Hindsight

by AA Bell

  ‘Bodily functions aren’t the only changes you’ll experience,’ Sanchez said as Ben drew the sample and finished with another swab. ‘You’ve never been shopping for yourself, at least not since you were a child with your parents, so teller machines, mobile phones and the internet are all virgin territory, not to mention sales-people who’ll treat you differently as soon as they realise you’re blind to any defects in their products or services.’

  ‘I know how mean people can be,’ Mira argued. ‘Better than you, probably. You’ve only got wall paintings, photos or reports to show what’s been going on around here, but I’ve seen everything.’

  Sanchez sighed. ‘If you’d said that six weeks ago —’

  ‘I know. You’d have a doc checking my dosage by now. Are we done here?’

  ‘Just about.’

  ‘Hang on,’ Ben said. ‘I expected a desk-load of extra paperwork, all things considering?’

  ‘I took care of it while you were in hospital, just the way I proposed it. The loophole that allows relatives to visit patients here, despite their criminal records, and take them away for brief home visits can be widened sufficiently for you both at my discretion but as her authorised escort you still have access to any of our resources — for as long as she’s living here voluntarily, I mean.’

  ‘Sounds too good to be true,’ Ben said, and again Mira heard subtle movements as if their hands were arguing, despite his crippled arm.

  ‘I was forced to drop you from the payroll, Ben. That little mishap with Freddie turned you into a political hot potato.’

  ‘Little? Maddy, he rang the cops pretending to be me and demanded a reward for kidnapping her! You should have known I’d only slipped out with her for a quick tour of the mainland. We spent the best part of an hour arguing about it. And then there’s that whole mess with his brother …’

  ‘Leave the past in the past until it bites you in the ass. Freddie only interfered to make sure she got home safely. Remember, his main worry is in keeping Colonel Kitching well away from me, and he’s been tearing himself apart with guilt over the things he’s done trying to avoid that particular premonition from coming true — for longer than you realise, probably, because he’s been foretelling doom for me for at least a fortnight before Mira even came onto the scene here.’

  ‘Freddie’s got issues,’ Ben agreed, ‘but if you’re suggesting what I think you’re suggesting, forget it. Mira and I discussed this already on the way here, and from now on, he’s history as far as we’re concerned.’

  ‘Bennet, he’s suffering!’

  Mira heard a final flurry of movements, then a bang as Ben punched the desk.

  ‘She shouldn’t have to face him,’ he shouted, then dropped his voice to a strained whisper. ‘She sees the past, he hears the future — so what? It’s not like they’re related. She’s not responsible for him and it’s unfair to keep suggesting she is!’

  ‘That’s not a healthy attitude,’ Sanchez persisted calmly. ‘Just put yourselves in his straitjacket for one minute — he’s deafened by the future, just as Mira’s blinded by the past. But at least she can only see one past at a time. That poor old man has to suffer infinite noise — every possible future playing out until history becomes set in stone, and it’s driven him past his limits, understandably.’

  ‘Tragic,’ Ben conceded, ‘but still not her responsibility!’

  ‘Count yourself lucky, then, Mira. Changing sunglasses is enough to turn your life around, but can’t you now see better than anybody? Light waves, sound waves; they can’t be too different, surely? Unfortunately, I can’t even begin to help Freddie until he talks to me — and he’s refusing to talk to anyone now, until he sees for himself that you’re home, safe and staying.’

  ‘He doesn’t need to see me. He hears everything.’

  ‘She’s been back ten days already after her first overnighter,’ Ben said. ‘He must have heard something, if not himself, then through the rumour mill. Staff talk as much as the clients around here and all voices echo back to him until they happen.’

  ‘Being back and staying for good are two different things,’ Sanchez argued. ‘This is Mira we’re talking about, and Mira, honey, you’ve fought tooth and nail for ten years and tried every option short of killing yourself to escape places like this. So if you, of all people, can bring yourself to say those words to his face — that you’re staying — let him read it from your lips himself, then there’s no way he can doubt it.’

