Beauty Sleep

by Kathryn Evans

  I was seriously, seriously thinking about swimming for one of them. What other options did I have? Call the police? Say I was being harassed? For all I knew, those men were the police. Or at least worked with them. The police weren’t for people like me.

  The little kid was coming back, and he was dragging a man with him. Now if I ran for the sea, they were going to cut me off.

  I made a noise that sounded like crying. I bit my lip hard to get myself under control. I had no idea what to do next.

  Miss Lilly was clearly so happy to see me eating that I forced the whole bowl of apple down. It got easier to swallow but it sat in my stomach like a heavy blob.

  She said, “I am so proud of you, the way you’re dealing with everything. You are a very mature young woman.”

  Annie came in with a cup of coffee for Miss Lilly and a parcel for me. “Topshop delivery.”

  “My jeans? Already?” And then I blushed, embarrassed that I’d been spending Miss Lilly’s money.

  “If you need to return them, let me know. I’ll summon a drone.”

  Foreign. Language.

  “What’s a drone?”

  Miss Lilly said, “It’s a kind of small flying robot.”

  “Oh. Okay.” I wasn’t sure if I was being teased.

  “Shall I bring the other thing now also?” Annie asked Miss Lilly.

  Miss Lilly nodded. “Why not?”

  Annie came back with a wicker basket. Looking up from it, with the most beautiful blue eyes, was a tiny Siamese kitten. She had a matching blue ribbon around her neck.

  “From Benjie,” Miss Lilly said. “Annie will look after her when you’re at school – that’s if you want to keep her?”

  I picked her up, tears in my eyes.

  “Oh yes! Of course I want to keep her – she’s adorable! I love her. Hello, little one. What big ears you have, you look like Batfink.”

  She put a paw on my chin and said, Meow.

  Deep inside me, a very small bubble of real happiness popped into existence.

  “Shall we take her upstairs and you can try on the jeans?” Miss Lilly suggested. “Maybe we can order a few other things together?”

  I carried Batfink, her warm little body nestled up close. My legs were still heavy with tiredness, but somehow I didn’t feel like collapsing when I got to the top of the stairs.

  “We need to sort your schedule out for the next few days,” Miss Lilly said. “I want Giles to go over some social-media stuff with you and you need to see Edna and Vera every day, don’t you think? Do you want them to come here?”

  I wanted to see Benjie too so I said, “It’ll be good exercise to walk to the clinic.”

  “That’s true. Okay. I’ll get Annie to walk with you.”

  “I could go by myself.”

  “I know. I’d just feel happier if someone was looking after you.”

  I was too distracted by Batfink chewing my hair to argue.

  I took my new kitten into the wardrobe with me while I tried on the jeans. She pounced on the old ones as I took them off and then clung to the new ones as I put them on. I was giggling when I came out and for a stupid moment, I forgot where I was. My heart twisted with sadness that it was Miss Lilly sitting on the bed and not my mum smiling at me. And then I felt so guilty, because she’d literally done everything she could to make me feel at home.

  I took a deep breath and said, “Do they look okay?”

  “They look great.”

  “Is this what people wear?”

  Batfink climbed onto my shoulder. I plucked her down, into my arms.

  “Anything goes these days, Laura, honestly – if you like them, keep them.”

  “Sure?”

  She nodded.

  I said, “Thank you. For this. For everything.”

  “It’s entirely my pleasure – shall we get a few more things? One pair of jeans isn’t going to get you very far.”

  I started up my slate and Miss Lilly laughed when she saw what I’d done to Notitia.

  “I see I’ve been usurped already.”

  I blushed and she laughed again, putting a hand on my arm. “I’m teasing you, Laura! I’m really pleased to see you making things your own.”

  I got Notitia-John to show us some Topshop tops. There were a lot of T-shirts with logos on. One of them was white with Choose Ice in big black letters. It was very familiar.

  I said, “Is that copied from my Choose Life T-shirt? Are they making fun of me?”

