by Tom Grieves
‘Ben said that he did terrible things.’
‘No.’
‘And Toby. He’s covered in scars.’
‘From all the stupid escapades he got himself into. He was a wild boy.’
She turned away from the glass. ‘You talk about it all like it’s good, like it’s fireworks when maybe it’s gunpowder.’
He didn’t respond to this, just shook his head as though her arguments and protests were childish. Were all her nerves just because of who she was? Because of the person inside that she was denying?
‘You could just make me revert to the person I was. So why don’t you?’
‘Because you’re my daughter.’
‘If you did, would I remember everything that has happened?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘So I’ll remember how I felt? How scared I’ve been?’
‘It’s all recorded, Anna. It’s valuable data.’
It was starting to rain outside – water spat against the thick glass without a sound. Everything seemed so small from up here. People looked like ants. She shook her head, still unconvinced.
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Christ,’ he sighed. ‘Don’t you want to find out the truth? You want to stay on the outside? Really?’
Outside, far below, there seemed to be a world teeming with people who had no interest in ‘the truth’. Anna thought of her bovine pupils, of Terry’s mother.
Henry put out a hand to her, palm up. It was like a key. Anna wondered what would happen if she took it. She wondered if she’d laugh at the kind, sensitive girl she believed she was. She wondered if, even now, she had any choice in any event that had ever taken place.
‘I want to go home,’ she said.
‘Which one?’
‘The one I know.’
*
Anna slept badly in her old flat, waking often, jolted by innocent noises from the street. The next day, her father arrived to pick her up and led her to the foyer of an expensive block of flats where the doorman gave her a familiar, respectful nod when he saw her.
‘Miss Price, it’s a pleasure to see you again.’
She noticed his eyes flicker across her clothes with a moment’s surprise but her father led her to the lift before he, or she, could make anything more of it. They rose in silence. When they stepped out, Henry handed her a set of keys and gestured to a door. Polished oak flooring beckoned her in and the place smelled … wealthy. She glanced at Henry who was smiling at her.
‘Welcome home, darling.’
She entered tentatively. It looked like something from a magazine – designed to seem effortlessly cool and sophisticated. She ran her hand over a sculpture; an antique wooden head with opal eyes.
‘You picked that up in Bali. You’ve got a thing about travelling,’ he said as he sank into a sofa, picking up a small remote control. When he clicked it, a section of the glass wall automatically retreated, revealing a small terrace. Anna stepped out and leant against the railing and stared down at the river and the city below.
‘I can afford this?’
He shrugged. ‘I helped set you up a little, I admit. But you’ve earned it. Believe me. People are very happy with you.’
People.
She turned back and wandered through a smart dining room into a smaller study. Its shelves were lined with books – some were reference books with academic titles, others biographies of the rich and famous. None were the English novels and plays that she had taught her pupils. She sat down at the desk. The chair was at just the right height. She didn’t touch the computer in front of her, but flicked through the papers and notebooks, opening one and recognising the handwriting as her own. But the words were unfamiliar and made little sense to her.
Her gaze fell upon a series of photographs in silver frames. One was of her and Henry: he in a dinner jacket, she with her hair up, wearing a designer ball gown and diamond jewellery. She stared at herself, saw the laughter on her lips and wondered if she’d ever laughed like that in her present incarnation. Anna pushed the frame away and chose another, showing her alone, high on a mountain top. In another she stood in a bikini with three laughing men, dripping with water, turquoise seas behind them. She remembered none of them. As far as she could recall, the most exotic place she’d been to was Spain, where she’d suffered food poisoning and had spent most of the trip in a darkened hotel room.
Henry appeared in the doorway.
‘Go away, please,’ she said. He nodded and left. She listened to his hard leather shoes on the wooden floor and wondered what the people below would think. And then she considered that flats like this were probably designed so that you never had to worry about such things. She leaned back in the chair; it was incredibly comfortable. She let herself swing around like she might have done as a schoolgirl, probably the brightest student in her year. What must that feel like?
She rifled through the drawers, finding bank statements which shocked her (in a good way) and letters from strange men – some pleading and lovelorn, others confident and flirtatious. There was a vanity about everything here which Anna disliked – the photos in the flat were always of her – and she wondered if this was simply narcissism, or maybe a facade for a deeper lone liness. If it was this, the money would certainly help to alleviate it.
She left the study and passed through the elegant kitchen, its cool marble worktops completely bare except for a fashionably retro coffee machine. She walked on, eventually finding her bedroom. There were two others for guests, although she couldn’t imagine this woman tolerating other people’s company for long. The longer she stayed in the flat, the more irritating she found it. It was smug and unreal. But she felt less uncomfortable in her bedroom. For a start, there were none of the posed photographs that she’d found elsewhere. There were only two: one of her father at Buckingham Palace, proudly holding up a medal to the camera, and the other, a faded snapshot of a woman in her thirties turning and laughing, surprised by the snapper. The photograph was crumpled at the edges as though it had been handled a great deal before being framed. It had faded to pale pinks and blues. One day the image would fade from sight entirely. Anna studied the laughing woman. It was her mother. She knew it instinctively. She sat down on the bed and ran her finger over the picture.
