The Division Bell Trilogy

by Rachel McLean

  Chapter Thirteen

  Yonda Hughes was a tall, well built woman with a stare that almost pierced your skin. Today she was wearing a yellow blouse under an emerald green jacket, topped by a shimmering necklace and earrings that caught the light when she spoke. Her dark skin, almost black at this time of year, seemed to recede against the vibrant clothes.

  Mark had known the occasional doctor like her, in his last job. Once they rose through the ranks and achieved the status of Consultant, they felt they could let their inhibitions go out of the window and wear what they wanted. The brighter the better, in fact, as it made them stand out among the dreary junior doctors they almost always had in tow.

  Here, Yonda’s outfits made him think about the changes this building had gone through, the paintings that would once have adorned the walls and the plush carpets that would have softened their footsteps. In the governor’s office there was just one concession to the past; a single framed painting on the wall behind her desk. It looked like an Impressionist, but Mark was no expert and had never got close enough to look at the signature.

  Yonda was perched on her desk, files stacked next to her and another in her hand: Rita’s.

  Mark had worked with women like Rita before. He felt sorry for her. She mistakenly believed that she still had some rights, that the law didn’t allow him to do what he wanted with her. He could only hope she would reconsider soon, and make things easier on herself.

  Judging by Yonda’s attitude in this patient review meeting, that wasn’t looking likely.

  “I’m bored with women like this,” she said. “Why can’t they just cooperate, make things easier for all of us? I’ve got targets to meet.”

  Mark shrugged. She knew the answer and he wasn’t about to waste his time by going over it.

  She slapped Rita’s file on top of the pile and sighed.

  “Let’s show her how things work.”

  Mark raised an eyebrow.

  Yonda turned to his colleague, sitting next to him opposite their boss’s desk. “Meena, what was your take on her when she got here?”

  Meena blushed. This was only her second month in the job and she was struggling to get used to Mark as a colleague rather than as her counsellor. He was proud of Meena; she’d been a success story. Even Yonda had given him a pat on the back when she’d graduated, the first to do so. Senior management had been cock-a-hoop.

  “She didn’t want to recite the oath,” Meena said. “At first she said she would, then she refused. Then in her second meeting, she kept asking when she would see a lawyer.”

  Yonda slipped down from the desk, her flesh jiggling as she did so. She walked between Mark and Meena and started pacing the floor behind them. Mark shifted in his chair, craning his neck.

  “But I do think there’s hope for her,” Meena continued, stumbling over the words. “I’m sure you remember what I was like at first.”

  Yonda smiled. “Oh God Meena, that we do. Right pain, you were.”

  Meena allowed herself a nervous smile. “I think she’ll see sense. Once she understands that she can’t see a lawyer, that there won’t be a trial. She’s bright. I’ve looked at her file.”

  “Hmm.” Yonda turned to Mark. “What was she like in group? Make any headway? If anyone can get them to play along, it’s you.”

  He ignored the compliment. “Nope. Nothing.”

  Yonda shook her head. “Right, then.” She walked back to her desk and hauled herself onto it again, pushing a file off with her bottom. “Let’s fast-track her.”

  Meena gasped.

  Mark nodded. “That’s what I told her would happen if she refused to cooperate.”

  “Hmm. You should have waited to speak to me first. But yes, that’s what we need to do.”

  Next to him, Meena was trembling. She’d seen the fast-tracking system before, but from the point of view of a patient. He tried to remember which ones she’d been there for. Then he remembered: Ashira Ghazi. No wonder she was trembling.

  He reached out and brushed her arm with his fingers. She flinched and turned to him, tucking her hair into that hijab. Her eyes were hard.

  “Sorry,” he whispered. “It’ll be fine. Rita won’t pass, but it won’t be like Ashira.”

  She gave a tight nod. Was there a tear at the corner of her eye? Meena Ashgar, not as tough as he’d thought. Well, that might help her in this job.