  “Of course they aren’t! People love you, Laura; they love your story. It’s an iconic eighties design, so not hard to guess you had one. You’ve started a bit of an eighties trend. They’re celebrating you. Let me show you something. Notitia, open Laura Henley’s Instagram.”

  Notitia loaded a screen full of pictures of me. I’d never seen most of them. There were pictures of me with the old-lady walking frame, grim determination on my face. Pictures of Mariya teasing my hair into ringlets. There was even a picture of me asleep in my bed.

  “What is this?” I said.

  “I hope you don’t mind but I asked Giles to create an official account for you. There were so many fake ones, I felt we needed to give a truer picture of your life.”

  “But what is it? Where did the pictures come from?”

  “Giles took them remotely – we didn’t want you to feel self-conscious. Instagram is just a place where you can post photographs and interact with your fans.”

  Giles took them? In secret? I felt stripped bare. It was a horrible feeling. Horrible. And then I realized what else she’d said.

  “Fans? What fans?”

  I poked at a picture of me at the press conference.

  The caption said:

  My first press conference, I was super-nervous but #MissLilly took care of me #sleepingbeauty #girlofice #girlfromthepast #vintagefashion #laurahenley

  “But I didn’t write that.”

  Miss Lilly laughed. “Most celebrities have help with their Insta accounts.”

  I squirmed inside. “Sorry, I’m not sure I understand – other people can see this?”

  She said, “Anyone who likes your page – it’s public. If it really bothers you, we can close it, but people will just pretend they’re you and you’ll have no control over what they post. If you like, you can take over the account – Giles will show you what to do and he can vet your posts until you get the hang of it. What I wanted you to see were the comments.”

  I tried to shrug off my discomfort. Miss Lilly obviously felt like Instagram was something you just had to have and she knew a whole lot more about this century than I did.

  I read the comments as Batfink leaped about my bed, jumping on imaginary mice. There were hundreds of messages:

  You’re so brave!

  Good luck, Laura! Welcome to the 21st century!

  We love you, Laura!

  I’m glad I lived to see this day! I’ve watched your story since the day you were frozen!!!

  It was lovely to read them – my heart swelled with warmth. And then I read:

  What are those teeth? Didn’t you have toothpaste in the 20th century?

  I felt like someone had slapped me.

  Miss Lilly pulled the slate away from me and said, “You see? People are excited to have you back.”

  “They said I have horrible teeth.”

  “One person, Laura – a troll. Everybody else said lovely things. I’ll get that comment removed.”

  “A troll?”

  “Not an actual under-the-bridge troll. A bored idiot being mean for the sake of it. Take no notice.”

  I knew it shouldn’t matter what a stranger said. But it did.

  “Seriously, Laura, internet trolls are just trying to get attention. Ignore it. There is nothing wrong with your teeth. You know, I think we should take a trip out, to Brighton maybe? We could do a bit of old-fashioned shopping. It’s probably a good idea, before you go to school, to spread your wings a little. Why don’t we go tomorrow? I’ll clear my sc
hedule for the afternoon.”

  I scooped up Batfink and held her close. I had mixed feelings about facing the world beyond the clinic and this apartment, but I knew I had to do it. I couldn’t put it off for ever.

  I nodded.

  I didn’t sleep much that night. Batfink wanted to sleep under the covers with me. Between nightmares of squashing her and of arriving at school with everyone pointing and laughing at my teeth, I felt pretty horrendous the next morning. Batfink woke me up by patting my cheek and meowing in my face until I got up.

  “You’re as bad as Pickle Cat-Chops,” I said, surprised to find the memory of our old cat didn’t come with a bolt of hurt.

  I put on my new black jeans with my actual, genuine, original-article Choose Life T-shirt. My legs were aching from all the walking I’d done the day before, but I knew from cross-country that the more I did, the stronger I’d get.

  Batfink didn’t want to be carried, preferring to tumble down the stairs and give me a minor heart attack.

  There was a cat litter tray in the kitchen and by the time I caught up with her, she was already using it.

  “Clever Batfink.”

