Jenni Fagan - The Panopticon

Joan appears in the bathroom doorway. ‘Have you seen Brian?’

I shake my head.

‘Okay, you’ll be having a review when you get back today, Anais. Last night was unacceptable. You cannot still just disappear when you want and think there will be no consequences. Helen’s coming in to discuss this.’

‘I thought Helen’d left.’

‘She has, but you still have your end-of-care review, and she’s taking you tae Warrender Institute, remember?’

‘Joan, see how Helen left? Like she just quit — it was after she’d spoken tae the police about me?’

‘Helen had plans to take some time out from the social-work department for a while, I’m sure. It won’t have been anything tae do with you, okay?’

Joan catches sight of someone at the end of the corridor and marches off.

‘I’ll discuss this with you later, Anais.’

Trudge downstairs feeling rough as shit. Before I was a teenager I didnae get come-downs, not really, I could get as mashed as I wanted then. I’ve even started tae get hangovers recently — getting old is pish fun. Brian’s sat in the living area reading a book. Angus is waiting for me with the front door open.

‘Come on, let’s get moving, lady, we’re late,’ he says.

Joan emerges from the left turret and Brian’s face falls.

‘We need tae talk, now!’ she says to him, and he traipses behind her into the interview rooms.

On the top landing the black doors are all closed, like usual. I feel uneasy, like I never really looked at them before. I haven’t been back in there to see the snow wolf or the snow bear, and I have this horrible feeling they are gone.

Crunch out to Angus’s car. He opens the passenger door and I get in; it smells of wet dog and faintly of good-quality grass. The air’s stale and stuffy from the morning sun. It’s giving me the boak.

‘So, did you have a good time at the cinema?’

‘Aye.’ I wind down the window.

‘I didnae know they did films until four a.m.?’

‘They dinnae.’

‘So what were you doing?’

‘I was getting laid.’

He turns the engine on and just looks at me.

‘You cannae say things like that tae your support worker, Anais.’

‘I just did.’

‘Fuck’s sake, just pick a bloody CD,’ he says.

Angus drives with one hand, slides his roll-up tin out his pocket and lights one. He inhales and gestures for me tae take one as well. Bonus.

‘Have you not got an iPod?’

‘I am what you would call old-school, young lady. I would have stuck with tape cassettes if they still made them.’

‘Prehistoric.’

‘So, what exactly are we in court for this morning?’

I shrug.

‘I need more than that, Anais. I didnae get a chance to see the rest of your files, so I couldn’t check what all the charges were. I’m a wee bit unprepared, so help me out here.’

‘It’s nothing too big. They caught me with Valium, or something.’

‘That’s it?’

‘Aye, probably just minor possession.’

‘Nothing else?’

‘I stabbed a lassie at the back of the chippy on Old Town Road.’

‘Tell me that’s not what we’re gonnae go tae court for, Anais?’

His voice is all high, he’s flapping. It’s funny. I dunno why he’s flapping, though. I think he’s wasted.

‘Is that why we’re going?’

‘It’s nothing major, Old-School! Take a chill pill, there’s nae stabbings, I promise!’ I smile nice and he shakes his head.

Flick through his CDs.

‘Your music taste is pish, Angus.’

‘Dinnae be judgemental. You’ve probably never even heard half of them.’

My stomach rumbles. I should have had something for breakfast.

‘You’re different from the other kids, Anais, d’ye know that? And despite what the police, or Helen, seem tae think, I reckon you’ve got a very astute, intelligent head on your shoulders.’

‘Fucking hardly! How come you’re doing this job anyway?’

‘Well, job satisfaction, and tae meet inspiring people like yourself. Why do you ask?’

We turn right, but Angus wasnae indicating and a car behind beeps us. He gives the driver a wee wave.

‘It doesnae seem like your bag.’

‘Maybe I’m not that different from you,’ he says.

‘I fucking doubt it.’

‘This is a shortcut, dinnae tell Joan.’

He accelerates the wrong way down a one-way street and gets us through to the other end without anyone noticing. I slap on an Arlo Guthrie CD and turn it right up. My feet are tapping away on the dash.

‘D’ye like music?’

‘Only soulless people dinnae like music. I love music, Angus.’

‘I used tae play in bands.’

‘Aye? I bet they were shite!’

‘Total shite!’ He grins.

The children’s-panel building is grim. They’re always grim. Like police stations. Ugly buildings in concrete, all square, nothing nice about them. The only stations that aren’t like that are really old ones in wee villages. They can be quite nice sometimes. I’m staying outside as long as I can, under the doorway, so the rain doesnae make my hair go frizzy.

Smoke a roll-up and watch an old man at the lights. The lights change but he just stands there. They change back to red again and he moves forward. A car beeps at him and he staggers back onto the pavement.

Angus seems quite decent. Normally it’s all No Smoking here, and boundary issues with clients there. He could almost be classed as a human being. Maybe. I mean he’s not Joan and he’s not a Mullet. He sticks his head out the door.

‘Move it, we’re late.’

Great. Door. Corridor. Door. Room. Long table of freaks.

Angus takes a seat at one side of the room, I take the chair in the middle. There are four panel members facing us; three of them have known me since I was ten. At least it’s just the wee room today, it’s not like a kiddies’ courtroom, just a panel room.

My jeans are looking old. I’m due clothing money next week. I desperately need new stuff, maybe a Fifties halterneck. I saw some great star-shaped sunglasses in the vintage shop in town. I’ve had the white version, but I lost them. The new ones I saw were black, they were classy.

‘Anais Hendricks, today’s hearing is for,’ the Chairwoman runs her pen down a list, ‘threatening a staff member with a metal pole, theft and wilful destruction of school property, illegal possession of prescription drugs, possession of marijuana and, the six-month saga of police vandalism you waged against Lothian and Border police?’

Angus shifts uncomfortably in his seat. He looks across at me.

‘Anais is aware that she was on a real downward spiral over the summer,’ he says.

‘Anais is always on a downhill spiral, Mr Everlen.’

‘She has been in the past, but I can personally vouch for the fact that she’s working exceptionally hard tae rectify this.’

‘Are you telling me, Mr Everlen, that there have been no more charges incurred against Anais, since these ones I have read out?’

She knows. How would she? She must know PC Craig, or her fiancé — he’s a policeman as well. I bet she knows the fiancé. I’d bet anything.

‘Anais is not here today tae answer questions on anything except the charges in hand,’ Angus says firmly.

Go, Angus! He looks as crooked as me.

‘Well, first on the agenda is the gratuitous vandalism against Lothian and Borders police department. This included deliberate destruction of police property and costing the police department thousands of pounds’ worth of damages. Also, there is the second time that you have stolen a school minibus from outside Rowntree High School, but this time you,’ the woman scrolls her pen down the report in front of her, ‘drove it into a wall?’