Thea recognized tortoise-Richard from the lecture – the man who had nodded off. There were big dark smudges under his eyes and he was so softly spoken that everyone had to lean in a little to hear him properly.
‘I wake up and I can’t move. I’m paralyzed, as if something is pinning me down and I’m petrified because then it feels like I’m choking.’
His hand went to his neck.
‘And I’m trying to move and I’m trying to breathe and it all just gets worse and worse. It’s over in a few minutes but I can do that a couple of times a night. Lucky I have no one to wake up, eh?’
He lowered his voice even further to a sad little whisper. ‘I’m too scared to go to sleep.’
His head drooped.
There was a pause and Harriet looked up from her tablet. ‘Right! Lovely!’ she said and Thea got the distinct impression that she hadn’t been listening. ‘Now, next. Please think of a dream or nightmare that has stuck in your head and share it with your partner.’
If she’d had nightmares, which she didn’t, nor dreams either really – but if she did, Thea would have had nightmares about the monastery. The rust staining the tower wall, spires like needle teeth and the blank dark windows where the blackness inside the old place came seeping out …
If she had nightmares, she would have had them about the pale blob of a face, only half-glimpsed.
‘I was in a cuckoo clock,’ Rosie said in a soft voice. ‘It must have come from my grandparents, right, because they had this cuckoo clock I was absolutely fascinated with as a child. Huge old thing. Anyway. I’m in the cuckoo clock having scones and tea with the cuckoo and it’s great. It’s all warm and cosy and the cuckoo is telling me how much she loves her job. She’s wearing a shawl and she’s got little glasses perched on her beak, even though her eyes are totally on the side of her head, right, so they’d be useless. Every so often she gets up and shoots out of the door to call the time, but she always comes back and we carry on having tea. I loved it in that cuckoo clock and I was really sad when I woke up.’
‘Have you still got the clock?’ Thea asked.
‘Nah. I was too little when they died. My mother sold all their stuff, used up the money. She’s a peach, my mum.’ Rosie’s smile didn’t quite convince. ‘Was. She was …’ She sniffed.
Thea started to say something but was interrupted by Ethan marching back into the main hall holding his mobile phone aloft as if it was lighting his way.
‘This is bollocks!’ He tossed the phone onto the little table they were clustered around and crossed his arms, those much-appreciated-by-Rosie biceps bulging. ‘We should be able to use our phones, like normal people. I didn’t sign up for this!’
Eye contact was carefully avoided.
Harriet massaged the bridge of her nose for a moment and clenched her jaw before going over to him, stilettos stabbing the floor. She whispered something to him that the rest of them couldn’t hear.
‘It’s not bloody good enough!’ He continued in the same loud tone. ‘You’re a bunch of tech geniuses who don’t approve of Wi-Fi?’
There were a few sniggers. Harriet sighed and turned to them all.
‘Respectfully – yes, you did sign up for this. No one reads the small print, do they? And you can use a phone; there are plenty provided, they’re just not yours.’ Harriet paused and smiled kindly at the group. ‘And a bit of a tech detox doesn’t seem to have done anyone any harm. Now, are there any other issues people want to raise, or may we proceed?’
To her own surprise as much as Harriet’s, Thea raised her hand.
Chapter 13
She didn’t know why she’d done it.
Harriet had asked and up had gone her hand, seemingly of its own accord.
She blamed the extra sleep.
They were now sat on the green. Nearby, the monastery gift shop was meant to look like a picturesque cottage with its peaked red-tiled hat. But there was nothing picturesque about it. Its wooden front door, warped by damp, bowed out slightly as if the whole place was a pus-filled spot, holding its wrongness inside, the outside skin stretched so tight it could pop and ooze at any moment.
It wasn’t forbidden to spend their lunch and breaktimes outside, but it was late October and, invariably, Rosie and Thea found themselves alone on blanket-covered wet grass even though the weather wasn’t too cold.
Normally, in her sleepless world, the hours after lunch were a dirty water stain on the day: grey, shapeless, ever spreading. Today, however, Thea gazed around her with a new clarity: eyesight sharp, brain sharper.
