Sleepwalkers (35 page)

‘We didn’t make you do anything, darling,’ Laura said.

‘Yes, you did. I know you did.’

His father put a hand on her elbow. ‘It’s time we stopped this.’

‘No, we’re fine,’ she said. Her voice had an edge to it now though.

‘I know who my parents really are,’ said Toby. He felt like crying. Like screaming.

‘Is that what you think?’ his father replied.

‘Yeah. Yeah, I do. So who the fuck are you?’

‘Okay. Enough,’ his father said. ‘Your name is Toby?’

‘Yes,’ he replied, confused by the question. But something stirred in him when he heard it.

‘Toby Mayhew?’

He felt calmer all of a sudden, but then his mother’s voice cut through. ‘Oh for God’s sake, we don’t need any of that.’

The anxieties lurched back into his stomach. His dad stared angrily at his mum.

‘What?’ she snapped. ‘What’s he going to do? You think we can’t handle him without having to resort to that?’

‘What are you talking about?’ Toby asked, but they ignored him.

‘I’m doing what they said we should,’ his father replied with a shrug of his shoulders.

‘Oh, yes, you’re always good at kissing arse,’ she replied. She sounded so different now, Toby thought. She looked at him and her gaze was cold and impatient.

‘Go to bed, will you?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I want you to tell me the truth. For once, tell me the truth.’

‘Laura …’ His father raised an eyebrow. But she waved an angry hand at him.

‘So he finds out, so I tell him some things. And …? Who cares. They take him away, wipe his mind clean, and then he’s back to us with the same old, same old. Don’t you get fed up pretending? Making up stupid meetings and bogus reports for that non-existent bloody job?’

Toby couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

‘At least you came back, I suppose,’ his mother continued. ‘Makes some things easier; less questions, less paperwork.’

‘Mum …’

‘What? What do you want?’

This wasn’t how it was meant to be. They were meant to be ashamed, he was the one who should be confident and angry.

‘I met another one, like me,’ he said, trying to will some control into his voice. ‘And he’d been in the army and they made him do things to people. And we’re going to stop you people.’

She didn’t even bother to reply.

‘But what I don’t get is why. All those things I did …’ He pulled at his shirt, exposing the scars that littered his frame. ‘What were they for? What was I made for?’

‘What makes you think you were made for anything?’ she replied.

‘Oh, Jesus,’ said Michael. ‘I’m going to have to call in about this.’

But he didn’t move. Toby had always thought of him as being in charge, but now he twisted his fingers unhappily, waiting to be told what to do.

‘I must have been doing all those things for something,’ Toby said. ‘There must have been a plan, right?’

‘Listen to him,’ she scoffed.

‘No, no, come on. What were you going to make me do?’

She shrugged.

‘What?’ he cried.

‘As far as I know, there were no plans.’

The words made no sense.

‘His face!’ She laughed cruelly. ‘Little boy, you were just a test.’

‘Laura, shut up,’ his dad hissed.

‘He thinks he’s special,’ she jeered. ‘Listen, love, you know those models they have in cars, the ones where they drive into walls and then inspect the damage? That’s you. That’s all you are.’

Toby was silent, his mind spinning and empty. A crash test dummy. He felt sick.

‘They just … a test?’

‘A lab rat,’ she said, and it felt like she took pleasure in the
words. ‘As you are, you’re a puny specimen. But then they play with your mind and you seem to be able to do so much more. So they wind you up and see how far you go.’

Toby saw himself jumping gleefully from that bridge.

‘They tried it on the military, this sort of thing – adrenalin patches and so on. But the public are rather attached to their good old boys.’

He imagined himself diving off that bridge again and again until finally his body snapped and could no longer be sewn back together.

‘For God’s sake,’ his father snapped. ‘You can’t talk to him like this.’

‘A rat?’ Toby spluttered; but his mother had turned away from him.

‘So he hears the truth for once. So what? I’m so fed up with pretending all the bloody time. Go on, make your call, you pathetic little man.’

