Jenni Fagan - The Panopticon

She’s big, Joan. If she sat on you in a restraint or in a riot, you’d fucking feel it. Mental note — avoid bowl-cut next time there’s a riot.

Mullet’s reading a book in Chinese. He has skinny legs and knobbly fingers, and the way he holds his shoulders isnae what let me know. It’s just something that’s there. I cannae explain it, but I can usually tell on sight these days. Mullet doesnae do adults. No way. I’d put fucking money on it. Sometimes I think they should take me around schools and kids’ clubs, like a sniffer dog, but not for drugs — for paedos. They’d never believe me if I told them? Hello, my name’s Anais Hendricks and I can tell a paedo on sight — usually. Aye, right, they’d believe me! I can, though, I can tell if a lassie’s been abused just by looking at her. They wouldnae believe it, though, there’s nae point in telling them. Not about that. Not about the dreams. Not about flying cats.

Joan has twenty different religious icons up on the office wall behind her.

‘Nae witch?’ I ask her.

‘You have a religious preference?’

‘Pagan. Three-parts witch, white obviously — well, sort of!’

‘Obviously,’ she says.

‘Seriously, white witch, ’cept on Sundays.’

‘I shan’t ask why not on Sundays.’

‘Best not.’

‘Well, we’ll see what we can do, Anais. I’m sure there’s a pagan symbol we can find tae put up for you. We dinnae want you tae feel excluded here. I know you’ve moved a lot, so maybe it’s time for you tae settle down — for a wee while?’

I’m dizzy. I hate. Her red shoes. His ginger mullet. Paedos, polis, sniffer dogs, Chinese books, tits, dirt, the colour yellow, icons, cord-fucking-carpets. I’d rather be dead today, but I umnay — I’m fifteen and fucked.

‘Wanker!’ I whisper to the student, as I get up.

Eric stands with his soft posh hand on my files and looks hurt. Joan nods at him and he lifts up a big pile of folders with my name and number printed on them; he puts them on her desk.

‘Brenda will show you tae your room. If you have anything sharp on you, it will be removed. And please, do not tell the other residents what you are in for!’

BRENDA HAS A fob-key thing for the rooms. I follow her through the main open-plan area; there isnae much in here, just ugly furniture, and crap carpets that urnay even a colour.

Count the steps to each floor — there are twenty-four. Six doors on each landing, I reckon there’s about twelve of us in this unit. We go past the bathrooms and they have girl and boy signs on the doors.

We reach the third floor, and the three lassies are waiting. Brenda walks me along towards them. Moustache’s tash is three fine brown spirals, on each cheek. She has wide brown eyes. Nae earrings — I dinnae even think she’s had hers pierced. Her hair is long and she reminds me of Frida Kahlo. I like Frida Kahlo, ay, especially her bath and feet painting, and that deer, and the ones of her dreams.

We stop at a bedroom next to the girls, room forty-nine — it is right in the middle of the landing.

‘I need shampoo,’ Moustache says to Brenda.

‘Okay, I’ll let you into the stores in a minute.’

Next to Moustache, the blonde girl with the pixie haircut scratches her tummy. Her tummy’s cut tae fuck. That’s beyond normal. Normal is when someone just cuts their arms, legs or sometimes thighs — not slash marks like that right across their stomach. There’s fucking hundreds of them, then there’s thick white ones under the fresh ones. She’s wearing low-slung jeans, and her hips have silvery stretch-marks. She must have a kid.

‘Can you hurry up? We want tae go out, like today,’ Moustache says.

‘I’m settling our new resident intae her room, then I’ll let you into the store. Anais, this is Tash — you choose tae be called Tash, don’t you, love?’

The lassie nods.

‘Aye.’

‘Uh-huh, and this is Shortie. Shona does not like her Christian name, either.’

The girl with the baseball cap gives me a dirty look, takes her hat off and rubs her hair. It’s curly, mousy and short. She pulls her hoody up and walks away, gesturing tae a laddie downstairs to meet her around the back.

‘And this is our Isla. Say hello then, girls!’

They look, and I look, and Brenda pushes back the door to my room. I follow her in and she hands me the plastic bag. Great! Unbutton my school shirt, kick off my shoes. There’s blood on my skirt — and my socks. There’s some on my leg. Everything stinks (like the cells did for three days) of concrete, and bleach, and cold, and glass. There was a stone bog in my cell, with just enough water to flush, but no enough tae drown in.

‘The bedroom doors are always open, Anais, but they can be pulled partially shut if you’re getting dressed. Nobody can see in. Well, only the watchtower, and there isn’t anyone in there unless the night-nurse is on duty; she can lock all the doors from a central locking system, if necessary — for the residents’ safety!’

She shakes her head when I stop undressing.

‘I need your underwear as well.’

Step out my pants and lob them into the bag. This room is smaller than my last one. There’s banging out on the landing — that laddie must be back, he’s really wellying that balcony.

‘Most of the boys’ rooms are on the second-floor landing. Nobody can see you dress or undress from the floors below, as long as you get changed tae the left of your door. We like tae keep doors open, to create a more trusting environment. There are no secrets here in the Panopticon,’ Brenda adds.

I shove the bag out to her and I’m in the scud now, so I stand behind the door with just my head poking out. I fucking hate being in the scud in new places. Imagine a big fluffy dressing gown. I’ve not had a dressing gown since I was, like, ten! I wouldnae waste my clothing allowance, though. I like vintage stuff and it’s expensive, I can barely afford even one piece a month.

Imagine, though, ay. Imagine soft new jammies, and an open fire, and a big dog I could set on strangers if they came anywhere near my house. Imagine having your own house? Imagine having ten big dogs and a gun. Tash is tapping her fingers off the balcony, and Brenda’s trying tae ignore her.

‘Is your underwear in there as well, Anais?’ she whispers.

‘Why, d’ye want tae sniff my knick-knacks?’ I ask her.

Isla giggles. Brenda turns the bag until she locates my scants. She smiles tightly and ties a knot in the bag. The wee laddie keeps kicking the balcony; he’s got curly hair and thick specs and he’s skinny as fuck.

‘Brian, you have been asked tae stop doing that.’

‘Aye?’

He boots the balcony harder and she marches away towards him.

‘Brian, you need tae get, wait a minute …’

Shove my door shut but it still stays open about three inches. There’s prongs in the fucking frame so I cannae close it. These doors really do only lock at night, and all from one button, up there in the watchtower! They say they dinnae use it to lock us in all the time. That’s what they say.

I’m so pale my veins pop out all purple. My toenails are chipped. This room is cold. One window, one wardrobe. Everything’s screwed to the floor so you cannae pick it up and throw it at the staff.

A tractor grumbles across the fields outside. Slide down the wall, drag the duvet off the bed and wrap it around me until I’m totally cocooned.

My bin bags are here, three of them. There’s a hole at the bottom of one — I push into it with my big toe and a lipstick falls out. Pillar-box red, Dior. I bought it last week from one of the girls who go choring up town. There were three professional chores in my last unit. They’d come back, day after day, with big store bags full of stuff they’d nicked. It’s a skill. I can do it but I dinnae, I have an aversion to being called a common thief. It’s only worth stealing if you’re in the big league. Diamonds. Rare artworks. Nuclear weapons. That kind of shit.