  Yonda stood up. “Oh, Meena. It’ll be fine. I promise you. She’s not like you. You got it, quickly. After the first week, you were the perfect patient.”

  Meena’s face had hardened and her blush had gone. She wasn’t meeting Yonda’s eye. She blinked a few times then nodded.

  Yonda cocked her head. “Good. Get it sorted, you two. I’m due in a conference call in five minutes, so I need you out.”

  They stood up. Yonda cleared her throat.

  “Mark, could you stay behind for a moment, please?” Her voice was casual. He glanced at Meena, who blushed and headed for the door. He took his seat again.

  Yonda piled all the files in the centre of her desk then took the chair Meena had vacated. He could smell her perfume, rich and heady. Her dark brown eyes, flecked with yellow, bored into his face.

  “I need you to help me with something. One of the patients.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  She glanced at the files and then crossed one leg over the other. Her tights made a shuffling noise against each other and the chair creaked. Mark tried not to pull back.

  “Jennifer Sinclair.”

  “Yes.” This wasn’t a surprise; the governor was bound to be interested in a disgraced former MP. He wondered if her file was the thick one, in the centre of the pile.

  “What’s she like?”

  He scratched his chin. “Well, she seems to be doing OK. I’ve got her to step two in less than a week. I think maybe we could fast-track her. I think she’ll pass.”

  Yonda looked alarmed. “Oh no.”

  “Sorry?”

  “You mustn’t do that.”

  “Why not? Surely the sooner we can get her cured and out of here, the better?”

  Yonda brought a pink fingernail up to her lips and tapped them. “Not for this one, no.”

  This made no sense. The purpose of this centre was to help women through the programme and rehabilitate them. Passing them and sending them back out was good for everyone; the women, the staff, the general public. Not to mention the company that ran the place. Surely a reformed MP would be their biggest and best advert yet.

  “But if we manage to cure a former MP—”

  “Let me stop you there. You don’t think we can ever tell anyone she was here, do you?”

  He frowned. “Well, I hadn’t really thought about—”

  Yonda shook her head. “As far as the outside world is concerned, she’s in prison. Bronzefield.” She chuckled. “The irony.”

  She pulled her finger from her lips and reached out towards Mark, then thought better of touching him. “She can’t be allowed to pass.”

  “Why not?”

  “Come on Mark. I can’t answer that question. But I’ve been given instructions, and I’m passing them to you. Slow her down. Make it difficult. Put any obstacle you can think of in her way.”

  He sighed. Suddenly he had a mental image of Jennifer’s face online, captured in the Houses of Parliament as she was being arrested. She was wide-eyed, her face pale in the light of the camera. She looked older now, in the flesh, more frail.

  “What would happen, if she left here? Surely she’d just go back to prison?”

  Yonda waved a hand. “That’s what I thought. But it seems they don’t want her out of here. Not in prison, and not back in the spotlight. And certainly not released.”

  “OK.” He didn’t feel comfortable about this. The clinical aspect of the job was what got him out of bed in the mornings; as a psychiatrist, he knew he could help these women, rehabilitate them. He didn’t like being told how to do his job.

  But there wa
s no point in arguing.

  “Has anyone been asking after her?”

  Yonda narrowed her eyes. “Why d’you want to know that?”

  He felt himself blushing. “Sorry. Just curious, that’s all.”

  “Well if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stop asking. As far as the powers that be are concerned, Jennifer Sinclair has left the spotlight. And they want it to stay that way.” She wrinkled her nose. “I didn’t tell you any of this, right?”

  “Right.” A pause. “Any specifics? For keeping her back?”

  “No. I’ll leave that to your expertise.”

  “OK.” He checked his watch; more than five minutes had passed and there was no phone call. “Do you need me to leave now?”

  Yonda stood up and smoothed her skirt over her thighs. It had deep creases running across it with repeated sitting. She tossed the files into a cabinet and moved round her desk. Her chair was large and ornate, dating from the original house. It contrasted with the one he sat in, also old, but in a way that made him imagine it might collapse at any moment. She leaned back, smiling.

