Nikki was sitting on one of the wooden benches in the entrance hall, a writhing, whining infant on her lap and a sullen-faced toddler leaning against her knees, a few cotton sacks containing the family’s meagre belongings slumped at her feet.
Shannon emerged from the office in a flowing tie-dyed dress that covered her full figure, her long brown wavy hair tied back.
‘Nikki Paton?’ Her loud, cheerful voice startled the toddler and made the baby whine even louder.
Alarmed, Nikki turned towards Grace, who reassured her with a nod and a smile.
This was where Grace belonged, not at Tier Three with its dubious methods and complex issues. Here the aim was to meet needs, rehabilitate and reintegrate, and seeing her clients make progress gave her a real sense of satisfaction. Spending time with Shannon also lifted her spirits. She was not just a colleague, but Grace’s best friend, who often reminded her of Lottie. Shannon had run the Agrarian for over seven years now and the two women had grown ever closer, not only in their bi-weekly working days, but often spending their free time together too.
‘Y’alright, doll?’ Shannon said to Grace, having kept her soft Scottish accent despite years in the south of England.
‘Nikki, this is Shannon, who runs the compound,’ Grace said, her voice low and soothing. ‘She’ll do your psychometrics like we talked about in the car and get you and the kids settled in. She’s a good friend of mine and I trust her.’ She looked down at the children. ‘Shannon, this is Felix’ – the toddler frowned – ‘and this is Angel.’
‘Aww, look at this gorgeous pair. Shall I give you a hand there, Nikki?’ Shannon asked, competent hands lifting the baby from Nikki’s grasp, placing her on her ample bosom and patting her back rhythmically. Angel stopped crying and stared up at Shannon, mesmerised. Grace saw Nikki relax. Felix clambered up onto his mother’s lap, grabbed her face with both hands and turned it towards him.
‘Look at those gorgeous ruddy cheeks,’ Shannon said to Angel. ‘Are you teething, honey? I have four of my own,’ she told Nikki, who blinked up at her as Felix began twirling her hair in his fingers and sucking his thumb. ‘They have lessons in the compound school and run wild with the other kids here the rest of the time. Mine’re bigger than yours, mind you, but the mums here have a cooperative for the childcare, Compound Kids Club they call it. They take turns when they’re not working to look after the littl’uns. There’s a good community here. Don’t worry, love, you’ll soon settle in.’
Nikki looked reassured, as though there was some secret mother code passing between them that Grace was immune to.
‘You live here?’ she asked.
‘Yeah, it’s not so bad!’ Shannon gave one of her winning smiles. ‘Right, let me go and fetch my shell and we’ll get you booked in. I’ve got a lovely cabin you can share with a young mum who has a couple of kids a similar age to yours. It’ll be chaos but it’ll be fun, won’t it, Felix?’
The toddler looked up at hearing his name.
Grace followed Shannon, who held the now sleepy Angel with one arm, as she navigated her way through the security door and into the office. Once in the office, she grabbed Grace into a hug with her free hand.
It felt odd to be so close to a baby.
‘She doesn’t bite,’ Shannon laughed, noticing Grace’s expression. ‘She hasn’t got any teeth. Well, not yet.’
‘Dan, he…’ She said no more.
‘He’s on at you about babies again?’
Grace nodded.
‘You’re going to have to tell him at some point. You can’t just lead him on, doll.’ Shannon rubbed her back sympathetically.
‘I know,’ she sighed.
Shannon knew Grace didn’t want a baby, but she didn’t know the full truth. How could Grace explain her irrational fear that she would leave a child as her mother had left her?
She couldn’t, not without unravelling the history she’d spent nearly her whole life concealing. As a psychiatrist she knew that feelings of abandonment as a child could lead to problems. She also knew suppressing feelings was not healthy in the long term. But still, what could she do? And there was more to it as well. But she couldn’t face up to that, not now.
Grace let herself relax into her friend’s hug.
‘You okay after yesterday?’ Shannon asked.
After seeing what Noah Begbroke had gone through in the clinic, Grace had been desperate to speak to someone about what she’d seen. When she’d left Dan downstairs the previous night, sleep had evaded her, so she’d called Shannon. Who better to help get things off her chest than her best friend, someone who already worked in the Tier System? Someone who she trusted would keep it to herself. Grace hadn’t told her everything. She hadn’t wanted to distress her friend. Was a trouble shared a trouble halved?
‘I’m okay,’ Grace sighed. ‘You’ll take extra good care of Nikki, won’t you? She’s, you know… fragile.’
‘I know,’ Shannon said with a nod, pulling back. ‘Right, I’ll get the paperwork done and then we’ll do the rounds.’ She picked up her shell and went back out into the entrance hall with her little passenger.
