by C. L. Taylor
‘Did anyone get the registration number?’
‘Don’t move her! She might have broken her back.’
Within seconds a crowd gathers around Dr Cobey’s body and I am shoved and pushed further and further away. I don’t push back. I don’t shout, cry or explain. Instead I stare at the back of the man standing in front of me. But it’s not his black woolly jumper I see. Imprinted on the back of my eyelids is Dr Cobey’s broken body; half on the pavement, half on the road, her legs twisted beneath her, her neck lolling to one side, her blue eyes wide and staring, a single line of blood reaching from the corner of her mouth to her jaw.
‘She’s not breathing.’
‘I can’t find a pulse.’
‘Can anyone do CPR?’
The driver of the car aimed straight for her. He revved the engine. He wanted to hit her.
‘She was scared. She thought someone was after her.’
‘What was that, love?’ A heavy-set woman in her fifties with wiry bleach-blonde hair and bright pink lipstick nudges me.
I glance at her in surprise. Did I just say that out loud?
The woman continues to stare at me but my lips feel as though they have been glued shut. She loses interest when the man on the other side of her starts shouting into his mobile phone.
‘The High Street. Near M&S. Road traffic accident. It was bad. I don’t know if she’s breathing or not. Someone’s doing CPR. He said he was a doctor.’
The crowd presses against me on all sides, gawping, commenting and speculating.
‘There’s still no pulse!’ shouts someone near the road. ‘Where’s that ambulance?’
As I take a step to the side to try to force my way through the crowd someone grabs hold of my left hand. An elderly woman gazes up at me as I twist round. She’s so short I can see the pink scalp beneath her fine white hair.
‘My boy,’ she says, squeezing my hand tightly, ‘my boy was killed the same way. She will be OK, won’t she?’
I’m torn. I want to check on Dr Cobey but people have started to shout the word ‘dead’ and the old lady holding my hand is quivering like a leaf. She looks like she’s about to faint.
‘Are you OK?’ I ask.
She doesn’t shake her head. She doesn’t answer. She just keeps staring hopefully up at me, tears filling her milky eyes.
‘Is there someone I could call for you? A relative, or a friend?’
She continues to look at me blankly.
I don’t know how to deal with this. I glance to my right, to where the woman with the bleach-blonde hair and pink lipstick was standing but she’s disappeared, replaced by a couple of scary-looking builder types. What do adults do in this situation?
‘Would you … would you like to sit down somewhere and have a cup of tea?’
The old woman nods. Tea, the magic word.
I hear the wail of the ambulance sirens as the owner leads us to a table at the back of the café. The old lady is resting her weight on my elbow, telling me that I’m ‘kind, so kind’. I want to tell her that I’m not kind. That I’m selfish and ungrateful and lazy and all the other things Tony and Mum accuse me of being. I want to tell her that someone deliberately ran over Dr Cobey but I can’t, not when there’s a bit of colour in her cheeks and she’s stopped staring at me with that weird freaked-out expression.
I wait for her to drink half a cup of tea, my feet tap-tap-tapping on the wooden flooring, as she sips, rests, sips, rests and then, when she reaches for the slice of carrot cake the café owner brought her and takes the tiniest of nibbles, I excuse myself, saying I need to use the ladies’.
I slip into the single stall toilet at the back of the café. I hold it together long enough to close the door and lock it and then I rest my arms on the wall and burst into tears. I’m still crying when I sit down on the closed toilet lid and reach into my pocket. Tears roll down my cheeks as I pull out the note that Dr Cobey thrust into my hands. They plop onto the paper as I carefully unfold it. I read the words Mason has scribbled in blue biro. I read them once, twice, three times and the tears dry in my eyes.
I’m not sad and confused any more. I’m terrified.
Chapter Three
Help me, Drew! We’re not being reformed, we’re being brainwashed. Tell Mum and Tony to get me out of here. It’s my turn for the treatment soon and I’m scared. Please. Please help.
