The Glimpse (25 page)

Cole told me he didn’t know who my father was. He told me he didn’t even know I was going to be bound to Jasper until he saw us together at the concert. And what’s this got to do with him splitting up with Rachel?’

‘Don’t you feel it even a little bit?’

‘Feel what?’

‘The connection between you and Cole.’

Ana put down the plate she’d dried three or four times over. It clattered as it hit the shelf by the sink. Was
that
why her body felt so out of control around him? She’d always been attracted to Jasper, but with Cole it was like being with an oppositely charged magnet. A force she couldn’t resist drew her to him. But he was so cool and couldn’t resist drew her to him. But he was so cool and calm around her. Surely if he felt the same way, she would know?

‘What happened in this vision? What did Cole see?’

‘I don’t realy know. You should ask him.’

Ana blew air through her nose and shook her head. If the Board heard them talking like this there wouldn’t be any need for creative or free-association tests; they’d both be certified Active.

‘Did you ever have the Pure test, Lila?’

‘Sure, I lived with my mum until Cole left the Project four years ago. You had to have it to go to school. They did it when I was five, around the time the whole country was getting it done.’

225

‘And?’

Lila shrugged. ‘No idea. School put it on their files. My mother burnt my envelope without opening it.’

Ana felt as though there was a glitch in time. For a moment, everything seemed to freeze. Her own life had been ruined by a test that meant nothing to Lila.

‘You decide who you are, Ana,’ Lila said gently. ‘Not some test.’

Ana’s lower lip began to quiver. Was that realy how it was for them? Could it be like that for her?

Lila stacked the washed plates and cutlery. She smiled Lila stacked the washed plates and cutlery. She smiled warmly, then shook her head and slunk into the corridor.

Ana thumbed hot wax dripping from the candle on the bath ledge. Lila’s claim that Cole had seen her in a vision and had been waiting for her was absurd. Impossible.

But a week ago, everything about her life now would have seemed impossible too – she’d never have believed Jasper could be in a psych dump for trying to expose the Pure tests as phony. She’d never have believed that Crazies from the Enlightenment Project would be helping her to find him or that she could feel incomprehensibly, wonderfuly, dangerously drawn to someone the way she was to Cole. He made her feel as though until now she’d only been living half a life. It wasn’t anything like her crush on Jasper – Jasper had been a fantasy; like faling for a movie star, when what you’d realy falen for was the character the actor was playing. But Cole was real, solid. He made her want to explode out of herself, let go of everything she’d held back for so long.

She ran the bath tap. Steam drifted off the water. She 226

vaguely wondered how much it might cost to have a hot bath. Picking up the candle, she rose and went to find out.

As she walked down the corridor, she heard the front door slam. From back in their bedroom, Lila’s voice penetrated the wals.

‘She’s confused. You can’t give it to her! She doesn’t know who she is.’

‘Stop it, Lila.’

‘You can’t!’

Ana reached the bedroom door and paused on the threshold. Cole and Lila fel silent.

‘Give me what?’

‘This.’ Cole slotted a mini-disc into the side of his interface. He walked over to her and put his interface chain over her head. She swalowed, steeling herself to look at him. But when she did, the expression in his eyes made her forget her awkwardness. What he was giving her had something to do with Jasper. She could sense it.

Cole continued to go out of his way to help, despite the fact it never seemed to be what he wanted.

‘Have you looked at it?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘It’s just been dropped off.’

Ana set down the candle on the mantelpiece and turned to face the wal. Projected in front of her was a copy of the London Mental Rehab Home admission records for the evening of March 21st and early hours of the folowing morning.

‘We’ve managed to get more details from eleven institutions in the London area,’ Cole said. ‘Not just the names, 227

but exact times they were signed in, who signed them in and what they were diagnosed with on admission.’

Ana searched the entries looking for the John Does Cole had mentioned before – there had been two the night of Jasper’s abduction, one at St Joseph’s in Putney and one at Three Mils in the East End. The St Joseph’s John Doe at Three Mils in the East End. The St Joseph’s John Doe had been signed in at 8.44 p.m.
Too early
, she thought.

