The Treatment

by C. L. Taylor

  ‘I would appreciate that,’ Dad says as he takes another step towards the headmaster. ‘Today has been a little … How did you phrase it? Upsetting.’

  One second the two men are a metre apart, the next my dad jumps forward, his right arm raised, fist clenched. His right fist smashes against Dr Rothwell’s cheekbone. Before he can react, Dad hits him again, an uppercut to the chin with his left hand. The radio and taser fly from Dr Rothwell’s hands as he lurches backwards. Smack! Dad hits him again. And again. Dr Rothwell stumbles to his left, then his right, then his legs seems to give way beneath him and he tumbles to the floor, narrowly missing Lacey who is curled up on her side. Mrs H., her hands pressed to her mouth in horror, retreats into the doorway of the library.

  ‘Mason! Drew!’ Dad hurries over to us, reaches out his hands and hauls us to our feet. ‘Come on, we need to go!’

  ‘We need to take them too.’ I gesture towards Mouse and Israel, who are still standing beside the front door, frozen with fear.

  ‘Of course.’ Dad’s eyes meet mine and I feel as though my heart is going to explode through my chest. It’s him. It’s really him. I don’t why he’s not brainwashed and I don’t really care. I’ve got my dad back.

  ‘Oh no you don’t.’

  Something cold presses against the back of my neck. I reach up a hand to see what it is but my hand is swatted away.

  ‘Don’t move,’ Mrs H. hisses, as she presses the taser against my skin. ‘And don’t do anything stupid.’

  Dad stiffens but he does what Mrs H. says. He doesn’t move a muscle. Neither does Mason. I want them to do something but neither of them wants to be responsible for me getting hurt.

  ‘Mrs H. to all support staff. Please come to the entrance hall immediately. Immediately. Lock the students outside. Do you understand? Over.’

  I hear the crackle of a radio.

  ‘This is Kyle. I’m on my way. Over.’

  Out of the corner of my eye, I spot Mouse ducking down beside Dr Rothwell. She looks as though she’s tying her shoelace.

  ‘Megan, get up!’ Mrs H. barks. ‘Get up and stand still.’

  Mouse slowly rises to her feet. She lowers her chin to her chest and her eyes to the floor. ‘I need a hug,’ she says quietly.

  ‘What?’ Mrs H. snaps.

  ‘A hug.’ She looks up and stares straight at our housemistress. ‘I really need one.’

  ‘Shut up. Stop talking. And don’t move.’ Mrs H.’s voice is raspy with fear. There’s just one of her and six of us – eight if you count the two boys standing beside the door to the isolation room – and she knows it. The moment reinforcements arrive she’ll feel stronger and more in control again. We’ve got minutes, seconds maybe, until they arrive.

  ‘Please give me a hug, Mrs H.,’ Mouse says again. ‘You give such good hugs. They make me feel really happy and secure.’

  ‘Don’t move!’ Mrs H. shouts as Megan steps over Dr Rothwell and around Jude and Lacey. Her hands are knotted behind her back. ‘Don’t come an inch closer.’

  ‘Please. Just a little one. I’ll be as good as gold afterwards.’

  ‘Go away!’ The taser quivers against the back of my neck as Megan draws closer. ‘I’ll hurt her, Megan, and you don’t want that, do you?’

  Mouse shrugs. ‘I don’t care what you do to Drew. I just want my hug. Didn’t you say you’d always be available for hugs? You don’t want to break your promise do you, Mrs H.?’

  One second Mouse looks mournful with her hands knotted behind her back, the next her arms are wide and there’s the most magnificent grin on her face. It reaches from one ear to the other.

  ‘Hug me, Mrs H.,’ she says, as she throws her arms around our housemistress. ‘Just hug me.’

  There’s a horrible crackling sound, just behind my head, and, for one horrible second, I think Mrs H. has gone through with her promise to taser me. But the scream that follows it isn’t mine. Nor is the blonde, blue-eyed body that hits the floor.

  ‘Go!’ Dad shouts, pushing me towards the door. ‘Go! Go!’

  Chapter Forty-Four

  ‘What now?’ Israel asks, as we pour down the steps of Norton House. ‘Do we just run?’

  ‘Why run when you can drive?’ Mouse says, dangling a set of car keys from her fingers.