My hands shake as I reread the words my brother has written. Two weeks ago he was sent to the Residential Reform Academy in Northumberland after he was excluded from his third school in as many years. My brother is a gobby loudmouth, always out with his mates causing trouble, while I like being on my own with my books and music. He speaks up, I keep my head down. We couldn’t be more different. Tony, our stepdad, said the RRA was the best place for him. He said that, as well as lessons and a variety of activities, Mason would be given a course of therapeutic treatments to help him deal with his issues. He didn’t mention anything about brainwashing.
As soon as I read the note I rang Mum but the call went straight to voicemail. By the time I’d got myself together enough to leave the toilet cubicle the old lady’s friend had turned up at the café to take her home. She tried to offer me a tenner, to thank me for my help, but I said no and hurried out of the café, pressing my nails into my palms to try to stop myself from crying. I ran all the way home, only to find that the house was empty when I let myself in. It always is when I get back from school.
I put the note on my desk and run my hands back and forth over my face to try to wake myself up. I feel fuzzy-headed and tired after everything that’s happened but there’s no way I can sleep. I need to talk to someone about Mason, but who? There are a couple of girls at school that I sit with at lunch but I wouldn’t call them friends. Friends trust each other and share everything. Lacey taught me what a bad idea that is.
I pull my chair closer to my desk and open my laptop. I’ll talk to someone on the Internet.
But which ‘me’ should I be? I’ve got four different names that I use. There’s LoneVoice, the name I chose when I was fourteen. It’s a crap name, totally emo, but there was a song in the charts with a similar name and it was going round and round my head. LoneVoice is sociable me. He/she chats on music forums about singers, songs in the charts, that sort of thing. XMsZaraFoxX is feistier. She’s the kick-ass main character in my favourite PS4 game Legend of Zara and she wades in if someone’s being out of order on the gaming site. RichardBrain is serious and academic. I log on as him if I want to talk about psychology. Then there’s Jake Stone. I invented him to mess with Lacey’s head. She thinks he’s nineteen and a model and she’s a little bit in love with him.
I never set out to be a catfish. I just wanted to be anonymous, you know? I wanted to be able to chat to people without them making assumptions about me based on how I look, how old I am, where I live and what my gender and sexuality are. The first time I joined a forum I didn’t say anything. I didn’t ask any questions or join in with the chat. I lurked and worked out who the funny one was, who was controversial and who was a bit of a knob. I watched how they interacted with each other, just like I watched the kids in the canteen at lunchtime.
It was my dad who got me into people watching. If I got bored in a restaurant or train station he’d gesture towards people on a different table, or standing in a huddle on the platform, and he’d ask me to guess who liked who, who had a secret crush and who felt left out. He taught me about body language, micro expressions and verbal tics. He showed me how much people give away about themselves without realizing it. I didn’t realize at the time that was he teaching me psychology. That’s what he did for a living. He was … is … an educational psychologist. He’d probably have a field day if he knew about my different internet ‘personalities’.
I log onto the psychology site where I hang out as RichardBrain. If anyone can help me make sense of what just happened with Doctor Cobey it’ll be them.
Actually, no. They’ll ask me what I know a
bout her which is precisely nothing.
Dr Rebecca Cobey
I type her name into Google and click enter. The first link is to a LinkedIn profile so I click on it and scan the page. She’s a psychologist … blah, blah, blah … she worked at the University of London as a Senior Lecturer … responsibilities blah, blah, blah and … I frown. It says she left three months ago but there’s no mention of where she went. No entry that says she worked at the RRA.
Were you lying to me, Dr Cobey? You had a note from Mason. How could you have got that if you weren’t at Norton House too?
I stare at her profile photo. She’s smiling into the camera, her brown hair long and glossy, her blue eyes sparkling. She looks so happy. So alive. And then she’s not. She’s lying crumpled and broken at the side of the road, staring unseeingly at the sky as blood dribbles from her mouth to her chin. I shut down the browser but the image of her lifeless face is burned into my brain. I have to find out if she’s still alive.
