The Panopticon (24 page)

‘Always.’ She lifts a pad.

‘Will you be warm enough?’ I ask.

‘See you, Anais.’ Tash says like I’ve totally lost it.

They walk away.

Everyone else is in the telly area or out. I want to make popcorn and snuggle up and watch a film, but Shortie’s out as well. I don’t feel like sitting in the lounge on my own tonight, not with the experiment – up in the watchtower, tapping on the glass. Trudge upstairs, put on my Chinese slippers and a hoody, and head for the roof.

It’s so quiet up here. Malcolm’s wings haven’t moved for ages. He’s given up. I’m giving up. I wish he’d fly over and take me to Paris. Imagine arriving in Paris by flying cat. That would be class!

Dinnae think. Not about penises. Not about Pat. Think about super-powers; of all the super-powers, flight’s the best one. Invisibility is okay, but it wouldnae
really
be all that – like you could eavesdrop, and watch people, and steal things I suppose, but you can do most of that anyway. Fuck telepathy. I get that on acid – it isnae fucking cool. Shapeshifting is a bit 1960s. Flying’s the one: like in my flying dreams. I’ve not had one of those for yonks.

The fields go out for miles all around the Panopticon. The branches on the trees are bare, but there’s still leaves on the ground. Somewhere a cow moos and birds flap up from the woods. It’s like that documentary I watched yesterday after getting wasted with John. We both watched it in the dark, and shared a family-sized bag of crisps.

The documentary was about all these dead bodies in the rooftop of the forests, encased in bamboo cages. In the documentary, people looked up, and right above them in the treetops were all these bamboo cages and each of them had a body inside it – decaying in the breeze.

‘What the fuck is that?’ John had asked.

‘Dead bodies. Up in trees,’ I said.

I handed him the crisps.

‘I’m gonnae have a whitey,’ he said and fucked off up to the toilet to be sick.

I watched the rest on my own. They put the bodies up in the treetops because of the high oxygen content. All that air speeds up the rotting process, then the corpses decompose quickly to feed the soil, return to the earth and make it rich and fertile. I liked it – I watched the whole thing, even the credits.

Pull my hoody up. Brian’s walking back across the fields. Wonder where he’s been. I lie back and watch the sky. My heart aches. It’s every day now this ache, this need to get the fuck away. My tag’s bugging me. I went by Fat Mike’s, but he was at the dogs. I’ll go again. I wonder if the experiment have a little gadge typing it all up – everything that happens to me. Maybe they’re faxing back reports, every sixty seconds.

Anais Hendricks’s eyes looked to the left – 11.06 a.m.

Anais Hendricks inhaled – 11.07 a.m.

Anais Hendricks took a long shit – 11.13 a.m.

Anais Hendricks is bored – 11.17 a.m.

What if there was no experiment? What if my life was so worthless that it was of absolutely no importance to anyone?

‘Alright, ya radge!’ Shortie sticks her head out the window and climbs out.

‘Hiya.’

I’m happy. Happy to see her. Happy not to be sitting here like a Norma-no-mates all night.

‘Did you go and see that monk-guy for your identity crisis yet?’ she asks me.

‘Not yet.’

‘How’d they ken you’re having an identity crisis anyway?’ she asks.

‘Dunno. It started when I was like eight. I told Teresa eventually.’

‘What, that you were having an identity crisis?’

‘Aye. Like a nervous breakdown, but not.’

Shortie leans back on the turret. She begins to skin up, and the wind keeps blowing her baccy away. I cup my hands around it so it’s protected.

‘How did you know that’s what it was?’

‘I don’t know. I looked in the mirror and there was this wee lassie who didnae smile, and when I met her eyes I felt embarrassed and awkward – like I’d just intruded on a stranger.’

‘That’s normal,’ Shortie says.

‘I used tae bite myself.’

‘You should have bit other people.’

‘I did.’

‘So what did you say tae Teresa?’ she asks.

‘I told her I didnae know who I was, that I thought I was insane.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She said: You’re eight, you’re not fucking meant tae know who you are. That’s how I started surfing in the lift shafts.’

‘You should have tried knitting, for stress relief.’

‘It cannae be much of a buzz – knitting.’

‘Probably not, ay,’ she giggles.

