The Panopticon

by Jenni Fagan

  ‘John! John, it’s me, it’s Anais. John, wait for me, please!’

  He shouts back, but I cannae hear what he’s saying. Someone comes up behind me. I can feel their breath on my neck as they grab my shoulder – shove me off the pier.

  Water. Cold. Sinking, sinking, sinking. Keep my eyes open and gaze up towards a murky light as I fall. It’s time tae let go. John dives in above me, swims down and grabs my hand, squeezes it hard; he turns, trying to swim back up tae the surface with me. A wee boy swims up towards us; he’s tiny, pointy chin. He touches my arm and John lets go of my hand and swims ahead. The little boy turns right back to me and grins. He has hundreds of wee white fangs. He whorls around my head, until water burns my lungs and I’m drowning.

  The experiment built me a bedroom to stay in – it looks like mine but it’s not. They want me like this. My eyes glow yellow and there’s soft hair all over my body: I’m one of them. I bathe in the waters of the dead and I, too, detest the living.

  16

  IT’S LIKE THE fortieth time he’s shouted. I wish he’d shut the fuck up.

  ‘Anais, you have court in forty minutes. Can you get ready, please?’ Angus calls.

  He’s on the landing and has been trying to get me up for half an hour. I turn over. My duvet is warm. I snuggle back down inside it – I just want to sleep all day.

  ‘Why’s Mullet taking me tae see my ma?’ John asks Angus. I can hear them, they’re outside my door now. I wish they’d fuck off.

  ‘I’m really sorry, John, but I cannae take you. I have tae get Miss Sleeps-a-lot tae court on time. Hurry up, Anais!’

  ‘Is she in court for the policewoman, like?’

  ‘I cannae discuss that with you, John.’

  ‘How – is the policewoman dead, like?’

  ‘No, she’s not.’

  ‘She’s gonnae go down.’

  I hear John saying the last bit to someone else, and I haul the duvet right off me. I’m fucking pissed off now.

  ‘Is she getting done for it?’ Isla asks Angus.

  Jesus, there’s a whole fucking powwow going on, on the landing. Rub my face. I feel like I slept in a grave.

  ‘No,’ he hisses at them, ‘she is getting done for half a dozen other bloody things, if that is okay with you lot? Can you hurry up, John, and dinnae wind Ed up again, and dinnae steal his car!’

  Isla pokes her head around my door.

  ‘Good luck later,’ she says.

  ‘Ta, Isla.’

  ‘John?’ I shout.

  He sticks his head around.

  ‘I hope it’s alright seeing your mum.’

  ‘Fucking whatever,’ he says and disappears.

  Get up. Drag on a pair of jeans, T-shirt, sneakers. Head to the bathroom and brush my teeth. Isla walks past with her school bag slung over her shoulder, Tash behind her.

  ‘Alright?’

  ‘Morning.’

  ‘Have you got court the day?’ Tash asks me.

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  I drink some water out of the tap. It’s cold and tastes like metal, but clean.

  ‘D’ye think they’ll do you?’

  ‘No doubt.’

  ‘Well, I hope they dinnae,’ Tash says and they disappear down the corridor.

  Joan appears in the bathroom doorway. ‘Have you seen Brian?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Okay, you’ll be having a review when you get back today, Anais. Last night was unacceptable. You cannot still just disappear when you want and think there will be no consequences. Helen’s coming in to discuss this.’

  ‘I thought Helen’d left.’

  ‘She has, but you still have your end-of-care review, and she’s taking you tae Warrender Institute, remember?’

  ‘Joan, see how Helen left? Like she just quit – it was after she’d spoken tae the police about me?’

  ‘Helen had plans to take some time out from the social-work department for a while, I’m sure. It won’t have been anything tae do with you, okay?’

  Joan catches sight of someone at the end of the corridor and marches off.

  ‘I’ll discuss this with you later, Anais.’

  Trudge downstairs feeling rough as shit. Before I was a teenager I didnae get come-downs, not really, I could get as mashed as I wanted then. I’ve even started tae get hangovers recently – getting old is pish fun. Brian’s sat in the living area reading a book. Angus is waiting for me with the front door open.