Later, she opened what she thought was a bathroom door but was instead the entrance to a walk-in wardrobe. She rummaged through the clothes, stopping only when she found the dress that she recognised from the photograph in the living room. She put it on and tied her hair back. Then she hunted for the diamond necklace and earrings. She finally found them in a large, leather jewellery box, put them on, and examined herself in the mirror before heading out to find her father.
He was standing on the terrace, looking down at the river below. When he turned and saw her, he was visibly shaken.
‘It’s you,’ he said after a moment. He took a step towards her, as though he wanted to take her hand, but then she shook her head and he stopped, unsure, not wanting to upset or annoy her.
‘We used to be inseparable,’ he said. ‘Your boyfriends found it unsettling. One of them called it creepy. Stupid bastard. You were only eight when your mother died. She was so beautiful, your mother, she would light up a room. I don’t care if it’s a cliché because that’s what she did. She’d be there and everything was brighter and better.’
Anna remembered the photograph.
‘I didn’t think I’d ever get over it,’ he continued. ‘She died so suddenly. It was just meant to be a routine operation. I still don’t know what went wrong exactly. All I could think about was you; how you’d cope, how I was going to tell you. On the way home I worked out some words for you and I sat outside the house for an hour preparing, trying to compose myself so you’d know that even if your mother was gone, you didn’t need to be scared because you still had me. But when I saw you, I started to cry. I sobbed in front of you, but you didn’t. You took my hand and stroked it with your little hands. ‘Ther
e, there,’ you said. Those were your exact words. ‘There, there, Daddy. We’ll be okay. Don’t cry, Daddy, we’ll be okay.’
He then told Anna how she had grown up with this same fierce determination; refusing to let events affect them. He wondered if her special desire to succeed in the sciences was somehow related to her mother – a fairy-tale desire, perhaps, to bring her back from the grave. He told her she had listened to him read her Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein with wide eyes, and from then on he’d pushed her away from such fantasies – fantasies that hinted at the impossible. Instead, he’d paid for sports courses and chemistry sets. She was a classic only child – driven by her parent’s intense desire for excellence – but one who had her own burning needs that pushed her far beyond her peers. It made her a loner, he said.
‘A loner, or lonely?’ Anna asked.
‘I fear the latter. I was always there, of course, but I don’t think a father should ever be a girl’s sole company.’
Anna imagined herself in this enormous flat, devouring books and journals late into the night, not allowing herself television or any frivolous luxuries, always reaching for impossible standards. She thought of the photo of her on top of the mountain and knew that the smile was forced – that the peak had felt like no victory, that there would always be higher mountains to climb. She almost felt sorry for herself.
‘I think your loneliness was what made you so brilliant,’ her father said. ‘I think it’s why your don at Oxford, Sir Edward Clitheroe, noticed you and insisted you join us. The protégé of a genius, I couldn’t be prouder. Together you have already pushed back the boundaries of what we considered possible. Mapping the human mind, uncovering its secrets. I’m just a manager, it’s way over my head.’
Anna caught sight of her reflection in a gilt-framed mirror and saw a stranger who stared warily back at her, despite all her finery.
‘Don’t you want to come back?’ he asked.
She gazed at herself and imagined her other self: brilliant, sadder, no longer fearful and confused, but driven by a pure sense of purpose. Breaking barriers. If she remained who she was, she would forever be running.
‘If I go back, will I be able to help Toby? And Ben and Terry?’
‘Yes, of course. You worked with them before and you’d continue to do so.’
‘I treated them well?’
‘You were magnificent.’
‘There is a lab, then?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘They talked about a lab where they’d be taken at night. Where we’d hurt them.’
‘Hurt them? Hardly.’
She remembered her own fear, alone in her humdrum flat. She could feel her old self urging her to shed this skin. She was embarrassed at how much she had coveted the clothes and scents that were already hers. She remembered the fading photograph in the bedroom, her bedroom, and wondered if she could trust this as a sign that she was a kind person, deep-down. If she went back, maybe she would laugh with her father at how she was right now. Perhaps she would become cruel. Ben and Toby might become mere numbers on a file that needed to be dealt with. Maybe the project was a front for something darker and crueller. She didn’t trust her father’s claims that their memories were falsely imagined and she worried that this was not the only lie he’d told her. She believed Ben and Toby when they said they had been taken in the night. She believed everything they’d told her. But how could anyone willingly choose to remain ignorant? She had no choice, she told herself as her hand slipped to the expensive jewels around her neck.
‘So,’ her father said, interrupting her thoughts. ‘Will you let us make you better?’
She paused, then nodded.
‘Ask me,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Just ask me and then I’ll make it all happen.’
She paused for a moment, confused by his words. But then she shrugged and said, ‘Whatever. Please make me like I was. Happy now?’
TWENTY-FIVE
Ben reached the B&B in the dead of night. He knew the town well and felt an odd sense of homecoming amidst the tatty facades and dank, foetid smells of the back alleys. This time, however, he walked without fear. After all, he was already inside the cage. Knowing this made his anger burn. He’d been scared of such feelings before, but tonight he was happy to let rip.
