Jenni Fagan - The Panopticon

‘Tell her now,’ I whisper to Shortie.

‘Today is a sad day for all of us. When someone is taken away so young, it is hard to understand that this is God’s will, and God’s will alone can decide when it is our time to go. We must have the courage tae let Jesus guide us in our hours of sadness!’

John’s legs are jigging up and down like mad, and he is clenching and unclenching his fist. Shortie grins at me — she’s got really bright eyes now — I can feel her watching me without even looking back. Look at the watchtower: look at it! Watching all this, it’s sick. The experiment are behind that glass, drinking tea, waiting for me tae leave; they are taking us out one by fucking one. One raises his mug of tea.

‘God knew what was best for Isla, a lost sheep in his flock.’

The glint’s here — in the room, passing around the kids, one by one, Angus sees it first. And the twins’ foster-mum is walking out the door with the twins. Shortie has warned her tae go, to take them out of here now. This isnae something for them to see.

Now it’s just the staff, the Minister and us.

‘God is with Isla, as he was always with Isla.’

‘Was he with her when she fucking died, on her own, up those fucking stairs?’ John says.

‘Ssssh,’ Joan admonishes, and she’s looking up too, catching it. Angus is trying tae see where I am, but the kids have closed around him and Joan.

‘We must ask God tae walk beside us!’

‘Fuck — you’re God!’

Shortie raises a chair above her head, just as Mullet clicks that the screws that are normally holding all the furniture down urnay there.

‘Joan, watch out!’ he shouts.

‘FUCK YOUZ!’ Dylan screams.

A chair crashes through the window. John tears a pool-cue off the wall and smashes out the strip-lights. Dylan is taking a run at Angus, and I am running up the stairs two by two — behind me the new girl has a fire extinguisher and she’s battering in the office door. Windows are being smashed all around the main room. Joan is on John’s back, restraining him, and I am reaching into the bathroom where I stashed it, picking up a glass bottle — lighting the rag with a match. It catches.

‘Shortie!’

I raise the lit bottle tae her and launch it — up, up. It turns once, twice, arcs towards the surveillance window.

‘This … this is how we fucking say goodbye tae our own!’

Shortie raises the telly above her head and lobs it through the last unsmashed window, and they are chanting, smashing, punching, it’s going around — This … this … this is how we say goodbye to our own!

Smash .

The whole surveillance window shatters, and I see them — turning on their fucking tails — the experiment, for a fraction of a fucking second: exposed.

YOU HAVE TO do the first things first — you have to begin at the beginning. This is the last time, I will never do this again.

Begin at the beginning, pick a birth. You have tae do it like it is important, like it counts.

How about a birth just like this: an ordinary baby is born, on an ordinary day, in a hospital just outside London. The labour takes fourteen hours, the baby is eventually delivered by Caesarean section. The mother cries — the father cries. Everyone is happy.

Pull my hat further down, tweak the rim so it turns up, it’s a 1920s-style hat, with a wee pin and a cherry on it. It matches my 1920s coat — and shoes. The train pulled into King’s Cross at 10.22 a.m. I didnae travel in the toilet. I didnae think I was dead; in fact, I have never felt this alive — every single breath feels like a first chance.

Next is the biological mother: Claire. She was the eldest of three sisters; her younger sister died in a boating accident and she passed on a few years later from ovarian cancer. Biological father: had a stroke and died six months later.

Now I’m an orphan. There are far worse things a girl can be.

‘How much are your lilies?’ I ask a woman on a flower stall by the river.

‘Four for a fiver, love.’

‘I’ll take them.’

‘Just four?’

‘Aye.’

The lilies are flat, so they’ll be easy to float — the river is calm. Walk down some steps to the shore. A wee laddie up on the pathway watches me. Down by my right a man is making a sofa out of sand. His wee dog runs around him and people throw coins down. They clatter into his bucket and some just land in the sand.

I unwrap the flowers and kiss each lily in turn. They smell that sweet way. The river is grey and they will disappear in seconds, but it doesnae matter. I place them on the water one by one. One for Teresa, one for Tash, one for Isla, one for Anais.

The tide whorls them away.

It took me ages tae walk down here, all the way past the tourist sites. Big Ben. Parliament. The wheel. The trees, the Christmas lights, the boats, the Christmas market and performers on stilts. And not one person has looked at me twice.

The buses here run all the time. In the village I’d wait for fifty minutes if I’d missed one. Here there is an LCD that tells you: due, 2 mins. I walk along to the steps and run up them, to the bus stop. A bus comes straight away and I get on, sit down next tae a man who is wearing a wee black skullcap. His sideburns are curly. The bus stinks. I breathe into my scarf until we pull up outside St Pancras.

I’ve got it straight now, in my head. I know how I began. I cannae think of the unit, or anyone I’ve left behind. I dinnae look left, or right, just straight ahead, and there’s no queue at the sales booth, so I walk right up.

‘A single ticket,’ I say.

‘No return?’ the woman asks.

‘No. Thanks.’

I put the ticket in my pocket.

It is what it is. Some people are blonde, some people are poor — some people get up and die on a day when they were gonnae go dancing. I’ve been playing the birthday game for years, and this is it: game over. There are no brothers, no sisters, no palazzo in Italy — no free perfume from Harvey Nichols. Just a plain ordinary life, the only one I will ever own.

I have to run for the train: the man’s putting his whistle into his mouth as I jump up onto the carriage. My heart is going pit-a-pat as I scan the platform, but there’s no-one there; no polis, no Angus, no experiment.

Weave down the aisle — this is it, just breathe, it’s all you have tae do.

I am in carriage F. My seat is 64B, opposite an elderly guy. I take my coat off and fold it neatly, place it down on the seat next to me and sit down. There are eighty-four seats in this carriage. The carpet has a swirly pattern, yellow on blue. The train is racing away from the city, out into the green. A hostess trolley rattles down our aisle; she stops at our table.

‘Can I get you anything, sir?’

‘Tea, please, no milk,’ he says.

The woman pours, and the man smiles — and I smile back, but just quickly. ’S alright. Sometimes you can just tell the goodness of a person by their face.

‘What’s your name?’ he asks me.

Tuck my hair behind my ear, look up.

‘Frances,’ I say.

‘That’s a nice name,’ he says.

And it is. It’s a nice name, if you look up its origins: it means freedom.

Paris.

Paris it is.

I am Frances Jones from Paris. I am not a face on a missing-person poster, I am not a number or a statistic in a file.

I have no-one watching me.

All I own is a lipstick I stole this morning, several hundred quid — and a lucky domino. This is it: no more experiment, no more meetings, no files, no straight to a secure unit, no giving up, no giving out, no beating up, no getting fucked, no looking over my shoulder, no locked cell, no broken vertebrae.