The Codex File (2012)

by Miles Etherton

  “I’m going to have a Snickers. I love peanuts,” Rachel said, slipping her money into the slot.

  “Me too,” Zoe replied as Rachel retrieved her chocolate bar.

  “Well I’m not. I can’t eat nuts. I’m going to have the last Mars bar.”

  Having pressed the button for her snack, a male voice behind the girls interrupted their conversation.

  “Oi, I wanted that last Mars bar. Give it to me, it’s mine.”

  The three girls turned as one and looked into the face of a short, overweight boy with cropped ginger hair. An empty Mars bar wrapper was clasped in his right hand.

  “You’ve already eaten one,” Clare replied incredulously as the boy’s glare alternated between her and the chocolate she was now holding.

  “I’d already bagsied that one. Give it to me.”

  Lunging for her hand Clare ducked out the way as the plump boy lost his balance and tumbled onto the floor in front of the machine.

  “Serves you right fatty,” Zoe laughed, and the three girls turned and quickly ran back in the direction of the hall.

  Hauling himself to his feet Zack Richards kicked the base of the vending machine in disgust as the three girls disappeared out of view. It wouldn’t be the last they’d see of him that night.

  An hour later and the disco had finished. Clare and her friends were all standing in the school’s main foyer waiting for their parents to arrive to pick them up. Kelly was flushed with excitement and, as predicted, could talk of nothing but Giles.

  Although pleased for her friend, Clare’s own thoughts had drifted off to James again. When she’d returned to the hall after that boy had tried to steal her Mars bar she’d spent what had seemed like ages trying to locate where he was. And eventually she’d found him, dancing with a pretty dark-haired girl in another class who she knew was called Maria, and who was particularly good at tennis.

  In an instant she’d felt her heart ripped out, the tears rising as Maria had smiled at him as they danced together. She probably didn’t even like him - not like she did. So why was it she’d got to dance with James when it was her that had the crush on him?

  Determined to keep her feelings and disappointment hidden she’d made an excuse about going to the toilet where she’d spent fifteen minutes crying, leaving her friends to swoon over Giles and feel jealous about his interest in Kelly.

  It had turned into a terrible evening. And as she’d sat in the toilet cubicle she’d also realised she’d left her half-eaten chocolate in the hall, on one of the tables, just when she could have done with it.

  Now, standing in the school foyer, she couldn’t wait to go home. The sooner her dad arrived to pick her up the better. The prospect of seeing James appear with Maria was just too much.

  But looking out the doors into the school car park, there was no sign of her dad’s car. And as she sighed inwardly the familiar sound of Giles and his friends, laughing, always loud and boisterous, filled the corridor.

  Turning involuntarily towards the sound she reached into her jeans’ pocket for her open Mars bar which she’d retrieved when she returned from the toilet. Without a second thought she took a big bite, the sweet taste of chocolate instantly making her feel better.

  Giles and his friends strolled nonchalantly up the corridor, stopping in front of where Kelly stood, the permanent grin on her face still in evidence. Munching on her chocolate bar she ignored the conversation between the two, her view blocked by where the other girls stood in front of her.

  “Hi Clare,” a quiet voice said as she slipped the Mars bar back into her pocket.

  Instantly looking up she found herself gazing into James’ eyes. His longish brown hair hung around his ears, slightly damp from where he’d been dancing.

  Clare felt herself begin to blush and she wished her mouth wasn’t stuffed full of chocolate, although somehow it tasted different than it ought to have done. But that didn’t matter now - James was talking to her.

  With a slight shuffle and awkward look at the floor as he fiddled with his hair James quickly looked her up and down. Unable to hold her stare his gaze settled on Clare’s blonde hair that hung just below her shoulders from where she’d been growing it.

  “I, er, wanted to ask you to dance earlier,” he finally stammered, thankful that Giles’ attention was focused elsewhere. “I thought you were looking really pretty tonight.”

