The Abbey Sleep Clinic occupies a small corner of Harley Street, part of an old mews house with shapely Edwardian bricks and an air of complete discretion. Visitors often remark on the churchy hush of the place, an oasis tucked behind Oxford Street and between the clatter of Regent’s Park and Cavendish Square. Parts of the building look like they’ve been carved from Portland stone. The Abbey has a regal aspect to it, fit for bewigged marquesses and second-rank royalty. It feels like a sanctuary.
The night – or possibly the day, I’m not sure, given it’s now gone midnight – is still grey and ugly as the cab slices through puddles and deposits me on the empty street corner. I duck out of the rain and shake the moisture off my faulty black umbrella. The cab pulls away too quickly, spritzing the back of my trouser leg with rain. I curse Bloom again for the summons.
I walk up the single flight of stairs and type in my passcode, the rain already making each digit buttery and hazardous. The old house stands on four floors now, long since converted into office space, with just a small silver plaque outside denoting ‘The Abbey Sleep Clinic’. There is a telephone number but no email address. The Abbey’s website is conspicuously bland, listing staff qualifications without revealing any photos. The image is deliberate, as everything here is. We are attendants hovering in the wings, useful to swell a scene or two. It is the golden rule for all mind doctors: we are heard but never seen.
Nothing happens. I wipe down the buttons with my sleeve and retype the security code. Finally, there is a tell-tale metallic cluck as the door shifts. I wonder if Bloom has called any of the others in, my fellow sleep specialists and esteemed colleagues. But the reception and waiting areas are still largely unlit and deserted. It’s like turning up for school and being the only pupil in the assembly hall. There is something strange about seeing a workplace stripped of its usual bustle.
‘Professor?’
I call out, but the sound echoes and dies. I flick a ceiling light on. It illuminates an array of neutral and soothing colours. New carpet has just been laid, still squashing pleasingly underfoot. The air feels unusually pure, pumped out through special filters built into the walls. Usually there is music too. The sound envelops visitors until the bill snaps them back to reality. The Abbey has a womb-like oblivion to it, away from the squall of the outside world. Sleep is primal, after all.
‘Professor?’
Still nothing. I stow the umbrella near the coat stand and wriggle out of my own soaked jacket. There is a bank of security monitors by the reception desk showing camera feeds from the back and front of the building. Our clientele requires it. Celebrities before a wedding, politicians battling for their careers, footballers in a rough patch of form, royalty facing scandal – all of them troop through the tasteful entrance with their pouchy, sleep-deprived faces. Sleep, like food or water, is one thing no human being can do without. The Abbey is a modern-day temple where psychic demons are soothed. People pay silly money just to sink into their beds.
I jiggle the security monitors to life. The front and back entrances flicker dully. I leave the monitors on and wait patiently by the lift, too tired to take the stairs. There is a scatter of magazines on the finger-marked coffee table by the lift doors and I reach for a copy of the New Scientist, skimming it as I wait. We are mentioned again, a small news-in-brief section. The Abbey has a useful sideline consulting on criminal cases across the world, maintaining lucrative contracts with the Metropolitan Police and other law enforcement agencies. All of it is ultimately shepherded by Professor Bloom, once dubbed ‘Britain’s top sleep guru’ in The Times. The article is still framed on her office wall.
The lift chugs up. I realise I know every inch of this building. I try to calculate how many nights have been lost to one of Bloom’s whims. Too many, I decide. But the Anna O case is different. Bloom wouldn’t tease me with that. Anna O is the holy grail for all sleep experts. Ever since it happened, over four years ago now, she has been the one mystery to beat them all.
No, Bloom isn’t that cruel. At least not with me.
I reach the top floor. This is the so-called executive wing. Really it is more of a broom cupboard. This is staff-only, which explains the Alcatraz-themed interior. There are seven of us who work full-time here, alongside another ten auxiliary staff – neurologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, psychotherapists and myofunctional therapists – running the full gamut of sleep-related treatments. My office is at the end of the hallway, one of the few with a functioning lock. Bloom’s office is the first and largest, newer than any of the others and bedecked with gilt-framed art and a hidden drinking fridge.
Bloom is waiting for me in her office doorway with a vexed, knotted look. Her mane of grey hair is tamed into submission, her hair clip moving in time with her yawns. She is mid-sixties, scattily dressed, an operatic thickness hidden by colourful layers, swaddled in canary-yellow and strawberry-pinks, her eyes framed beneath Hank Marvin glasses. Despite rock and roll appetites, she rarely betrays tiredness or any need to sleep. Bloom boasts hollow legs for drink, a bottomless capacity for food. She is the last of her generation: the two-bottle lunches, the occasional afternoon nap, a permanent middle finger for all things HR. She commits the unspoken sin of her sex by being stridently unmaternal. A gourmand, raconteur and wit. She thinks her way through life. Her gift and curse.
Behind her I see another figure. He, by contrast, looks ferrety with a pinched, lawyerly demeanour. A stranger. I’m intrigued.
‘Quite the welcome party,’ I say, feeling my right trouser clinch damply to my leg. ‘Mind telling me what’s going on?’
I walk into Bloom’s office. The ferrety man stands up. Up close he looks more imposing. His hair is stiff, precisely combed. He is fifty-ish, at a guess, with a beaky nose and widow’s peak. A folder on the table beside his chair has a crest on it: ‘Ministry of Justice’. My palms begin to sweat. Bloom was serious, then. Above law enforcement, even above the National Crime Agency. The MoJ is ministerial level.
‘I’m sorry,’ says Bloom, ‘but this really couldn’t wait. Dr Benedict Prince, meet Stephen Donnelly, Deputy Legal Director at the Ministry of Justice.’
Donnelly stretches out a hand and shakes mine limply. He holds my gaze and says softly, ‘Before we begin, Dr Prince, I’m afraid there’s a few house rules to go through.’
I tuck my surprise away. ‘Oh yes?’
He talks through a head cold, sniffs punctuating each sentence. ‘Yes. There’ll be a few forms to sign at the end if you don’t mind.’
‘Saying what?’
‘First, this meeting tonight never happened. Second, you’ve never met me. Third, what you’re about to learn will never leave this building or, indeed, this room. If anyone asks, you came to the office to collect some patient files before returning home. Is that clear?’
I want to smile, but I see that he’s not joking. ‘What is this?’
‘Is that a yes to the terms?’
‘Do I have a choice?’
‘Not really.’ Donnelly indicates the vacant chair. ‘Please, take a seat.’