Grace sat at the desk, the screen in front of her displaying the Janus bulletin. There would only be limited information here, but it might give her some idea of what was going on.
Her fingers trembled as she typed in the name Remy James Wilson. She didn’t use the voice search, not only because she didn’t want Shannon to hear but because she couldn’t bear to say his name out loud, as though somehow it might conjure him up and he’d be standing in front of her.
His image appeared on the screen. He’d filled out, his almost black hair hanging scruffily down to his muscular shoulders and around his strong jawline, his mouth turned down.
She could see the boy in the man’s face and was immediately transported back to the past.
‘Come on, Remy.’ Her knuckles were white as she gripped her kit bag over her shoulder. ‘Let’s go, the pair of us. There’s nothing here for us now.’
Lottie was gone. He had to accept that.
‘Just throw some stuff in a bag. Come with me!’
‘I don’t want to leave London.’ For a moment, he sounded like a child, not the young man who stood tall in front of her. ‘I’m a London boy through and through. The lads have promised me some work over the next few months. Can’t you stay here, instead of going to Newcastle or wherever it is, Gracie? Go to college somewhere closer? I mean, what’s so good about university anyway?’
He tried to smile but his grey eyes were sorrowful, as if he already knew he wasn’t going to be able to persuade her. In them she saw all the loyalty, support and comfort that she’d known nearly her whole life. What was going to happen when she cut her moorings and drifted?
For a moment she wobbled.
No. She had to be strong. She had to do this. She geared herself up, knowing once the words were out she wouldn’t be able to take them back. Once an egg was cracked, Lottie used to say.
‘The last thing I want to do, Remy, is to hurt you,’ she began, the words burning her lips because she knew that was exactly what she was doing.
His shoulders fell and her heart cramped within her chest.
They rarely had much money, Remy was in trouble with some dodgy people, the city was getting her down. She was tired of the struggle.
‘I’ve worked so hard to get out of the shit, Remy. I have to make a life for myself. I have to do this for me.’
‘Without me?’ he said, as if the words didn’t make sense, as if there could be no ‘me’ without the ‘us’. ‘Gracie, please…’
‘If you’re not going to come with me, then you have to let me go. I don’t want to resent you. After all the hard work I put in… two jobs… passing my exams even after losing Lottie…’ She saw his face and stopped, dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘A place on a degree course! Whoever would’ve thought that could happen to a person like me? I’ve got the chance of a new life. Why can’t you just be happy for me?’
She’d told him she’d come down to visit him during the holidays, but it was always all or nothing with Remy and she didn’t do ultimatums.
So she’d made the hardest decision and let go.
Grace scanned the bulletin. A street fight with a notorious drug dealer had ended in death. That was all the detail she could access. Her clearance stopped at Tier Two files. From what she knew of Remy in the past, he never carried a weapon. Maybe the dealer had died when he banged his head on the pavement. She convinced herself that whatever had happened it had been manslaughter. That meant Remy would go to Tier Three.
It was bad enough seeing Noah Begbroke go through that, regardless of what he’d done, but how would it feel if it was someone she loved?
Love – the idea struck her hard. He was her brother, not in blood, but in bond. What a fool to get himself into trouble like this over a street fight. It must have been an argument that had surged out of control. Had Remy changed so much in the intervening years that he would kill someone? Yes, it was manslaughter, not murder, but still. She knew he wasn’t adverse to making money in dodgy ways, or fighting, as she’d seen him do both in the past, but she also knew that Remy hated drugs after seeing what it had done to their mothers.
Grace shut the screen down as soon as Shannon came back into the office.
‘Right, Shan, let’s get to it.’
Shannon and Grace drove around the compound in Shannon’s jeep, having settled Nikki and the children into their cabin with a new array of second-hand clothes, bedding and necessities. Grace could tell that Josie, the other mum in cabin 22, had already taken Nikki under her wing, and she began to feel more confident about Nikki’s prospects at the compound. They drove through a family area, washing lines full of clean cotton clothes, large and small, drying in the sun, donated toys left strewn around. The older children were in lessons at this time of day but some of the babies and toddlers were sitting on blankets with their mothers.
Shannon slowed the jeep every now and then to wait for the security gates to open. The fences were heavy-duty posts made from recycled plastic, a constant reminder of incarceration. For many residents, the fences gave them security. For others, the notion of freedom was enough to motivate them to get their lives together and get out.
As they drove, Grace checked her shell for brain scans and bio-readings of her scheduled clients. She quizzed Shannon on the progress of offenders and they discussed the competency of the various therapists who worked throughout the day in shifts from seven in the morning until ten o’clock at night.