She skipped over the rest of the submission data – ‘Last Name, First Name, Legal status of admission, Date, Time, Diagnosis impression at admission, Doctor Admitting patient’

– down to the information from Three Mils. As she did so, she noticed that nine admissions for St Joseph’s had al been signed off by the same doctor, which was odd because most institutions had at least half a dozen psychiatrists attached to them, to say nothing of the fact that the admission process was supposed to take at least an hour.

In the silence, she could hear Cole’s soft breathing. He read over her shoulder. His closeness was like heat from a fire. She thought of Lila’s claim. He must have seen her in one of those awful news headlines three years ago, and her face had subconsciously stuck and melded over time with a girl he’d had in some vivid halucination as a teenager. But why did she feel such a pul? Like he was the moon and she was the sea.

She inhaled deeply and returned her focus to the admissions list. The Three Mils John Doe had been signed in at 7.07 p.m. while she and Jasper were stil at the concert.

Cole took back his interface and studied the list again, systematicaly crossing off names. He quickly covered the 228

forty-or-so entries and by the end there were only five left un-struck. He looked over at her, cocking an eyebrow.

‘It seems the insane keep office hours,’ he said. ‘Look, out of forty-three admissions here, only five happened between 9.15 p.m. and 7 a.m. the next morning.’ Ana moved closer, noticing his fingers, the strength in his hands as he gestured to his interface projection. The first admission that hadn’t been ruled out was for a psych dump in Barnet. The admission time was 9.19 p.m. That would have given the abductors less than thirty minutes to get out of the Barbican, travel fifteen miles north to Barnet and get Jasper signed into the hospital. Even with clear roads it was unlikely, if not impossible.

Cole scroled down the page to St Lazareth’s in Elephant and Castle.

‘This time is feasible,’ he said.

Ana shook her head, acutely aware of the way her body angled towards his. ‘The diagnosis is “Undifferentiated schizophrenia and psychoneurotic depressive reaction”.’

‘You what?’ Lila said. ‘What would that be when it’s at home?’

‘It’s as complicated as it sounds. But for our purposes, it means the guy must have been admitted voluntarily. If Jasper was supposedly voluntary, he’d have been drugged or unconscious and incapable of answering any questions.

Because if he wasn’t drugged he’d have been labeled with paranoid persecution disorder, or something along those lines. Not schizophrenic and depressive.’

‘These next two are female,’ Cole said. He scroled past 229

229

them, to stop on the only one remaining: Scott Rutherford; 11.05 p.m.; admitted to Three Mils.

The diagnostic impression was schizophrenic with gran-diose persecution disorder; admission involuntary. That made sense. If Jasper had been struggling against his admission, if he was trying to convince the assisting psychiatrist of the truth – there were always two present to sign in any admission – then this could easily be a preliminary diagnosis.

If she had managed to acquire fake ID so easily, she imagined the Wardens or whoever had incarcerated Jasper could have done the same. Skimming along the rest of the admission details, her gaze settled on the psychiatrists’ signatures at the end.

Her heart bumped to a stop. The room swam before her eyes. She reached out to steady herself on the bed’s foot-board, but missed and plunged towards blackness, reality shredding around her.

Miliseconds later she regained consciousness. She lay on the floor not moving. Lila panicked. Cole lifted her up and drew her limbs into him, so her head lounged against his chest.

‘I’m fine,’ she murmured.

‘Get some water,’ Cole said to his sister.

‘I’m absolutely fine.’

Cole and Lila fussed until Ana forced herself to sit up and told them to leave her alone. She spent the next hour by told them to leave her alone. She spent the next hour by the curtained window, watching the twilight turn to dusk, dusk to night, staring at the driveway and the street beyond.

Cole and Lila packed away the remains of supper, pushed the beds together – Ana would sleep on one side, Lila in the 230

middle, Cole on the other side. They cast furtive glances in her direction, which she felt rather than saw and wholy ignored. She thought of nothing; her father’s signature had burnt a hole through her mind.

231

19

Three Mils

Hours later, Ana woke with a start to find the numbness had passed, replaced by an intense headache. She roled off the edge of her bed and crept to the window.

