Sleepwalkers (20 page)

Inside, he stopped. He stared at the childish posters on his wall. He felt so much older than a boy who liked football and silly pop stars, but when he looked down at his pyjama bottoms and bare feet he felt small and feeble. He couldn’t think of anything to do except get back into his bed. He pulled the covers up to his neck, then pulled his knees to his chest. He screwed his eyes shut and imagined that he had never opened that drawer. It was his mum and dad. Mum and Dad. They loved him. He saw it, he felt it every day. That must be the truth. He felt angry with his body as it spasmed and shuddered
with emotion. He tried to imagine himself as a robot, with cool, ice-blue emotions, able to play the game, unable to be hurt. But the little boy in the bed couldn’t stop the tears and the choked breathing. He pulled the sheets over his head and prayed for some peace in the darkness. In the morning, it would all be okay, he told himself. Dad would wake him up and Mum would cook him brekkie and it would all be normal and happy and fine and this would all, all go away.

He tried to imagine himself in the tent he was given for his eleventh birthday, the one his dad had helped him erect in the garden and in which he slept every night for a week. The wind and the rain couldn’t drag him back into the house. He said he was going to be a cowboy. Under the covers, he tried to laugh, but the noise came out as a whimper. He knew that downstairs the red light continued to blink, never sleeping, malignant. It knew that he had been snooping and it would reveal his secrets in the morning. Things would not get better with the dawn. He knew that. He was only fifteen years old but the legion of scars across his body had taught him brutal lessons.

The window didn’t open fully – there was a metal bar which meant it could only offer a narrow gap. But he didn’t dare try to unlock the front door without waking his parents, so Toby forced himself through, scraping his head and his back with the effort. The tiles were cold and slippery and twice he thought that he would fall as he crawled across them. The drainpipe was plastic and couldn’t possibly hold his weight. But he controlled his panicky breaths, gripped hard and slipped down with only minor scuffs and bruises. Even the clumsy fall at the end wasn’t so bad.

He got up from the floor. There was no sound inside the house.

Then he ran.

A thick blanket of cloud moved in one night, unnoticed until the insipid morning that followed. There it stayed, shutting out the sun, and it wouldn’t budge for weeks. Carrie gazed up at it from her bedroom window and thought of Ben. It had been weeks now since he’d gone, and while there had been plenty of visits, forms and questions still nothing was clear to her. A story was concocted – a sick relative to whom Ben had gone running – which she recited to her nodding children and half-interested friends. Ben would be back soon. When she asked Diane why she was claiming something which would soon be proved to be wrong, she was given short shrift. They were in a new stage of the operation. When asked what this meant, her question was answered with an evasion which irritated her. She couldn’t work out the truth: was Ben out there or not? There was the chance, Diane admitted, that he might return, but the way she discussed it you felt it was all still part of the plan. Or maybe Carrie was reading too much into it all.

She slept fitfully. She would dream of Ben and wake with a jolt, the memory fresh on her tongue. The taste of his mouth
against hers, the smell of his sweat, the rough feel of his big hands which would hold her tighter and tighter as the night wore on.

She had never been scared of him. The elegant old gentleman who’d told her about his past had described him as a thug, something dangerous. With her help, they would transform him; heal him. It would require deception and trickery, but this experiment was also an act of kindness – a rebirth. Carrie had tricked plenty of men before, that part wasn’t hard, whether they’d been council officials, debt collectors, police or bailiffs. She guessed that was partly why they picked her.

When they first moved into the house the men had shown her where the cameras and voice recorders were. They’d explained how much medicine was needed to dope Ben if she was called on to do so, and where the drugs were hidden. Every movement was being monitored. She was in no danger. As a last resort, she could shout out and someone would be there within one minute. But this would rarely – if at all – be necessary. After all, Ben could always be controlled by asking the three questions.