  ‘Come on, let’s get moving, lady, we’re late,’ he says.

  Joan emerges from the left turret and Brian’s face falls.

  ‘We need tae talk, now!’ she says to him, and he traipses behind her into the interview rooms.

  On the top landing the black doors are all closed, like usual. I feel uneasy, like I never really looked at them before. I haven’t been back in there to see the snow wolf or the snow bear, and I have this horrible feeling they are gone.

  Crunch out to Angus’s car. He opens the passenger door and I get in; it smells of wet dog and faintly of good-quality grass. The air’s stale and stuffy from the morning sun. It’s giving me the boak.

  ‘So, did you have a good time at the cinema?’

  ‘Aye.’ I wind down the window.

  ‘I didnae know they did films until four a.m.?’

  ‘They dinnae.’

  ‘So what were you doing?’

  ‘I was getting laid.’

  He turns the engine on and just looks at me.

  ‘You cannae say things like that tae your support worker, Anais.’

  ‘I just did.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake, just pick a bloody CD,’ he says.

  Angus drives with one hand, slides his roll-up tin out his pocket and lights one. He inhales and gestures for me tae take one as well. Bonus.

  ‘Have you not got an iPod?’

  ‘I am what you would call old-school, young lady. I would have stuck with tape cassettes if they still made them.’

  ‘Prehistoric.’

  ‘So, what exactly are we in court for this morning?’

  I shrug.

  ‘I need more than that, Anais. I didnae get a chance to see the rest of your files, so I couldn’t check what all the charges were. I’m a wee bit unprepared, so help me out here.’

  ‘It’s nothing too big. They caught me with Valium, or something.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘Aye, probably just minor possession.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘I stabbed a lassie at the back of the chippy on Old Town Road.’

  ‘Tell me that’s not what we’re gonnae go tae court for, Anais?’

  His voice is all high, he’s flapping. It’s funny. I dunno why he’s flapping, though. I think he’s wasted.

  ‘Is that why we’re going?’

  ‘It’s nothing major, Old-School! Take a chill pill, there’s nae stabbings, I promise!’ I smile nice and he shakes his head.

  Flick through his CDs.

  ‘Your music taste is pish, Angus.’

  ‘Dinnae be judgemental. You’ve probably never even heard half of them.’

  My stomach rumbles. I should have had something for breakfast.

  ‘You’re different from the other kids, Anais, d’ye know that? And despite what the police, or Helen, seem tae think, I reckon you’ve got a very astute, intelligent head on your shoulders.’

  ‘Fucking hardly! How come you’re doing this job anyway?’

  ‘Well, job satisfaction, and tae meet inspiring people like yourself. Why do you ask?’

  We turn right, but Angus wasnae indicating and a car behind beeps us. He gives the driver a wee wave.

  ‘It doesnae seem like your bag.’

  ‘Maybe I’m not that different from you,’ he says.

  ‘I fucking doubt it.’

  ‘This is a shortcut, dinnae tell Joan.’

  He accelerates the wrong way down a one-way street and gets us through to the other end without anyone noticing. I slap on an Arl
o Guthrie CD and turn it right up. My feet are tapping away on the dash.

  ‘D’ye like music?’

  ‘Only soulless people dinnae like music. I love music, Angus.’

  ‘I used tae play in bands.’

  ‘Aye? I bet they were shite!’

  ‘Total shite!’ He grins.

  The children’s-panel building is grim. They’re always grim. Like police stations. Ugly buildings in concrete, all square, nothing nice about them. The only stations that aren’t like that are really old ones in wee villages. They can be quite nice sometimes. I’m staying outside as long as I can, under the doorway, so the rain doesnae make my hair go frizzy.

  Smoke a roll-up and watch an old man at the lights. The lights change but he just stands there. They change back to red again and he moves forward. A car beeps at him and he staggers back onto the pavement.

  Angus seems quite decent. Normally it’s all No Smoking here, and boundary issues with clients there. He could almost be classed as a human being. Maybe. I mean he’s not Joan and he’s not a Mullet. He sticks his head out the door.

