The Truth About Lies

by Tracy Darnton

  The catering assistant turns back hurriedly to her tea urn, eyes down as though she hasn’t been enjoying listening to the show, while I help myself to another coffee. Do I believe Dan? He’s always so plausible. A well-oiled lying machine. And yet, my memories of last night come back – the feelings I had for him. The feelings I thought I saw in him. It felt real. It feels real now.

  “Lovers’ tiff this morning?” says Keira, appearing at my side, barely able to contain her smirk. “I do hope you’ve not split up,” she says, looking at me keenly. “Everyone said that you two didn’t have much in common but … anyway I’m here for you if you’ve been dumped.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” I say. “Have some self-respect. Stop throwing yourself at someone else’s boyfriend.”

  Keira reddens. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Yeah, right. Cut it out, Keira. And you can cut the drama too. No more anonymous candle-lighting and dramatic music. You’re not going to use the memory of my friend Hanna any more to get some sick Goth kick out of her death. No more Book of Condolence mystery entries. No more messages from ‘beyond the grave’. Nothing. It’s over. Go and talk that one over with a new counsellor. I’m going on this crappy hike.”

  I leave Keira there, opening and closing her mouth like the vapid goldfish she is.

  40

  Remember, remember the fifth of November

  Gunpowder, treason and plot.

  I see no reason why such terrible treason should ever be forgot.

  Traditional rhyme

  “Where now?” says Dan.

  “What?”

  “I’m not speaking in a deep, metaphorical way about our relationship. I want to know which direction to walk in. I don’t want to get lost.” He holds the compass and we stare at it as the needle stabilizes. He folds out the map and carefully places the compass, looking up to find a landmark. “The mist’s too thick. You can’t see anything. We need another bearing.”

  “Don’t we need to know where we are exactly in the first place?”

  We’ve walked too quickly, not paying attention to the path. Being so angry with each other made us move faster. But I have to make that rendezvous with Desai at the Gara Stone Circle. I want to get out of this whole mess.

  “Can’t you use your memory for something useful for a change?” says Dan, jolting me out of my thoughts.

  “It all looks the same at the moment – foggy. I’m not psychic,” I snap back.

  “So more fallibility. Careful or you’ll end up average like the rest of us,” he says.

  “I never said I was perfect. Quite the opposite.” I stop and take a drink of water, wiping my mouth on the back of my hand.

  Dan adjusts my hat, pulling it down over my ears. “Keep warm,” he says, his hands lingering on my head. The kind of show of affection I find hard to accept, or believe. I shrug him off. He looks hurt and I feel a pang of regret. Briefly. This is his fault. He betrayed me.

  “I’ve been thinking since reading that memory book you lent me, and I’ve worked out what you’re missing,” he says. “We talked about it on our first date.”

  I wince. “You mean Ashburton? Which I now realize was a surveillance mission.”

  He ignores my dig. “You know what’s squeezed out after all that brain capacity is taken up by you remembering everything?”

  “Great. You’ve psychoanalyzed me. What’s your conclusion?” I glare at him, challenging him to call it how it is.

  “Empathy. You’re low on empathy,” he says.

  “You mean I don’t give a damn about other people? Boo hoo.” He’s right of course. But it’s not news to me. I think of all the people I’ve deliberately hurt or pushed away while on or since the Programme.

  “I wouldn’t say that exactly. And we can work on it.”

  “Patronizing git,” I say, the anger surging through me. “And empathy is exceedingly overrated.”

  “I think Coleman messed with your mind with her cognitive vaccine and that deep down there’s the real Jess,” he says, holding out his hand, which I ignore. “And I really like her.”

  “You don’t know me at all.” The real me, what I’m capable of. “Memories make us who we are. They shape us. Maybe mine are too bad to ever get over. Have you psychoanalyzed that? I’m damaged. Beyond repair.”

  “No one’s beyond redemption,” he says.

