Jenni Fagan - The Panopticon

She’s crying again.

‘How long did you wait?’

‘All night. Till seven this morning — then I got the bus,’ she whispers.

Her hands are freezing cold and I get that knot in my gut. Tash wouldnae leave Isla there all night — not a fucking chance. We stare at each other, and I can hear a car door click shut. Click, click, click. It feels like someone is pouring lead through my veins.

‘The other lassies on the dock were going mental at me because I wouldnae move. They were shouting that I shouldnae be there if I didnae want business.’

Angus clicks the phone down.

‘Okay, the police have traced the registration — it’s a missing car. It was stolen last week in Rochester. We need to go down and make a statement, Isla. Anais, you have tae go; Helen’s waiting for you.’

Isla grips my hand.

‘I’m going with her, Angus. She needs me with her.’

‘No, sorry, Anais — you going tae the police station is not a good idea. Isla, you are stuck with me until we get back.’

Bad. Bad feeling. Bad in the gut. Bad in the air, and just like that — wee faces flit across the walls, exactly the same as the concrete ones, but these ones are in plasterboard. It’s like someone has half-flicked a light switch, so you can see that the spirit world is actually always there, watching us live our lives.

‘Anais, you have tae go now. Helen’s waiting in the car.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ Isla says, blowing her nose.

‘You’re sure?’

‘Aye, go.’

I dinnae like this. Bad, horrible feeling, knowing that Tash is somewhere out there right now when she’ll want to be here. Cold skin. What if she’s got cold skin? What if she’s staring at the sky and the clouds are in her eyes?

I watch Angus lead Isla outside.

Helen’s car reeks of nail polish and aromatherapy oils — bergamot, to be precise. She’s got a wee bottle of it sitting on the dashboard. I can taste spring-onion crisps. They’re all I wanted for breakfast. I hope I umnay pregnant to a pig farmer. I wish I hadnae eaten — I want to be sick every time I think of Tash stepping into a blue Escort. Door shuts. Guy presses lock on all the doors — click, click, click. She turns around, looks him in the face.

Dinnae think. Not about cars. Not about Tash’s earrings, or her hair, or her laugh, or how you want desperately — to see her again.

It’s dull out, and there’s frost everywhere. We drive in silence, out in the country, down the motorway, until we are at the big crossroads in town. People are standing at the traffic lights looking just like people, living normal lives.

Click, click, click.

They’ll find her. They will. Do not think about it. Don’t, or you’ll start to panic.

It’s weird driving through the city after being surrounded by farmland for weeks on end. I cannae believe I’ve been in the Panopticon for over two months now. It almost feels like home, cos of, like, Shortie, and Isla, even Angus, and the roof. It’s a long time since I’ve wanted to stay anywhere. Helen is breathing, just in, and out. Her nostrils flare. Her fingers are long and bony.

‘So you’re leaving — tae, retire?’ I say.

‘I’m taking a gap year.’

‘But, you’re what: fifty?’

‘I am thirty-seven, Anais.’

‘Same difference.’

Helen grits her teeth.

‘Wouldn’t you like to take a gap year, Anais? Go and help people less fortunate than yourself, or work in a sanctuary to save elephants?’

‘No, I fucking wouldnae.’

‘Some day you won’t feel so smart about things. One day you’ll realise it’s up to you, and you alone, to make something of your life.’

‘Fuck off, Helen.’

‘Be rude if you want, it’s not my problem any more. So, today, I want to go through this with you. Focus. Anais, are you stoned?’ she asks.

‘Just a wee bit.’

‘Right. You were born in Warrender Institute, as you already know, and I have finally managed tae find your adoption certificate — well, a copy of it. It was taken in with the rest of Teresa’s documents when they were investigating her murder.’

I flinch at the word. And now all I can see is Teresa’s kimono on the floor in our bathroom. I could slap Helen sideways.

‘Mr Jamieson is really looking forward to meeting you. He was there when you were born, and he remembers it well.’

‘What? He saw me, and my biological mother?’

‘That’s what he said, yes. He’s actually been at Warrender longer than any other resident.’

‘That’s promising, the longest crazy they’ve got!’

‘Don’t say crazy, it’s not a positive term.’

‘What would you say, like?’

‘I would say, people like your mother are obviously fragile to the pressures of life and, sadly, those pressures can make them ill. That’s maybe what made your mum run away from the hospital.’

‘If it makes you feel better.’

‘You are fragile, Anais.’

‘Am I fuck!’

I go quiet and think about the iguana in that guy’s flat a few years ago. What was his name again? Chief. He was a right weirdo.

‘Angus said you thought the blood on your skirt was animal blood, and you had them checking it out at the lab?’ Helen breaks the silence.

‘Aye, I picked up a squirrel, I didnae know it had blood on it. Why, have they got the results yet?’

‘The tests came back saying it was definitely human blood, Anais. The police think you’re just — trying to halt the investigation with this squirrel story.’

‘Do they now?’

Clever experiment. They are smart and relentless and wholly fucking brutal, and in my heart I’m raw, and scared, and nothing. I feel cold, shivery. I want tae get in a bath and put my head under the water.

Click, click, click. Tash turning around — looking at the guy, him saying something to her. What does he say?

Some day, aye, you will walk into a room, or a car, or an aeroplane, or a toilet, and you won’t know it right then — but you will never get back out again. Exit only. Fact. You might go home and put your shopping down and turn on the telly, and all the time you dinnae realise that the next time you go back through your front door it will be in an ambulance, or a body bag.

‘You must remember something about that day?’ Helen asks.

Shrinking. Shrinking, shrinking, shrinking.

It was a squirrel — it wasn’t PC Craig’s blood, I know it in my bones, and so do they, but they don’t care. They dinnae. The experiment want me to know that they’ll have me in a secure unit for life — for something I dinnae do. How else can they break me?

Helen’s serene. The city is ugly. People. Cars. Buses. Trees. Buildings. Then the motorway again, and silence. A turn-off. We drive by a car broken down by the side of the road, then a wee bit later a man walking along with a can of petrol. We whizz past a garage and down a track in the woods, through wide-open gates: Warrender Institute. It’s a big building — like the Panopticon, but less imposing. Huge windows, like the ones in my dream.

The nurse greets us and we all turn to wait for an old barefoot man who’s walking down the corridor. This place stinks.

‘This is Mr Jamieson, Anais. He was living here when you were born,’ the nurse says.

The old monk stops about a metre away; he nods his head a lot — and looks totally pleased to see me. His eyes have a right agitated sheen, and the left one is milky and bloodshot. I think he must be totally blind on that side. The other one is a watery pale-blue colour, and it doesnae look much better.

‘Hiya.’

I dinnae know what else to say. My hands feel really far away, and my arms and my legs dinnae feel like mine.

We walk along to the day-room. The monk sits in his chair and I take a seat across from him. He isnae saying much. The nurse gives me weak orange juice in a plastic cup. I put it down on the table and check the place out. There’s a woman in the corner dozing; her T-shirt has Happy Place written on it. Her handprints are in green paint underneath and there’s spittle around her mouth.