  Clare’s blush accelerated from a mild pink to a crimson red in an instant, but she couldn’t suppress the smile. Quickly swallowing the chocolate she attempted to reply, but before she could get the words out Giles was next to James and the group of boys dutifully followed as he sauntered off.

  With her heart racing Clare watched, aware but uncaring that her mouth was open in shock, as James disappeared down the corridor. In her mouth she was aware the Mars bar hadn’t tasted quite right. Maybe it had been old and she shouldn’t have eaten it a thought in the back of her head was telling her. But none of that mattered. All of the tears and anxiety from earlier in the evening had been banished in an instant.

  James Bartlett had spoken to her. And he thought she’d looked pretty too.

  Further down the corridor Zack Richards stood contentedly eating his third Mars bar of the evening. Stealing it from the stupid girl with the flower on her T-shirt had been easy. Whilst everyone else had been looking at the dancefloor he’d slipped it out of the wrapper, replacing it with the Snickers bar he didn’t want. No-one had seen what he’d done. And as the final mouthful slipped down his throat he knew just how devious he was.

  Michael Robertson pulled his green, slightly muddy Rover into the school car park. Picking Clare up the previous night from Zoe’s parents’ farm always meant he had to take his vehicle to the car wash afterwards. Mud and who knows what else seemed to attract itself to his car like a magnet. It was the same every time.

  And something else was the same tonight - he was picking Clare up from one of her many after school activities.

  Both he and Colette had recently commented how she had a better social life than they did. If it wasn’t taxiing her backwards and forwards to friends out in the middle of nowhere it was ballet classes or school discos. And yet again it was dad who was the taxi. Colette was working late again, another meeting of the management team at SW Technologies as they plotted their next move to try and secure the tender for UKCitizensNet.

  The moment he’d got in his car from their home in Hersham he’d turned the radio on, tuning into BBC Radio 4 and yet another discussion about the forthcoming demise of the internet in the UK. The journey to St Winifred’s school in Camberley normally took about half an hour so he’d caught most of the debate as he’d weaved his way through the end of rush-hour traffic.

  The current affairs programme had been focusing on the government’s ‘Countdown to UKCitizensNet’, the slogan they were now using to both promote and defend the online change. With just over nine months to the pulling of the plug on the internet government ministers were all banging the same drum: UKCitizensNet is the future - safer, quicker, and better for Britain.

  He was so tired of their rhetoric and of Dr Marcus McCoy’s. If Colette’s company hadn’t been bidding to run its replacement he would have boycotted any mention on TV or radio of it. But because of Colette, even though he didn’t remotely understand the technical aspects of what her job entailed, he always paid attention to the ‘Countdown to UKCitizensNet’.

  Secretly he hoped he might learn something that gave a clue as to weaknesses within the other companies likely to bid to run UKCitizensNet. Even though she’d never come out and said it, Colette was clearly anxious at what would happen to SW Technologies, to its employees, and to her job if they failed. If nothing else, the hours she worked were testament to that. The introduction of UKCitizensNet was going to affect all of their lives, one way or another.

  Pulling up in front of the main entrance to the school Michael could see many of the children who’d been at the disco congregated in the foyer.
Scanning the faces he quickly located Kelly, a striking if slightly thin and gawky, blonde girl who towered over Clare. And sure enough in the accompanying crowd he could see his daughter, beaming as she said her good-byes to her friends.

  “Was it a good disco?” he asked as the car door closed and Clare pulled her seat belt across her, locking it into place.

  The smile on Clare’s ran from ear to ear as she gave her father a quick nod before waving at her one of her friends as the Rover pulled away.

  Michael didn’t push the questioning any further, knowing his daughter would share the details if and when she wanted to. If you tried to elicit something from her too quickly she was more likely to clam up. She was certainly more like him in that respect, keeping her thoughts and feelings to herself until they were needed. So far she hadn’t exhibited any signs of her mother’s directness and getting to the point quickly.

