The Glimpse (29 page)

From there, they’d planned to ride together on Cole’s bike, folowing 263

the Heath’s border half a mile until they ran into their escorts from the Project, who would take them over the wal.

The minister limped from the checkpoint up the centre of the road. Cole trained his binoculars on the guard who had let him through. The man poured a flask of water into a tea urn. Reassured, Cole refocused his vision on to where he’d first seen Peter jogging, searching for signs of anything amiss, anything scuttling in the shadows.

The soft rumble of a hybrid closed in from behind. Cole backed up against the bridge wal. A split-second later, the bridge’s arched underbely flared with light from the vehicle’s headlights. The car flew forwards. Too fast.

vehicle’s headlights. The car flew forwards. Too fast.

Too loud. A screaming contrast to the eerie quiet of the last twenty minutes. Al wrong. As it whooshed by, the world blazed white, then fel black.

Cole swung to check Peter’s progress. Stil a hundred metres off, the minister stumbled right, fleeing for the pavement.

‘Peter!’ Cole shouted. He sprinted forwards. The car headlights swerved across the minister’s path, lighting him up for an instant. Then he disappeared. A crack split the air.

Cole’s knees weakened. He gazed in disbelief at the dazzling shafts of light. The car slowly reversed revealing the minister’s crushed head, brains and blood smattered across the road.

Cole clutched his stomach. His skin burnt. He was about to vomit or pass out.

A door clicked open. A bulky figure got out of the car and stroled around it to the minister’s body.

264

‘Is he dead?’ A voice inside the car said, carrying on the night air.

‘Course he’s bloody dead,’ a second voice answered.

Metal glinted in the man’s outstretched hand. ‘Brains everywhere,’ he added, prodding Peter with his foot.

‘You sure you shouldn’t shoot him?’ the voice inside the car said.

car said.

Cole fumbled towards the pavement and heaved. His eyes watered. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

‘Near the bridge!’ a voice shouted.

For a moment, Cole was faling through cloud –

everything soft, hushed, grey. Then with the pop of gun-fire, he was back. A man wearing night-vision goggles sprinted towards him. The hybrid switched gear, swinging around. A siren wailed in the distance. Cole’s arms and legs kicked with adrenalin.

He flew thirty metres to his bike, mounted, flipped the key and stepped on the gear pedal. As the bike jerked forward, another shot echoed through the darkness. It impacted in the arched wal behind him. Shattered brick rained down, covering him in a cloud of dust as he revved on to the empty road.

Hunkered low against the wind, he pushed his bike faster than it had ever been before. The archaic engine roared and jounced with the effort, choked by the diluted ethanol fuel. Cole’s skin was on fire. The night breeze cooled the sweat on his face, making him shiver.

Beyond Gospel Oak station, the streetlights died. The road waned into the moonless night. No pedestrians. No 265

cyclists. No bonfires or shanty houses. Only Pures had reason to travel this way.

Cole passed the station and cut his headlamp. Darkness enveloped him. The slip road towards the Lido ruins lay two hundred metres up ahead.

two hundred metres up ahead.

A Psych Watch siren whirled in the distance and two police sirens grew closer. Pale yelow light crept up behind Cole as the car that had run over the minister gained on him. In a few seconds, they would have him in their sights.

Squeezing his brakes, Cole swung hard left. The back wheel skidded across the road. Burning rubber stung his nostrils. The front wheel thumped the kerb. He accelerated. The bike bounced up the pavement, now a grey silhouette in the bleed from the headlights. A second later the pavement ran out. He slammed down on to uneven ground, disappearing into blackness. The bike juddered through long grass and bush. Cole shielded his face with one arm as brambles slashed his face.

Up ahead, sirens flashed. He held his course, cutting a line to the slip road. Headlights flooded the bracken further off to his right, as the pursuing vehicle overtook.

Everything lit up and then went dark again.

Cole let go of the throttle. The bike ground to a halt in a thicket of high shrubs. It took several shaky attempts for him to kick out the stand. As his adrenalin ebbed, shock wrapped over him. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t move his limbs properly. He vomited again into the bushes. The Psych Watch van with its prison-break siren drowned out the sound. The police sirens came next.

266

Cole managed to flip his headlamp back on and slowly rode the bumpy terrain towards the ruins. Alone.