Toby’s head was spinning. This couldn’t be right. There had to be something, a point to his life. Some bigger reason that would explain everything. But his mother’s cruel taunts had exposed a horrifying alternative. No point, no story, no end, no answers.

He pictured Bea, scowling at him from the bed. He thought of Ben and the way he and Anna had abandoned him. He thought of all the schools he’d attended and the same cold callousness that had greeted him at every one of them. This was his life. He could run, bolt for the door, but wherever he was, the truth was the same.

His parents continued to argue while he stared at his feet. He heard his father shout something about ‘protocol’, but he
didn’t care any more. He went back up the stairs. There was a bath waiting for him. He sat on the edge, his finger trailing in the water. Below he heard more shouting.

Is this it? Is this the rest of my life? He tried to picture different endings, different versions where he was heroic or victorious or simply significant somehow. His finger drew an invisible circle in the water and his mind was blank, empty, useless.

Just a test.

He went back out and stood at the top of the stairs. He saw his mother stride past without bothering to look up at him. He was home after escaping and they had no interest in him at all.

Soon he would be taken back to the lab.

He pictured waking up the next morning, sore and confused. He thought about returning to school where Jimmy Duthie and his pals would be waiting to bash him up again. He shuddered as he imagined the next tests that might be planned for him.

No happy endings.

He found what he wanted in the bathroom cabinet. He closed the door on the bathroom and realised for the first time that there was no lock on the door. Still it didn’t stop him.

He pulled the razor blade across his wrists. It was tougher to do than he expected and he had to cut harder and deeper before the blood really began to pour. He did the same to his legs, just above the ankle. The blade stung like hell, but he didn’t cry.

*

His head began to get woozy and his feet slipped slightly on the wet floor. He put his hand out and banged the door. From
below he heard his mother call out his name. He heard the exasperation in her tone and was pleased.

Feet clumped up the stairs without hurry. But this could not be undone, not now.

His eyesight was fading. He sat on the edge of the bath, only just able to maintain his balance. Things drifted into black and white.

Toby smiled as his mother pushed open the door and stepped in, only to slip and fall. He looked down at the floor. It was everywhere. He had no idea there would be so much. It was a delightful surprise.

His mother started screaming as Toby’s eyes fluttered closed and he fell back into the bath. He could feel her clawing at his body, trying to pull it out of the water. But she was too late, he could feel it. He smiled, delirious.

He was telling his own stories now.

Anna sat in the empty boardroom of the Rylance Group’s central office. It was high up, with tall windows which offered spectacular views of the city below. The room was silent but for a steady low hum from the air-conditioning system. The long, polished table could seat at least twenty and she cut a small, fragile figure as she waited. Her hands were not tied and no one guarded the door. Since the young man had helped her into the car, everyone had been polite and respectful. A jug of coffee and a small pot of hot milk had been put in front of her and eventually she helped herself.

Her father came in. He was dressed in his suit again, with a swelling bruise under his jaw. He sat next to her and gazed at her with such affection that she wondered whether she had imagined her murderous plot.

‘I was going to kill you,’ she said. Her words sounded ridiculous to her now.

‘Yes.’

‘So, why are you smiling?’

‘It was planned this way.’

‘For me to kill you?’

‘For you to try. When you had reached the point where you intended to kill me, then the experiment was over. It was a finishing line, if that makes sense.’

‘No. It doesn’t make any sense at all.’

‘No, it won’t. I’m sorry. But you’ve proved today that you were right. I was against it, I was so anxious, but you were always bolder than me.’

He poured himself a coffee.

‘Who am I?’

He looked at her. ‘You’re Anna Price. My daughter. But it’s a good question.’

‘You know about my memories, don’t you?’

He nodded.

‘You know that I remember the same things as the others?’

‘Yes.’

‘So, what does that mean? Does that mean they’re mine? Are they real memories or are they stolen from someone else?’

‘What do you think?’

‘Are you going to answer every question with another question?’

He placed the cup down on the saucer. ‘I’m sorry. Ask away.’

