‘Of course not. But when society is suffering from a disease, it is my job to diagnose what’s wrong with this city and to seek a cure. My policy was simply to take a more proactive role in helping troubled children receive medical help. Prevention rather than punishment. It was a visionary policy that to the dismay of my detractors was an immediate success.’
‘At that point, before the current difficulties, there was some talk of you as a rival to the party leader. There were whispers of you leaving the mayor’s office to stand for prime minister. Was there any truth in that?’
The mayor lets out a short cackle, which is probably intended to sound self-deprecating, but the effect doesn’t quite come off. ‘The . . . er . . . the prime minister has always had my full backing.’
‘But you blame him for the current situation.’
‘It’s not a question of blame. The economic climate is a challenging one, and cuts had to be made. It’s true that I urged him not to withdraw funding for the Concentr8 programme, and we had very robust debates on this matter, but . . . I suppose I simply . . . without wanting to give any impression of a split within the party… I feel it’s important for Londoners to know that events on the streets today are not a result of the introduction of Concentr8. It’s the withdrawal of Concentr8 that has led to the current crisis, and I can’t pretend this is a cut that ever had my approval.’
‘So you do blame the prime minister.’
‘Of course not. At times like this, difficult choices have to be made.’
‘Do you have any comment on the rumours of an abduction from outside your office?’
‘I never comment on rumours. Police are examining some CCTV footage, and there will be an announcement if the situation evolves.’
‘One last question . . .’
‘Do you really have everything you need? I thought you wanted the man behind the mask.’
‘Your PA said I was only allowed ten minutes.’
‘Did he?’
‘Apparently you have a meeting with some kind of emergency task force.’
‘I suppose I do.’
‘I just wanted to ask if you have any message for the rioters.’
‘Just to . . . well, to stop it. At once. Enough is enough. Things have got out of hand and they need to know they will be punished. The rule of law will prevail. We will give no quarter to unbridled thuggery.’
‘And is there a question of dependency? Some people are suggesting that the removal of Concentr8 might be causing withdrawal symptoms en masse. Could this be a factor in the riots?’
‘There is no question of Concentr8 being an addictive substance. Absolutely not. You’ll have to ask Professor Pyle about this. He’s the doctor. Rigorous procedures are in place for testing everything that is prescribed in this country. Concentr8 is 100 per cent safe.’
‘Would you give it to your children?’
‘My children are in rude health. Literally. Thank you for your time. It’s been a pleasure.’
The mayor stands, shakes my hand briskly, strides to his desk, and stares at his computer screen with a now-I-want-it-to-look-as-if-I-am-hard-at-work expression settling over his face.
The interview is over. I get the feeling I haven’t made it on to Hugo Nelson’s Christmas card list.
For one physician it was ‘fascinating and exciting to watch a child who awakes mean and irritable. Within 15 to 30 minutes after taking methylphenidate [Ritalin] he becomes calm and cooperative and is able to sustain concentration for hours.’
Matthew Smith, Hyperactive: The Controversial History of ADHD
FEMI
It’s well strong, that White Ace. Next morning my head’s exploding, that’s if it is morning. Don’t feel like it, cause it’s already proper hot – sun slanting in, pushing grey-orange rays through the high windows so dirty they ain’t hardly windows at all.
It’s the first look I’ve got of where we ended up. Can’t even tell if it’s a factory or a warehouse or what. Bigger than a football pitch with racks along one whole wall, mostly empty except for a few car parts and tools. Massive heap of old worn tyres in the corner, half toppled over like spilled guts. Grey machines along one wall, big old rusty things for doing I don’t know what, and more tools covered in greasy dust almost like fur. There’s struts and pipes and cables and wires all across the ceiling, probably just like any other building, except in a place like this you don’t bother to hide them. Floor’s concrete, all smooth and polished and warm if you rub through the dirt. Crunches underfoot though, with every kind of filth you can think of. Don’t know why, but lots of feathers. Grey ones.
