Jenni Fagan - The Panopticon

It still makes me smile.

The policeman stops the footage.

‘So, your vendetta against PC Dawn Craig started over a year ago?’ he states.

‘I didnae have a vendetta.’

‘You threatened tae kill her. Is that friendly behaviour, in your world?’

‘When’s Helen coming back?’

‘She’s not.’

IT’S PEACEFUL ON the roof and there’s a big yellow full moon. I’ve been listening out for Britney, but she’s not around tonight. I keep thinking about my biological mum — it’s probably cos Helen’s finally taking me to the nuthouse I was born in. She wants me to meet the old schizo who supposedly saw bio-mum when she got committed. I still have the monk’s wee pencil picture, a scrawl of a cat with wings.

I don’t know what to think about it: someone who actually claims to have seen me, actually being born. Well, not actually being born, but he reckons he was there (in the building) when it happened. Helen says the old guy actually saw me , when I was a baby. Like not in a test-tube, or a Petri dish, or a lab, not growing in a glass jar. He saw me. A real wee baby, born the usual way, and this wee frantic part of me is hoping — for what?

I’ve been thinking about the experiment growing me for so long — I almost cannae imagine anything else now. Maybe this is just a ruse. The experiment urnay fucking stupid. Helen thinks it will help my identity problem. I fucking doubt it. She keeps saying she’s leaving the social soon, tae go and help people in other countries. Wish she’d fucking hurry up about it.

7652.4 — Section 48 was my first name. Seriously, they couldnae even give me a name until they’d filed me and discussed me and decided what I came under for sectioning. I hate the first name they gave me after that one; I wouldnae even tell anyone it, ever. It was shit. At least Teresa picked something better: Anais — she named me after one of her favourite writers.

A glow from the window below spills out into the dark and stars appear. Pull a half-smoked cigarette out my jeans pocket, spark my lighter, the silver bit hurts my thumb, but it catches. Inhale until I’m dizzy. My jeans smell now, that burnt-umber kind of way. I’ll have to put them in the laundry tomorrow. I might just quit smoking. Why follow the crowd?

The wind is picking up, trees rustle all the way down the drive. Malcolm, the flying cat, is waiting for me tae go and say hello.

Are you fucking ignoring me?

I look at the text twice. Mind-games. Delete the message and look at my photos. There’s a beautiful one of me and Hayley, one night up on Calton Hill, with the Beltane behind us, fire-breathers and drummers and me — feeling like a white witch on LSD.

I’m in debt, the pigs are saying I grassed someone. They’re gonnae kill me, Anais .

Cold. Cold in my heart. I dinnae know how tae tell him that, since I’ve been away from him, I see things differently. All the times he — I dunno, it’s like he manipulated. But maybe he didnae. Maybe I’m just being a bitch? Maybe everyone deserves a second chance.

Hang on xx .

I tried to get in the watchtower again, but it’s locked. The experiment are like the watchtower: they can see in everywhere, but nobody can see them. But they’re even cleverer, they can see you anywhere you are. You could imagine them like a man with a wide-rimmed hat staring in your bedroom window while you sleep. Every night he comes and watches your dreams like he’s watching the telly. Sometimes he sits by your bed and whispers words to rearrange them, so you might start out dreaming of something nice, then he’ll whisper tae you about something bad. It’s always something bad. The experiment are like that.

I was in hospital once, and I saw them — just under the curtain, four guys in suits; all I could see was the bottom of their trousers and identical shiny shoes. Then Teresa. Kimono. On the floor. Blood. The walls. Her cigarettes. Kraft macaroni cheese congealing in a pot while Tom chases Jerry and a siren roars. They’d been there then as well.

If you sit really quietly and focus, you can feel the experiment. You will. You’ll feel them right fucking there, in the room. Just watching. Dinnae ever let them know that you know about them. If they find out that you know about them — then it will just be a matter of time. Just a matter of time. You’ll walk down a street one day and a bus’ll fly by, and where you were stood — just a second ago — there’ll be nothing but empty space!

Gone.

Game over.

It happens all the time. There are hundreds of thousands of people go missing every year in the UK, never-seen-again. Gone. A few come back, like. Most dinnae. It’s getting worse every year, and it’s not just nobodies; I mean mostly it’s nobodies, but in all truth, they’ll take anybody. They hate. You. Me. Everyone really.

Like ming-bag Elaine last spring, I watched the final footage of her on some train’s CCTV on the local news. They never found her body, just her bag at some dump.

Then there was Brendan, in fuzzy footage — shoplifting, just before he climbed into some taxi. A taxi where? Nobody knows, Your Honour.

‘Who was driving the taxi?’

‘I dinnae ken.’

‘How not?’

‘Didnae ask.’

‘Did anyone ask?’

‘Nope.’

It could have been anyone driving that cab. It could have been Elvis. It might have been some sick cunt with a space in his sex circle, who knows? Maybe Brendan is cement under a patio right now. What a waste, ay, he was a fucking great shoplifter. I bet he didnae look at the number on the back of that cab when he got in. I bet he didnae memorise it. I memorise every number in every car I get in. I memorise nameplates. I did it on the docks for Mary when she went on the game, and Mary never went missing on my shift, not fucking once. She used to give me twenty fags tae keep track of the registration numbers for her, and a drink at the end of the night. It was better than a paper round. Teresa went fucking mental when she found out.

Disappearing, ay. It can happen alright. Any time, anywhere. Even from a nice leafy street, or a dark cinema, or the dinner queue, or the back of the bus, or straight from bed, all cosy in the morning.

I could be stood out on somebody’s car sunroof on a summer’s night, a fat bassline vibrating, my arms flung out wide, and just as the driver turns to shout something up and touch my bare leg — he finds nothing. Only air. Gone.

People in care are always disappearing. Nobody finds out where they go.

The office is warm. Angus’s got one of those hot-air heaters on. I turn it around so it blows on my legs.

‘I want tae file a counter-complaint for harassment.’

‘Okey-dokey.’

He crosses his legs. The soles on his eighteen-hole Docs are almost worn through. His army shirt’s frayed and his knees poke through his jeans, and his dreadlocks are tied up at the back in a kind of weird green bun.

‘Is that your phone buzzing, Anais?’

‘Aye.’

Part your legs .

He’s fucking bored in that jail.

‘D’you think I should file a counter-complaint against the polis?’

‘That’s not what I said, Anais.’

You are the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. Marry me .

‘They arrested me without cause, and kept me for three days.’

‘Two and a half days.’

‘Whatever.’

I stretch an elastic band I found on the desk.

Will you meet me, Anais?

He’s really putting the pressure on lately, and I’m just trying not to answer.

‘They only kept you for four hours today,’ Angus says.

‘Aye. Great.’

I take out my voucher to top up my phone and tap it in.