The Glimpse (26 page)

‘From the kitchen window, I saw him carrying my mother, limbs dangling, to his car parked at the side of the house. I broke away from the girl and ran to them.

He laid my mum on the back seat and closed the car door. He told me she was fine. “She’s had an accident, Ariana. You’re not to worry. I’m taking her to the hospital.” I never saw her again; never got to say goodbye.’ The grief settled over Ana like an ache, like flu.

Cole took her hand and held it between his own. His palms felt warm. She liked their roughness, it made them seem solid and reassuring. She felt him watching her.

Staring through the shadows at his hands cupping hers, she brushed a finger across his wrist.

She had a plan. It was the only way forward. The only path open to her.

‘I need proof Jasper realy entered Three Mils as Scott 235

Rutherford,’ she said. ‘I’m going to get myself committed.

If he’s there, I’l find out what he’s done with the research evidence and I’l get him out.’

‘That’s the most insane thing I’ve ever heard,’ said Cole.

She could hear a smile of disbelief in his voice. ‘Anyway, he won’t stil have the evidence. If your father didn’t take it, the orderlies wil have frisked him. It’s pointless.’

‘Jasper knew he was being folowed. He could have hidden the disc before they took him.’

‘Listen.’ Cole’s grip tightened around her hand. ‘Even if he’d managed to hide it, he’s been institutionalised for almost a week. They have ways of extracting information.’

‘My father isn’t affiliated with Three Mils. He wouldn’t have been able to go back there to interfere with Jasper’s treatment, especialy if he thought someone might start asking questions about Scott Rutherford’s background.

Perhaps he thought it wouldn’t matter if Jasper had hidden the disc. Because Jasper was the only one who knew where, and who would he tel? Who would believe him?’ Vocal-ising her argument increased Ana’s certainty. Posing as a patient was worth the risk.

‘Besides, how else wil we know if it realy is Jasper?’

‘There are other ways. Anyway, Jasper obviously hasn’t been able to get out, so how do you think you’re going to?’

‘After admission, there’s a routine evaluation that has to be done within twenty-four hours: an interview with one be done within twenty-four hours: an interview with one of the resident psychiatrists and a sanity test of a hundred questions. If you pass, you’re released.’

Cole withdrew his hand. ‘And if you don’t pass you’re 236

kept for another month of involuntary treatment before the next assessment.’

‘I’l pass,’ she said.

‘Nobody passes. If you’re too normal they think you’re abnormal. If there’s nothing apparently wrong, then it’s deeply hidden and that’s even worse.’

‘I’ve taken that test ever since I was fifteen,’ Ana said.

‘My father coached me on it. I know exactly how to respond. I can’t fail.’

‘There are other things that could go wrong. It’s too risky.’

‘What about you?’ She turned to face him. ‘This minister you’re helping has information that backs up Jasper’s, right? Something that proves the government and Novastra came up with the idea of Pures before my dad even began his research. What’s going to happen if the Wardens know about the minister? You’re taking the same risk. I saw the way you said goodbye to your mum.’

Cole stared at her. She angled away to face the street.

Across the road, the blue LED street lamp softly shaped the iron railings of a park.

‘You’re in shock,’ he said finaly.

‘You’re in shock,’ he said finaly.

She shook her head. ‘You’re the one who thinks I’m part of al this. That I have something to do with disproving the Pure test.’

‘Not by getting yourself locked up in a loony dump!’

‘What then?’

Cole’s eyes narrowed, his face compressed.

‘What did you see?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know how to explain.’

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‘Try.’

He turned away as though it hurt him to look at her. ‘I saw us.’

‘What were we doing?’

‘Kissing,’ he said.

Ana’s stomach flip-flopped. Nerves fizzled inside her.

For a moment she thought she was going to laugh. She pressed her fingers together and tried to continue breathing.

‘Wel, that was part of it, anyway,’ he said.

She nodded.

‘The better part,’ he added.

Her hands shook. She had no idea how to respond. Her heart felt like it was going to pump itself so hard it would burst through her chest. She glanced at him and saw he was grinning.

‘You’re joking?’ she said.

‘I’d never joke about kissing you.’

Heat rushed to her cheeks. Thank goodness he couldn’t see her properly. She shot to her feet, trembling.