I ring the hospitals first, asking if they’ve admitted anyone by the name of Dr Rebecca Cobey. The first receptionist I speak to tells me she can only release patient information to next of kin. I wait a couple of minutes then I ring back, using a different voice, and say I’m Dr Cobey’s daughter. This time the receptionist tells me there’s no Rebecca Cobey listed. I try the other hospital in town but they claim they don’t have her either. Finally, I ring the police who confirm that there was a motor vehicle accident on the high street but they can’t tell me what happened to the victim.
‘I was there,’ I tell the female police officer. ‘The car sped up. It deliberately knocked her over.’
‘Can I ask how old you are?’
‘Sixteen.’
‘OK,’ she says and then pauses. This is the bit where she laughs at me or puts the phone down. But she doesn’t. Instead, she says, ‘What’s your name and address? I’ll need a contact number for your parents so I can arrange for someone to come to your home to interview you.’
‘Of course. My name is Drew Finch and I live at—’
‘Drew,’ Mum says from the doorway, making me jump. ‘Is everything OK?’
Chapter Four
Mum frowns as she reads Mason’s note. Tony, sitting beside her on the sofa, reads over her shoulder.
‘Who did you say gave this to you?’ Mum says, looking up.
‘I told you, a stranger.’
‘Did she tell you her name?’
‘Well, she …’ I tail off. I don’t like the weird way Tony’s looking at me. It’s like he’s too interested in what I’m saying.
Mum glances at Tony. I hate how she does that – deferring to him as though she’s incapable of making a decision without his opinion. She was never like that with Dad. She made all the decisions in our house back then. Dad used to joke that, ever since the motorbike accident where he lost his right leg from the knee down, Mum wore the trousers because they didn’t look right on him any more.
Tony runs his hands up and down his thighs as though he’s trying to iron out invisible creases in his suit trousers. ‘Have you spoken to the police about what you saw?’
‘I rang them earlier. They said they’d send someone round to take a statement from me.’
‘I see.’ He glances back at Mum but she’s looking at Mason’s note again. It quivers in her fingers like a pinned butterfly. She’s rereading the bit where Mason says how scared he is. I can just tell.
‘Jane.’ Tony places his hand over the note, blocking her view. ‘We talked about this. Remember? About Mason trying to avoid facing up to his responsibilities. We both know how manipulative he can be.’
‘He’s not manipulative!’ Mum shifts away from him so sharply his hand flops onto the sofa. ‘My son might be a lot of things but he’s not that.’
‘He’s a liar, Jane. And a thief. Or have you already forgotten that he stole from you.’
‘Tony!’ Mum glares at him. ‘Not in front of Drew. Please.’
It’s not like I don’t know all this already. They sent me upstairs when we got home from school but I didn’t go into my room. I sat cross-legged on the landing instead and listened to Mum lay into Mason about nicking twenty quid from her bag. She told him how disappointed she was. How Tony was at the end of his tether. How they knew Mason had been smoking weed out of his bedroom window. ‘And now you’re stealing!’ she cried. ‘From your own mother. What did I do to deserve that, Mason? What did I do wrong?’ She started crying then. I heard Mason try to comfort her but she wasn’t having any of it. She told him that he’d pushed her to the edge and she had no choice but to agree with Tony and send him to the Residential Reform Academy.
Mason wasn’t the only one who gasped. I did too. When Tony had first mentioned sending Mason away (another conversation I’d eavesdropped) Mum was really against the idea. I wasn’t. Mason might be my brother but he can also be a prize dick. He wasn’t always a dick. He was pretty cool when we were kids but he changed after Dad disappeared. He stopped watching TV in the living room with me and Mum and holed himself away in his room instead. And if he wasn’t in his room he was out with his mates on their bikes or skateboarding in the park. He started finding fault in everything – in me, in Mum, at school. He talked back to his teachers, he started fights and he smashed stuff up if he lost his temper. After he was excluded, I barely saw him. When I did he’d make snidey comments about me being the favourite and accuse me of sucking up to Tony.
‘You’ve got no personality,’ he’d shout at me. ‘That’s why Tony likes you.’
He really bloody hated Tony. He made no secret of that.