There were lights on inside. As he rang the bell and banged on the door, he could hear faint music from somewhere inside the house. But it wasn’t the old rock and roll of before, it was something classical now – sweeping strings and clashing cymbals. Eventually the door was pulled open. Edward stood there with a welcoming smile on his face. But he was different somehow. It took Ben a moment to work it out and this slight disorientation stopped him from hitting the old man right there on the doorstep. Edward was wearing a tie. No, a suit and tie. A perfectly fitting dark suit with a cream shirt and blue silk tie that matched his eyes. He had shaved. He seemed taller. He looked at Ben with that same twinkling grin, but it was clear that he was stone-cold sober.
‘Lee,’ he said, and his voice was posher now. ‘I knew you’d come back. I even dressed up for the occasion.’
‘You’re laughing at me. I wouldn’t do that.’
‘No, no, not at all. This is a very big moment for me. We can finally be honest with each other. Please, come in.’
Ben stepped over the threshold and Edward locked the door behind them. Ben’s hands curled up into tight fists but when the old man turned back to him, he showed no signs of fear.
‘I’m going to kill you,’ Ben said. ‘You do realise that, don’t you?’
‘Well, you’re certainly going to try,’ Edward replied. His voice was definitely posher.
‘Got back-up? I seem to be able to take most men down.’
‘Yes, you’re very handy. And no, there’s no one else here.’
‘Aren’t you scared? I know who you are, old man. I know what you did to me. And tonight, I’m going to stop it all.’
‘Why would killing me stop it all?’
Ben was thrown by the question, unnerved by how calm and collected Edward was.
‘I want you to tell me things,’ Ben said. ‘Before I do it.’
‘Okay.’
‘Not here. Let’s go into the sitting room.’ Ben produced a roll of rope from behind his back.
‘You’ve planned ahead.’
‘Don’t mock me.’
‘I’m not mocking. This is all being recorded, by the way. You wouldn’t expect otherwise, would you?’
Of course. Cameras were everywhere. There was nowhere in the world where one could hide out of sight any more. Something tightened in Ben’s throat. Edward suddenly didn’t seem so vulnerable.
‘Are they watching now? Are they coming for me?’ Ben asked quietly.
‘No one’s watching right now and no one’s coming. I told you. It’s just you and me.’
Edward’s fingers twitched lightly by his sides.
‘I remember you,’ Ben said, his voice clearer as he spoke. ‘You’re the one who stole me. It’s you that destroyed my life. I see your face staring down at me. You. You are the thing in the night. I’ve been so scared of you for so long. But not any more.’
Edward merely nodded.
‘Now we’re going to go into the other room and you’re going to answer my questions. Every single fucking one.’
‘I will,’ Edward calmly replied. ‘But first. Your name is Ben?’
‘Yes.’ As he heard his name, the tension seemed to ease from inside him. It was as though a cushion had been gently wrapped around the back of his neck.
‘Ben Jones, is this you?’
‘Yes,’ he replied, and found that he was starting to smile. He wasn’t sure why, but he suddenly felt happy. Anxieties drifted off and away from him. He began to wonder what he was doing here. He knew, somehow, that a third question was coming.
‘Ben Jones, are you ready for us now?’
‘Yes.’
And sud
denly nothing mattered at all. He felt so happy and calm. His fists uncurled. He tried to remember why he’d come here, but his head was in such a delightful fug that such thoughts just weren’t worth the effort. He stood there, a stoned grin on his face, swaying slightly. He waited to be told what to do. Whatever it was, he’d do it.
Edward put a hand on his arm and led him away from the door, into the other room. Inside, Ben saw that the few remaining pieces of furniture had all been removed and had been replaced by a small leather armchair and a high, long table, the sort used for massages, perhaps. But a masseur doesn’t use restraints.
Ben gazed at the table with heavy eyelids. Edward gestured for him to lie down. And he did so. And as Edward slowly and carefully used each restraint to tie down his arms and legs, so Ben started to hum an old-fashioned nursery rhyme. And then, happy, doped and utterly mellow, he closed his eyes and went to sleep.
*
Ben woke with a start. He pulled up sharply, but was held tight by the restraints on the table. It took him a moment to work out where he was. He’d come in, he’d threatened the old man, he was going to hurt him and then …
He couldn’t remember any more. He looked down and saw that his legs and arms were bound tightly by thick leather ties. He pulled against them, but there was no give. And then he noticed Edward sitting in a leather chair nearby, still dressed in his suit and tie. It was dark outside. Ben guessed that, at most, a few hours had passed. He looked at him, then down at the restraints again.
‘You might try to hurt me otherwise,’ Edward explained.
‘I’d kill you, yes.’
‘Well, you might try.’
‘What was all that about? The old drunk routine?’
‘Was I any good? I’m not a big drinker and it was starting to take its toll.’
‘My question.’
‘It was so I could spend time with you. See you close up, first-hand. I’ve watched you for years, but it’s always been through a lens or a recording.’