climbed the steps to the nearest tank and dropped inside. Without prompting, she lay on the freezing metal bed. A strap tightened around her chest.
She closed her eyes. A distant click of high-heeled shoes echoed off the wals.
Cusher.
Cold metal bars curved over Ana’s wrists. The nurse locked down her thighs and feet. The low hum of a water pump began. Liquid gushed into the tank, spattering against the hard plastic floor. Ana breathed in. Chil air mixed with bleach filed her lungs. She relaxed her feet, mixed with bleach filed her lungs. She relaxed her feet, her fingers, her neck, alowing her body to sink into the metal 315
frame beneath her. Water tickled against the underside of her body. Goose bumps broke out on the tops of her arms and legs.
‘I think we might see some improvement today,’ Cusher said. Inside the tank, with the splattering and sloshing of water, Cusher’s voice had no direction, no origin. It was everywhere at once, possessing the air.