They’d kiled Peter. A government minister. And it was his fault. The minister would never have got involved if Cole hadn’t emotionaly blackmailed him to hand over the incriminating government recording.

*

Ana lay curled up on a mattress in Studio 8. The pain in her head shut out al thought. Her body was sore and bruised.

Only her left eye opened, letting through a narrow slit of day. She watched as the day faded and night crept in around her. Others came to lie quietly on their beds.

Occasionaly, she heard whimpering and groaning. Once she thought it might be coming from her.

After what seemed like hours, but might have been minutes, a distant bel broke the spel of lethargy cast with nightfal. Girls stirred from their beds.

A slight girl came and crouched beside her.

‘Here, take this,’ she said, pushing something smal and round against Ana’s lips. Ana grunted. ‘It’s just aspirin, for the pain.’

Ana opened her mouth. A bitter taste hit her tongue. She crunched, which made her head hurt even more.

‘Looks like your interview didn’t go too wel,’ the girl said.

‘They didn’t give me the test with al the questions.’

The girl shook her head. ‘Never heard of anyone having a test before,’ she said. ‘Come on, you need to eat.’ She hooked an arm around Ana’s waist and puled her to a sit-267

ting position. Ana’s head spun from the sudden movement, but she didn’t protest. She was starving. She hadn’t eaten since she’d left the flat at Forest Hil. That morning?

‘What time is it?’ she asked.

The girl chuckled. ‘It doesn’t make any difference. In here, we’re always in the Twilight Zone.’

The girl helped Ana across the courtyard to the door at the end of the smaler yard, which now stood open. They blundered inside and down a maze of dimly lit corridors, up some stairs and into a crowded dining room.

Slouched against a wal, chin resting on her chest, Ana waited as the girl fetched them supper.

The meagre meal consisted of soup and bread. Ana ate slowly, hunched over, eyes closed. She flinched as cutlery clanged and chairs scraped. Her head pounded.

She focused her efforts on getting a few spoons of sustenance inside her without throwing up – the soup smelt of duck-weed and tasted mouldy. No wonder half the patients were bones sticking out of blue robes. And now Ana wore a blue robe too, instead of the white one.

The nurses must have dressed her in it after her interview with Cusher. She imagined it had a number on the back denoting what meds she should be given.

Twenty minutes later, she returned to Studio 8. The girl managed to acquire another blanket for her from somewhere and helped Ana lie down on a mattress close somewhere and helped Ana lie down on a mattress close to the door but out of the draught. Sleep came eventualy. Deep and empty. When Ana woke, it was to the grating of the giant doors as they opened.

Morning crept into the dark interior. With it, the girls 268

around Ana twitched to life, pacing, whispering and picking at their beds and robes. No one left the studio.

They were waiting for something. Ana, however, could barely move.

The combination of the sedative and beating had stiffened her body and left her too sore to want to try. She wheezed, forced by the bruising on her back to take short, shalow breaths. At least tonight Cole would be waiting for her at the Forest Hil flat, and when she didn’t make it, he would contact her father. She had a way out.

But al the other boys and girls were stuck in Three Mils for months, maybe years. How did they live with that?

Thoughts of Cole sneaked through Ana’s defences. For a few brief seconds she felt the warmth of his presence, comforting and strong. She imagined him holding her the way he’d done outside his mother’s flat. Then a dozen troleys rattled across the courtyard, bringing her sharply back to reality. Girls scampered to their beds and lay face down, numbers to the ceiling.

The troleys rumbled in various directions. One grew louder, approaching Studio 8. Ana listened as it crashed over the metal door rails and into the dorm. She caught a whiff of cigarette smoke and suspected her least favourite orderly was, once again, posted on guard duty.

The nurse began distributing medication. The troley wove between the girls, squeaking and clanking. When wove between the girls, squeaking and clanking. When the nurse reached Ana, she stopped, held out a smal toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste, a tiny bar of soap and a plastic container. Ana heaved her prostrate body high enough to free an arm. She took the goods, tucking the toothpaste, toothbrush and soap against her cheek. Then she squeezed 269

the seal of the eye-like container. It popped open. She tipped the contents into her mouth, accepted the cup of water and swalowed.

