“I should kiss her goodbye,” I said, but Coleman held my hand firmly on this side of the wall.
“It’s not allowed now, dear. You’re too late.” She gave me a tissue and a stilted hug.
I stared at Mum for a while. I wanted to smash through the glass and stroke her cheek, reach through and brush her hair because it wasn’t how she used to do it. The parting was all wrong. I wiped at the glass with my sleeve where it was misty but the moisture was on the other side. I didn’t want the glass to be dirty, which was stupid, because it’s not like she’d have noticed.
And then Coleman led me away.
I couldn’t face a church funeral. Mum wasn’t a believer and we have no other family. Coleman organized the cremation and then we scattered the ashes during a boat trip on the Thames. Surreptitiously of course. You’re not allowed to chuck dead people into the river or public spaces, whatever state they’re in.
I was a complete mess. Numb and broken.
Coleman sorted out my life, took over. My brain went into overdrive. It was a set of dominoes – each memory tumbled into another and another. I moved permanently into her house. Brett settled up our outstanding rent, brought the rest of my things, boxed up my mum’s, and paid for a storage unit. Her life in thirty cardboard boxes. I only kept the necklace with me, for sentimental reasons. A talisman. I touch the pearl now, pulling it from side to side along the chain.
Coleman put me on to the next stage of the Programme so we could work through the trauma together, which seemed to be incessantly reliving the accident. I was hyper at times, comatose at others. She gave me talking therapy, hypnosis, something to help me sleep; the whole box of tricks.
I didn’t scatter all of Mum into the Thames – I keep a handful in a box in my trunk. I go and get it now and then and pat the lid. When I go abroad, I’ll take her with me. She always wanted to go to New York.
15
When falsehood can look so like the truth…
Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
I went swimming last night. Forty lengths but it didn’t work as well as usual to relax me. I was still wound up tight like a spring when I finished. I had a nagging fear that someone might be watching me from the shadows outside. I used to revel in the solitude of the pool ‘after hours’ but found myself wishing Dan would appear again. An attentive bodyguard could be just what I need. If I can trust him. But we haven’t spoken since the incident in Mr Desai’s class and Keira’s probably launched an offensive by now to get her claws into him.
I pick up Principles of Memory. Coleman’s photo smiles out at me from the cover. I normally skip the dedication page in books – ‘To my sister Mary-Lou who’s always been there for me’, ‘For my own little pussy cat, Tibbles’ – that sort of schmaltzy nonsense. But Coleman’s book has:
‘For F.
Gone but not forgotten’
Like a gravestone inscription. Like my gravestone inscription. Nice.
I’m reading at a slower rate than usual, making sure I fully understand all she says. I can hear her plummy voice in my head as I read the words. There are disguised references to me throughout and plenty of chapters on her pet topic of treating post-traumatic stress disorder. She talks about preventing bad memories from embedding by using reconsolidation therapies, though she’s vague on the detail. There’s no mention of her unorthodox techniques. But there is a passing mention of personality change: ‘These techniques to limit the storage of disturbing memories are not without side effects and consequences in the personality and behaviour of the subject.’ Is that what she observed in me? Has she made me vengeful and mean and…?
I shudder as I recall Hanna. In our old room in A-Block, she’d sniffed at the dodgy diet drink she’d made up and wrinkled her pretty little nose. I didn’t stop her. I was glad her skin was getting spotty and her cheeks pinched. I was glad she was throwing up, becoming so withdrawn. I’d egged her on, played on her insecurities. And so she took a sip. And another.
I stare back down at Coleman’s book and read on. ‘Further, the need to employ such techniques as spatial displacement quickly may well be impractical in a military or emergency-service setting. The whole field requires extensive research which, given the need for a stressful or traumatic incident to occur, is difficult to reproduce in the laboratory setting.’ It certainly is. She must have thanked her lucky stars when Mum’s accident happened. A traumatized teenager to study, on a plate. I plough through the appendices of references too. The Programme isn’t mentioned by name at all in the entire book. A whole set of facts missing, an untold story. So that’s the missing jigsaw piece – literally erased from history.
I close the book and talk to her photo on the dust jacket. “No one outside the Programme knows about it, do they, Prof? It’s your dirty little secret. But I know. Is that why you’re looking for me? To make sure I stay quiet about it? And it’s not fair that you’re off publishing bestsellers and heading up a university department while I’m being scared by flyers and postcard messages.” I trace the outline of her face: the dark hair in a bob, the smug smile. I go round and round, my fingernails digging in deeper and deeper, scratching into the cover.
I was brought up in a home that was full of sweet little mottos on fridge magnets. Mum collected them from service stations and tat shops at touristy hellholes like Cheddar Gorge. ‘Don’t get mad, get even’, ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold’. You get the idea. The time has come for Coleman to know that I’m watching her. I need actual proof of what she did to me on the Programme so I’m not dismissed as a disturbed teenager with a score to settle when I spill the beans. I’m going to find out the full extent of what she’s hiding about the Programme. She should have let me be because now, one day soon, she’s going to pay.