‘What’s the big deal about outdoor shoes anyway?’ Rosie asked.
How could Thea explain it to Rosie? That sometimes, when she was in the Centre, she felt that the walls would suck her in, the glossy cream closing over her completely, sealing over her mouth when she tried to scream?
The face in the monastery window.
‘I just like getting some fresh air,’ was all she could articulate. She’d thought about telling Rosie what she’d seen but, however she played it in her mind, it just sounded silly. No one was there. A few carefully worded questions to Rory one day had confirmed that the monastery was abandoned and had been since the last monk had shuffled out in the 1980s.
‘Yep, well, it is certainly fresh today.’ Rosie pulled another blanket tighter across her shoulders. The sky didn’t look fresh at all; it looked grimy, like over-handled dough. ‘I’ll come though, if you want to go for a walk. Could use the exercise.’
‘Ladies.’ Rory sat down next to them.
He rustled the bag invitingly.
‘What is it today?’ Rosie sat up and made a swipe for it.
She was too slow and Rory hid it behind his back.
‘Today, my fellow connoisseurs’ – there was more rustling as he fumbled with the bag behind him – ‘we have a veritable feast, a delight … a delectation … of cocoa and milky goodness!’
With a flourish he produced a bunch of chocolate bars and laid them reverently on the grass, fanning them out like cards.
Rosie pounced on one and tore the wrapper off immediately.
‘God, I love you, Rory Thirwood,’ she said, her mouth full of chocolate bar. ‘Seriously, I will have your babies. My stash ran out a week ago. Bloody inhuman, not letting us have chocolate.’
‘I aim to please,’ he said modestly, unpacking a sandwich and an apple for himself. ‘But I’m not in the mood for procreation right now, thanks all the same.’
Thea rolled her eyes and chose a chocolate bar.
‘So, I hear you’ve been making a name for yourself.’ Rory turned to Thea.
‘It’s just shoes! God! What is the big deal? Why do we have to wear these stupid slippers all the time anyway?’
‘I think in therapy you might want to consider “talking through” your problem with moccasins.’ Rory ducked as Thea threw his apple at him. ‘And your anger issues.’
Thea leant back on her elbows and stretched her legs out in front of her, wiggling her feet. She’d been awake for most of the previous night, the dark hours a staircase and her mind a small ball gathering speed down its stairs. Usually the stairs were unending, but again last night, the ball had finally come to rest. She had slept longer.
‘Bring on Phase Two,’ Rosie said, never one to let a silence linger. ‘I am done with my night terrors. I woke up so sweaty last night, I had to have a shower at one in the morning.’
‘What was the nightmare?’ Thea asked.
‘Rats. They were gnawing my toes off.’ She licked the wrapper clean and then flopped back onto the grass. ‘It’s going to work, right? The tech?’
Rory rubbed his apple on his trousers. He was wearing baggy cords and a T-shirt over a long-sleeved top. This time the T-shirt had a print of zombie mermaids eating sailors.
‘Well, there’s a lot of tech. And a lot of clever people doing a lot with that tech, so yeah, hopefully, it’ll work.’
Thea wasn’t listening. She was marvelling at how fas
t she could think, and how she didn’t feel like her joints were gummed up with sludge. There was so much space in her brain, now she wasn’t always obsessing about how tired she felt, or how she’d get through the day, or whether she’d had enough coffee to attempt driving. But there was another kind of space opening up too: it was picnic-blanket-sized and big enough to fit jokes and gossip and random chat that went nowhere. It was big enough for Rosie and Rory.
Thea clenched her fists. ‘Look. I think I saw something. Up at the monastery. I went for a walk up there when I first arrived and I saw … something at one of the windows.’ She picked up pace. ‘And I know it’s stupid but I can’t get it out of my head and I need proper outdoor shoes to get up there again and, no, I don’t believe in ghosts and, yes, I totally understand if you think I’m crazy—’
She gasped for breath. It was probably the most she’d said in one go since she’d arrived. Rory and Rosie stared at her.