‘That time on the beach when I was a little girl, was it me?’ she asked. ‘Or was it someone else? We came up with a phrase for it in the squat, for Ben and Toby. We called them “sleepwalkers”. It seemed a nice way to describe something so dreadful. Am I one of them? Or is it me on the beach?’

Henry didn’t reply for a moment. He stared out at the city and she wondered if the delay was theatrical.

‘The memory you refer to belongs to a man in his forties called Steven Dawson.’

Anna’s mind reeled. The light was too bright, there was no air in the room.

‘Who?’

‘He’s no one important. The memory you have of a pet rabbit, the one where you leave the latch unlocked and in the morning—’

‘In the morning it had been savaged by a fox.’

‘Yes. That came from a woman called Karen Dixon. They are just average people who do not even know why we have borrowed and copied their remembrances. We have thousands of these, all from different people.’

‘So I’m not your daughter.’

‘Of course you’re my daughter. I love you. And this, this phrase of yours, sleepwalking, it demeans you. You don’t understand how special you are.’

‘Oh, I’m a special sleepwalker, am I?’

‘No. Yes … God, you’re not a sleepwalker, it’s everyone else, down there, them, they’re …’ He sighed, frustrated. ‘Look. The programme is not what you think. You imagine all sorts of things, like a child imagines monsters under the bed. But the programme is entirely, absolutely for the greater good.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘It is designed to help certain individuals who have suffered extreme trauma. It’s an ongoing project, intended to move beyond the old-fashioned limits of therapy and psychoanalysis. We’re removing the trauma from a patient’s mind, giving him or her a chance to live free of the memories and experiences that have scarred them.’

‘What?’

‘It is a project in development which intends to control a damaged mind. To remove what is malign and hurtful and replace it with positive, empowering emotions. Your friend Ben was badly injured when fighting in Iraq. His friends died slowly and painfully in front of him and he has been unable to overcome the experience. We have been trying to help him. Toby too. After the death of his parents in a road accident, he has struggled to cope with the trauma and has moved from foster home to foster home.’

‘And me? What was my trauma?’

‘You have no trauma, Anna.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘The head of this project, the pioneer. It’s you.’

Anna stared at him, dumb with shock.

‘It was in this very boardroom that you explained the project, explained its goals and ambitions to a collection of sponsors in the hope of raising funds for further research. To prove the validity of the project, you proposed to have the work done on yourself. You would have your memories removed and we would watch as an unlikely English teacher inevitably plotted the murder of her own father. Your experiences would be recorded and documented. A camera was placed inside your television set as a means to this end.’

The coffee tasted too bitter. ‘Is there any water?’ Henry pressed a button on the phone and after a few moments the door opened and a young man entered with a jug and glasses. Behind him, Anna saw a figure walk past the doorway and pause for a moment. It was Kath. But she was dressed differently – smarter and with her hair straightened. She saw Anna and nodded, a
little bashful, almost apologetic. And then, in a second, she was gone.

Henry poured her a glass of water and she drank thirstily.

‘The programme,’ he continued, ‘meant that you would live as a completely different person, someone with a different character, different friends, employment, accommodation. A life that had no recall of any past experiences beyond your relationship with me. I wouldn’t let you cut all our ties, I couldn’t bear it. You chose an English teacher. We were all surprised.’

‘Why?’

‘Because, you were, you are, very different.’

‘What am I like?’

‘You run the research and development department of a multinational corporation, specialising in neurology. You run a team of thirty of the brightest minds in the country. You have a beautiful flat in the smartest part of town. You’re driven and tough and ambitious. And you don’t suffer fools.’

‘I don’t think I sound very nice.’

‘You’re not nice. Nice is …’ he sighed. ‘You are brilliant.’ He reached for her hands and she was too confused to stop him. ‘I love you. You are my girl. We’ve only had each other since your mother died and these last couple of years have been terrible. Looking at this nervy stranger in those terrible clothes.’

Anna stared down at her clothes. She’d always thought she’d dressed rather well.

‘Now it’s over, you can come back. The real you. You can come back and show what an incredible success your work is.’