  He wasn’t quite sure what was best. In a lot of ways he felt sure that was why he and Colette had been such a good mix because they did have very opposite personalities. And maybe Clare’s would evolve into somewhere in the middle, direct when she needed to be but guarded and cautious too. But there was time. She was only seven and a half after all.

  The traffic was light as Michael headed out of Camberley and Clare was unusually quiet. From all the smiles and hugs at the end of the disco it looked as she’d had a good time. But she wasn’t normally this subdued, and they could always find something to chatter away about as he drove them home.

  “Are you alright?” he asked, glancing to where she sat in the passenger seat.

  The glare from a passing street-lamp briefly lit her face and Michael was sure her complexion was pale, her expression drawn and slightly pained, her normal exuberance strangely absent.

  “I’m not feeling well,” Clare mumbled, shifting in her seat.

  “What’s the matter? Are you feeling sick?”

  Pulling quickly into a nearby layby Michael looked into his daughter’s face. Tears had begun to trickle down her face which, as he’d thought, had lost all colour and was ghostly white. With the radio turned off the sound of Clare’s breathing filled the car like bellows being pumped rapidly.

  A sense of panic started to rise in him, and he could feel his pulse racing. He knew he had to remain calm as a terrible thought started forming in the back of his mind.

  Clare’s chest visibly heaved as she fought for each breath.

  “Daddy, I can’t breathe,” she said, her eyes wide with fear and brimming with tears.

  Despite all the preparation for this moment, regardless of all the books they’d read about handling her allergy Michael still felt underprepared and alone. Why did this have to happen when Colette wasn’t there as well?

  “Clare, have you eaten nuts this evening? I’m not cross, but you’ve got to be honest with me. Did you eat any nuts at the disco?”

  Clare’s head began to loll and her eyes rolled upwards as she fainted in her seat, her body going limp, her pallor reflected in the nearby street-lamp.

  Turning to restart his car Michael caught sight of a wrapper poking out of Clare’s jeans pocket. The half-eaten Mars bar was starting to melt and he almost dismissed it as irrelevant. But in his heightened anxiety he opened the wrapper up, looking for an explanation for his daughter’s ailment. His heart thumped like a hammer in his chest and the realisation hit him with the force of a punch. He didn’t understand why but the half-eaten bar clearly had peanuts running through the middle of it and wasn’t the bar shown on the wrapper. He knew Clare wouldn’t have bought it on purpose. So why was it in her pocket?

  Wiping the sweat from his hands, he screeched out of the layby and turned the Rover around, heading back in the direction he came. Fortunately he knew a shortcut that cut out the centre of Camberly, which was always busy, and get him to Frimley Park Hospital and the nearest A&E unit. His daughter needed emergency treatment and he knew what he needed to tell the doctors. His daughter had gone into anaphylactic shock.

  Less than ten minutes later Michael had abandoned his Rover in front of the entrance to A&E, thankful no ambulances bringing another emergency were in his way. At least it wasn’t Friday or Saturday so hopefully the medical staff wouldn’t be short on the ground, occupied by angry drunks that had got into a fight. And if they were he’d scream and shout until someone came and attended to his precious little girl.

  Carrying his daughter in his arms he barged through the doors, frantically looking around for assistance.

  A doctor who was signing off the treatment option for a teenager who’d been hit by a 4x4 turned in Michael’s direction. The male doctor looked young Michael thought, maybe 30, but had a commanding air. And what he needed most at the moment was someone to quickly treat his daughter.

  “I think my daughter’s eaten nuts. She’s got a nut allergy and fainted in the car whilst complaining she couldn’t breathe. Please do something for her,” Michael blurted out, trying not to let his own sense of panic get in the way of treating Clare.

  The doctor nodded and pointed Michael in the direction of a spare bed before turning to a male nurse who was in attendance.

  “We’ve got suspected anaphylactic shock on a young girl. I need epinephrine, now.”

  Laying Clare carefully onto the bed the doctor quickly felt her pulse as Michael stood back, shaking as he watched his daughter lying unconscious before him.

