‘What? He saw me, and my biological mother?’
‘That’s what he said, yes. He’s actually been at Warrender longer than any other resident.’
‘That’s promising, the longest crazy they’ve got!’
‘Don’t say crazy, it’s not a positive term.’
‘What would you say, like?’
‘I would say, people like your mother are obviously fragile to the pressures of life and, sadly, those pressures can make them ill. That’s maybe what made your mum run away from the hospital.’
‘If it makes you feel better.’
‘You are fragile, Anais.’
‘Am I fuck!’
I go quiet and think about the iguana in that guy’s flat a few years ago. What was his name again? Chief. He was a right weirdo.
‘Angus said you thought the blood on your skirt was animal blood, and you had them checking it out at the lab?’ Helen breaks the silence.
‘Aye, I picked up a squirrel, I didnae know it had blood on it. Why, have they got the results yet?’
‘The tests came back saying it was definitely human blood, Anais. The police think you’re just — trying to halt the investigation with this squirrel story.’
‘Do they now?’
Clever experiment. They are smart and relentless and wholly fucking brutal, and in my heart I’m raw, and scared, and nothing. I feel cold, shivery. I want tae get in a bath and put my head under the water.
Click, click, click. Tash turning around — looking at the guy, him saying something to her. What does he say?
Some day, aye, you will walk into a room, or a car, or an aeroplane, or a toilet, and you won’t know it right then — but you will never get back out again. Exit only. Fact. You might go home and put your shopping down and turn on the telly, and all the time you dinnae realise that the next time you go back through your front door it will be in an ambulance, or a body bag.
‘You must remember something about that day?’ Helen asks.
Shrinking. Shrinking, shrinking, shrinking.
It was a squirrel — it wasn’t PC Craig’s blood, I know it in my bones, and so do they, but they don’t care. They dinnae. The experiment want me to know that they’ll have me in a secure unit for life — for something I dinnae do. How else can they break me?
Helen’s serene. The city is ugly. People. Cars. Buses. Trees. Buildings. Then the motorway again, and silence. A turn-off. We drive by a car broken down by the side of the road, then a wee bit later a man walking along with a can of petrol. We whizz past a garage and down a track in the woods, through wide-open gates: Warrender Institute. It’s a big building — like the Panopticon, but less imposing. Huge windows, like the ones in my dream.
The nurse greets us and we all turn to wait for an old barefoot man who’s walking down the corridor. This place stinks.
‘This is Mr Jamieson, Anais. He was living here when you were born,’ the nurse says.
The old monk stops about a metre away; he nods his head a lot — and looks totally pleased to see me. His eyes have a right agitated sheen, and the left one is milky and bloodshot. I think he must be totally blind on that side. The other one is a watery pale-blue colour, and it doesnae look much better.
‘Hiya.’
I dinnae know what else to say. My hands feel really far away, and my arms and my legs dinnae feel like mine.
We walk along to the day-room. The monk sits in his chair and I take a seat across from him. He isnae saying much. The nurse gives me weak orange juice in a plastic cup. I put it down on the table and check the place out. There’s a woman in the corner dozing; her T-shirt has Happy Place written on it. Her handprints are in green paint underneath and there’s spittle around her mouth.
It smells like saliva in here. Like when you go to the dentist, or to get your eyes checked, and the man comes right up into your face and you can smell the saliva in his mouth — it’s gross. There must be a café or something through that door as well. I can smell bad school dinners and bleach.
The monk smiles and smiles, and nods his head. He’s kind of cute, tiny and wizened and I dinnae have a clue what to say, so I just sit. After a while he begins to look sad.
My face flushes, and I feel embarrassed. Helen is out in the nurses’ office chatting — she’s probably telling them all about elephants in India.
Someone should wipe the spittle from that old pill-head’s mouth; every time she exhales a strand of it expands out.
‘So you saw my mum?’ I ask finally.
‘Aye.’ He grins.
‘But you cannae really see?’
‘I could see quite a lot then,’ he falters.
‘What did she look like?’
‘Nice thatch.’
I dinnae think he’s taking the piss but I cannae be sure.
‘And a winged cat, lovely it was, great big wings.’
He spreads his arms wide to demonstrate. Shivers up my back. A winged cat and a woman that jumps from a big arch-shaped window and never stops falling.
I’m not looking at the walls, cos I dinnae want to see faces. I cannae imagine a woman in this room giving birth to a baby, but that doesnae mean she wasnae here. He said she had a flying cat and he even drew it for me. My arms are prickling.
‘She flew in on it. It followed her around, and it padded right down this ward. They didnae see it, of course. Oh, it had lovely black glossy wings.’
A cat that flies — Malcolm. There’s a coldness in me. The hairs on my arms are really up and I look around the room as hard as I can, as if this cat will materialise for me to see it, but it doesnae. The faces are there briefly. Just like a tracer.
‘My mother flew?’
‘Uh-huh, flew in — flew away. They didnae see anything.’
The monk leans across to me.
‘They dinnae see much, though — do they?’ he says.
Glance towards the office. Helen and the nurse are drinking tea.
‘So. You’re saying you saw my mother.’
‘Aye,’ he nods.
‘And she flew in here on a winged cat?’
‘Oh, aye. He was braw, he had a thick coat. His wings were huge! Your mother flew in from that side of the building — the orderlies thought she was walking, but they didn’t look down, her legs were not touching the ground! She glided right down that corridor on him, then through this door. He waited for her, while she gave birth tae you — and that took quite a while! Then she smashed that big arched window right there, then she jumped. Well, the cat picked her up, down by the woods, about five minutes later. I saw them flying east.’
‘Right.’
He’s so schizo it’s hopeless. Weird thing is, I totally believe he’s never told a lie in his life.
‘Your mother was massive with you in her tummy.’
‘What colour was her hair?’
‘Black, like yours.’
Helen’s still chatting in the nurses’ room; they’re all laughing about something.
‘What did she smell like?’
‘Eggs, and death.’
‘I hate eggs. So — let me get this straight: she flew in on a big black winged cat, and she gave birth in here?’
‘Aye.’
‘In this room?’ I ask him.
‘Right there.’
He points to the window. I look, but all that’s there is a fake rubber yucca tree.
‘And she smoked cigarillos,’ he adds.
‘She smoked wee cigars?’
‘Aye. She was a cigarillo-smoking Outcast Queen.’
He is taking the cunt.
‘They’re lovely, they are — sensational girls, the Outcast Queens. D’ye not know of them?’
I rub my head, and undo my ponytail and shake my hair out. My scalp feels too tight, and this is the single weirdest conversation ever — it tops ketamine. Maybe the experiment have already got me, maybe I’m in a cage somewhere right now, drooling down my chin.