‘I’ve never realy kissed anyone,’ she blurted, instantly wishing she’d kept that piece of information to herself.

Idiot
, she thought as she scampered quickly back inside.

In the bedroom, she kicked off her shoes and lay down beside Lila. Cole returned a minute later. She heard him stretch out on Lila’s other side. In the darkness, she imagined she could hear him smiling.

*

Three Mils was formerly part of a group of tidal mils on Three Mils Island. Vehicles could access the psych dump 238

from Sugar House Lane, a long, isolated road to the north.

Pedestrians entered by a street to the west which had been closed off to cars. Beyond the first bridge, on the left, a row of brownstone houses led up to a blue gate, which dated back to the mil’s conversion into film studios. On the right-hand side stood a pretty, industrial mil with a clock tower.

‘This time tomorrow morning,’ Cole said, holding Ana’s shoulders, fixing her gaze, ‘you get on at Bromley-by-Bow and go to Whitechapel. From there you take the train to Forest Hil. You go straight back to the room.

You wait for me, until I come for you. The room’s al paid up.’ Ana nodded. But every time she looked at him, she thought of them kissing.

They were standing outside a boarded-up Tesco on the edge of the long pedestrianised lane.

‘This is crazy,’ Lila said for the hundredth time.

‘If the psychs don’t give you back your money, jump the barrier and get on the Tube without a ticket. No one wil stop you.’

Had he been teasing her about his Glimpse?

‘Ana, concentrate. What I’m teling you is important.’

‘Get on the Tube without a ticket,’ she said. Her heartbeat accelerated as she imagined jumping barriers and riding through London alone. She should be more worried about a night in the psych bin than Cole’s Glimpse and ticket evasion, but that part of what she was doing seemed too alien to even contemplate.

‘Lila’s going back to the Project,’ Cole said. ‘But I’l be there for you tomorrow night.’

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Ana unfastened her interface from the silver chain around her neck and gave it, along with her real ID, to Cole. ‘If I don’t get out,’ she said, ‘I want you to send this to my don’t get out,’ she said, ‘I want you to send this to my father and tel him where I am.’

Cole took the ID and interface dubiously. She could see he was thinking that if her father was capable of putting Jasper in Three Mils to protect his reputation, he was probably capable of leaving Ana there too. But Ana knew Ashby Barber wouldn’t let his daughter rot away in a loony dump. He would come for her. His pride, if nothing else, would insist on it.

‘I’l see you tomorrow night then,’ she said, the uncertainty in her voice leaking through.

‘Tomorrow night,’ Cole repeated. He held her gaze.

Ana longed to reach out for him, but she only smiled.

‘Besides,’ she said, ‘you’ve seen the future. And we haven’t

. . . you know.’

Cole smiled back, then reached out his fingers to lightly touch the short hair at the back of her neck. She closed her eyes, wanting to engrave the feeling on her memory –

the tingling sensation where their skin met, the electricity that flowed between them, setting her on fire.

Lila shook her head. ‘Madness,’ she said, kicking a fizzy drinks can and sidling off to examine a poster on the boarded-up Tesco shop front.

‘I want to understand,’ Ana murmured. ‘What makes you so sure this Glimpse wasn’t a trick?’

Cole’s hands dropped around the curve of her shoulders, down her arms. ‘Don’t you ever just know something?’

down her arms. ‘Don’t you ever just know something?’

he asked.

240

Ana searched his eyes.
No
, she thought,
not really
. Ever since she’d been told she was a Big3 Sleeper she’d questioned everything, especialy herself.

‘But it happened so long ago.’

‘Yeah. I was only sixteen.’

‘I barely remember things that happened before I moved to the Community. Sometimes, I think if I didn’t have a photograph, I wouldn’t remember what my mum looked like. What makes you think I’m the girl?’

Cole dug his hands in his pockets and took a deep breath.

They stared at each other for several seconds, until Lila came and stood between them.

‘Just for the record,’ Lila said, ‘in case anyone is actualy listening, I think Ana voluntarily getting herself committed to a loony dump is a realy bad idea.’

Ana tore her eyes away from Cole and hugged Lila. It was the first time she’d initiated physical affection with anyone since Tamsin disappeared. She drew back embarrassed, but Lila puled her close.

