The Panopticon (3 page)

Joan has twenty different religious icons up on the office wall behind her.

‘Nae witch?’ I ask her.

‘You have a religious preference?’

‘Pagan. Three-parts witch, white obviously – well, sort of!’

‘Obviously,’ she says.

‘Seriously, white witch, ’cept on Sundays.’

‘I shan’t ask why not on Sundays.’

‘Best not.’

‘Well, we’ll see what we can do, Anais. I’m sure there’s a pagan symbol we can find tae put up for you. We dinnae want you tae feel excluded here. I know you’ve moved a lot, so maybe it’s time for you tae settle down – for a wee while?’

I’m dizzy. I hate. Her red shoes. His ginger mullet. Paedos, polis, sniffer dogs, Chinese books, tits, dirt, the colour yellow, icons, cord-fucking-carpets. I’d rather be dead today, but I umnay – I’m fifteen and fucked.

‘Wanker!’ I whisper to the student, as I get up.

Eric stands with his soft posh hand on my files and looks hurt. Joan nods at him and he lifts up a big pile of folders with my name and number printed on them; he puts them on her desk.

‘Brenda will show you tae your room. If you have anything sharp on you, it will be removed. And please, do not tell the other residents what you are in for!’

2

BRENDA HAS A
fob-key thing for the rooms. I follow her through the main open-plan area; there isnae much in here, just ugly furniture, and crap carpets that urnay even a colour.

Count the steps to each floor – there are twenty-four. Six doors on each landing, I reckon there’s about twelve of us in this unit. We go past the bathrooms and they have girl and boy signs on the doors.

We reach the third floor, and the three lassies are waiting. Brenda walks me along towards them. Moustache’s tash is three fine brown spirals, on each cheek. She has wide brown eyes. Nae earrings – I dinnae even think she’s had hers pierced. Her hair is long and she reminds me of Frida Kahlo. I like Frida Kahlo, ay, especially her bath and feet painting, and that deer, and the ones of her dreams.

We stop at a bedroom next to the girls, room forty-nine – it is right in the middle of the landing.

‘I need shampoo,’ Moustache says to Brenda.

‘Okay, I’ll let you into the stores in a minute.’

Next to Moustache, the blonde girl with the pixie haircut scratches her tummy. Her tummy’s cut tae fuck. That’s beyond normal. Normal is when someone just cuts their
arms, legs or sometimes thighs – not slash marks like that right across their stomach. There’s fucking hundreds of them, then there’s thick white ones under the fresh ones. She’s wearing low-slung jeans, and her hips have silvery stretch-marks. She must have a kid.

‘Can you hurry up? We want tae go out, like today,’ Moustache says.

‘I’m settling our new resident intae her room, then I’ll let you into the store. Anais, this is Tash – you choose tae be called Tash, don’t you, love?’

The lassie nods.

‘Aye.’

‘Uh-huh, and this is Shortie. Shona does not like her Christian name, either.’

The girl with the baseball cap gives me a dirty look, takes her hat off and rubs her hair. It’s curly, mousy and short. She pulls her hoody up and walks away, gesturing tae a laddie downstairs to meet her around the back.

‘And this is our Isla. Say hello then, girls!’

They look, and I look, and Brenda pushes back the door to my room. I follow her in and she hands me the plastic bag. Great! Unbutton my school shirt, kick off my shoes. There’s blood on my skirt – and my socks. There’s some on my leg. Everything stinks (like the cells did for three days) of concrete, and bleach, and cold, and glass. There was a stone bog in my cell, with just enough water to flush, but no enough tae drown in.

‘The bedroom doors are always open, Anais, but they can be pulled partially shut if you’re getting dressed. Nobody can see in. Well, only the watchtower, and there isn’t anyone in there unless the night-nurse is on duty; she can lock all
the doors from a central locking system, if necessary – for the residents’ safety!’

She shakes her head when I stop undressing.

‘I need your underwear as well.’

Step out my pants and lob them into the bag. This room is smaller than my last one. There’s banging out on the landing – that laddie must be back, he’s really wellying that balcony.

‘Most of the boys’ rooms are on the second-floor landing. Nobody can see you dress or undress from the floors below, as long as you get changed tae the left of your door. We like tae keep doors open, to create a more trusting environment. There are no secrets here in the Panopticon,’ Brenda adds.