‘Fucking knitting! I’ll knit you the now. No, Shortie, the lifts were a buzz! I’d leap when they drew level – then you
fly up on the other one, all the way. One time the lift got stuck and I couldnae get the hatch open. I was stuck for fucking ages. I lay down and did big fake snores – pretending tae be a dragon. I was only wee really, ay.’

‘I bet it was a class buzz, Anais.’

‘It was, until someone grassed me and the school found out and called out a social worker. She arrived in a green Fiat Punto, I remember that, and I brushed my bowl-cut for half an hour before she got tae our flat!’

‘You … had a bowl-cut?’

‘Aye. She came tae explain about identity problems, tae me, and tae Teresa.’

‘What was her explanation, like?’

‘That was the funny bit, she had a flowchart, on like a stand, and a marker pen – and she explained what psychotic schizophrenia was.’

‘What?’

‘Aye. She reckoned my biological mum was some schizo they found naked outside a supermarket, so she draws this cat on the flowchart, then another bigger cat – with a bib on.’

‘D’ye want a blow-back?’

‘Aye.’

Shortie leans in and blows the hot smoke into my throat and it burns like fuck.

‘Aye, so she divides the flowchart page in half with a green line, then she points at the big crap cat she’s drawn and says it’s a lion,’ I say.

‘A fucking lion?’

‘Aye, and I was like: It doesnae look like a lion, it looks like a crap cat!’

‘What was your mum doing?’

‘Chain-smoking – she’d had tae cancel all her afternoon clients, so she was fucking raging. The social worker was all like: This is what a schizophrenic sees; like you see the small cat, and everyone else sees the small cat, but a schizophrenic looks – and they see a lion.’

‘Trippy shit.’

‘I asked her if I’d get tae be a schizophrenic when I grew up.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She said, maybe. Then Teresa went mental, kicked her out. I sat rocking in front of the telly and she belted me across the pus, said if I wanted everyone tae think I was fucking mad – I should just keep rocking.’

‘Fuck, that’s harsh.’

‘I know. I just thought it sounded cool – seeing stuff others people couldnae see, like something out a book. I mean, I also wanted tae be a fucking dinosaur. They didnae seem so worried about that.’

Shortie looks freaked out. We sit, quietly watching the light change over the fields. I wish I’d never said a thing.

24

‘WHAT’S WRONG, ISLA?’
I ask her.

‘Tash didnae come back.’

‘What?’

‘She got intae a punter’s car last night, and she didnae come back.’

I feel sick right away. Step into the office where Isla’s sitting, and Angus is on the phone to the police station already.

‘It was a blue Escort, I’ve got the registration.’ She points at her pad.

‘Isla, have you been out all night?’ Angus asks.

He holds his hand over the phone; she nods tae say aye, she has. She’s pale and shaky.

‘What happened?’

‘I waited where she left me, near the docks – I took down the number, and I waited, then I rang her phone and it just kept ringing.’

She’s crying again.

‘How long did you wait?’

‘All night. Till seven this morning – then I got the bus,’ she whispers.

Her hands are freezing cold and I get that knot in my gut. Tash wouldnae leave Isla there all night – not a fucking chance. We stare at each other, and I can hear a car door click shut. Click, click, click. It feels like someone is pouring lead through my veins.

‘The other lassies on the dock were going mental at me because I wouldnae move. They were shouting that I shouldnae be there if I didnae want business.’

Angus clicks the phone down.

‘Okay, the police have traced the registration – it’s a missing car. It was stolen last week in Rochester. We need to go down and make a statement, Isla. Anais, you have tae go; Helen’s waiting for you.’

Isla grips my hand.

‘I’m going with her, Angus. She needs me with her.’

‘No, sorry, Anais – you going tae the police station is not a good idea. Isla, you are stuck with me until we get back.’

Bad. Bad feeling. Bad in the gut. Bad in the air, and just like that – wee faces flit across the walls, exactly the same as the concrete ones, but these ones are in plasterboard. It’s like someone has half-flicked a light switch, so you can see that the spirit world is actually always there, watching us live our lives.

‘Anais, you have tae go now. Helen’s waiting in the car.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ Isla says, blowing her nose.

‘You’re sure?’

‘Aye, go.’

I dinnae like this. Bad, horrible feeling, knowing that Tash is somewhere out there right now when she’ll want to be
here. Cold skin. What if she’s got cold skin? What if she’s staring at the sky and the clouds are in her eyes?