  I stare at her in astonishment. ‘What the … ?’

  She winks. ‘Dr Rothwell’s pocket. I grabbed them when I picked up the taser.’

  She chucks the keys at my dad who catches them with one swift swipe of his hand through the air.

  ‘Don’t just stand there gawping at each other,’ he says, jerking a thumb in the direction of a shiny red Range Rover. ‘Get in!’

  We bundle into the car, stepping on each other’s feet and elbowing each other in our desperation to get in. Through the wide open doorway, I can see Dr Rothwell reaching for a radio as he picks himself up off the floor. Mrs H. is on her hands and knees, trying to get up.

  ‘Wait! Wait!’ Jude and Lacey spill out of the door and speed down the steps, their faces ashen. Their arms waving.

  ‘Go!’ I scream at Dad. ‘Go, go!’

  He glances over his shoulder. There are eight of us and only seven seats. Mason, Israel and Mouse are in the row behind and the three students are squished together into the two seats at the back. Even if we wanted to fit anyone else in there’s no space.

  ‘Please Dad,’ I scream, as Lacey and Jude sprint across the gravel driveway towards us. ‘Please just go!’

  I don’t need to ask him twice. He turns the key in the ignition and presses his foot flat to the floor. The huge car leaps forward but Lacey and Jude have already caught up with us. Lacey reaches for the driver side door but, before her fingers can make contact, Dad yanks the steering wheel to the left and we’re away, tyres crunching on the gravel, engine roaring. As we speed down the long, tree-lined driveway I glance into the rear-view mirror, half expecting to see another car chasing after us but there’s no one behind us.

  ‘No,’ Dad breathes and I twist back around. We’ve reached the metal gates at the end of the driveway. They’re shut.

  ‘Check the glovebox,’ he says as he dips a hand into the driver’s side door compartments. ‘He might have some kind of electronic key.’

  I unclick the glovebox and reach a hand inside. There’s a map, a car manual, various bits of paperwork and some hard-boiled sweets but no key. I unclip my seat belt and feel under my seat. Nothing there apart from an empty can of Coke and a manky apple core. Nothing in the door compartments either.

  ‘Anything?’ I look hopefully at Dad.

  He shakes his head.

  ‘Mouse?’ I twist round in my seat. ‘You went through his pockets, didn’t you? Dr Rothwell’s? Did you find anything else apart from his car keys?’

  She shakes her head. ‘Nothing worth stealing.’

  ‘Are they on the key chain?’ I ask Dad.

  Again he shakes his head. I can’t believe it. We can’t have come all this way only to get stuck here. The key has to be in the car somewhere. It just has to. I rifle through the drinks holder next to the gear stick and stick my fingers into every other little nook and cranny I can find. As I do, Dad flips down the visor and I hear the clunk of something falling into his lap.

  ‘Say your prayers,’ he says, as he holds a key fob at arm’s length, points it at the gates, and then presses a black button.

  Everyone in the car holds their breath.

  And then the gates creak open.

  *

  I can’t stop staring at my dad. Whilst Mouse, Mason and Israel have all fallen asleep and the students are talking quietly in the back, I’m terrified that if I take my eyes off my father for one second he’ll vanish in a puff of smoke or I’ll wake up and find myself lying on my uncomfortable bunk in Norton House.

  ‘Dad,’ I say softly.

  ‘Yes, Drew.’ He keeps his eyes on the road but the corners of his mouth edge up into a warm smile.

  ‘This is going to sound weird �
��’

  He laughs. ‘No weirder than the last hour or two.’

  ‘Can I … can I … touch your face?’

  He gives me a puzzled look then raises his eyebrows.

  ‘I told you it was weird.’

  ‘It’s not weird at all, Drew. You need to check that I’m real, don’t you?’

  ‘Mmm.’ I bite down on my lip to stop myself from crying. It doesn’t work and tears roll down my cheeks.

  ‘It’s OK, sweetheart.’ He takes his hand off the gear stick and covers mine. He squeezes it tightly. ‘It’s OK. I’m not going anywhere. I can promise you that.’

  ‘What happened? Why did you leave?’

  ‘I never left you.’ He looks at me sharply. I was taken.’

  ‘By Dr Rothwell?’

  He snorts softly. ‘Not just him.’