When Ana let go, she absorbed Cole’s presence one last time, memorising the iceberg blue of his irises. Then with nothing but the fake ID stick and forty pounds cash, she strode, head down, towards Three Mils.

strode, head down, towards Three Mils.

Her legs trembled as she crossed over the footbridge towards the clock mil. She stopped by the gate. A security guard appeared out of nowhere.

‘Got an appointment?’ he said.

Ana alowed her fear to express itself as a general nervousness. She scratched beneath her hair at the back of her neck.

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‘Er, the Mental Watch Centre sent me.’ In her mind she recaled the signatures of the psychiatrist who’d admitted the John Doe patient on the same night as Jasper. Culen, or Cohen perhaps. ‘They told me to ask for Dr Culen.’

‘You must mean Gudden,’ the guard said.

‘Oh.’ She nodded and ducked her head.

The security guard backed up to the last house opposite the clock mil, once the home of a foreman or a factory official. He disappeared inside then reappeared behind a latticed window, holding an intercom phone. A moment later, the blue gate opened. Ana shuffled through. As it closed, she glanced behind and caught sight of Cole and Lila. It was too far to see their faces. But their bodies were stil and she could tel they were both watching her.

Inside Three Mils, she shambled along a cobbled street with built-in railway tracks, anxiously casting about for an indication of how bad the place was. To her right a large field of tarmac, broken up into faded white boxes, lay empty. On her left sat a long, utilitarian building that didn’t look inviting. But at least it had windows.

didn’t look inviting. But at least it had windows.

She folowed an arrow painted on the ground, tripped up steps to the reception and entered flustered, which under the circumstances, she decided, wouldn’t hurt. A lady behind a circular desk met her eye. She nodded at one of the seats pushed against a bare wal. As Ana sat down, a man in a three-quarter-length doctor’s coat appeared.

‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘I’m Dr Dannard. I’m afraid Dr Gudden isn’t available this morning.’ He held out his hand to shake Ana’s.

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‘Emily,’ Ana said, using the name Nate’s contact had matched her to.

‘May I?’ He reached over her and took off the chain carrying her fake ID. His intrusive proximity made her instantly wary.

‘Nice chain,’ he said. ‘Folow me.’ The door ahead sensed their approach and swished open. Ana folowed him down a brightly lit corridor. Dr Dannard pushed open the second door they came to and stood back to let her in. She shambled forward, the twinges in her stomach going berserk.

He gestured for her to sit in a low chair on the patient’s side of his wooden desk. Then he settled into a high-backed leather seat opposite her and inserted her ID

stick into his interface pad.

‘You’ve dyed your hair,’ he said.

Panic stabbed Ana’s chest. Had he recognised her?

Panic stabbed Ana’s chest. Had he recognised her?

‘You’ve cut your hair like a boy and you’ve dyed it because you don’t want people to think you’re pretty.’

She relaxed, realising this was al part of his ‘astute’

assessment. Dr Dannard was obviously happy to do al the talking, so she didn’t bother to answer.

‘Got a boyfriend?’ he asked.

‘Not exactly,’ she said.

‘Dumped you, has he?’ He nodded in agreement with himself. ‘Low self-esteem. Nervous too, mmm?’ Again, it wasn’t a question. He reached into his top desk drawer and puled out some papers.

‘You need a break,’ he said, folding his hands together 243

and resting them over the papers. ‘A bit of time to relax, unwind. Let somebody else take care of you.’

He was making a stay in the dump sound like a luxury holiday.

‘Wouldn’t you like to forget about al the stresses and strains of everything
out there
?’ His eyes gleamed. He pronounced ‘out there’ with an edge of disgust, simultaneously waving his hand as though brushing reality away. Ana nodded, wondering if the outside world could be so easily dismissed here.

‘Good,’ he said. He got up, bely bumping over the top of the desk, and left the room. Internaly, Ana began to question whether if she walked out now, the security question whether if she walked out now, the security guard would open the gate. Dannard was clearly unhinged.

Anyone who merely looked at another person and saw a catalogue of mental ilnesses in the way they cut their hair had to be.

He returned with a second, younger doctor, who seemed irritated.

‘Boyfriend’s dumped her,’ Dannard said by way of introduction, ‘and she’s not taking it too wel, are you?’