Smells like you’d expect. Dust and oil and maybe some animal rotting somewhere what we ain’t found yet. There’s something mouldy sort of musty you can taste in the back of your mouth, which is weird with everything so hot and dry and baked.
The others they’s all asleep when I wake – Blaze and Karen up in the office, Troy and Lee down with me on boxes. When I look over I see Troy’s dead still, but his eyes are open. There’s something about Troy makes you wonder if he ever sleeps, he just ain’t the kind of person you can imagine switched off. Dad told me once they used to take a canary in a cage down into coal mines so if there was bad air the canary would snuff it and the miners would know they had to get out. That’s Troy. He’s our canary. Small and always worried and if anything bad happens you always reckon it’ll be Troy that takes the hit.
There ain’t no sound from where the guy’s tied up, but I swear I can feel waves of him coming out of that room. I mean what if he’s dead? It’s stupid but he could be. Heart attack or something, I mean he looked on the verge, he really did.
Can’t think of nothing to say to Troy. That’s the stupid thing. I want to know if he’s part of the plan. If he knew what was going to happen. Or if he can help me out. I mean maybe we could just run for it, cause I swear it ain’t just the White Ace that’s made my skull buzz and scream like this. Sick, I just feel sick in my head and my stomach and my bones and every part of me, cause I know I got in too deep, into something that ain’t part of my world.
Troy? I say.
He turns and looks at me but don’t say nothing.
You OK? I ask.
He shrugs. What kind of answer’s that? I mean this is the weirdest thing that’s ever happened and he’s acting like it’s normal! But him and Blaze, they’re almost psychic. Whatever you say to Troy you might as well say it straight to Blaze, cause there ain’t no gap between them.
I lean in and whisper. Don’t know why. I mean it’s only Lee there, and he’s asleep and even when he’s awake it ain’t like that adds much to the number of working brain cells.
You into this? I say.
Troy licks his lips. I can see he’s stressing over his answer cause he’d never say nothing against Blaze, but I can feel that he knows this is too heavy.
Dunno he says.
Didn’t hear him coming or nothing, don’t know how he does it, but I turn and do this massive flinch cause suddenly Blaze is right there standing over us, wearing no top, and he’s well ripped and he’s half smiling down at me like he knows what I just said. Knows it so well he don’t even need to ask.
All right blud? he asks but not even looking at me. Just stepping past and getting a box of what’s left of the chips. Tips on more ketchup and eats them cold.
My heart’s pumping and pumping, it’s like I can feel each pulse pushing out at my temples doof doof doof, cause I know what I want to say but I’m scared. Staying here and being part of this is suicide, total suicide, so however hard it is to face down Blaze it’s worse to just play along and do nothing and wait for the feds. So eventually I force it out, trying to say it all casual, but it don’t come out like that cause my voice is thin and dry and you can hear everything I’m thinking in just the way the words sound.
Might go home I say.
Blaze stops chewing. Looks at me. Sucks a bit of stuck chip from behind his front teeth. Chews some more. Swallows
. Sniffs.
I don’t reckon that’s a good idea he says.
My Mum. She’ll be losing it. Don’t want to, but I got to.
Lee’s awake now, looking from me to Blaze and back again cause even he can feel the tension, even he knows something’s up.
Blaze shakes his head. Don’t got to do nothing. It’s your life.
I shrug. Sorry man.
Still ain’t walking away though. He’s got me pinned down with his eyes. Well I ain’t going to stop you, but if you go off then how do I know you won’t rat us out?
I wouldn’t do that! You crazy!? I stand up but my legs don’t feel right.
I’m just saying. You should stay. I reckon you’d be safer here.
It’s that word safer that gets me. It’s all he needs to say. I got no idea how he’d do what he’s saying he’d do, or even exactly what it is, but there ain’t no doubt that’s a threat. He puts a hand on my shoulder and pushes me down into a chair.
Have these he says, and gives me the rest of the chips. Only the small ones left.