  ‘Just tell him she’s in solitary,’ Ben suggested. ‘It was status quo around here for so long, it’s as good as the truth. Besides, she’d need to be sedated or cloud-nined anyway if news ever came that I couldn’t be her guardian or authorised escort.’

  Mira shivered. ‘Don’t even think about that. I’ll go rabid.’

  ‘I rest my case,’ Ben said.

  ‘I’ve already tried that angle,’ Sanchez replied. ‘Face it, Ben. Freddie’s not going to stop obsessing about Mira until he sees it on her own lips that she’s staying.’

  You want me to lie? Mira asked with her hands.

  ‘Two words is all I’m asking.’

  I can’t lie, especially to him! I never want to see him again!

  ‘You won’t have to see him, Mira. I’ve shifted him down to the old music room. By all reports, he’s never been down there, so there’s no chance of glimpsing his ghost for another — how long is the lag time with that shade?’

  ‘Ten days. But that music room is under the women’s wards!’ … and I’ve already bid good riddance to that place before I left my unit this morning. If I’d walked out naked, the sterile smell of those halls would have been too much luggage. There’s no good reason for me to go back there.

  ‘Freddie’s worth it, honey, and so are you. I know this sounds crazy but just imagine the mess you’d be in by now if he hadn’t stitched your eyelids closed in time for your first day with Ben?’

  ‘I’ll admit, it made me pay a lot more attention to you,’ Ben said. ‘A blind girl who’d beg her enemy to help her stop “seeing things”? No way could I give up on you until I figured that one out.’

  ‘But I can’t face him!’ Mira leapt to her feet and paced the rug, feeling the walls closing in. ‘Can’t you see? He doesn’t need to hear anything from me. But if that’s what he wants — if it’s what he’s manipulated you into thinking he needs — then he’s plotting something!’ And don’t tell me to be quiet, she added with her hands. It wouldn’t be me if I didn’t protest!

  ‘He’s not plotting anything,’ Sanchez said, taking Mira’s hand for silent finger Braille. ‘This is mostly my idea.’

  Mira recoiled bitterly. ‘Maybe it isn’t enough for him any more if I stay here. Maybe now he wants me dead? Who knows what else he’s been planning, given so much time alone in a rubber room to think?’

  ‘Mira, he won’t need to plan anything that drastic if you tell him yourself that you’re staying.’

  ‘He knows how much I hated my room! He’s never going to believe I’d choose to stay there. Much safer for him to kill me.’

  ‘And yet you’ve been here for the last ten days safely and the only one he’s tried to hurt is himself. He knows you’re on the waiting list for a ground floor unit overlooking the bay. We’re just finishing the renovations to enable the window to open and catch a breeze.’

  And when he finally figures out the truth?

  ‘Listen, I only need him happy and cooperating long enough to find a solution for him. I’m not asking for any ongoing contact from you. I think I’m already onto something with ear muffs, but I need him to be talking to me long enough to figure out how to filter out all the alternate futures, and I can’t do that while he’s still jealous and obsessing about you.’

  Mira sighed and glanced sideways to the corner of the matron’s desk, where her obsidian statuette of the Greek King Sisyphus struggled forever to push a boulder to the peak of a hill in Hades — now harder than ever as a snow globe, since the first gl
ass boulder had smashed. Either way, stone or snow, Mira knew how he felt.

  ‘Mira,’ Ben said, unexpectedly using that gentle tone that always melted her. ‘How will we know what he’s up to, if we don’t give him a chance to reveal his hand? If we do it on our terms, you’ll be safe.’

  Oh, please, Mira signed. Not you too?

  ‘It’s not as if you’ll have to invite him into your room here every day.’

  ‘Two minutes and two words,’ Sanchez reminded her. ‘Such a small price to pay for peace.’

  Maybe for you. Mira turned her back on them, knowing if they didn’t understand her reluctance to lie by now, they never would. Freddie certainly understood. She’d spent the last ten years telling nothing but the absolute truth, however crazy it sounded, so she’d always know she’d never once deluded herself, at least not deliberately. One deliberate lie — no matter how small nor how good the intentions — and she’d lose that level of confidence in herself forever.