  “Please. Thanks, Mark. I know I can rely on you.”

  He nodded and turned for the door. Behind him, Yonda had started humming something to herself.

  “Hang on a minute.”

  He turned round. “Yes?”

  “Just one thing. Keep her away from that Rita woman. I don’t like the thought of the two of them influencing each other.”

  He shrugged. Jennifer and Rita had shown no sign of becoming friendly. “No problem.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Rita sat alone at breakfast. The other women from her group were at a table in the opposite corner, quietly talking between themselves. Except Paula; she was sitting at another table with another woman, short and dark with a high pitched laugh.

  She’d slipped past them without making eye contact and found this small, solitary table near the exit. She watched them as she ate her soggy toast. Sally, the one who’d looked at her like she was a piece of gum stuck to her shoe, was gazing across at Paula and her friend as if she wished she were with them instead. She hardly spoke, only seeming to answer questions with monosyllabic grunts.

  Bel, of course, wasn’t taking part in the conversation. She stared at the other women, her eyes round, and shovelled spoonfuls of cereal into her mouth without looking down. More than once she spilled food down herself, but seemed not to notice. Instead, Maryam would lean over and sponge the food off with a paper tissue. It only made things worse, the paper mixing with milk to form a scratchy white stain on Bel’s blue shirt.

  Jennifer and Maryam were the only ones making anything resembling conversation. They muttered to each other, Jennifer’s eyes flicking around the room as Maryam spoke then falling back on her companion’s face. Maryam was still playing with her hair, tucking it into her collar between bites of toast. Jennifer was ignoring it in a way that looked deliberate.

  Rita was torn between watching these women, trying to get the measure of them, and ignoring them, focused instead on her own release. She still hadn’t been told what rights she had, and was beginning to wonder that maybe she had none. Ash hadn’t prepared her for this.

  She was watching Jennifer leaning in towards Maryam, asking her a question, when suddenly Jennifer’s eyes rose to meet her own. Rita stiffened, feeling as if she’d been caught out. Then she mentally berated herself and arranged her face into a look of nonchalance. Jennifer responded with a smile.

  Rita looked down at the table, uncomfortable. Could she leave without finishing her breakfast, or would she be punished? She decided to wolf the food down as quickly as she could. She was hungry.

  She caught movement from the corner of her eye and looked up, expecting to see Jennifer standing over her. Politicians, she thought. Always such busybodies. The local MP had visited her school once, throwing the headteacher into a tizzy of panic, tidying classrooms herself and snapping at the staff to neaten themselves up for the day. She wondered if those people ever got to see the world as it really was.

  But it wasn’t Jennifer. Instead, two orderlies stood in front of her. She sighed. Was it time for her one-to-one, already? This new counsellor, the man, was hard faced and would surely lose patience with her non-cooperation soon. She had to hold out until she could find a way out of here.

  One of the orderlies gestured at her tray. “Eat up. Then you have to go to your room.”

  She looked at the half eaten toast and cooling mug of tea; she wasn’t all that interested in finishing them. “Why?”

  The orderly looked at his colleague, then back at her. “To prepare.”

  She leaned back and folded her arms across her chest. Her heart was pounding. “Prepare for what?” Was she going to be released? Did she have a visitor, maybe?

  “OK,” she blurted, and stood up.

  “Get rid of that,” the orderly said, looking at the tray. She picked it up and took it to the waste counter, where she piled her plate on top of others and threw the remains of her breakfast away.

  “Good. Come with us.”

  She glared at the orderlies. Why did they need two of them, just to take her up to her room? And what sort of preparations would she be expected to make, once she got there?

  “I’m capable of walking up there by myself.”

  “We know that. But we’ve been told to take you.”

  She shrugged, feeling a shiver run down her back. She glanced across the dining room to see that Jennifer and the other women had gone. The room was emptying fast, women muttering among themselves. They were heading along the corridor towards the back of the house, where she’d been taken for that group session two days ago. Why weren’t they being taken to their rooms?

  She looked at the orderlies again then headed towards the stairway to her room on the second floor. It was tiny, no more than a box room, with a slim single bed that still took up so much room that she had to squeeze round the door to get in. When she sat up in bed, her head would hit the sloping ceiling. It smelt of damp, and the droppings of some unidentified rodent. But at least when she was in there she was free to roam her own mind, to convince herself that she wasn’t going mad. She’d found a piece of charcoal under her bed and used it to mark off the days on the wall behind her headboard, where no-one would see. Five so far.

  When they arrived at her room the orderlies waited outside while she squeezed herself in. She looked round the half-open door at them, wondering what would happen next.

  “Wait there,” said one of them. She realised his colleague had stayed silent the whole time. She looked at their name badges: Tim and Roy. Roy she’d met before; Tim was new.

  She sat on the bed, looking around the room and wondering how long she would have to wait, and what she was expected to do. She didn’t have any personal belongings to gather together, in anticipation of release; her clothes had been taken off her when she arrived and shoved into a clear plastic bag, filed away somewhere. Would she get them back, or would she have to leave here in the jeans and t-shirt she was wearing now? It was chilly, a spring mist like a thin veil outside the windows.

  She looked out of the tiny roof window above her bed, the only source of light. All she could see was the blank sky above. A plane passed overhead, its trail thin and distant in the white sky. Five days. Already the normality of aeroplanes, trains, buses and cars seemed so distant. She wondered who was covering her class. It had been a Wednesday when they arrested her, but today was a – she had to stop and think – Monday, and the children would have been without her for three days. Would she slip back into her old job as if nothing had happened, or would she be denied that? Even Saskia would be a welcome relief, after this. Even Darius Williams. She allowed herself a smile at the thought of the boy’s misdemeanours, so irrelevant now.

  She pulled the headboard back to check the tally on the wall. Hopefully she wouldn’t be adding a sixth mark. But the wall was bare. She frowned and pulled the bed back further, leaning over to
get a better look. Was she imagining it? Had she marked the wall further down than she remembered? But even when she scraped the bed all the way back from the wall – quietly, so as not to be heard – there was nothing.

  She shoved the bed back in and lay face down on it, her mind blank. She was sure she’d made those marks, could picture them in her mind. The charcoal she’d reached for under the bed, after searching every inch of this space on her first night. Her sudden resolution to mark the time here, to leave some sort of record. It was gone.

  There was a noise in the corridor outside. She sat up and wiped her eyes, sniffing. She had to keep it together.

  A quiet knock came at the door. She almost laughed at the incongruity.

  “Come in.”

  The door was pushed open and a head appeared around it. Male, with pale skin and dark, wavy hair. Her counsellor. She felt her heart sink.

  He smiled at her. “Hello, Rita.”

  “Hello.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  She shrugged. “OK.” Why was she behaving like one of her pupils? This place seemed to turn her into a petulant little girl. She sat up and squared her shoulders.

  “I’m fine, thank you. I’ve been told to prepare for something. Where are you taking me?”

  His eyes crinkled; there were deep crows’ feet either side of them. “Back to the room we were in yesterday, for the group session.”

  “Oh.” She hadn’t been expecting this. “I thought maybe I had a—”

  “Sorry. Can I come in?”

  She shrugged again. Why was he being nice, all of a sudden?

  He shifted into the room and sat down next to her on the bed, far enough that they weren’t touching. He examined his fingernails, which were short and bitten.

  “You understand that it’s my job to help you get through the programme?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, we haven’t been making much progress so far, have we?”

  He turned to her. She refused to meet his eye, shaking her head instead. “You know what I want. I want to see a lawyer. I’m entitled to a proper trial.”