  I listen as he tells me how, ten years earlier, the Department of Education had brought together him, Tony, Dr Rothwell and various other psychologists to investigate solutions to help stem the number of children who were permanently excluded from school.

  ‘That was a different Government,’ he says, ‘from the one we have now. They genuinely wanted to help those kids but the new lot …’ He shakes his head. ‘I’m assuming they’re still in power. I didn’t dream that, did I?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘Unfortunately.’

  ‘I can’t say I’m surprised. Disappointed, yes, but not surprised. Anyway, when they got into power, they became interested in the project me, Tony and Phil were working on. They told us they didn’t want a “special snowflake” solution – you know, a caring, nurturing approach – they wanted something more radical, cheaper, more immediate and guaranteed to work. They said they wanted us to come up with a way to make excluded kids useful members of society rather than dropouts, drug addicts and criminals.’

  ‘I’m none of those,’ Israel murmurs from behind us.

  ‘I know you’re not,’ Dad says, glancing over his shoulder. ‘I didn’t agree with any of those statements and I made it perfectly clear that I thought the approach we’d developed was a good one. Not Phil though, he proposed a …’ he makes quotation marks in the air with the fingers of his left hand ‘ … radical and effective solution. He suggested that we should look at the Korean and Cold War brainwashing techniques. I was horrified. Prisoners were brutalized using those techniques. There was no way I was going to agree to develop a treatment to use on teenagers. But the Home Secretary –’

  ‘Jeff Kinsey?’

  ‘No, his predecessor, Nigel Johnson. He said he’d sanction it, but only if we kept it on the down low. If the press found out, he’d deny all knowledge. By this point Tony was quite high in the academies feeding chain but he wasn’t in charge. He told Nigel that if he pulled a few strings and arranged for him to become head he’d support the proposal. Not only that he’d source the kids for the first wave of treatment.’

  I slap a hand over my mouth but it doesn’t muffle my horrified gasp.

  ‘I know.’ Dad gives me a sideways look. ‘Shocking, isn’t it? I always sensed there was something dodgy about him but I didn’t know the half of it.’

  Oh God. He doesn’t know. He’s got no idea that Mum’s married to Tony Coleman. That he’s mine and Mason’s step-dad. I need to tell him, but how? I twist round in my seat but Mason is still asleep.

  Dad sighs heavily. ‘Anyway. I told them they’d go ahead with the treatment over my dead body. I said I’d go to the press and blow the whistle but I didn’t even make it as far as our house. When I went to the car park I was grabbed and thrown into the back of a van. They took me to an isolated house somewhere, I don’t know, I didn’t see much and then they –’

  ‘They brainwashed you.’

  ‘Yes.’ He nods. ‘They experimented on me. I was the first person to go through the treatment, but brainwashing only really works if it’s continually reinforced and I was left to my own devices for a long time. Phil Rothwell was so convinced that my treatment was permanent that he let me wander freely through Norton House. I saw you and Mason but I thought you were apparitions, ghosts of a different life that didn’t really exist. You’d appear but, as soon as I tried to work out who you were, you’d disappear. I felt as though I was getting a glimpse through a window into the real world, only for the curtain to snap shut whenever I looked too hard. I thought I was going mad. I nearly told Phil about the hallucinations but something deep inside me warned me not to. When I saw you and Mason being attacked by Rothwell and Hatch I felt so afraid. My children were being hurt and there was nothing I could do about it. It was my worst nightmare come true. Then something inside me snapped. It was like the curtains had been ripped of the wall and I was … I was me again.’

  ‘You were de-conditioned.’

  He gives me a surprised look. ‘How do you know that term?’

  I laugh softly. ‘We’ve got a lot of catching up to do. Was it you who turned off the CCTV the first time me and Mouse tried to escape?’

  ‘Yeah. It was. The friends were used to me wandering about, asking them questions and watching what they were doing. I was in the CCTV room with Destiny when I saw you on one of the screens. I recognized you. You’d changed so much but I knew you were my daughter.’ He squeezes my hand. ‘I could tell you were up to no good, I could see it in your face. Exactly the same expression you’d have if you were going to steal one of Mason’s toys. Then, when the fight kicked off –’

  ‘My fight?’ Israel interjects.