I watch Angus lead Isla outside.

Helen’s car reeks of nail polish and aromatherapy oils – bergamot, to be precise. She’s got a wee bottle of it sitting on the dashboard. I can taste spring-onion crisps. They’re all I wanted for breakfast. I hope I umnay pregnant to a pig farmer. I wish I hadnae eaten – I want to be sick every time I think of Tash stepping into a blue Escort. Door shuts. Guy presses lock on all the doors – click, click, click. She turns around, looks him in the face.

Dinnae think. Not about cars. Not about Tash’s earrings, or her hair, or her laugh, or how you want desperately – to see her again.

It’s dull out, and there’s frost everywhere. We drive in silence, out in the country, down the motorway, until we are at the big crossroads in town. People are standing at the traffic lights looking just like people, living normal lives.

Click, click, click.

They’ll find her. They will. Do not think about it. Don’t, or you’ll start to panic.

It’s weird driving through the city after being surrounded by farmland for weeks on end. I cannae believe I’ve been in the Panopticon for over two months now. It almost feels like home, cos of, like, Shortie, and Isla, even Angus, and the roof. It’s a long time since I’ve wanted to stay anywhere. Helen is breathing, just in, and out. Her nostrils flare. Her fingers are long and bony.

‘So you’re leaving – tae, retire?’ I say.

‘I’m taking a gap year.’

‘But, you’re what: fifty?’

‘I am thirty-seven, Anais.’

‘Same difference.’

Helen grits her teeth.

‘Wouldn’t you like to take a gap year, Anais? Go and help people less fortunate than yourself, or work in a sanctuary to save elephants?’

‘No, I fucking wouldnae.’

‘Some day you won’t feel so smart about things. One day you’ll realise it’s up to you, and you alone, to make something of your life.’

‘Fuck off, Helen.’

‘Be rude if you want, it’s not my problem any more. So, today, I want to go through this with you. Focus. Anais, are you stoned?’ she asks.

‘Just a wee bit.’

‘Right. You were born in Warrender Institute, as you already know, and I have finally managed tae find your adoption certificate – well, a copy of it. It was taken in with the rest of Teresa’s documents when they were investigating her murder.’

I flinch at the word. And now all I can see is Teresa’s kimono on the floor in our bathroom. I could slap Helen sideways.

‘Mr Jamieson is really looking forward to meeting you. He was there when you were born, and he remembers it well.’

‘What? He saw me, and my biological mother?’

‘That’s what he said, yes. He’s actually been at Warrender longer than any other resident.’

‘That’s promising, the longest crazy they’ve got!’

‘Don’t say crazy, it’s not a positive term.’

‘What would you say, like?’

‘I would say, people like your mother are obviously fragile to the pressures of life and, sadly, those pressures can make them ill. That’s maybe what made your mum run away from the hospital.’

‘If it makes you feel better.’

‘You are fragile, Anais.’

‘Am I fuck!’

I go quiet and think about the iguana in that guy’s flat a few years ago. What was his name again? Chief. He was a right weirdo.

‘Angus said you thought the blood on your skirt was animal blood, and you had them checking it out at the lab?’ Helen breaks the silence.

‘Aye, I picked up a squirrel, I didnae know it had blood on it. Why, have they got the results yet?’

‘The tests came back saying it was definitely human blood, Anais. The police think you’re just – trying to halt the investigation with this squirrel story.’

‘Do they now?’

Clever experiment. They are smart and relentless and wholly fucking brutal, and in my heart I’m raw, and scared, and nothing. I feel cold, shivery. I want tae get in a bath and put my head under the water.

Click, click, click. Tash turning around – looking at the guy, him saying something to her. What does he say?

Some day, aye, you will walk into a room, or a car, or an aeroplane, or a toilet, and you won’t know it right then – but you will never get back out again. Exit only. Fact.
You might go home and put your shopping down and turn on the telly, and all the time you dinnae realise that the next time you go back through your front door it will be in an ambulance, or a body bag.

‘You must remember something about that day?’ Helen asks.

Shrinking. Shrinking, shrinking, shrinking.

It was a squirrel – it wasn’t PC Craig’s blood, I know it in my bones, and so do they, but they don’t care. They dinnae. The experiment
want
me to know that they’ll have me in a secure unit for life – for something I dinnae do. How else can they break me?