‘Drew,’ Tony says now. ‘If this woman told you her name you need to tell us what it is.’
‘I know but …’ I pause. Tony’s the National Head of Academies which means he knows the people who run the RRA. If he contacts them, Mason will get into trouble. He’s not supposed to have any contact with the outside world while he’s away. He wasn’t even allowed to take his phone or iPad with him. I shouldn’t have said anything about this in front of Tony but I was so freaked out by what had happened it all came spilling out before I knew what I was doing.
‘But what?’ He sits forward so he’s perched on the edge of the sofa. ‘Just tell us her name, Drew.’
‘I’m going to ring Norton House,’ Mum says, before I can reply. She reaches into her handbag for her phone and swipes at the screen.
‘Jane.’ Tony touches her arm. ‘Let me deal with this. If you get in touch, Mason will be getting exactly the reaction he was hoping for when he smuggled the note out. He –’
‘Yes, hello.’ Mum twists away from Tony. ‘I’m calling to enquire about my son, Mason Finch.’
‘Mum!’ I jump out of my seat. ‘Mum, please! Don’t tell them about –’
She waves me away.
‘Yes, that’s right. I just wanted to check that he’s OK.’ She covers the mouthpiece with her hand and gestures for me to sit back down. ‘They’re just going to find out how he’s doing.’
‘Honestly, Jane …’ Tony gets up from the sofa. He walks over to the window and stares out into the street with his arms crossed over his chest. A bead of sweat trickles out of his hairline and runs down the side of his face. He swipes it away sharply, as though brushing away an annoying fly. The toe of his right shoe tap, tap, taps on the carpet as Mum continues to hold. I’ve never seen him look this unsettled before.
‘OK,’ Mum says into the phone. ‘Right, OK. I understand. No, there’s nothing else. Thank you for your time.’ She removes the phone from her ear and ends the call. ‘He’s in pre-treatment and can’t be disturbed, but they’re going to WhatsApp me some video footage so I can see that he’s OK.’
Tony doesn’t react. He continues to stare out into the street. A new bead of sweat runs down the side of his face. He doesn’t swipe it away.
‘Mum,’ I say, but I’m interrupted by the sound of her phone pinging.
‘Here we go. They’ve sent the video.’ She tap
s the empty seat next to her, gesturing for me to join her on the sofa. Tony doesn’t move a muscle as I cross the living room.
Mum touches the screen as I sit down next to her. An image of Mason, sitting in a beanbag chair with a PS4 controller in his hands, jumps to life. There are two boys sitting either side of my brother, both on beanbags, both holding controllers. All three boys are laughing their heads off. They look like mates, kicking back in one of their bedrooms rather than three kids who’ve been sent away to overcome their ‘behavioural problems’.
‘Can I look at that for a second?’
Mum doesn’t resist as I take the phone from her hand and click on the video details.
‘What are you doing?’ she asks.
‘Checking the date the video was taken. They might have sent you footage of when he first arrived.’
‘And?’
I stare at it in disbelief. ‘It was taken today.’
‘There you go, then.’ Tony swivels around so he’s facing us. ‘And you still claim your son wasn’t trying to manipulate you, Jane?’
Mum sighs heavily and looks at me. ‘What do you think, Drew? He looks fine, in the video, doesn’t he?’
There’s desperation in her eyes. She wants me to tell her there’s nothing to worry about.
‘No one’s being brainwashed,’ Tony says. He’s not sweating any more and his foot has stopped pounding the carpet. If anything he looks ever so slightly smug. ‘All the kids get a couple of weeks to settle in followed by an intensive course of therapeutic treatment to help them overcome their behavioural issues. If Mason passed a note to someone – and I’m of the belief it was written before he left – it was done because he’s still resistant to the idea that he needs to make some positive changes in his life.’
Waffle, waffle, waffle. Tony might be convincing Mum with his pseudo psycho-babble but I’m not so sure.
‘What kind of therapeutic treatment?’ I ask.
‘Um.’ Tony runs a hand over his thinning hair. ‘It’s … er … cognitive behavioural therapy, modelled especially for adolescence.’