The three questions, the man had explained, were part of Ben’s hypnotherapy: three specifically worded questions, in the exact order, would return Ben to a place of peace and sanctuary. Such was the strength of these three questions that they could be asked by a stranger over the phone and the subject would immediately return to this calm, suggestible state. They’d done it in front of her and she’d watched, stunned, as Ben’s pupils dilated, a childish grin formed on his face and he stood there, perfectly still, waiting to be led wherever was chosen for him. To do whatever was chosen for him. He was just a
project. She would watch and record. He must love her and believe she loved him back, but she must be professional and feel nothing. She’d laughed at this. Men were easy meat to her. Ben would be no different.

But as she lay in bed, watching the slate-grey sky with no interest, she knew that her confidence in her own callousness was misplaced. He was too kind, too sweet, too loving, too gentle. He would pick her up and she would imagine herself as Fay Wray in the arms of King Kong. He would clown around with the kids, laughing, and roaring with mock-cartoonish anger, and she would find herself laughing with him. She would take his clothes off and pull him inside her and she would get lost in the moment. And she would see him hobbling and exhausted after he’d been taken away to do things that were never explained and she would dress his wounds and massage his tired muscles and she would forget that he was anything but her man. Her Ben.

Diane had spotted it first. Carrie had been reporting an event in the park which they hadn’t been able to record properly – the recording devices in Ben’s jacket had failed. (Issues like this weren’t that unusual – there were plenty of sessions like this where Carrie’s memory was pressed for every last detail.) Carrie had described how Ben had helped Joe down from a tree when he’d got stuck – his jumper having snagged on a loose branch. She laughed as she recalled the incident.

‘You seem very animated today,’ was Diane’s smoothly barbed comment. Carrie stammered a reply and reported the other details as though they bored her. She carried on like this when she got home. Sure enough, Ben noticed the difference. At first he said nothing, but instead did all the washing up.
Carrie continued to push him away as he made her a cup of tea, cooked dinner, ran her a bath, all the time saying little but watching her, waiting for her to explain his sins. Eventually, she fed him a story about a girlfriend who’d pissed her off and had been on her mind. He was happy to buy the lie, happy to be welcomed back into her arms.

This was how it continued. Carrie would play the lover and mother a little too well, forgetting herself before pulling back. She would sleep happily in his arms, persuading herself that the closer she felt to him, the harder he would find it to spot her deceptions. She would reconcile the contradictory demands of her employers and her swelling emotions for Ben by telling herself that this total immersion into her case was a necessity for its success. She was helping Ben, she was helping the project. But when she reported back to Diane and pretended to be objective and uninterested, she became aware that she was telling more lies to her than to Ben. The realisation made her skin prickle.

But it was a half-hearted rebellion, at best. The Company approved of her loving behaviour, after all, and encouraged it. It didn’t matter how tenderly she dressed his wounds, it didn’t matter how sweetly she whispered lies in his ears. She was too scared to reveal the truth to him. But she desperately wanted, somehow, to let him know that her love was real. She wanted him to be able to feel, deep down, that her touch was hers, not theirs. But as long as they knew what she was doing, her rebellion was futile.

It came to a head one night. They’d been out for dinner (an approved, local restaurant) and would normally have headed home at that point, but had, by chance, run into parents from Joe’s school and another bottle of wine had been opened,
followed by spirits and, as chairs were pointedly put onto tables by the ever-less-smiley waiters, someone suggested going on to a club. It seemed ridiculous, at their age, on a school night. But the dad was very drunk, swearing loudly about ‘raging against the dying of the light’, and while Carrie had been sure to be the least responsive to the idea (in case they were listening), secretly she was thrilled.

They were nearly barred entry because of Ben’s jeans, but it was a quiet night and so they were ushered in, promising the grumpy doorman that they’d be throwing money at the bar. Carrie followed them in, her heart pounding as they bounced down the sticky steps into the strobing, throbbing room. The mum turned to her and started laughing – shouting above the din – ‘Now I remember why I don’t come to these places any more!’ Carrie laughed with her. But there was only one thought in her head: there would be no cameras in here. And no one could hear their words.

She drank the vodka and knocked back the tequila and danced and laughed just like everyone else did. She watched Ben as he and the dad argued about footballers, and then clung onto the mum and wailed with hysterics as the two men did their ‘dad dance’ in the middle of the floor to the bemusement of the cool youth around them.