Outside, the world had spun into the deepest centre of night. Nothing moved in the pitch blackness.

Stil dressed in jeans and one of Lila’s borrowed T-shirts, she slipped on her pumps, puled Cole’s brown jumper over her head and borrowed his puffa jacket.

She lit a candle and tiptoed towards the door.

The corridors between their room and the steps outside were frozen and eerie. She fumbled for the latches, leaving both doors resting against their locks so she could get back in. The crisp air burnt her throat as she crept out into the night.

On the porch, she gazed at the stars. Once there’d been On the porch, she gazed at the stars. Once there’d been so much light polution in London you wouldn’t have seen the stars, even on a clear night. But now hundreds of glinting, silver flecks spangled the sky.

Ana shivered and hugged her arms tightly around herself.

The cold chased away al remnants of her earlier unconsciousness and lethargy. She sat down on the curved steps and begun rubbing her hands.

232

A scuff sounded from inside. She twisted towards the noise and saw Cole’s six-foot frame in the doorway.

‘Hey,’ he whispered.

‘Hey,’ she whispered back.

He came and sat beside her. ‘Couldn’t sleep?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Sorry, I borrowed your coat. Do you want it back?’

‘No, no, it’s fine, you keep it.’

‘Thanks.’ Ana squeezed the jacket around her waist and dipped her chin into the colar.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’ he asked.

The pressure in her head moved down to sit on her shoulders as wel. She cleared her throat.

‘My father,’ she said, ‘programmed me into thinking joining with Jasper Taurel was the only way I could have a safe and happy life and then he . . . he discovered Jasper was going to expose his dodgy research and he Jasper was going to expose his dodgy research and he got rid of him. Incarcerated him in a psych dump under a false identity. Then he had the gal to promise me that if I just sat tight, we’d get Jasper back.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Everything I thought was wrong. Everything I’ve valued

. . .’

‘It wasn’t your fault.’

‘I just accepted what I was told. After I realised what happened when you asked questions . . .’ She remembered the awful morning in the Head’s office; the first time she met the Board. It seemed like a milion years ago. How she’d regretted writing to the Guildford Register’s Office for her mother’s death certificate.

233

Cole sighed.

‘That’s the way it’s been set up,’ he said. ‘It’s dangerous to ask questions. Instead we have the Board, the fix-it-al pil, the endless bombardment of new distractions. It’s just the same in the City. It’s like a magic trick. Our attention is directed one way, while a sleight of hand conceals what’s realy happening.’

Ana drew her knees to her chest and rocked herself.

‘Al these years I’ve been carefuly watching myself, ter-rified of when, or where, or how I might crack. Now I’m finding it hard to believe there’s nothing realy wrong with me.’

Cole squeezed his hands together and blew on his fingers.

‘You’re not the only one,’ he said. ‘Look how many people out here are convinced they’re sick. Most people believe and trust those in authority. We’re conditioned to as kids and we don’t expect them to lie to us.’

Ana breathed out, watching the white cloud of breath just visible before her eyes.

‘The morning after my mother gave in to my father and started taking the Benzidox again,’ she said, ‘I woke up realy early with this terrible feeling.’ Her mouth grew dry.

She’d never told anyone this before. For years, the memory had been hazy and broken, buried beneath the lies she’d told the Board. But seeing Cole’s mother had brought the morning flooding back in excruciating detail.

‘I went to find my mother but she wasn’t in her bedroom.

I passed my father’s study and saw the light on beneath his door. He was always up reading half the night and faling 234

asleep on the sofa. I searched for my mother downstairs and then I went outside.

‘I could hear an engine running. So I crossed the overgrown lawn to the barn and I stood outside, listening. My father rationed the petrol. When he went off to London for the week, he left the spare car with just enough fuel in it to drive a couple of miles to the nearest neighbours in an emergency. So the engine being left on like that wasn’t just weird, it felt deeply wrong. And I could smel the fumes.

They leaked under the double doors. I tried opening the doors, but couldn’t. I ran back to the house and got my dad.

He made the girl that was with us at the time keep me inside, while he went to see what was going on. I heard him chop through the door with an axe.