*
I have a free period late afternoon and hurry out of biology, before anyone can ask me where I’m going. I sign out and grab my coat for the long walk down the drive to the bus stop. It’s a crisp, blue-sky day but the sun’s already starting to tip towards dusk. I know exactly what I want to buy. I can play at sending messages too.
I select a book at the bookshop in Ashburton and write an inscription. The perfect, thoughtful gift – apt, erudite and rather Victorian Gothic: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.
I sign it: To the Prof
Forever in my thoughts,
Your very own monster
The assistant gift wraps it for me – brown-paper parcel, tied up with string and a wax seal. I pay him extra to post it tomorrow when he’s up in London at a book fair. I know the delivery address. I lived there for months after all. “It’s a surprise for someone – a game we play,” I say. “I don’t want them to see a Devon postcode. That would ruin the fun.”
“I’m all for games,” he says. “What is life if not for playing?”
“Exactly so,” I say.
Game on.
16
Try the following memory exercise: Read each word once. Close the book and write down as many as you can remember:
beach
jumper
surfboard
watch
camera
smile
Work Your Memory
I hurry back down Ashburton High Street in the dark, not wanting to miss the last bus back to school. I feel lighter already for doing something back at Coleman. ‘Don’t get mad, get even’ really works. Mum’s fridge magnet told the truth. I’m even humming. If I hum loud enough maybe I’ll shut out all the memories of Coleman that are trying to gatecrash my good mood, memories of all the procedures and tests she put me through. The EEGs, the CT, MRI and PET scans. Testing, testing.
I hope Coleman gets a dose of sleepless nights and anxiety when she opens up her parcel, wondering where I am and whether I’m going to blow the whistle on how she really operates.
Out of the corner of my eye, I notice a vehicle slowing behind me. I look sideways at the reflection in the shop windows but I’m dazzled by the full-beam headlights. My hear
t rate quickens and I look for a shop to run into as it draws close.
Now I can see it properly. It’s orange and a Mini and a pile of crap. It’s Dan in Uja.
“You can get arrested for picking up girls like this,” I say. “It’s called kerb-crawling. And you a vicar’s son too.”
“Hop in quickly then before the cops arrive.” He pushes open the passenger door for me and I get in.
“Fancy seeing you here,” he says. “You’re no longer avoiding me, then?”
He doesn’t show any sign of driving off. It seems a heart to heart is the price to pay for the lift. “After you said I was a complete jerk, you mean,” I say.
“You said I was a complication.”
“Yeah, well, you’re a complication who’s offering me a lift home in the dark and cold,” I say. “Though I guess I’m still a jerk, which is worse.”
Dan laughs. “I may have overreacted at the time. And at least our first row is out of the way. Lucky I’m the forgiving type.”
“I’m not always good with how other people are feeling,” I say. But I note his comment about the first argument, as though we’re a couple, an actual boyfriend-girlfriend. He seems sincere, but… The car’s slowly misted up with our breath and I wipe at the windscreen with his car cloth. “We’re on a double yellow. You’d better move.”
He reaches over and kisses me. Slowly. “What do you think I’m feeling now?” He kisses me again.
It’s as physical as you can get with two people wearing seat belts strapped in separate seats. I’m melting. I’ve missed him. I’ve missed feeling like this, a surge of emotions taking me over, stopping my brain from whirling through the past. He helps me live in the present. Should I give us a go? Prove Maya wrong?
“See, it’s not so hard to work me out.” He makes to kiss me again, his hand travelling up my leg, but I’m worried about the woman who’s stopped in front of the car. I swear she’s peering in at us.
“We’re in a car with windows by a street lamp. We’re not invisible.”
“You win, Little Miss Prudish.” Dan puts the car into gear and flicks the indicators. “I’m glad we sorted things out,” he says as he pulls away.
“I’m not one of those girls who likes PDAs all the time – especially at college,” I say. “I don’t want to be gossiped about.”
“Understood. I won’t ask you in public to play Twister again,” he says. “Or Frustration. My mistake.”
“I can’t stand it when you’re trying to talk to someone and their boyfriend’s draped all over them, as if they’re wearing him and he owns them. And the girl’s trying to talk and his tongue is halfway down her throat.”
“Yuk. Agreed. I will never do that,” says Dan.
“And no his and hers teddy bears with messages on their jumpers?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Nothing,” I say. “I mean absolutely nothing on social media.”
“OK. But you can’t make any more rude comments about Uja,” he says. “Or give me anything heart-shaped.”
“Agreed. And not the G word or the B word.”
“Dan and Jess?”
“Jess and Dan,” I say.
Maybe it is possible to drive around in my ‘boyfriend’s’ car and pretend to be normal. We’ll watch movies and stress about exams and uni applications and spend our holidays surfing in Cornwall. I’ll work on ways to forget, to recall things only when I want to.
“You drive a hard bargain but we are now officially… What’s an acceptable term for you?” he says. “An item, a couple, going out, mutually exclusive, lovers?”
I like the smile on his lips and in his eyes. And I know how much I want to resume what we started. Even though I know it could end badly – it’s bound to end badly – I find myself saying: “Just us. Just Jess and Dan.”