There’s a bang from up high – a door slamming. It’s Karen coming out of the office. She don’t look down, does this big stretch, and she’s in knickers and a vest top and me and Lee and Troy and Blaze we all look up at her, totally silent just frozen. All of us thinking the same thing except maybe Blaze, cause for him it don’t take no imagination.
It’s only cause of the silence while we look up at Karen that we hear the noise. Tiny it is. Like a sob. Maybe a gasp. Coming from the guy in the next room.
Anyone fed him? says Blaze.
As American politicians, educators and scientists began analysing why they were falling behind the Soviets, they came to identify and subsequently demonise the behaviours seen to interfere with high educational achievement . . . A new educational profession, school counsellors, worked with teachers to identify hyperactive children who were struggling academically, label their deficiencies and refer them to physicians for diagnosis and treatment. Through this function, counsellors served as the lynchpin between the educational and medical spheres in the diagnosing of hyperactivity, ensuring that what was initially an educational problem became a medical issue as well.
Matthew Smith, Hyperactive: The Controversial History of ADHD
THE HOSTAGE
The sun is coming through a high pane of eight small, dirty windows, one of which is broken, producing seven dull columns and one luminous shaft of sunlight. Dust motes rise casually through the glare in an endless upward flow. At the brightest point they glitter and twinkle. This is the only movement in the room, apart from the steady but imperceptible creep of the sunbeam, which since dawn has moved halfway from the wall to the radiator where I’m tied. In the same time again it will spear down directly on to my head, like the annunciation, except not.
I sometimes hear trains: the clickety-clack of long InterCitys, not the rumble and thump of a Tube line. I’m probably somewhere near the tracks out of Liverpool Street, but that doesn’t tell me much. I can’t remember the last time I didn’t know where I was. It’s like a form of sensory deprivation, to have no idea of your own location. But that’s hardly my biggest anxiety.
I don’t know how I got through the night. Just making it to the first glimmer of sunrise feels like the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Not that I actually did anything, but never before have I understood that simply waiting could be so arduous – every hour like the last mile of a marathon.
There isn’t enough slack in the cord to lie down. I tried to cut through it by rubbing against the side of the radiator, but all I achieved was removing a layer of skin. The pain in my wrists comes and goes. I keep checking my fingers, worrying that they’re swelling up, losing circulation. They tingle and feel puffy, taut, sausagey, but I don’t know what that means. My arms, legs and back take turns competing in the pain league. Shifts in posture succeed only in shuffling the pack of aches.
I feel curiously detached from gnawing hunger pangs that seem both intense and distant.
Thirst is stronger. My raw and parched throat is impossible to ignore.
And like a pounding mental heartbeat thumping again and again at the inside of my skull, two thoughts beat out an incessant rhythm.
What are they going to do to me?
What do they want?
What are they going to do to me?
What do they want?
What are they going to do to me?
What do they want?
The cold, leaden gaze of the kid with the cornrows, the one in charge, has branded itself into my brain. I am at the mercy of a boy who feels no fear, who has no conscience. He can do anything he likes to me.
I feel his arm around my neck again, hard as steel cable – the sensation absolutely vivid – then, as if zapped by a cattle prod, my body jolts awake.
I don’t know how many times I’ve been through this cycle, or for how long I drift off. All I know is that sickening jab as I crash into alertness, flipping from a dream of strangulation into a reality that is almost as hideous.
I sense a vibration in my throat, a moan that I don’t even choose to utter, and barely hear.
I watch the dust motes floating upward.
I should try to imagine myself as one of those weightless fragments of dirt.
Somewhere else in the room, in darkness, the dust must fall back to earth. It must circuit round and round.
I have to detach myself from my body. I have to stop thinking.
I am a speck of dust.
This pain is not mine.
That pain is not mine, those wrists are not mine, those fingers are not mine.
I am a speck of dust.
I rise. I sparkle for a moment. I fall.