Progress could be slow at the compound, as no doubt it was at the other, newer compounds around the country. Getting people back on their feet, helping them to build happier, more successful lives, and healing them, chemically and emotionally, took time. Tier Three offered quick, effective results, but this was where Grace’s heart lay.
As they drove back through the soldiers’ compound, Conrad’s offer came into her mind. It didn’t surprise her that he would value a swift conveyor belt of profitable cures over the expense and long-term graft of building morally healthy citizens.
‘Penny for them, doll?’
Where should she start? Should she tell Shannon that Dan was asking her to spy on Tier Three to find out what had gone wrong? Or say that her childhood friend was in serious trouble and she felt guilty she hadn’t been around to keep him on the straight and narrow? She settled for something less difficult.
‘Conrad wants me to move up a Tier.’
Shannon briefly released the pressure on the accelerator and the car juddered. ‘Really?’
‘He asked me yesterday.’
‘What did you say?’ She kept her eyes on the road.
‘I said no.’
Shannon blew out a lungful of air. ‘Great, I’d hardly ever see you any more! What would I do without my pal? What did Dan say?’
‘He said it would upset me too much.’
‘He might have a point.’ Shannon pulled up with a jerk and grabbed her shell from the side pocket of the car door. ‘I’ve got to drop something off for one of the therapists. Won’t be a minute.’
Grace watched as Shannon stopped to talk to a group of soldiers who were working on physio exercises. Her thoughts turned to Nikki’s children. What would her and Remy’s life have been like if they’d been in a place like this? She imagined her mum sitting on the grass with the other mothers.
Taking her shell from her bag, she tried to search for more information on Remy, but there wasn’t much more she could access other than the bulletin and his photograph.
‘I read the case files on him,’ Shannon said, suddenly reappearing at the side of the jeep.
‘You gave me a fright! Didn’t expect you back so soon.’
‘Just missed her, the therapist. I’ll catch up with her later.’ She searched Grace’s face. ‘Do you know him?’
‘Is he getting treated down here, do you know?’ Grace asked, deliberately avoiding the question. She imagined him in the London clinic, walking down the corridor towards her, flanked by guards. A fear gripped her that if she saw him in real life, old Grace, Gracie, would suddenly come tearing through the fabric of the carefully constructed life she’d built around herself these last fifteen years.
‘He was treated up in Manchester,’ Shannon said, curiosity evident in her voice.
Treated? Grace relaxed a little. At least his treatment was over and done with. ‘That was quick. He only killed the guy three days ago. When did they arrest him?’
‘What are you talking about?’ Shannon asked. ‘They treated him at Tier Three last year.’
‘Last year?’ Grace couldn’t make sense of what she was hearing.
‘Yes, up in Manchester. I told you. They sent me the files to look over beforehand because he was ex-forces. He’d had a fight, the other guy pulled a knife and Wilson took it from him and slashed him. Serious but not fatal. In my opinion he had conflict-trauma. I didn’t actually meet him,’ Shannon added, taking a bottle of water from the drinks holder and slugging from it.
Grace flicked at her shell to look more closely at the details, her heart thumping furiously. ‘No, look, he was arrested just a few days ago. Are you sure it was the same offender?’
Shannon looked closer, shielding her eyes against the bright sunlight. ‘Yes, Remy Wilson. That’s him.’ She looked at the date again. ‘Wait a minute, you’re saying that he offended again, after Tier Three treatment?’ Her face was a picture of confusion. ‘No, that’s not possible.’ She shook her head.
Grace thought back to her conversation with Dan the previous night. ‘If this gets out to the press…’
‘It won’t,’ Shannon reassured her. ‘There’s no way Conrad would let it. Anyway, from what I’ve heard on the grapevine, Conrad’s pretty pally with some bigwig in the DoJ. I’m sure he’ll put the brakes on a leak.’
Dan’s words came to mind. I can be pretty persuasive.
‘But I don’t understand how this could have happened after Aversion Therapy,’ Grace said.
‘They’ll probably scan him for psychopathy. I mean if Aversion Therapy hasn’t worked, then he must be pretty messed up. There must be something else wrong with him.’
Grace dug into her memories. Remy wasn’t a psychopath.
Was he?
Shannon took Grace’s shell from her limp hands and typed something. ‘Ah, they can’t scan him. He’s on the run. Good job this isn’t in the press. Imagine the public knowing Tier Three wasn’t effective. Imagine the hysteria – all those criminals who’ve been released back into the wild…’
‘If they catch him,’ Grace began, ‘they’ll send him to…’ Her mouth suddenly dried up, as though her mind wouldn’t let her go there.
Shannon said the words she couldn’t: ‘Tier Four.’
Grace leaned over the side of the jeep and vomited onto the lush, green grass.