  “Have you given her anything since she went into shock? An EpiPen or anything else?”

  Michael shook his head, tension creasing his forehead into deep furrows.

  “No, she doesn’t have one. We were told she didn’t need one.”

  The doctor frowned, shaking his head as he monitored her pulse rate.

  “Well, you might want to reconsider that in future,” he said flatly as the male nurse returned with the dose of epinephrine and a hypodermic needle. “If you could stand back please.”

  Michael duly obliged, his own breathing becoming shorter as he looked into Clare’s pale face, all of her normal vitality washed away. Forcing back his own tears and anger at how a peanut chocolate bar had been in the Mars wrapper he was aware of how helpless he felt. There was nothing he could do other than leave her in the hands of the medical team and hope she didn’t slip away before him.

  And what he needed most, other than his daughter being well again, was for Colette to be there with him.

  The first thing Clare saw when she opened her eyes thirty minutes later was her mum’s face, smiling but anguished and reddened from where she’d been crying. The last thing she remembered was feeling faint in the car with her dad. She knew her mum was working late tonight, but here she was now by her bedside to tell her everything was OK.

  “You gave us a real scare there darling,” Colette said softly, squeezing her daughter’s hand.

  “I don’t know what happened. Did I eat some nuts by mistake?”

  Colette nodded, relieved the colour was returning to her daughter’s cheeks. When she’d arrived, just after the doctor had administered the epinephrine, she’d been shocked at how white Clare had been. If she hadn’t been told otherwise she might have thought her daughter had died there on the bed she was so pale.

  When Michael’s emergency phone call had come through the meeting at SW Technologies was nearly over. Not that any of her colleagues would have objected to her rushing away under such circumstances.

  She was only thankful the meeting at had been at the company’s office in Guildford. She could have been talking with contractors in central London about the UKCitizensNet tender bid, which had been all too common recently. There was no way she’d have got to the hospital in the time she had if she’d been in London. And if Clare hadn’t got the epinephrine treatment she might not have got back in time at all.

  Colette let that terrible possibility trail off in her thoughts, not bearing to contemplate it for a second.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t with you when it happened,” Colette said, still smili
ng, tightly clutching her daughter’s hand.

  “That’s OK,” Clare said.

  Colette’s sense of guilt had ridden up inside her to the point she felt was going to burst as she’d watched her daughter lying unconscious on the hospital bed. And now she needed to unload it, reassure both her daughter and herself of what was important.

  “Even though work has been really busy recently you do know that I will always be there for you, don’t you? No matter what.” Colette said softly as her own tears streamed down her cheeks again.

  “Of course I do mummy, it’s not your fault.”

  Leaning forward Colette embraced her daughter, holding her tighter than she’d ever done before.

  Michael stood behind, leaning against the bed for support. His own sense of relief had left him feeling exhausted and his limbs ached from the emotional trauma of the evening’s event. He didn’t even want to think about what would have happened if they hadn’t been near the hospital. If this had occurred the night before when he’d picked Clare up from Zoe’s parents’ farm, virtually in the middle of nowhere, he dreaded to think what might have happened.

  And as he watched his wife and daughter he knew he never wanted to feel this afraid again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  The 18 months Michael had spent in the care home had been confusing. Day after day of being pumped full of sedatives and then listening to drivel from counsellors trying to empathise with him. But it had nothing on this. Conspiracy and counter conspiracy. Renegade groups fearing for their lives and holed up in the middle of nowhere. And now an app that could set fire to your house among other nasty things.

  There were times when he felt he would wake from this absurdness and discover it was just hallucinations induced by the drugs they’d pumped him full of in the care home.

  He stepped out of Ash Vale station, which seemed permanently deserted. The cloying smell of urine on the steep steps hung sickeningly in his nostrils. Casting one more furtive glance behind him he relaxed a little. No-one else had got off at this stop. If they’d been following him then he’d lost them somewhere along the line.