  “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. You sound like Daddy the vicar. Am I your pitiable salvation project? Are you trying to save me, Dan? Because I think I’m way beyond that.” I shove my hands in my pockets and stride off, Dan hurrying to catch me up. Is he right? Did Coleman make me act in a certain way, accentuate some personality traits, or is that the real, unpleasant me anyway? I’ll always dwell on the past. It’s so hard to let go of the personal slights and snubs, the perceived humiliations. My memory makes it impossible to be a better person. I battle it all the time.

  We slip back into silence. All I can hear is the crunch of our boots on the path. All sound is muffled by the fog and we’re in the middle of nowhere. Really the middle of nowhere.

  “For someone who hates walking, you’re doing pretty well,” he says. He’s chucking olive branches in my direction but I want to stamp all over them. What’s the point in making up with him, even though my heart is pushing me to do exactly that? I’m going to have to move on again. The pleasant interlude is over. I should have gone as soon as I realized what had happened to Lena, or saw Callum, or as soon as I saw the Missing Person flyer. Dan is the one who kept me here and put me in danger.

  “I’m in shape. I do swimming,” I say. “I have stamina. I can outrun you and your ridiculously heavy rucksack. Maybe we should motivate ourselves with a challenge. First one to the next checkpoint.”

  “Are you serious? In this weather?” he says. “I can’t even see ten metres ahead.”

  “Well, otherwise it wouldn’t be a challenge, would it?” I’m calculating, desperately looking at that map in my head and thinking of the best point to slip off towards the stone circle without Dan knowing. By the time he gets to the checkpoint and realizes I’m not there, he won’t have a clue where I am. “And I need a head start,” I say. “Count to three hundred really slowly. Then go. You can take my rucksack too as you’re such a boy scout.” Before he can complain about it, I load him up with my bag to slow him down, threading his arms through the straps so he can carry it across his front. “Start counting. One, two…”

  I sprint off across the springy ground, splashing through the puddles.

  “Jess, hang on! Don’t be stupid! Jess!”

  “Keep counting,” I shout as the mist closes around me. Before I ran I’d worked out a straight line in the right direction. But now in the mist, it’s hard to tell where it is. I’m looking for a tor on the horizon to get my bearings, except that there’s no horizon any more.

  I look back. I can’t see any sign of Dan or hear him counting. His voice is lost on the moor. There’s no way he’ll catch me up if he sticks to the head start, and he’s got both rucksacks to carry. But most of all, he doesn’t know I’m now heading away from the checkpoint.

  I’m looking for Bleak Cross, an ancient monument, to know where I am and where to leave the track. The atmosphere feels ghostly out here and the conditions play tricks on your senses. I swear I can hear breathing and it creeps me out. There’s a solitary tree ahead, twisted and shaped by the wind. I will myself to reach it as another milestone. I jump as a pony shoots out across the path. Each of us is startled by the other. He snorts a cloud of water droplets and disappears back into the mist. I rest my hand on my heart to calm down.

  At last I can make out the Celtic shape of Bleak Cross and quicken my pace. Something solid in this shifting landscape. Relieved, I lean on its weathered stone, catching my breath, feeling the worn carving beneath the grey lichen. The path forks here and I take the left one, heading gently downwards across the stony moorland, following the line of the crumbling wall
of a sheepfold.

  I check my watch: 11:55. Only five minutes to get to Gara Stones. I cross a small stream, swearing out loud as I slip on a stepping stone. My head’s spinning with Dan. Can I trust what he says? Or is he an amazing liar who had me fooled? He loves me, he loves me not.

  The rough outline of two large stones looms through the mist ahead – giant teeth poking up from the earth: Gara Stones at last. There’s a small car park for visitors down the track on the other side and, beyond that, the road. There won’t be any tourists in this weather. I crouch by the tallest stone, getting my breath back. It’s five past twelve. The seven remaining Gara Stones drift in and out of view, revealing themselves and disappearing again as the wind carries the waves of mist. I lean round the side of the stone and look towards the path to the car park and road. No one yet. Unless I’m too late.

  A whistle, long and low, like a call to a pet dog breaks the silence. Then my name. My actual name. “Freya? Freya?”

  There’s now a figure by the stone on the opposite side of the circle. The mist lifts slightly as the breeze gets stronger. The man’s collar is turned up against the cold and he’s wearing a bulky scarf but I know the silhouette; the shape of the coat. And I know the voice. The twang of a slight American accent.

  Ramesh Desai. My escape route.

  41

  Will there be a day when we can erase bad memories and replace them with only good ones? Whoever cracks that scientific problem will have a queue of millions.

  Nash, E. (2015) ‘Remembering Ethics’ Cognitive Neuroscientist Review, Vol 3, no 2, p.15

  “Freya, glad you made it,” says Mr Desai. “Did you tell anyone else?”

  “No one,” I say, half-wishing I had told the only person who cares about me – Dan. Or maybe Maya. “And I prefer the name Jess now.”

  “Jess, then. We need to go.” He tries to take my arm but I step back beyond his reach.

  “Go where exactly? Or do you only communicate by postcard, Mr Desai?” I sit down on the cold ground and glare at him.

  He squats down beside me. “I know we haven’t got off to the greatest of starts. I had your best interests at heart, but I should have spoken up sooner,” he says, reaching out a hand to me. “It’s important that we get out of here today. Coleman and her backers don’t mess about.”

  I ignore his hand. “I want to expose what Coleman did to me, to my mum.”

  “Good, that’s the spirit.” He stands up, shaking out his legs. He adjusts his gloves and buttons his coat. “Though there are wider implications than what happened to you on a personal level, Jess. Terrible as that was. You’re vital for her to prove her thesis and establish her cognitive vaccine, to give people the ability to forget.”

  I hesitantly accept his offer of a hand to help me up. “Funny, because at the moment that’s what I want more than anything: to forget this whole mess.”

  His intense eyes look deep into mine. “Be careful what you wish for. Your memory – your own archive – is fundamental to who you are, your personal identity.”

  He turns to walk through the wet grass towards the track, checking I’m following him.

  “Even the bad stuff?” I say.

  “Especially the bad stuff. How you dealt with it has shaped you. I’m not saying it’s good to suffer, but bad experiences do serve a purpose. You get burned…”

  “You learn not to stick your hand in the fire?”

  “Exactly. It’s complex. You can’t just wipe out the past without consequences, biological and ethical. Changing a response to memories to help with PTSD is one thing. But she wants to enable people to do terrible things with impunity. If they don’t remember it, they won’t feel regret, shame or horror.”

  He pauses and looks over his shoulder. His twitchiness is making me nervous. “Coleman’s ruthless, as you’re now discovering for yourself. But luckily there are people who want to stop the way her research is going.” He carries on walking, faster this time, and I follow him along the path towards the car park.

  “But I don’t have the proof yet,” I say. “I need to get hold of that so that I can make things right.” So that I can do the right thing by Mum. Get justice for her.

  “I’m here to help you,” says Mr Desai. “Eventually, with your testimony…”

  “But that’s all it is! The testimony of a girl who says her memories have been altered,” I say. “An unreliable witness by myself but Coleman wrote down data, doses, everything. Now I can see through the labyrinth of all that information. She won’t throw those records away – they prove what she wants to sell.”

  “They’ve got us flights to Boston tonight,” he says, checking his watch.

  “Maybe if I could get into her house again or meet with her, we could record her…” I try.

  “My car’s down the track and we’ll get going.”

  “Or if I…” I stop. He’s not listening to me properly, to what I want. I can’t just leave like this.

  “Come on, Jess. No time to go back to the college to collect anything. I can sort everything for you. They’ve got you a US passport to travel on, in a new name.”

  But I don’t budge.

  Mum’s box is in my room. I can’t leave her there on her own. And I don’t want to be a lab rat again even in a fancy facility in the States. I don’t want to be studied any more.

  But most of all, right now, I realize I want Dan. I can’t leave Dan.

  Mr Desai raises his voice. “Look, you need to see the bigger picture, Jess. They, I, think Coleman’s work is dangerous.” He’s impatient with me, trying to hurry me up. “It’s not just the deception, the smoke and mirrors about your mother’s death.”

  I feel like he’s holding back on the truth. “So you keep saying. Without telling me who they are exactly. The way you’re describing it, I’m not sure they do want to help me. They want to stop Coleman, sure, we have that much in common. But what am I to them? A cog? A brain on legs. Just like I was to Coleman.”

  “There isn’t time for this now,” he says, looking anxiously around him. “I can fill in the gaps – all of them, I promise. But later.”

  “Where’s Nadia Hashimi?” I ask. “Is she on board with all this?” I trust Nadia.

  He touches his face. His eyes don’t meet mine, and he hesitates. The tell-tale signs of a lie. “Absolutely. Let’s get going.”

  I’ve had enough of lies. Suddenly I’m too tired and cold and I want it all to stop. Mum was right about this memory of mine being a curse.

  Then, out of the mist, a dark shape throws itself at Mr Desai, knocking him to the ground. I’m paralyzed, watching like it’s happening somewhere else. The attacker’s wearing a hood but it slips as the two figures grapple on the grass. Mr Desai’s trying to roll the attacker off, and I can see one of his ears. It has a chunk missing at the top. It’s Brett.

  I look for something to hit him with. I grab a rock about the size of my palm and throw it at Brett as hard as I can. It hits his back with a thud.

  He stops for a second, long enough for Mr Desai to roll out from under him and haul himself up. “Run, Jess. Run!” he shouts. He’s trying to stand fully upright, holding his ribs. I can’t leave him like this. He looks pleadingly at me again. “Get out of here,” he whispers. “I’ll hold him up as long as I can. Run.” He tosses me the car keys and launches himself at Brett while I sprint down the track towards the car park.

  The images of the fight are already replaying in my head. I run to his car, cursing myself for not starting driving lessons. But I have watched Dan drive Uja. I replay in my head, like an instructional video, the way he started the engine, checked the mirror and flicked the indicators. Mirror, signal, manoeuvre.

  I press the key fob to unlock the doors. I get in the driver’s seat, shaking with adrenalin. Keep calm, keep calm. The engine starts first time, unlike Uja. I can do this.

  I focus in on the periphery of my memories to figure out what Dan was doing with the pedals and copy the actions. Right foot on th
e accelerator pedal. It revs noisily and I back off slightly. Left foot down on the clutch, first gear, find the biting point, and cautiously press on the gas, while easing up on the clutch. The car’s straining to move. I release the handbrake and the car splutters forwards and stalls. I look in the rear-view mirror. I can’t see any sign of Mr Desai or Brett. Yet. I try the process again, this time kangaroo-hopping the car a couple of times before I get the hang of the clutch. Come on, come on. It still doesn’t feel right. It’s not accelerating and there’s a grinding noise. Something’s blocking the front wheels and I get out to check. My heart sinks when I see the state of the tyres. They’ve been slashed. Brett’s handiwork? This car’s going nowhere.

  I read the map in my head. I run towards the road and turn left. This links back towards the main route across the moor. I’ve got about six miles by road to reach Dartmeet and get Harrison, Barker, Maya, anyone to do something. I can’t possibly run all the way. And I’m worried about Ramesh Desai. Should I have left him even though he told me to? With a sickening feeling I realize that if Brett slashed the tyres that means one thing for sure: he has a knife.

  I keep on jogging, as though I’m out with the running club on a normal Saturday morning. I reach the bigger road with a stitch in my side. There’s an occasional firework in the distant sky. People who can’t wait until darkness and the bonfire night displays.

  In the stillness I hear something. It’s a vehicle. Headlights. I take off the brightest thing I have: the neon Hanna’s Hike T-shirt. Thank you, Maya. I stand in the middle of the road holding it above my head like I’m that girl in The Railway Children waving a red petticoat to stop the train. And it’s working. The black Audi with tinted windows is slowing. The window opens only a few centimetres. I don’t blame the driver, as I’m splattered in mud and waving my arms like a lunatic. Hitchhiking is normal round here, though you don’t normally ask people to go back the way they came. I need a full charm offensive. Charm is not my strong point.