There is a sharp squeak as the door scrapes open. I sit up straight, like a schoolboy wanting to look diligent at the arrival of a teacher.
It’s the kid in a green T-shirt, the one who pointed out the CCTV cameras and stopped the other one stabbing me. He’s the one I’m least afraid of.
I tell myself to be sane, to be normal, to haul my brain back from its long, strange plummet. I am not a speck of dust. I am a man tied to radiator. I am Anthony Paxton. I work in the housing department at the mayor’s office. I live in a flatshare near Finsbury Park. My room is still there, but at this moment is vacant, because I have been kidnapped. By kids.
He puts a cardboard tray of chicken and chips in front of me and unties one hand. It’s the first food I’ve had since yesterday’s lunch. The chips are decent, but the chicken is barely even chicken: cold, deep fried, leathery grey, in batter that tastes like a cross between grilled cheddar and orangeade.
I’m so hungry I wolf down the whole lot and gnaw the last strands of meat off the bone, smearing my cheeks with grease in the process. He stands there, watching me eat, as if he’s surprised that I’m hungry, as if he’s forgotten, until now, that I’m a human being.
‘Can I have a drink?’ I say. My tongue feels sluggish, fat, unfamiliar.
He takes a moment to respond. I sense that he doesn’t want to help me, doesn’t want to fetch and carry things for me like a servant, but that he also doesn’t want to be responsible for killing me.
He walks out with no indication of whether or not he’s going to return, but after a while he does, carrying a large plastic bottle, full, wet on the outside as if it’s just been filled at a tap. I gulp heavily from the slightly sweet, alcohol-fragranced water. The liquid seems to tip not just into my stomach, but to seep instantly everywhere, moistening the whole of my parched body.
When I finish, and look up at him, his eyes flit away.
‘What’s your name?’ I say.
I want him to talk, want him to stay. I’ve been alone for so long I feel like I need to speak to someone, hear another voice, just to check that I haven’t lost my mind.
‘I don’t got a name,’ he says, still not looking at me.
‘So what shall I call you?’
He’s walking away alre
ady but he stops, turns and looks down at me. He shrugs. ‘Whatever you like,’ he says.
‘Whatever You Like? Can we make it Whatever for short?’
Something is bulging, almost bursting inside me, and for a second I feel as if I might cry, as if this boy turning away and leaving me alone again is going to trigger some kind of mental collapse, but he smiles and the pressure in my chest begins to recede. Not a whole smile, not even really half a smile, but something. It isn’t a scowl, anyway. For a flicker of an instant, his gaze meets mine; his restless, sad grey eyes look into mine. I’ve made contact, human to human. And it strikes me that though I email America every day, though I often phone France, read tweets from Canada and Australia and India, though I watch films and connect with websites from everywhere on the planet, I have never before really looked into the eyes of a kid like this.
Children on Ritalin are said to become less fidgety in class and to show an improvement in ‘behaviour which is perceived by teachers as disruptive and socially inappropriate’. No wonder that ADHD soon began to be diagnosed on the basis of school-teachers’ reports and was observed to show a peculiar expression pattern, often remitting at weekends and in school holidays . . . The clear implication is that, whatever it does for the child, Ritalin makes life more comfortable for harassed teachers and parents.
Steven Rose, The 21st Century Brain
TROY
Can we make it Whatever for short? he says.
I never spoke to someone like him before – someone posh – except for maybe social workers but they ain’t proper posh like this guy. It’s kind of weird that even now tied up he’s trying to be funny but it’s obvious why. He wants me on his side. Chat me up talk me round – silver tongue – thick kid – twist me round his finger – that’s what he’s thinking. I should smack him one for trying it on but he’s just a guy tied up – I can see he’s bricking it – and I can see the effort he’s making to mask the fear. Been there myself enough times – different situation same principle – working every muscle to act normal to stop someone wanting to hurt you. That’s what makes me feel sorry for him almost. Don’t know why it just does.
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