Ben saw her laughing, caught her eye and grinned. She knew that everything he was doing was for her. He never even glanced at the young women in their breasty tops. He loved her with a totality that maybe was only possible because of the other senses and memories that had been taken from him. But it made his love no less powerful to her. As Carrie watched his terrible dancing, she suddenly felt like crying.

She ran to him on the dance floor and pulled him tight to her. He laughed, enjoying the embrace, turning it into a silly slow dance. But this wasn’t enough for her. She needed him to feel more. She needed him to see her for real, for once.

She pulled him hard by his hair, yanking his face towards hers so that he was staring into her eyes. He winced with the pain.

‘I love you, Ben.’

‘Yeah, okay,’ he laughed, trying to get her hands off his head.

‘No, listen.’ She pulled her mouth to his ear. She wanted to scratch his face, to make some sort of impression that could cut through all the lies, half-truths and performances. The music pounded all around them, securing them in a protective wrap. ‘When it goes wrong, when stuff happens and you’re not sure about me, will you remember this? Just remember this. Now. Will you?’ Ben leaned in closer, scooping her up in his arms.

‘Let’s get that Ricky Martin song on and go
latino daddio!
’

He wasn’t listening. She looked at him and wanted to scream. Immediately he clocked her mood and stopped dancing, staring at her stock-still in the middle of the dance floor as the music mphed and tsked.

‘I love you, honey,’ he said, his face cloudy with concern.

‘That’s not enough,’ she replied and tears started to pour down her face.

‘I can’t hear you,’ he shouted. ‘What’s happened? Baby?’ He tried to grab hold of her and for a moment she wouldn’t let him before a hopelessness swamped her and she crumpled into his embrace. ‘What is it, honey? What did I do?’

Carrie held him tight. Then she whispered in his ear. ‘I’m sorry. I love you. I’m so sorry.’

Ben had stared at her, baffled by the tears and the words. Then he grinned and started to dance again. ‘You’re off your face!’ he laughed. She stared at his lumbering frame and felt sick. The music throbbed on as Ben and the Dad started doing the conga together, nearly starting a fight in the process. He looked like a happy, sedated panda, ignorant of his onlookers. He looked as though he didn’t want to know. She wondered if he would cope if he ever did find out.

When they got home that night, Ben asked her if she felt better and tried to bring the matter up again. But here, under their gaze, with all ears listening, Carrie could no longer speak. That night they fucked hard and rough, as though somehow they were battling against the lies she fed. He fell asleep immediately afterwards, but she lay naked on top of the sheets feeling dirty and used.

The bed was now cold. Ben was gone and Diane was now her only companion. Carrie pulled a pretty cover over the sheets and tucked the corners in tight. Everything in the room was spotless. Diane ran her hand over the pristine bed cover and nodded her approval. Carrie knew she liked things tidy. She watched warily as Diane peered out of the window.

‘Yes, I’m sorry it’s dragged on. Fucking boring, really,’ she drawled. Carrie folded her arms. Diane glanced at her, then continued to look out of the window. ‘You know how Head Office can be. What can I say?’

‘Can I speak to them?’

‘I’m sorry?’ She had Diane’s attention now.

‘I’d like to speak to someone. About Ben. About what’s happened to him.’

‘Well, I don’t think that’s going to help anyone.’

‘I’d like to anyway.’

Diane frowned, then smiled, then frowned again. ‘Why?’

‘It might be useful.’

‘For who?’

‘Me. It might help me for the next case too.’ She swallowed, worried that she was blushing. She could feel the heat in her ears. Diane gazed at her with that horrible stare that seemed to imply so many things without a single tell. Carrie remembered Ben at the end of the bed, struggling to pull his trousers on because of the pain in his back, and she felt emboldened. ‘I think I’ve done enough for you to know more. I deserve it.’

Diane started drawing something on the window with her finger. A doodle of a sun. The silence was long.

‘If I knew more then I’d be a help. I’ve been helpful so far, haven’t I? It would be good, surely, if I had a better idea of how everything … clicked.’