‘Ghosts?’ Rosie said hopefully.
Someone cleared their throat behind them. ‘It was you, wasn’t it – you’re the one who asked for shoes?’
Thea twisted to see Ethan stood behind her, feet planted wide, arms crossed like a bouncer in a nightclub doorway. Rosie hurriedly smoothed her hair and swiped chocolate stains from her mouth.
‘Yes,’ Thea said. ‘I did.’ She hoped he hadn’t heard her rant about ghosts and faces in windows.
He nodded and frowned. ‘This phone thing …’
‘Chocolate?’ Rosie offered.
Ethan ignored her and stared off into the distance, as if the trees were doing something he disapproved of.
‘Sometimes you sniff the milk and it smells okay, but you know – despite the smell – that it’s about to turn,’ Ethan said, still staring.
Rory turned to get a better look at him. ‘Are you okay, mate? Look, there really isn’t anything to worry about. Studies show that smartphones—’
‘Thea!’ Harriet called to her as she teetered over the grass towards them, the wet earth sucking at her heels. ‘Thea, so this is where you are! Really? In this weather? You’ll catch a chill. Anyway … ‘She stopped at the small group of people and inspected the damage to her shoes. ‘Delores would like a little word with you.’
She began to wobble back to the Centre, calling behind her, ‘Come on then!’
Thea got up, clutching her blanket to her, feeling a bit light-headed. ‘Wait! Why—?’
But Harriet was too far away. Was this about the shoes? Was Thea about to be reprimanded by the headteacher for a stupid pair of stupid shoes? It seemed so ridiculous.
Ethan caught her eye and muttered softly, ‘Yep. You can’t smell it yet but, the milk’s about to go bad.’
Maybe it was some kind of prickle in her soul that made her look up, past the windows on the first few floors of the Sleep Centre, higher, to a window at the top of the Staff Bubble, where someone stood, probably watching over the green. To Thea though, it really seemed like she was watching her and her alone.
Delores.
Chapter 14
“Striking” was the perfect word to describe Delores; it had just the right edge of violence lingering in it. Beautiful, but also really fucking intimidating.
She was sitting on a low, deep, half-moon windowsill in an office at the very top of the Staff Bubble. It had high curved walls and a ceiling made completely of glass. Light flooded in: too much, too bright, weaponized. It slanted so as to miss Delores’s desk but fell squarely on the seat opposite, so any guest would have to squint and sweat uncomfortably through their meeting.
‘Thea Mackenzie.’
It wasn’t a question, so Thea didn’t reply. Despite her best efforts, her heart was thumping loudly and she felt as if she had done something wrong. She hadn’t done anything wrong. She’d asked for shoes, for God’s sake!
Rory had taken her in the lift in the middle of the building, the walkways to each floor radiating from it. He’d given her hand a squeeze before leaving her at the office door.
Delores continued to gaze down at the scene below her, whatever it was. From Thea’s angle all she could see was the dough-coloured sky.
‘How are you finding everything?’ Delores didn’t turn to look at her.
Thea couldn’t stop herself. ‘Is this about the shoes?’
‘Hmm?’
For the first time, Delores wrenched her eyes away from the window and swivelled a little to face Thea. She was wearing a dress the colour of newly sharpened knives.
‘The shoes? I asked for outdoor shoes …’
Delores cocked her head to one side. ‘Did you?’ She smiled a little. ‘You wish to explore?’
And there was the opportunity to tell Delores the truth, that she wanted to hunt for phantom faces in ruined monastery windows but the sunlight on her face was so bright and hot it melted the words in her throat.
‘There’s a lighthouse. Apparently. It’s why people used to come and visit the island. Boat-trippers, you know? I thought it might be … nice … to go and see it.’
‘Nice. Yes.’ Delores sounded as if she couldn’t agree, despite her words. ‘But no, this isn’t about the shoes. Though I’m sure they can be arranged.’