  I rooted around in the cupboards to see if there was any cat food. Of course there was. No supermarket-own brand for my little princess either – there was some posh-looking stuff called Organicat next to a little stack of china bowls. Someone – Annie, I guess – had put a bowl of water down. Batfink threw cat litter all over the floor in a useless attempt to cover up her wee and then skidded over to me, demanding food.

  While she was eating, I looked about for a broom to clear up her mess. One wall was decorated with large poppies. I trailed my hand over it and found a crack down the centre. I stood back and tried to work out if it was a cupboard. I spotted a small black button in the middle of one of the poppies. I pushed it and a pair of doors slid open. It was a lift. I stepped inside. There was a button to go up and two buttons to go down.

  I was tempted to go down and see if there really was a bank vault for a small country down there but Batfink came hurtling in after me, followed by a small, round whirring thing that was skidding across the floor, picking up the cat litter. A robot vacuum cleaner! Batfink did not approve – she climbed up my trouser leg, her little claws digging into my skin as she scrabbled to escape. I squealed as she hit bare skin and carried on climbing, tearing a little ragged trail up my arm. I put her on my shoulder and sucked at the bloody scratch on my wrist.

  But when I looked at it, there was nothing there. No mark at all. I had definitely sucked off blood – there was no way she hadn’t torn my skin. There’d been no magic cream, no bandage.

  A cut on my arm had healed itself in less than twenty seconds. Just like that.

  Miss Lilly had already gone to work, and Annie wasn’t exactly approachable, so I didn’t mention my miraculously unscratched arm to anyone and then it was time to go to physio. I didn’t want to leave Batfink, but Annie said she wasn’t allowed in the “clinical environment” so we shut her in the kitchen. I made Annie turn off the vacuum thing so it didn’t scare her again.

  We marched across to the clinic so quickly, I was almost running to keep up with Annie. The team were all waiting for me. I gave Benjie the biggest hug.

  “Thank you so much. I adore my kitten.”

  Benjie said, “She’s got an excellent pedigree. Her name is Sasha Spectacular of Saxon Princess.”

  “Not any more, it isn’t. It’s Batfink.”

  I nearly said something about the weird non-scratch when Benjie took my blood, but I really didn’t want to be put through any more tests. It wasn’t like it was a problem and really, I wanted to stop all the monitoring so I could start feeling normal again, not get them to do more. I saw Edna and Vera, who were both pretty happy with my progress, and then Mariya appeared, snapping a pair of tweezers.

  “Want to tame those eyebrows, Laura?”

  If I’d known waxing and tweezing my eyebrows was going to leave me with two red, puffy slugs over my eyes, I’d have said no. I mean they looked neater. Neater but more like slugs and REALLY, REALLY sore. As I gazed in the mirror, the puffiness began to disappear. Was that the same healing thing that had happened to my arm? I touched one of my brows.

  “Don’t rub them, Laura! They’ll get infected. Here, take the tweezers and pull out any stragglers as they come through.”

  I took the tweezers and mumbled my thanks. I didn’t feel very grateful, to be honest – I felt like she’d just punched me in the face a few times.

  “Or come back and I’ll do them again.”

  I said, “Oh look, Annie’s waiting for me, I’d better go.”

  As I hurried to keep up with Annie’s super-fast walking down the corridor, I nearly collided with someone coming through a side door. He was in a white bathrobe with a towel wrapped around his head and he was drop-dead gorgeous. Chiselled cheeks, strong jaw, brown skin, brown eyes.

  “OMG!” he said. “You’re Laura Henley, Ice Princess. We have got to have a selfie, my followers are going to love this.”

  He put his arm around me and held up a tiny slate.

  Annie turned around and the look of horror on her face properly scared me. I wriggled free of his arm just as I caught Miss Lilly’s scent, and she came striding towards us.

  “What is going on here?”

  No one said anything. It was like we’d all been caught doing something we shouldn’t have.