  ‘Move it, we’re late.’

  Great. Door. Corridor. Door. Room. Long table of freaks.

  Angus takes a seat at one side of the room, I take the chair in the middle. There are four panel members facing us; three of them have known me since I was ten. At least it’s just the wee room today, it’s not like a kiddies’ courtroom, just a panel room.

  My jeans are looking old. I’m due clothing money next week. I desperately need new stuff, maybe a Fifties halterneck. I saw some great star-shaped sunglasses in the vintage shop in town. I’ve had the white version, but I lost them. The new ones I saw were black, they were classy.

  ‘Anais Hendricks, today’s hearing is for,’ the Chairwoman runs her pen down a list, ‘threatening a staff member with a metal pole, theft and wilful destruction of school property, illegal possession of prescription drugs, possession of marijuana and, the six-month saga of police vandalism you waged against Lothian and Border police?’

  Angus shifts uncomfortably in his seat. He looks across at me.

  ‘Anais is aware that she was on a real downward spiral over the summer,’ he says.

  ‘Anais is always on a downhill spiral, Mr Everlen.’

  ‘She has been in the past, but I can personally vouch for the fact that she’s working exceptionally hard tae rectify this.’

  ‘Are you telling me, Mr Everlen, that there have been no more charges incurred against Anais, since these ones I have read out?’

  She knows. How would she? She must know PC Craig, or her fiancé – he’s a policeman as well. I bet she knows the fiancé. I’d bet anything.

  ‘Anais is not here today tae answer questions on anything except the charges in hand,’ Angus says firmly.

  Go, Angus! He looks as crooked as me.

  ‘Well, first on the agenda is the gratuitous vandalism against Lothian and Borders police department. This included deliberate destruction of police property and costing the police department thousands of pounds’ worth of damages. Also, there is the second time that you have stolen a school minibus from outside Rowntree High School, but this time you,’ the woman scrolls her pen down the report in front of her, ‘drove it into a wall?’

  ‘I drove it intae the wall both times.’

  ‘Something was different the second time, Miss Hendricks?’

  She raises her eyebrows, stops, like she’s asking a pub-quiz question. The other three panel members look to see what I’m gonnae say.

  ‘The second time it was on fire,’ I respond after a minute.

  ‘Correct.’

  Brilliant. A correct answer. What do I win? The woman’s running her eye up and down the charges again, looking for something. I hate. This chair. Their faces. That shite gold clock on the wall.

  What I don’t get is this: if they’re gonnae lock me up, they should just do it. This pissing around is stupid. She knows I’m accused of it anyway. I keep thinking about that morning, near Love Lane. I was going down by the bus stop, totally fucked, had been out all night and I saw something; it’s been niggling and niggling at me, and you know what, I can see it, I fucking can – it was a squirrel. It was a fucking squirrel, half-run-over in the middle of the road, and the morning commuters were driving down from the roundabout and they’d hit it again, but I walked out into the middle of the road and stuck my hand up to stop them. I was already high as fuck. I mind floating down the road in front of the cars, and none of them could get by me, cos it was that narrow bit of road near the bridge.

  ‘And you have just been placed in the Panopticon, Miss Hendricks, is that right?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  The squirrel wasnae dead. Cars were beeping at me like fuck as I scooped it up, walked over to the green gate and sat down with it in my lap. I cannae believe I couldnae mind that squirrel. I took my cardigan off, and scooped it up off the road. Cradled it like a wee baby. I folded it up right cosy, then I walked up the woods. The cars were still beeping at me as they drove away. I knew I’d remember that day, I knew I’d remember something.

  ‘Yes, Anais moved in a few days ago and is settling in well,’ Angus verifies.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, she has made several friends already, and she has volunteered to take part in the therapeutic arts group.’

  What a liar.

  ‘Miss Hendricks was placed in the Panopticon for the suspected grievous bodily harm of a police officer, is that correct?’

  The squirrel wasnae dead. It must have been about 8 a.m., so the drivers in the cars were all pissed off, beeping, trying to get to the motorway for work. I sat down on the wall and ignored them, and I opened up the cardigan to check that the squirrel was okay.