She moved from the windowsill to stand behind her desk. It was a huge monolith of concrete that reminded Thea uncomfortably of a sacrificial altar. With her long red hair and pale Celtic skin, Delores would have fitted the high priestess role perfectly.
‘What this is about, however, is you, Thea Mackenzie. You have shown some … interesting … results in your sleep data.’
‘I have?’
‘You were interesting from the start. It’s why we accepted you on the trial and why I fought to keep your place, even after we found out about your mother’s troublemaking past.’
‘She’s retired!’
‘No matter. She is a very small fish. You are the one who is important. You are … different to the others.’
‘Different?’
‘Yes. We haven’t even begun Phase Two and yet, here you are. We allow you an average of just under three hours of sleep per night. Three hours. Most people would eventually crash. You, however, haven’t. That is significant. Your skin and hair are healthier than before, you perform much better on the aptitude tests and you have become more sociable. You haven’t merely avoided crashing; you have thrived.’
Delores smoothed the concrete top of her desk. It was empty apart from a laptop and a sinuous twist of ornamental stone.
‘You have been disappointingly easy to fix.’
Thea almost felt ashamed, as if she’d been wasting everyone’s time.
‘If it was so easy, why did I feel so terrible all the time, y’know, before?’
‘Technically, you are not an insomniac at all. You are a night owl. You work to a different sleep pattern to most of the world. Given freedom, you would naturally fall asleep around’ – Delores glanced at her laptop – ‘seven in the morning and wake around two and a half to three hours later. The problem is not your sleep, it is that your sleep pattern does not fit into modern working life. Turning up on time for your nine-to-five becomes tricky.’
Delores paused and came around the side of the desk so she could sit on the edge and look at Thea, a small crease appearing between her eyebrows. ‘Just under three hours. Some people say they sleep only that amount, but in fact, get more without realizing it. However, you’re the real thing. You know, I’ve never actually met one of you.’
Suddenly Thea remembered the lecture. ‘The Sleepless Elite,’ she whispered.
People who could live happily on a tiny amount of sleep. The word “elite” suggested private clubs, cocktail parties and carpet so thick you could lose a shoe. Thea glanced at her feet. She’d be happy to lose the moccasins.
‘Well, that’s just a silly name. But, who knows?’ Delores crossed her legs. ‘Sleeping less is, as I said, fascinating, but what I want you to now consider is, well, not sleeping at all. Successfully. With the help of Morpheus
. You could be our white-crowned sparrow.’
Thea remembered the picture from the lecture: a speckled bird with a rather incongruous helmet of white and black that made it look as if it was about to go for a bike ride. She imagined it, its little chest heaving as it determinedly flew on, through the night, through sleep.
‘I could go insane.’
‘No. Morpheus could do it with no risk to you. Think of sleep as malleable, like plasticine, and Morpheus gently rolling and massaging it into the smallest ball it could be. It’s still plasticine, hmm? It’s just been squashed together. We would mould your sleep into the smallest ball possible – and you wouldn’t even notice.’
‘Until my brain began to ooze out of my ears.’
Delores sighed and uncrossed her legs. She placed her hands carefully together in a prayer position and tapped the two index fingers repeatedly.
‘You are the perfect candidate for this. In a usual test subject, we would have to try and squeeze seven or eight hours sleep but with you it would only be three. Three! Morpheus could get rid of three hours, I’m sure.’ She paused and stopped tapping her fingers. ‘Of course, all of this would come with a certain … remuneration.’
The pauses for effect were starting to annoy Thea. She wondered if Delores did this in real life, went into a café and said things like: ‘I’ll have the flat white, the bran muffin and a … [cue dramatic pause] … chocolate slice.’ Though, of course, she would never go into cafés. Coffee would magically appear for a woman like her.
‘How much money?’
‘Twenty thousand.’
Thea narrowed her eyes. She was hoping that, by narrowing them, Delores wouldn’t see her utter shock. Twenty thousand pounds! The warning light flashed around in her mind, illuminating corners where things like consequences lurked, but Thea was already too dazzled by that number.
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