I shove the bag out to her and I’m in the scud now, so I stand behind the door with just my head poking out. I fucking hate being in the scud in new places. Imagine a big fluffy dressing gown. I’ve not had a dressing gown since I was, like, ten! I wouldnae waste my clothing allowance, though. I like vintage stuff and it’s expensive, I can barely afford even one piece a month.

Imagine, though, ay. Imagine soft new jammies, and an open fire, and a big dog I could set on strangers if they came anywhere near my house. Imagine having your own house? Imagine having ten big dogs and a gun. Tash is tapping her fingers off the balcony, and Brenda’s trying tae ignore her.

‘Is your underwear in there as well, Anais?’ she whispers.

‘Why, d’ye want tae sniff my knick-knacks?’ I ask her.

Isla giggles. Brenda turns the bag until she locates my
scants. She smiles tightly and ties a knot in the bag. The wee laddie keeps kicking the balcony; he’s got curly hair and thick specs and he’s skinny as fuck.

‘Brian, you have been asked tae stop doing that.’

‘Aye?’

He boots the balcony harder and she marches away towards him.

‘Brian, you need tae get, wait a minute …’

Shove my door shut but it still stays open about three inches. There’s prongs in the fucking frame so I cannae close it. These doors really do only lock at night, and all from one button, up there in the watchtower! They say they dinnae use it to lock us in all the time. That’s what they say.

I’m so pale my veins pop out all purple. My toenails are chipped. This room is cold. One window, one wardrobe. Everything’s screwed to the floor so you cannae pick it up and throw it at the staff.

A tractor grumbles across the fields outside. Slide down the wall, drag the duvet off the bed and wrap it around me until I’m totally cocooned.

My bin bags are here, three of them. There’s a hole at the bottom of one – I push into it with my big toe and a lipstick falls out. Pillar-box red, Dior. I bought it last week from one of the girls who go choring up town. There were three professional chores in my last unit. They’d come back, day after day, with big store bags full of stuff they’d nicked. It’s a skill. I can do it but I dinnae, I have an aversion to being called a common thief. It’s only worth stealing if you’re in the big league. Diamonds. Rare artworks. Nuclear weapons. That kind of shit.

Pick up my lipstick and take the lid off. This shade of red
is absolutely perfect. I need tae get a pencil in a matching colour, or just a wee bit darker. Lips have to be outlined really, if you’re not blessed with bee-stung. It’s easy tae make a cupid’s-bow-look more pout than it is. It’s the same with a lack of right-angled cheekbones or supernatural baby blues or tawny owls. There are ways to make it work. Sometimes I make something so pretty, I dinnae even think it’s me. It’s not that I think I’m perfect. I’m so imperfect it’s offensive. Totally and utterly fucked in fact – but I like pillbox hats.

Sun floods in my window, and a rainbow appears. I gaze up at it until the colour fades and the clouds turn grey.

The experiment are watching.

You can feel them, ay. In the quiet. In the room. Wherever you are – they’re there. That’s a given. Sometimes they’re right there, sometimes a wee bit further away; when I want to hurt myself but I dinnae, I can always feel them then. They want me to hurt myself. They’re sick like that. What they really want is me dead.

My legs are going numb, and I’m getting cold, but I still cannae be arsed unpacking. It’s dark outside now. Those stars are way brighter than in the city. A bird flies by and there’s a low hoot. I’m gonnae have tae go for a piss, I cannae hold it in any longer.

Stick my head out over the landing, there’s a notice on the office door downstairs. The staff must be in a meeting. Score! If they were in the main area then I’d have to be dressed appropriately, even to go for a pee. As it is, I can shuffle along to the bogs in this duvet and hopefully no-one’ll see me.

There’s a girls’ bathroom and a boys’ bathroom – they just have toilets in them. I peek next door and there are
two bathrooms with baths in them. Usually the staff make you bathe every day; no doubt they’ll tell me to have one after tea. I go into the girls’ toilet. Someone’s been sick in here. There’s a strong whiff of vomit, and sweat. Ming-fucking-mong.

Have a pee and look in the mirror and meet my own eyes, but quickly look away. It’s funny when you make yourself feel uncomfortable. I do it all the time. Mirrors are best avoided, unless I’m getting ready, or on a really good E. Everything’s fine if you’ve had a really good E. This bathroom is cold, I wish I was wearing socks or slippers or something. Someone’s left a deodorant in here – bath in a can, ay. It’ll do, for now. I spray it on and wash my face, then close the bathroom door quietly behind me. Shuffle back along the landing. Tash and Isla are arguing outside their room.

