Jenni Fagan - The Panopticon

If that happens I will need to click my feet three times and find a place far — far fucking away — to call home. Maybe an igloo. I could be the lone Eskimo, friend of whales and seals. Except I dinnae think Eskimos are right friendly with whales and seals. I think they just stab them, skin them, eat them, and wear their skin.

Can you imagine it — a life in a secure unit, then prison. I wouldnae mind if it was for something I’d done! I mean I would, but it’d be different. It makes me burn when I think about it, right inside, like I just want to — disappear. Just like that. That’s how it happens. You blink one day and what was there a second ago is gone.

I push through a gap in the bushes, into the woods. It’s colder in here and quieter. The leaves have turned to mulch on the forest floor and the boughs are nearly bare. When I breathe out there is a wee stream of silver. Autumn has gone quickly this year and winter is appearing, but she hasn’t put on a show yet. Even the weather is still — waiting to see what will happen.

I climb up on my oak tree, let myself fall back until I am hanging by my knees, hair trailing across the forest floor. It’s soothing. The trees still have some leaves, all dry and crackly. The rest are mulch. Hundreds of tiny wishes drift through the woods, they sparkle in the dim, and dance up as silver orbs.

I remember Hayley catching a wish for me when we were younger, before she moved away to Singapore and some great life with friends who are rich and clever. Hayley had the most perfect tits I’ve ever seen. So neat, smaller than mine — more upturned with really pale-pink nipples. I could easy have been her wife. She would have got some fancy job with her dad’s company and I would have waited at home, tae love her, and make her some tea, after a long day. Instead I ended up with Jay. Sucking on a mouldy pole — that’s what Tash calls it. Hayley was quiet, and kind. Kindness is the most underrated quality on the planet. I feel hollow just now. Hollow where a heart should be. Like when you know someone loves you, but you urnay good enough — that it will go. That you’ll make it go, it’s only a matter of time.

Take a joint out my bra. Fucking shitty lighter, light again, inhale — that’s better, inhale deeply. The forest floor is damp and wild garlic sweetens the air. Somewhere the river gurgles.

There’s a newspaper near my head. It’s damp, but I can still read the headline.

Nobody Could Prevent Child’s Murder.

I have to close my eyes, tears at the back of them, dizzy, let my legs fall down over my head until I feel solid ground. Sink down. Lump in my throat. How can someone do that, ay? And how can someone say — on the front of a fucking newspaper — that there was nothing they could do to stop it?

Seriously. How not? How can you not stop it? If you take a kid who is in danger out of a place where it’s gonnae be tortured tae death — well, that kid would not be murdered then. Fact. It was a head social worker said that headline. What kind of message is that to send out to baby-murderers? What kind of apology, or acknowledgement of responsibility, is that?

It’s not an apology. It’s not an explanation. It’s a fucking insult, that’s what it is.

It’d be different if it was their baby. You’re sure as fucking shit it would be different then. It’d be different if it was some foreign country and they were being ethnically cleansed, or were war victims. But it’s no different here, at home, if you’ve no money. It’s no different here. They just let it happen. They say they dinnae, but they do. All the fucking time.

You can stop it. You go in, and you look, with your eyes open; if they have a record of continuous bruises, or bumps, if you visit and they have chocolate smeared all over them — wipe it off. See what is underneath. Dinnae even fucking think about leaving until you do. But they pass by things, don’t they, like, professionally. They have never asked me about rooms without windows or doors. Not once.

‘How many social workers have you had, Anais?’

‘Thirty-eight.’

‘Who are the worst to break in?’

‘Graduates. They’re itching for a good specimen, it makes them feel better about all their student loans, and it makes them believe they’re now a grown-up. It’s all very serious. They think everything’s great. Child abuse. Getting battered. Drug addiction. They fucking love it — makes them feel dead professional and important. Everyone wants to feel important, ay?’

As specimens go, they always get excited about me. I’m a good one. A show-stopper. I’m the kind of kid they’ll still enquire about ten years later. Fifty-one placements, drug problems, violence, dead adopted mum, no biological links, constant offending. Tick, tick, tick. I lure them in to begin with. Cultivate my specimen face. They like that. Do-gooders are vomit-worthy. Damaged goods are dangerous. The ones that are in it cos they thought it would be a step up from an office job are tedious. The ones who’ve been in too long lose it. The ones who think they’ve got the Jesus touch are fucking insane. The I can save you brigade are particularly radioactive. They think if you just inhale some of their middle-classism, then you’ll be saved.

Helen’s like that. She thought that what I really needed was homeopathic tongue-drops. She said I should take them if I ever felt like I was getting angry.

What she really didnae like, though, was that I wouldnae stick tae the uniform. No hair extensions, no tracksuits, no gold jewellery. That really pissed her off. The first time she saw me in a pillbox hat and sailor shorts, you’d have thought I’d just slapped her granny.

She wanted a case that was more rough-looking. More authentic, so she could take me for meetings at that bistro near hers, where her posh pals would see and think she was dead cutting-edge and that. India’s the best place for her. I hope she gets a fatal (yet slow-acting) stomach bug and just fucking dies.

I dunno why I was remembering Hayley earlier. She went. Everyone goes. Everything does. Then we’re all just dead. Dead as fuck and there is no heaven. Probably there isnae. Probably there is nothing. Just some gimp sat waiting for you with a bunch of notes.

‘So, newly dead person, that time you did that thing — we have it right here on note 1000000098775f2.987,87. What exactly was that about?’

The watching feeling is getting worse.

I am not an experiment.

I am not a stupid joke, or a trippy game, or an experiment. I will not go insane. Something bad is gonnae happen, though. I can feel it. It’s in the way that crisp bag has faded from the rain. I am not an experiment. If I keep saying it, I’ll start believing it. I have to try. I am not an experiment. It doesnae sound convincing. It sounds stupid.

Try it in German. Ich bin nicht eine experiment. My German’s shite. Inhale slowly to the count of four, look hard at the tip of my nose and try again. This time I go for an official BBC broadcaster circa-1940 accent.

Today, one finds one is not, in actual fact, a social experiment. One is a real person. This is real actual skin as seen containing the bodily organs of a real actual human being with a heart and a soul and dreams.

It’s true that I came from real people once too, and they were a jolly old sort, with no naked psycho-ness in any way.

I, the young Miss Anais, understand wholly that I am just a human being that nobody is interested in. No experiment. No outside fate. I am not that important, and that is just fine by me. I propose a stiff upper lip and onward Christian soldiers, quick-bloody-march! This is Anais Hendricks, telling the nation: to be me is really quite spiff-fucking-spoff, lashings of love, your devoted BBC broadcaster since 1938.