by Nick Gifford
Hayley had taken to life in Senior House with gusto. It was as if she’d been waiting for this kind of recognition all the time she’d been in the main school, and now she was lapping it up. She seemed to have got to know everyone by their first names already, even Miss Carver and Mr Pullinger.
There was a hint of desperation in all this, Liam suspected: she was making the point that she was here and she belonged. Even so, he couldn’t help but admire the way she took to it. He longed to be able to do something with that kind of open-eyed enthusiasm again, instead of suspecting everything, fearing everything.
This was never going to last, he realised.
He knew bad things had been done to his head. He knew that something terrible was going on, and if he could only unlock his memories he might be able to work it all out.
Whatever ... this could not go on.
Could he imagine lasting a whole year in this state of tension? A term? Even a month?
No. Something must give.
That left him with the choice: either sit back and watch carefully to see what would happen, or push it and see what gave first.
He didn’t think he had ever been one to sit back and wait.
~
He sat on a grassy hummock behind the wall of what had once been the Senior House kitchen garden. He took his phone out and flipped it open.
There were no more strange messages, but the reminder was still there. He didn’t know whether he’d set the reminder and forgotten or someone had planted it as some kind of prompt. Either way, it was there.
13th June. Mum’s birthday.
That was today.
He closed his eyes and tried to remember, but nothing came. No memories of birthday cakes, no family parties.
Again, he wondered... this question had been plaguing him. How much of what was in his head was his own, and how much had been put there, how much removed? Could they do those sorts of things to someone?
He thought of how much he had learnt about the world in the last week and a half. So many strange things.
He could believe almost anything now.
He tapped a key on his phone to clear the screensaver. There was a number filed with the reminder. He thumbed the “call” button and put the phone to his ear.
There was a pause of a second or two, then he heard the ringing tone. That, and the pounding of his pulse in his ears.
It rang three times, then there was a click, a silence, a woman’s voice.
“Hello?”
He had hoped for – no, he had expected – a flash of recognition, triggered by that voice, but it did not come.
It was a soft voice, hesitant. Accentless, anonymous. He did not remember ever having heard this voice before.
“Hello?” the woman said again. “Who is this?”
Liam swallowed. His throat felt paralysed. He managed to swallow again.
“Happy birthday,” he said, in little more than a whisper.
A long silence followed.
“Who...?” She started, stopped, then started again. “Liam? That’s you, isn’t it? Liam? Oh my god. I thought we’d lost you. Liam, are you there?”
“Mum?” He closed his eyes, and that squeezed the first of the tears out. “Is that you, Mum? What’s happening? What are they doing to me?”
“Liam. Are you okay? Where are you? Are you still at that place?”
He couldn’t answer, couldn’t say a thing through his choked up throat.
“Liam. Listen to me. I don’t know what you believe any more. I don’t know what you remember and what they’ve brainwashed into you. Try to dig deep, Liam. Try to remember. Try to recover your true self. Do you understand?”
Sort of. “I’ve been trying,” he said.
He gathered himself. “Can we meet?” he asked. “Can I see you?”
Another pause. “Can you get out?”
“Maybe,” he told her. “I think I know someone who could help.”
~
She was in Wolsey. Just in case, she had told him. So close!
They were going to meet tonight. They hadn’t discussed what would happen after that, but Liam had no intention of coming back here. He would take the withdrawal symptoms, and the long-term risks of abandoning the NATS medication.
Just one more afternoon of this madness, and then he would be clear.
He stayed for a while on the hummock behind the old kitchen gardens, trying to gather himself. He mustn’t give any of this away. He had to find that discipline again, the concentration he and Luc had discussed. One more afternoon of shutting out the prying minds of Morton Blake and Miss Carver and then he could relax.
But still, he had to hold it together all afternoon. He mustn’t allow himself to slip now.
He headed back up to Senior House. He had an afternoon of English and History to get through. And he must find Luc.
He came to the House and went inside, still with ten minutes of the lunchbreak to go. He decided to head up to his room. Maybe Luc would be there.
Instead, on the landing, he met Mr Pullinger and Anders.
“Anders?” said Liam. “What are you doing here?” Kids from the main school weren’t allowed in Senior House... Hayley had said he was jealous, but what could he be doing here now? What was he up to? Then he remembered Anders’ role in NATS security and instantly clamped down on that thought, for fear of giving himself away.
“Connor,” said Mr Pullinger. “Have you seen Hayley Warren?”
Hayley? Why were they looking for Hayley?
He thought of her room, then – just a brief, flashing thought, but it was enough.
“That way,” said Anders. “Number six.” He gave Liam a dirty, aggressive look, then turned on his heel and strode along the corridor after Mr Pullinger.
“What...?”
They ignored him.
Mr Pullinger reached for the door and pushed it open.
“Hey! What’s going on?”
She was in there, then. Liam felt guilty, as if he had betrayed her by even thinking of her room. He hadn’t known she was there. He’d only guessed.