17
You keep a little piece of me
You must be missing me, missing me already
‘Missing Me Already’ – Silent Fjords
“The loci or journey system,” says Mr Desai. “A method used since Ancient Roman times. Pick a route you know very well. Walking through the college, for instance. Close your eyes and proceed up the drive, pass through the gatehouse arch, waving at the porter on duty, go up towards the chapel courtyard with the oak tree in the middle and the iron seat, Mandela Lodge is on your left-hand side – keep your eyes closed please, Miss Petrova – and you’re turning into the cloister towards the chapel doors. Enter the chapel, walk up the aisle and take a seat on the front pew. That’s far enough for now.”
He shows us a film on the whiteboard of all we’ve ‘walked’ in our heads, so we can soak up any details we’ve missed. “The route must be so familiar to you that you need no effort to remember it. Then you can attach items you wish to remember at the locations, or loci, of your route. You can add more familiar buildings as needed, creating whole ‘memory palaces’. I myself am particularly fond of using the campus of the university where I had a research job in London. It’s forever etched on my mind.”
“Do you do all this?” asks Dan when no one else can hear us.
“Not exactly. It’s more of a film that I choose to watch.”
“Press play.”
“Fast-forward or rewind. But all done in a nanosecond.”
“Pay attention please, Jess and Dan,” continues Mr Desai. “Concentration is the key to success. Now I shall demonstrate how we use that journey to place things to remember. Let’s take the Christmas song ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’. As you enter the school grounds, you eat a pear from the pear tree but get pecked by the partridge roosting there. You pass a dovecote with two turtles sticking their scrawny necks out of the openings to signify the two turtle doves. Further along the drive you say Bonjour to three French hens riding bicycles with onions round their necks.” He continues working his way through “The Twelve Days of Christmas” until he has placed twelve drummers drumming along the altar table in the chapel.
“Now take a piece of paper, and write out the song for me, using those vivid images we have located along the route.”
I play along, even though my brain does this kind of thing naturally. I don’t need to make up such vivid images. I look at my classmates, chattering excitedly about remembering a list of only twelve items. I wish I could forget, like them. They really don’t realize how lucky they are.
Next, Mr Desai places a pile of sheets on each table. “Some of you will have poems, or passages of prose, some lists of historical dates and events. Apply the techniques we’ve been learning. Play with them, use whichever methods work for you. I expect you all to be word-perfect next lesson. And to show you the benefits of pushing your brain to work harder, I have printed these off in unusual, unfamiliar fonts. In working harder to process the text, you’ll be surprised that the information will be better retained.”
Keira dives in to get first pick. She gives me Shakespeare’s ‘Sonnet 30’ written in twirly Blackadder font. All Gothic mourning and misery. Could Keira have written in the condolence book or sent the mourning card? I peer sideways at her notes, trying to examine her writing. But the notes are quickly taken: messy, abbreviated, inconclusive.
“I think my memory’s getting better with all this,” says Maya. “I got full marks on my French vocab test for the first time ever.”
“And me,” says Dan. “There’s some good stuff in that memory workbook he gave us – the number-rhyme system and the mind maps. At this rate, we’re going to be a whole class full of memory boffins. We’ll be able to enter the World Memory Championships.”
“What’s the point, though, in being able to learn pages of binary numbers or to memorize a pack of cards in less than a minute?” asks Keira.
“Because it’s cool. Those memory geeks get mobbed, I mean mobbed by all the Chinese and Malaysian chicks. Like a world-famous sportsman,” says Makoto. “I watched some of the championships on YouTube last night.”
“You could play blackjack in Las Vegas,”
says Lena. “You can work out your odds because you remember all the cards that have already been played. As long as the casino doesn’t realize you’re card-counting, you can become a millionaire.”
“They would realize if you’d won the World Memory Championships,” says Makoto.
“So then you have to choose between hot girls and the money. Tough choice,” says Dan.
“You get a commemorative T-shirt too,” says Makoto.
“You’d love it then, Maya,” I say.
“Ha ha. Hilarious,” she says, sticking up one finger.
“And did they look happy?” I ask. “The people competing, did they look happy?”
“Happy? They were ecstatic when they won, yeah.” Makoto looks at me like I’m a weirdo for asking.
“Were you not listening to the part about the hot girls and the money?” asks Dan. “There are a lot of hot girls involved with memory feats.” He smiles at me and nudges my leg under the desk with his foot.
*
I make my way to Mandela Lodge after TOK. I may as well move in for all the time I have to waste here. I can’t be the only freak show in town in need of counselling. I’m regretting the deal I struck with Barker of extra sessions.
“I have a gift for you today,” says Dr Harrison. “A special gift that I think will help.” He produces a large gift bag from behind his armchair.
“Ooh, a present,” I say, briefly interested. He hasn’t given me anything better than a leaflet before.
I pull out a cardboard box from the bag; larger than a shoebox, decorated with pink roses and butterflies. It’s hideous. If I were, like, eighty-two, I’d keep my knitting patterns in it.
“It’s a memory box,” he says.
“Er, thanks,” I say. I open it but it’s completely empty. I place it on the coffee table between us.
The Truth About Lies Page 7