  “I think you may have taken a wrong turn, Mr Savage,” Miss Lilly said. “Perhaps you could delete that image and return to the cosmetic wing? Annie, please see Central Control and find out why the door lock sequence I requested has been overridden. Thank you so much.”

  Miss Lilly put a hand in the small of my back and steered me down the corridor.

  “I am so sorry, Laura. He’s a valued client but…well, that is exactly why I didn’t want you wandering around the clinic on your own.”

  She didn’t say anything else but it was obvious she was furious. I wondered why she was so mad about it. Was he press? Had he broken her deal with them? Was that why?

  Once we got back to the apartment, her mood changed completely. She seemed as excited as I was about going to Brighton. We headed out straight after lunch.

  The sun felt delicious on my skin but I was disappointed with the car. I thought it might look a bit space-age, or at least a bit Back to the Future, but it looked like a normalish white car. It was parked in front of a wall of dark glass with a sign that said Caution, parking plate and had a zigzag of death running through it, like you get at an electric power station.

  “Solar,” Miss Lilly told me. “It’s wirelessly charging from the sun. One of the few benefits of climate change.”

  I nodded. Yet again only half understanding what she’d said.

  A burly guard was standing by. He didn’t look happy when Miss Lilly told him she didn’t need him to come with us.

  “I would like to spend some time with Laura alone. I am perfectly capable of deciding the parameters of my own safety.”

  I got in the car and as soon as my bum hit the seat the car said, “Fasten your seat belt.”

  I did as I was told.

  Miss Lilly said, “BN1 1EA.”

  “Thank you, Miss Lilly. Traffic is moderate. Journey time is approximately forty-seven minutes.”

  A map appeared on the dashboard and I watched a blue line snake across it, tracing a route. Miss Lilly smiled at me. I was just adjusting to the fact that she’d had a little conversation with her car, when it backed out of its space BY ITSELF.

  I looked back in a panic, sure we were going to hit something.

  Miss Lilly put a hand on my arm. “It’s fine. This car has hundreds of sensors – it’s safer than having a human in charge.”

  I gripped the seat, unconvinced. Not only was it driving itself and following its own map, it was also completely silent. Well, I say silent – there was no engine noise but it was surprisingly chatty, for a car.

&n
bsp; The car manoeuvred until it faced the gateway and said, “Estimated arrival time is 2.35 p.m. Would you like me to continue driving?”

  Miss Lilly said, “Yes.”

  “You are kidding me? No way. You can’t, not seriously?”

  Miss Lilly shook her head, clearly amused. I gripped my seat even harder as the car accelerated away.

  “It’s not funny.”

  “It is a bit funny,” Miss Lilly said. “Your face is a picture. Trust me, Laura, it’s completely safe.”

  I relaxed a bit, eventually. There was a lovely, calming smell in the car – sort of cakey with vanilla.

  “So what have you decided about school?” Miss Lilly said. “Do you think you’d like to go to Whitman’s?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Do I have to?”

  “No, I told you, if you want to go back to your old school, we can arrange it, but I think you’ll like Whitman’s. I loved it when I was there.”

  “I don’t know anything about boarding schools. Is it strange, being away from home?”

  Her face froze for a moment. “Of course, but my parents were very busy. My father established this clinic, it took up a lot of his time.”

  “What about your mum? Was she involved?”

  “What a lot of questions.”

  I felt like I’d overstepped an invisible mark. “Sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “Actually,” Miss Lilly interrupted, “it’s quite nice not to talk about business for a change. What can I tell you? I suppose Mother was my father’s muse – a lot of the therapies he developed were with her in mind. Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal to preserve his wife in death; my father wanted to preserve my mother in life. The cryogenic programme was all about her, really.”

  “What was she like?”

  “She felt…overlooked. She was easily as clever as my father, but her beauty was always seen as more important than her brain. The aromatherapy content of our products was all developed by her – some really very complex chemistry – but while Father was alive, none of it was attributed to Mother. He called the brand Dr Crisp’s Scent Therapy. Isn’t it awful? I tried for Scentsation, but he wouldn’t even give on that.”