  ‘Maddy’s right,’ Ben said, taking Mira’s hands gently again and splaying them against his in preparation for silent finger Braille. ‘For peace.’

  Mira’s heart pounded higher into her throat, dreading the inevitable extended lecture about doing the right thing, if only for her own long-term mental health.

  I’ll tell him, he signed, surprising her. If u don’t argu hel belev it. Can u handl that much?

  Mira gulped, trying to swallow her fear. She felt cornered, but if she couldn’t trust Ben to keep her safe around Freddie, what chance did she have?

  Ben took her hands and cupped them softly in his. ‘You may have been locked up all these years physically, Mira, and your delusions have certainly tormented you, but in your mind, you’ve always been free — whether in solitude, in the quiet spaces between events, or fighting tooth and nail to escape — so for you, it no longer matters where you live. But for Freddie, it’s been the opposite. You tell me, Mira, which is crueller? Can you honestly let him suffer another day?’

  ‘Okay,’ she conceded finally. ‘I’ll see him. Across the room should do, but if he starts accusing me of colluding on Maddy’s death with his brother again, I’m out of there. No straitjacket or rubber room in the world could hold me.’

  Former Colonel Kitching stood in the middle of his military cell with his back to the gate and arms folded.

  For the past ten days, he’d replayed the events of his arrest, frustrated to know it was only due to a crazy, blind girl; little more than a lab rat who’d been involved in one of the research projects into interrogation of the human subconscious. A volunteer, of all things. He could have vetoed her involvement before she’d become such a threat to him. Until he’d crossed paths with her and her remarkable gift, he’d managed to stay ten steps ahead of anyone who’d suspected him of being dirty. Physically, he was still her superior; twice her weight and towering head and shoulders taller than her, and yet it was his neck that bore the scar of where she’d nearly strangled him with her little lace brassiere.

  If only he hadn’t been so focused on the young soldier who’d been held captive in the same cell that day — and been so surprised to see that he’d worked his chains loose from the floor and ceiling during his last interrogation session — he never would have turned his back on her. He would have noticed that she’d somehow removed her bra without removing her sundress.

  He should have chained her up too. A single step backwards had been all it took to bring about his downfall. She’d caught him from behind and the concrete floor of the cell had become their unexpected equaliser. Adrenaline gave her the edge, along with a lot of leverage and the tactical advantage of staying beneath him. She’d needed much less strength that way to keep a tight hold of him, also forcing him to spend most of his energy struggling for every breath.

  ‘Come into the darkness with me,’ she’d whispered, but she must have weakened just as he’d lost consciousness.

  Next time, he wouldn’t underestimate her. Any lab rat could be clever if conditioned properly, and since she was already clever, all she needed was the conditioning. A few days of creative persuasion in a private cell; he’d take great pleasure in that process personally — far more than his incomplete attempt to convince that soldier to accept blame for eliminating a lowly snitch from the organisation. The court martial in a few days might hang on answering for that himself, if his associates failed him.

  Mira’s gift should be his to command by the end of the week. She’d cooperate almost willingly after that, and in so many ways, it excited him like a young man with his first tommy gun. There’d be no goal he couldn’t attain. No secret that his enemies or rivals could ever hide from him. And all because he’d been disciplined enough while recapturing her to shoot her favourite person in the world, without killing him. She’d be traumatised by that for months, if not years. They both would be; off balance in a way that made them all the more vulnerable. Prone to weaknesses.

  ‘Colonel,’ whispered a guard with the hint of a Japanese accent. ‘It begins.’

  THREE

  The short walk to her old ward felt like a death march; a feeling made all the more real when she lifted her glasses briefly and saw the hanging tree for convicts ahead of her with its great boughs ripe with human fruit.

  The tree itself still lived — a two-hundred-year-old Moreton Bay fig that disappeared behind the most recent extension as soon as Mira repositioned her shades, but she saw it again in all its solemn majesty as they rounded the corner, now fenced into a pretty courtyard. An arch of wisteria dripped tears of violet petals onto the cobbled path and into the tinkling waters of a small fountain. Sandstone dormitories loomed around her too, crowding out the light for the formal rose garden.