  ‘Yes. When that kicked off and Destiny was radioed to provide backup, I saw you and that one –’ he jerks a thumb back towards Mouse ‘– hanging round by the door. I knew what you were going to do and turned off the CCTV. But by the time I’d walked back out the door, I’d forgotten who you were.’

  ‘Dad, did you know someone called Dr Rebecca Cobey?’

  His brow furrows as he stares through the windscreen at the rain-washed motorway that stretches into the distance. ‘Yes, I think I did. Quite tall, dark hair, young. Younger than me anyway. Why?’

  I don’t answer. Instead I stare out of the window as the grey-green-brown countryside flashes past us. I should feel safe, being in the car with Dad and the others, already hundreds of miles from Norton House, but the tight feeling in the pit of my stomach is still there. It’s so big, all this. Rebecca Cobey was murdered for trying to escape. The Home Secretary knows about it. The Minister for Education knows about it. The Prime Minister might even know it. What chance have we – a ‘mad’ psychologist and eight excluded kids – got of exposing the truth?

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Dad puts an arm around my shoulders and pulls me close. His does the same with Mason, standing on the other side of him and we shelter under the warmth of his thick grey overcoat as the wind whips our hair onto our cheeks and the Chancellor of the University of London delivers his speech in his deep baritone voice. I close my eyes and rewind time. I’m seven years old. It’s Christmas Day and I’ve just opened two of my presents – a Nutcracker Barbie and a Who Wants to Be a Millionaire board game. Mason’s opened two of his – a WWF real sounds arena and a Thunderbirds playset. The carpet is covered with discarded wrapping paper. The living room smells of chocolate, pine needles and coffee. Mum and Dad are sitting on the sofa, bleary-eyed, nursing their hot drinks but they’re smiling. They don’t take their eyes off us as Mason and I reach for the next present on our pile and rip off the wrapping paper. This is my world, these four walls, these three people. Nothing can hurt me. I am safe. But then the door to the hallway opens and Mrs H. and Dr Rothwell charge into the living room. They raise their right hands and point their tasers around the room. One by one, Mum, Dad and Mason disappear.

  ‘Drew?’ Mum touches my gloved hand as my eyes fly open. ‘Are you OK, sweetheart? You were making a weird panting noise.’

  ‘I’m OK,’ I lie. I’ve barely slept since we got home. I wake up several times a night, convinced that I’m back at Norton House.

  ‘We’ll
take you to see someone just as soon as this is over.’ She glances up at Dad. ‘Won’t we, David?’

  He nods gravely. ‘They’re all going to need some help after what they’ve been through.’

  Dad drove all the way from Northumberland to London, only stopping to get petrol (Mouse had also lifted Dr Rothwell’s wallet, it turned out). When we arrived in London, he parked outside a huge, red-brick gated building and shepherded us to the intercom.

  ‘My name is Dr David Finch, he said. ‘Myself, and these children were illegally abducted and subjected to practices outlawed by the United Nations Convention against Torture.’

  After a pause, the gate swung open and Dad led us up four stone steps to a huge, black door.

  ‘We’re safe here,’ he said. ‘I promise.’

  Things happened very quickly after that. We were interviewed in turn, by a kindly looking woman in a red suit and a man with oversized spectacles, then were told that we’d be spending the night in a secure hotel with a guard at each end of the corridor. If I was worried before, I was terrified when I was told that. I shared a room with Mouse and the female student, Yolanda. Mason and Israel shared a room, so did the other two boys, Alfie and Joe.

  The next morning, we were shipped back to the red building in a van with blacked-out windows and told to wait in a boring, green-walled room that looked like some kind of gentlemen’s club. Our parents had been contacted, we were told, and would be arriving to collect us. I had heart palpitations when I was told that – how would Dad react when Tony turned up with Mum? But Tony didn’t turn up with Mum. She came alone, and he wasn’t mentioned once the whole way home. No one really spoke. Mum drove but, whenever she stopped at a red light, she stared at Dad. I couldn’t tell from the expression on her face whether she was happy to see him, annoyed with him or, like I was, extremely weirded out.

  Dad didn’t come back to the house. Mum dropped him off at a hotel in town. When he got out he hugged me and Mason and said he’d see us soon. I immediately burst into tears. I was terrified that, if we drove off, I’d never see him again. But I did. He came round the next day and he and Mum sat side by side on the sofa, close but not touching, and answered every question that Mason and I threw at them: