Shattered (6 page)

Madison opens a door to show me my en suite. ‘You may be on your own in the tower, but at least you don’t have to share your bathroom. Don’t miss rule nine: no more than five minutes per shower. If you go over she turns the hot water off for the whole house for a day. Somehow, she
always
knows. She does randoms, too: walks the halls in the middle of the night at odd times, to make sure you don’t breach rules six or eleven.’

‘Thanks.’ I smile, look at her.
Please leave
. I need to be alone a while.

She must see it on my face. ‘You want me to go, right.’

‘Ah…’

‘No worries. See you at tea downstairs at four.
Don’t
be late: rule number two.’

Alone at last, I circle the room: a double bed, an empty wardrobe, a desk and a chair. More wardrobes across the room – locked. And a lot of empty space: it’s a big room. Did this use to be Lucy’s room – my room – is that why Stella keeps it empty? I shrug. No idea. Nothing in it feels familiar.

I pull the curtains open wide. There are windows all around: lake one side, woods the other. Gorgeous views, and I close my eyes, try to imagine this room and me in it, younger, looking out the window with my dad, but can’t.

There is an odd noise at the door: scratching? A grey paw reaches underneath. I open it.

A grey cat looks up at me, then pushes past through the open door. Takes a running leap at the bed and sits there daintily, washing one paw, her green eyes on me all the while.

Lucy’s grey kitten, her tenth birthday present – one of the very few memories I’ve had of being her since I was Slated. Is it…this cat?

I walk over to the bed, sit on the other end cross-legged. ‘Is it you?’ I whisper. She stalks across the bed, walks all around me in a circle as if checking me out thoroughly. I hold out one hand, and she rubs her chin against it. Soon I’ve coaxed her onto my lap; I stroke her and she curls up, purring.

The list of rules is next to me where Madison left it, and I pick it up, look at the first page.
Rule one: Be nice to Pounce (the cat).

‘Pounce?’ I say, and she stirs, looks at me with slit-eyes, then pulls her paws tight around her head as if to say,
be quiet: can’t you see I’m sleeping
? Pounce sounds to me the sort of name a ten-year-old would give a kitten.

Well. Stella might be a little weird, but given what she puts as rule number one, maybe she and I will get along all right, after all.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I make it to tea at exactly one minute to four, stomach rumbling. Madison and the girl I saw her with earlier are there, and two others; there is no sign of Stella, and I’m told the others are at work in various places around Keswick. There is a teapot, and a plate of warm scones with jam we all swoop on with delight. They usually just get dry biscuits at tea, Madison tells me, and I wonder: is this a special treat for me?

After they give me a quick tour of the place. There is a TV room with sofas and fireplaces, a library, and a dining room with one long table already set for dinner.

I wander back to my room to unpack. When we assemble for dinner at seven, Madison pulls me into a seat next to hers. Soon all but two seats are taken. There is a sea of friendly, curious eyes, and names are called out, too many to remember at once. And it all seems…nice. Cosy. Not a place to try to get away from.

Stella walks in as a clock chimes seven, and chatter quiets down. She takes the empty chair at the end of the table. She looks at the other empty seat, and frowns. ‘Does anyone know where Ellie is?’ There is a murmur of
no
, shaken heads.

‘Maybe she’s not hungry. Maybe she’s not well. Maybe she found something better to do,’ Madison says, and the room falls silent.

Stella frowns. ‘Then she should have sent word. Could someone check her room, please?’

Another girl volunteers, and returns moments later. ‘She’s in her room. She fell asleep,’ she says, and I wonder: why doesn’t Ellie come along now?

The tension on Stella’s face relaxes, and gradually everyone else does also. Serving dishes are passed around. I’m relieved I’m too many seats away to have to try to chat with Stella in front of everyone, but now and then can’t stop my eyes glancing over, finding hers, then spinning away again. This is so
surreal
: in a room having dinner with my actual real mother for the first time in seven years, yet we sit apart, not speaking. There is a part of me that wants to jump up and say, enough already! And another part happy to keep up the appearance of strangers, to hang back, to observe.

When we’re done, everyone starts leaving except two on dish duty, stacking plates. The others are wandering out in twos and threes; some head to the TV room, some in other directions, and I stand, uncertain. Did Stella mean for us to talk now? But Madison links my arm in hers and draws me along with her; a few others follow, down a hall and up a few stairs to knock on a door. ‘Come in,’ a voice calls from inside.

‘Did you bring me anything?’ a girl asks, and is introduced as the sleepy Ellie. ‘I’m starving!’

Madison and the others produce rolls and other bits pilfered from dinner.

‘I don’t understand – why didn’t you just come and eat with the rest of us?’ I ask. ‘What was the point in sending someone to check on you, then leave you here?’

Madison rolls her eyes. ‘You can’t have dinner if you are late. Against Weirdo Rule number three.’

‘Don’t be so unkind. She’s all right,’ Ellie says, and I’m relieved to hear someone stick up for her. But it doesn’t seem to be the popular opinion.

‘It’s ridiculous making us account for every second of the day. We’re not babies,’ another girl says.

‘You know why, though,’ Ellie answers, and I get the sense that this is a conversation everyone has heard before.

Madison scowls. ‘Yeah, but how many years ago was that? Shouldn’t she be over it by now?’

‘Over what?’ I ask. An uncomfortable feeling says I already know, but I shouldn’t. Do I ask because it would be normal to ask, or do I need to hear it? Hear somebody else say things I know to be true, but can’t remember.

‘You don’t get over things like that,’ Ellie says to Madison, shaking her head, then turns to me. ‘Her daughter went missing. No one knows what happened to her. I think Stella is afraid of something happening to one of us; she is just looking out for us all.’

Late that night there is a faint knock on my door, and it opens. I sit up, heart pounding.

Hall light frames round her: Stella.

She looks different, hair down, a long flannel robe wrapped tight around her; more soft and uncertain. Pounce pushes past her, runs across the room and jumps up on my bed.

Stella pulls the chair next to the bed and sits in it. She grips my hand so tight it starts to hurt.

‘Lucy? Is it really you?’ she whispers. She reaches out her other hand, shaking, to my hair. ‘What has happened to your beautiful hair?’

‘It’s changed, permanently: IMET.’

‘We could dye it, I suppose.’

‘No. I’m trying to not be recognised.’

‘Oh. Of course.’ She sighs. ‘I can always stop dyeing mine.’

‘Why? Do we need to match?’

She starts, pulls her hand away. ‘Not exactly. It’s just that I didn’t know you when you came in. I didn’t know my own daughter. You didn’t know me either, did you?’

I hesitate, shake my head. She looks hurt. ‘I’m sorry. You know I was Slated, don’t you?’

She nods. ‘She told me.’

‘Who?’

She looks away. ‘I don’t know. Whoever it was who told me you were finally coming home.’

Someone in MIA?

‘Tell me your story, Lucy. Tell me everything you can about where you’ve been these seven years.’

I hold still a moment. I came here because I wanted to find out about my missing past, my years here: of course she wants the same in return, to know about the parts of my life she has missed since then. A fair exchange? But much of what has been my life these last years I don’t want to say out loud. Some demons are best kept locked up, hidden away.

‘Lucy?’

‘Could you not call me Lucy? It’s just that it is dangerous. No one can know who I really am.’

‘No one can hear us now.’

‘But you might slip up when other people are around.’

She half smiles. ‘I’ll try, Lu—’ She jumps, guiltily. ‘—Riley,’ she says. ‘What should you call me?’ Her eyes hunger, and I know what she wants to hear, but I can’t bring myself to do it.

‘I should call you what all the girls do, for the same reason: Stella.’

She frowns, and sighs. ‘Oh, all right. Tell me about your life,
Riley
.’

And I stare back at her.
Should
I tell her everything, no matter whether I want to or not? Is it dangerous to know? ‘I don’t know everything. A lot of my memories are gone.’

‘What you do know, then.’

‘I think I was kidnapped when I was ten. I didn’t understand why for a long time.’

Her lip curls. ‘The AGT.’

My eyes widen. She knows, or guesses? ‘Yes, it was them. They had some sort of plan, to fracture my personality. So that when I was Slated some memories would survive.’

Stella’s face wars between sadness and horror. ‘You must have been so scared.’

So little memory of that time remains, but what does isn’t good: late at night hearing a doctor’s voice saying over and over again,
you have no family; they didn’t want you; they gave you to us
. My eyes start to sting, and I blink. ‘Are you sure you want to know?’ I ask. ‘Everything? It isn’t easy to talk about. It might be harder to hear.’

Stella hesitates. ‘Yes. Tell me,’ she says, and slips an arm across my shoulders, hesitant, and some of the resistance inside melts enough for me to lean into her a moment, and tell her the blackest early memory from
then
.

I hold my left hand up. ‘They made me – as Lucy – be right-handed. Broke my left fingers so I had no choice.’ She cradles my hand in hers, staying silent. Nods once to say
go on
, but doesn’t press. But I can’t bring myself to tell her the thing that happened that finally cemented the personality split: that Dad snatched me back from the AGT, that we nearly got away. But Nico caught us. The gun in Nico’s hand. Does she know how Dad – her husband – died?

I straighten up. ‘Later on, they succeeded: I had a split personality. When I was left-handed, I trained with the AGT as one of them; now and then I was right-handed, and I was Lucy. When the Lorders caught and Slated me, the other part of me hid away and Lucy was dominant, so I was Slated as right-handed, and it was Lucy’s memories that were Slated. The later memories I had with the AGT survived. Lucy’s early life is gone.’

‘Why would they do such a thing?’

‘As far as I understand it was all part of a scheme, to show the Lorders that Slating could fail: that any Slated criminal could be violent, even though that was supposed to be impossible. That none were safe.’ I don’t spell out what the consequences of Nico’s plans would have been: with no way to tell which Slated might turn, what would the Lorders do to all the Slateds? I shudder inside.

‘But if you were Slated, why haven’t you got a Levo?’

This is venturing into no-go territory: it would be dangerous for her to know how I was caught between the violent plans of Nico’s AGT and Lorder blackmail. How they tracked me to the AGT, and I thought Agent Coulson was going to kill me, but Katran – terrorist, yes, but an old friend who really
cared
about me – raced to my rescue, and Coulson shot Katran point blank in front of me. How holding Katran as he died made me finally remember my dad’s death. Because of Dr Lysander, the Lorders thought I’d done as they wanted; they let me go, removed my Levo.

‘Lucy? Sorry, Riley, I mean. What happened to your Levo?’ Stella prompts, and I wonder how long I’ve been staring into space.

‘It was cut off,’ I say. A small lie. The Lorder method of removal was gentle: a few buttons pushed on a machine, and it painlessly sprang away.

‘I didn’t think that was possible,’ she says.

‘It is,’ I say, and this I say with truth. I cut Ben’s Levo off with a grinder, didn’t I? He survived. Barely, but he did: then the Lorders took him away.

‘There is something I don’t understand. If you were Slated as right-handed, how can your years here be gone? You were left-handed until you were ten. You
must
remember!’ She says the words like if she wants it enough, it will be so.

‘I don’t understand all the neurology of it. It’s like what hand was dominant was plastic; it could be bent and changed. I think doing that was part of how my personality was fractured.’

‘So young.’ She shakes her head. ‘But some memories stayed with you after you were Slated?’

‘Not exactly. To begin with, I was just like any other Slated. I had this new family, and—’

‘Were they nice?’

‘Mostly. Mum and my sister were, though Mum was difficult to work out at first.’

She holds still. ‘You called this other woman
Mum
.’

‘I was Slated. They told us to do that.’

‘Sorry. It doesn’t matter. And then?’

‘I started to get memories back.’ I hold back how. She doesn’t need to know that I was attacked, that fear and rage crashed through the boundaries and made Rain emerge: the half of me that was pure AGT, pure terrorist, under Nico’s spell, and ready to do whatever he asked.

‘So what do you remember?’

I shake my head. ‘I’m sorry. The memories I have are from after I left here. With the AGT. Before then is the half that was Slated.’

She looks back, eyes desperate and pleading. ‘But do you remember anything about me? Do you remember anything from here, before, at all?’

Something, I don’t know what, makes me say
no
. Even though there are some little snippets that
have
come back: this cat, now curled up between us. Playing chess with Dad, and the rook. Is it because, as she said, I was left-handed when I was little? If that is true, then more may come back. Or is it because these are things that Rain knew? The worst memory of all – Dad’s death – was suppressed, buried so deep it didn’t come back until Katran died.