  She passed through the courtyard, flanked invisibly on both sides by Ben and Matron Sanchez, with no sign of any crowd of Freddie’s minions as spectators. Through the violet haze of her sunshades, the only spectre she could see was a one-armed gardener who was snipping off a few blooms from the roses — ten days ago. His ghost remained as oblivious to her as Ben and Sanchez now seemed to be. They didn’t touch her. They didn’t say anything, and that made her worry even more that they were silently communicating — again or still, she couldn’t be sure.

  Did either of them suspect she was counting her steps? She hoped not, keeping her head movements small as she took note of every potential escape route in case she really was being lured back into solitary.

  She crossed the internal road which led to the staff car park and licked her dry lips. As she reached the foot of the steel wheelchair ramp which led up to the glass doors, she clutched the rail — and felt it vibrate. If she hadn’t been so sensitive and alert, she might have missed it, and at first, it seemed as if her shaking hands had caused the ramp to shake.

  She steadied herself, and felt the tremble continue like a small bug struggling in a spider’s web. Inside the rail?

  Recoiling her hand, she stumbled back from it. Ben grabbed her elbow. Sanchez grabbed her other, but she wrenched away from them.

  ‘I can do this!’ She bit her lip, reminding herself that self-control was the primary trait she needed to demonstrate to win her independence, especially if they were really luring her back to her room, since it was always easier to slip the grip of most staff if she could keep them at ease first, and off guard.

  ‘We can’t stop our natural reflexes to help you,’ Ben said, ‘any more than you can curb your reflexes to pull away.’

  ‘I know, I’m sorry!’ She leaned more heavily against the rail and noticed it was still trembling. Every step towards the glass doors only served to intensify the sensation, until an automatic sensor detected the matron’s security tag inside her collar and welcomed them inside with a hiss and a cool gust of air-conditioning.

  Inside, the whole building seemed to be throbbing. Mira felt it in the air against her skin, through her shoes and as a small tickle deep inside her ears.

  ‘How safe is this place in an earthquake?’ she asked.


  ‘Not an issue,’ Sanchez replied. ‘There hasn’t been an earthquake in the Moreton Bay region since 1954.’

  ‘Quit worrying,’ Ben added, ‘this’ll be over soon.’

  That’s what worries me, she thought. ‘Seriously,’ she asked. ‘Can’t you feel that?’

  Their footsteps paused a short distance ahead and behind her.

  ‘Feel what?’ they asked together.

  Mira touched the wall and felt it there too. ‘Don’t tell me it’s nerves!’ Ahead of her she could see fourteen doors down each side of the hall, each with circular windows that glowed like violet moons — all except for the door to her own room, nine doors down on the right, where light had never been of any use to anyone except staff during their brief raids to force-feed, clothe and tend to her.

  As she drew nearer, she smelled freshly oiled leather — too familiar! A stale pocket of rum-scented cigars — not smoke, just the bitter after-scent of a wardsman whose clothes and breath always reeked after taking a break, and she knew Neville Kenny must be somewhere near her door, wearing his handmade leather shoes today.

  ‘Hello, lass,’ he called, conjuring a storm of bad memories all at once. ‘Back already?’ He laughed, and she could only hope he was joking.

  ‘Bad timing, Neville,’ Sanchez said. ‘She’s in no mood to spar with you this morning.’

  ‘So business as usual then?’ He laughed again, as if baiting for trouble, but Mira only chewed on her tongue, wary of saying anything that might echo back through time to Freddie Leopard.

  She wondered if Sanchez had reminded the staff to guard their tongues too. Now was hardly the time to ask, however, in case Freddie’s minions were watching her through the full moons of their windows.

  Ben led her closer to her old room, and she fought the urge to run past him for the nearest exit. She couldn’t help it. Ten years of confinements drugged out of her mind most of the time and terrorised by ghosts every time she opened her eyes. Her own ghost was probably still inside going stir-crazy. The air itself seemed to grow even more intense, virtually throbbing with its own raw fear around her. Still he led her closer to that door, even though he could have chosen two alternative halls as their route down to the music room.