Mr Pullinger was in the room, and now Anders rushed in after him.
Liam followed them, stopping in the doorway.
Hayley was there in a tee-shirt and jeans which she was struggling to fasten. She must have been changing. “Mr Pullinger? Anders? What is it? Why are you just barging in like this? What’s happened?” Then she looked past them, to the doorway. “Liam? What...?”
“Go back to your room, Liam. You weren’t meant to see this.”
Liam turned and he saw Willoughby standing there in the corridor. Principal Willoughby was a good man. He radiated warmth, friendliness. Trustworthiness.
“Don’t watch this, Liam. Go back to your room.”
Liam glanced over his shoulder. Hayley was cowering on her bed, hugging herself. She was frozen in place, her eyes locked on Mr Pullinger. She appeared unable to move, unable to speak any more.
Liam walked back along the corridor, past Principal Willoughby to the landing, and then along the opposite corridor to the room he shared with Luc.
He unlocked the door and went in.
He closed the door.
He walked across the room.
He lay down on the bed.
He slept.
18 In the middle of the night
You have to believe your own lies sometimes. Even if you only manage to do so for a short space of time. If you can fool yourself, it’s far easier to fool the rest of the world.
~
Liam woke.
Someone was in the room with him.
Principal Willoughby. He was sitting on Luc’s bed, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped in front of him.
Liam felt good with Mr Willoughby in the room. This was the man who had identified his talent and moved him here to Senior House. This was a man who had Liam’s best interests at heart.
Liam rubbed his eyes.
“What
time is it? I should be in lessons.”
“It’s all right, Connor,” said the Principal. “You have been excused for this afternoon. You had a traumatic experience. You saw an event you didn’t fully understand.”
Liam remembered. He remembered seeing Anders and Mr Pullinger subduing Hayley in her room. “Why?” he asked.
“Young Ms Warren had been up to no good,” said Mr Willoughby. “It seems that she has been trying to sell her story to the national press. She wouldn’t have got anywhere, of course. Who would believe a crank story about the secret existence of the Lost Families? And in any case, we have people in place to stop such things.”
Liam nodded. This explained her erratic behaviour. “How did you find out?”
“Anders Linley discovered what she was up to. He reported it directly to me.”
Good old Anders. Liam had only shared the room with him for a week, but he missed his company. “What will happen to her?”
“She has demonstrated her unworthiness. She was a threat to our security. Her talents will be neutralised and she will be returned to the outside world.”
That was good.
“Are you okay, Connor? We don’t want you diverted from your course at such an early stage.”
“I’m okay,” said Liam. “Just tired.”
He closed his eyes. Hayley had been stupid, but it was good that she was going to be taken care of.
He listened to the door closing, still thinking positive thoughts.
Hayley would be okay. Anders had done the right thing. He was glad that Mr Willoughby had taken the trouble to make sure he was okay – that just showed what a good place this was.
He thought along these lines for several minutes, until he was sure he was alone.
He thought these things because he had become very good at faking such thoughts now. Blocking his natural reactions and re-shaping the thoughts into the kinds of things they would hope he would be thinking.
~
“So, let me get this straight, yes? This Anders has lied to them about Hayley because his jealousy is inflamed. They have taken her and ... what is it that you fear? You are sure he was lying?”
Liam looked up at Luc. They were high up in the evergreen oak that Luc had shown him the previous day.
“Hayley was desperate to get into Senior House. She wouldn’t have done anything to risk that, especially once she’d got here. She told me Anders was mad that the two of us had moved here and left him behind. You should have seen him when they came for her. He was gloating. He’d won. He thought he’d been dumped, so this was his revenge.”
“But what will they do?”
“I don’t know.” But it was bad. He had had another of those memory flashes, when Willoughby had been talking to him, a vivid flashback that he had suppressed instantly. Kath, in Norwich, guzzling pills from a plastic container. And another: something medical, something that called out to a fear rooted deep down in his mind. He touched his implant scar. “They’ll take this, for a start. They’ll kill off the spark. Who knows how she might end up?”
“So what do we do?”
“What can we do? We’re powerless.” Until this moment he had clung to the idea that they might be able to help Hayley, but no...
Luc climbed higher in the tree again. He seemed to like pushing it to its limit, climbing out along the slimmest of branches that you would swear would not take his weight. When he came back down again, a few minutes later, Liam caught his eye.
“Luc,” he said.
“Yes?”
“There was one other thing...”
~
It was dark, with clouds covering the stars and the moon.
Liam perched on the window-ledge. When Luc did this he just took his weight on his hands and swung out from here, but now that Liam was in this position he couldn’t quite work out how he did it. Instead, he turned awkwardly and reached out with his right hand.
He found the iron pipe, and stretched his right foot out, too, until it struck the pipe. It felt solid enough. He took his weight on the right side and swung round, grabbing the pipe with his left hand, just as he started to slide with his feet. He did as Luc had told him, leaning back so that he pulled out with his hands, which drove his feet in against the wall and stopped them from skidding. Slowly, he edged his way down.
Luc clapped a hand on his shoulder when they both stood on the ground. Silently, they slipped away into the trees. Liam’s eyes had adjusted now, but still he found it hard to see where he was placing his feet and he stumbled several times.
They crossed the playing field.
“So,” said Liam, finally breaking their silence with a low whisper, “how do we get to Wolsey?”
“Come,” said Luc. “You will see.”
They skirted around the main school house until they came to one of the outbuildings. Luc leaned close to a side door, and then stood back as it swung open.
Inside, he produced a penlight torch and flashed its narrow beam around. They were in a garage. There was a big blue car there, surrounded by tools and boxes and heaped bags.
“Here,” said Luc, handing Liam the torch. “You open the door on the right, yes? There is a bolt at top and bottom, and one in the middle.”
Liam took the torch and went to the front of the building. It was just as Luc described. He slid the bolts and swung the door open. Behind him, a car engine sprung into life.
It sounded so loud!
He hurried back, and scrambled in through the passenger door that Luc had opened.
Luc was beaming at him. “You British...” he said. “Everything is on the wrong side, but I am okay. Now. Let me see. The accelerator.”
The car revved and lurched forward, just missing the door as it swung out onto the gravel.
“Oh no,” said Luc. “Gears! My father ... we have an automatic, you know. It makes things simpler.”
They stopped, and Liam jumped out to swing the garage door shut, then he was back in the car and they were revving down the long drive in a gear far too low.
Fearfully, Liam peered back through the rear windscreen and side windows, but there was no sign of lights going on in the school building, no dark figures hurrying outside. At the end of the drive, they turned right onto the Wolsey road.
“Okay,” said Luc, having mastered crunching into a higher gear quite quickly. “There must be lights on this thing, no?”
~
“You are sure, my friend?”
Liam nodded. “I’m not going back there,” he said. “Whatever happens.”
Luc shrugged. “Okay. It has been good knowing you. I mean that, you know?”
Liam felt bad about abandoning Luc to return on his own. He felt bad about not telling him the entire truth, too. He had just told him he had a friend here, but hadn’t said that it was his mother. “Look out for Hayley if you get the chance,” he said.
Luc shrugged again. “I climb trees and steal cars and get away with a lot of things they don’t know how to stop,” he said. “But I think that miracles are maybe a bit beyond my abilities, no?”
Liam stood back, and watched as the car set off into the night.
He retreated into the shadows and flipped open his phone.
She answered on the second ring. “Hello?”
“I’m here,” he said. “In Wolsey. Where are you?”
“Okay. You know the seafront? The Golden Anchor chip shop? Opposite, at the top of the beach, there’s a shelter. It looks out towards the sea. You know the one?”
“I’ll find it.” He had never been to Wolsey. Not in the memories he could reach. Before, though. He thought he had been here before.
He was in an area where the High Street opened out, with angled parking spaces lined up like herring-bone along the central area. Shops crammed either side of the street, the brightly-painted buildings jostling, as if squeezed into too little space.
She didn’t trust him, he realised. That was why she was meeting him out here and not whe
rever she was staying. She had told him very little. She was giving him no information that he might betray to anyone reading his mind.
That was sensible, he supposed. He had done exactly the same thing with Luc, just now.
Trust had to be earned.
He took one of the small side-roads, away from the High Street. Judging by the way the road had come in, he had worked out that the sea must lie in this direction.
It did. He came to a road that ran parallel to the High Street. One side of it consisted of more of the higgledy-piggledy, brightly-coloured town-houses, while on the other a concrete sea-defence wall held back a bank of shingle at the top of the beach.
He looked left and then right.
There: a dark shape on the beach. That must be the shelter.
He walked in that direction, and soon saw that he had been right: the chip shop, the Golden Anchor, lay in darkness on his side of the road.
He crossed. It was funny. Only a week and a half ago, he had walked into NATS, starting a new life. So much had happened in a short time, and here he was, leaving that all behind. He was not going back.
He was scared, he realised. Would he recognise her? She had been blocked out of his mind so successfully that parts of his brain still thought of her as dead.
Steps led up the wall.
He climbed to the top, then down onto the shingle on the other side.
His steps crunched with each footfall, and he saw movement in the shelter, a figure coming out to greet him. She came out of the darkness, and he saw her, and recognised her. It was Kath.
19 Nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide
Some people believe that history is a kind of force, a thing with its own momentum. They argue that the major events of history – or at least, events very similar and with the same result – would happen regardless of who is around to take part: history happens because the world is ready for it.
Others argue that history is shaped by key figures: that without Leonardo, Napoleon, Darwin and Hitler the world would be a very different place today. Some people cling to this belief with an almost religious fervour.
It might be their only source of hope.
~
“Hello, Liam.”
Kath. He stared at her and she flinched, raising a hand to her head.