With a final effort she extended her arm to return the plastic cup. Nothing happened. Her chest tightened. She lifted her head and squinted at the nurse. The nurse didn’t look at her, didn’t move. From the corner of her good eye, Ana saw movement in the entrance. She wavered.

They couldn’t know she’d pressed the pils against her top gum.

She caught the eye of the girl that had helped her the night before. The girl stared at her unblinkingly, a warning lay buried behind her impassive expression.

‘Water, please,’ Ana croaked. The nurse gave her another thimble of liquid. This time Ana tipped it into her mouth and swalowed the pils. The nurse moved on.

Once al patients had received their meds, a bel sounded.

The nurse and orderlies retreated. Girls rushed out into the chil morning.

Ana struggled to her feet. Her muscles ached with each smal gesture, but she had to get to the toilet. She had to throw up.

Doubled over, clasping her blanket around her shoulders, she staggered into the yard. Her heart sank when she saw the queue for the toilets. It curled back on itself twice. At least sixty girls were waiting. The boys’ queue was shorter, but that didn’t help.

Ana peeked in the opposite direction. By the far wal on her left where the aleys ran on either side, several girls crouched, gowns lifted high on thighs, pee trickling through legs. Keeping close to the studio wals, Ana 270

lurched towards the passageways, planning to dip into the left-hand aley just long enough to jam her fingers down her throat.

At the end of the yard, she steadied herself against the gravel wal, checking quickly about for nurses, orderlies or surveilance cameras. Tension built inside her skul.

She pressed her hands to her head. Soon the chemicals would enter her stomach, would be absorbed by tiny capilaries and carried through her bloodstream to her brain. She breathed in deeply, let go of the wal and tossed herself into the passageway.

‘Whoa . . .’ Mid-manoeuvre, two firm hands caught her shoulders. ‘Steady there.’ It was a voice Ana knew wel, even if everything else about the girl had changed beyond recognition. Stunned stupid, Ana could only blink. The girl with the vine tattoo pushed her back into the yard.

‘Slow learner huh?’ Ana narrowed her semi-good eye to examine the skinny teenager. A black fringe cut a jagged line high on the girl’s forehead. Long lashes framed dark eyes. A mole sat on the right, salow cheek. Yesterday, Ana had been too dosed up and disorientated to Ana had been too dosed up and disorientated to recognise the girl with the vine tattoo. Today, as Ana absorbed her former best friend’s features, her mind hurtled back through time.

She saw Tamsin impersonating their home economics teacher the day Ana was caled to the headmistress’s office; she saw Tamsin chalenging any girl in their class to make fun of Ana after it came out she was a Big3

Sleeper; she saw Tamsin pouring her heart and soul into Portia’s monologue from
The Merchant of Venice
at their Year 10 school variety show.

271

Ana bit a hole in her lip in an effort to come back to the present. Blood trickled into her mouth. She wondered if Tamsin recognised her even though she was covered in bruises, and had short hair and brown contacts that were dissolving day by day and would soon be gone.

They were standing along the back wal in ful sight of the yard. The acidic tang of vomit and urine, along with the blood and Ana’s confusion, set her head spinning.

‘Pul down your knickers and crouch like the rest of us,’

Tamsin said. Ana did as instructed. Her thighs shook under her weight, her chest heaved, but she couldn’t stop gawking at the vine tattoo. ‘Wait . . . Wait . . .’

Ana held back her retching reflex.

‘OK.’

Perhaps Tamsin meant for Ana to pee, but Ana turned sideways and threw up. Two pils dribbled down the brick wal coated in brown liquid. Without pausing a brick wal coated in brown liquid. Without pausing a beat, Tamsin doused the sick with a bottle of water. The liquid mix washed away, joining a foul-looking, yelow rivulet at the foot of the wal. Relieved, and unable to restrain her blad-der, Ana peed.

‘Don’t know why they bother to put newcomers in the white gowns and pretend there’s some sort of twenty-four-hour evaluation,’ Tamsin said. ‘Everybody gets a blue one with a number the next day. No such thing as passing the interview. How can anyone prove they’re not insane to people that are?’

Ana hoisted her knickers back on and stood up. In the aley beyond, something moved. A blurry boy jerked backwards and forwards, obscured by another boy, who stood 272