  ‘Anais’s not been charged for that,’ Angus snaps.

  The woman chairing the panel looks over her notes. ‘Anais has been detained and questioned – is that correct, Mr Everlen?’

  ‘That has no relevance tae our appearance today.’

  ‘Really? You have been detained and questioned for the suspected grievous bodily harm of a police officer who is now in an acute coma, is that right, Anais? I think that is exceptionally relevant. Is that why you are in the Panopticon without permission to return to school – while the police department complete their investigation?’

  Her mind’s made up.

  If I was on death-row – just me and a dead squirrel that couldnae vouch for me – I’d ask for three last things.

  First: to fly.

  Second: to achieve something.

  Third: to look my real mum, or dad, or granda in the eyes, so I’d know the experiment werenae really what made me.

  Imagine knowing that you came from people with hearts and souls? That Chairwoman’s uptight; she doesnae like me, she cannae stand me actually, I bet she’s never loosened up in her life.

  ‘Do you have anything to say about the case, Miss Hendricks?’

  Angus sticks his hand out. ‘This goes completely against all protocol,’ he says.

  ‘Miss Hendricks?’

  ‘No.’ Angus holds his hand up. ‘Anais is not here to answer questions about any other cases today. I’m not having this.’

  The Chairwoman smiles tightly at him. She looks at me. I bet she’s never had a threesome. Me and Jay had a threesome once, we couldnae get right intae it, though; well, I couldnae, he could. I’d thought it would be like the best sex ever, but it wasnae really. It was better after, when I thought about it and made it up in my head.

  The Chairwoman settles a sheaf of papers back down and sighs. I bet if she saw that squirrel she’d have run it right over.

  ‘Miss Hendricks, I have seen you here more times than I can count. In fact, if there was a place available for you in a secure unit today, we would have you put there right now.’

  ‘You cannae use an unproven case to affect this one!’

  ‘I hope you are not questioning my professionalism, Mr Everlen?’

&
nbsp; ‘If you continue to use an unproven case that should not even be mentioned here, then yes, I will – officially, if necessary.’

  ‘You will be tagged tomorrow morning, Anais, at your local police station. And I’m putting you on a curfew pending further review of your charges. Do you have anything to say?’

  Aye. Aye, I do. It’s this: here is what you don’t know – I’d lay down and die for someone I loved; I’d fuck up anyone who abused a kid, or messed with an old person. Sometimes I deal, or I trash things, or I get in fights, but I am honest as fuck and you’ll never understand that. I’ve read books you’ll never look at, danced to music you couldnae appreciate, and I’ve more class, guts and soul in my wee finger than you will ever, ever have in your entire, miserable fucking life. I wonder if I should tell them about the squirrel?

  ‘Do you have anything to say, Anais?’ she asks again.

  Paris.

  Paris it is.

  Paris and its cobbled streets, and a beautiful mother who wears headscarfs and big Jackie O sunglasses and drives barefoot without a seatbelt on. She’s a burlesque star. Or a brain surgeon. She’s let me drink wine since I was seven. I never get drunk. Just mellow. She reads me poetry and we bake fairy cakes.

  ‘We are aware that the Panopticon has a secure wing opening soon?’ she says to Angus.

  Maybe a mansion. Maybe a dad who is in government. Maybe he has a mistress, but probably not, because the headscarf mother is so beautiful he is madly in love with her, like every day.

  The Chairwoman stares. Fuck off, cunt-pus. Your mind is made up, and I’ve got absolutely fuck-all to say. I’ve so much nothing to say that I can feel my throat closing up. It happens like that sometimes. Once when I was four I stopped speaking for six weeks. They said it was a protest but it wasnae.

  ‘It is my belief that you cannot stop yourself, Miss Hendricks. Everything in your record tells me that you will keep offending.’

  Angus sits forward and the Chair holds her hand up and continues.

  ‘And, should you be tried for one single offence more, then we have a court order to have you placed in a secure unit and detained until you are eighteen years old, without review.’

  ‘I thought you said you would tag her first?’ Angus is standing up and his hands are a wee bit shaky. She is really pissing him off.