Isla nods at me, and I nod and pass around them, pretending not to listen.

‘I dinnae want you tae come,’ Tash says.

‘I umnay letting you go by yourself.’

‘Isla, I’ll be more worried about you being there for half the night on your own – like a sitting-fucking-duck! What if you catch a cold?’

‘If I umnay there tae take down the numbers, it’ll be worse. I’ll just worry.’

Isla scratches her belly. She’s cut that again since earlier and she looks like she’s gonnae greet. Tash has taken her moustache off, and put make-up on, and her hair is Pre-Raphaelite; earlier it was in a braid. She’s wearing a wee skirt, and boots, and Isla has a pad in her hand. She touches Tash’s cheek.

Slip into my room, and stand behind the door. They’re whispering low now. They’ll be heading for the docks, or wherever’s closer. Isla must be taking down the licence-plate numbers, just in case Tash doesnae come back, then she’d have something to tell the polis about the last time Tash was seen. They scuffle by my door and down the stairs. I look out the window and a few minutes later they come out.

‘Where’s Isla?’

A laddie on the landing below is asking one of the staff, their meeting must be over.

‘She’s away on an outing with Tash. I think they were going ice-skating.’

I dinnae recognise the staff guy’s voice. A door slams, then there’s a thump as music blares out on the landing below.

Outside, Tash and Isla disappear to a wee dot across the fields. That’s how Teresa started. Mother Teresa, where art thou?

Teresa began when she was right young. She told me she got intae a good sauna and stayed there for ages, but she got sick of giving away part of her cut. She was doing it from our flat by the time she adopted me. Her old man never knew. He thought she was in accounts. She said she tried for a straight life and it didnae happen, but she didnae regret it, cos that was how she got me. Her old man had had a normal job, normal life, normal family. She had Professor True. He was her oldest client and he gave all Teresa’s refs for the social, saying she was his accountant, saying she was an exemplary this-and-that and the next thing. He loved her. Old True. Old likes-it-up-the-arse but dinnae tell anyone at the university,
or
his sainted wife – True.

Pull the curtains closed.

I cannae face lying down in that bed. I’m always getting in shit for not sleeping in beds. You dinnae know who’s slept in your bed before you – it could have been a right clarty bastard. I got scabies off a bed in a unit once. It was itchy as fuck and I had tae slather on this pink ointment that smelled like chemicals, for like a week! It was fucking shite.

Snuggle back down, right in the corner of the room – so I can see if anyone comes in.

The hallway’s lit with a dim blue light and my face hurts. It’s the floor, under my face. Look along the carpet and see bin bags – and a single bed. Fuck! Shove myself up against the wall. I’m dizzy. Death-breath. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!

‘Bed,’ someone calls from downstairs.

‘But I’m fifteen!’

‘You are twelve, Dylan. When you are thirteen years old you will get to stay up for ten minutes longer. Then, when you are fourteen, you will be allowed a further ten minutes! When you are fifteen, you will be allowed a full half-hour more.’

The laddie’s on the landing below, by the sound of it, and he isnae giving up.

‘I’ve got a tummy-ache.’

‘No, you have not.’

‘I miss my mum,’ he pleads.

‘I miss my mummy too, Dylan. Now, bed.’

I cannae believe the night-staff are on duty already, I must have been asleep for hours! I didnae sleep in the cells, though, so no wonder I’m knackered.

The night-nurse sticks her head around my door. The light on the landing behind her is a pale blue, and she’s white. Like, white! I mean she isnae like Celtic pale-as-fuck white – she’s albino. Try not tae stare. Her eyes look like they’re a pinky colour, and they flicker from left to right.

‘Get off the floor, and up into your bed, please. We do not sleep on the floor like dogs, Miss Hendricks.’

She has the most proper English accent ever.

‘What time is it?’ I ask.

‘It’s time for bed.’

She pads away down the landing. I stink. I want a bath. I want to cry and hit my head off the wall – and scream until I pass out, but I gave that up for Lent.

Grab the first bin bag; there’s nae T-shirts for bed at the top, just my feather wings. I pull them out and rub my face against their softness, then hang them carefully over the window. They are the luckiest thing I own.

Rummage until I find a book and an old T-shirt, pull it on and climb into bed. At first, in a new unit, you always think of the bugs left from the last person who slept in the bed. Then you just think: Fuck it! I can tell that old albino’s the type to put you in a fucking headlock if you urnay tucked up all neat and nice, ay. She looks in again.