I look down at the glass in my hand.
I think of Anna washing her own glass out by hand this morning. Not that there will be any traces. It will look natural.
She doesn’t need a knife. Not this time. My body will do the rest for her. My death requires no spectacle. I am just a pawn that needs elimination. A final piece of the puzzle.
We lock eyes. Anna watching me. Me watching her. The two of us caught in this singular, deadly moment.
I can read everything in her expression: the vindication, the calculation, the predatory coolness of someone who has done this before and got away with it.
She has imagined this moment, the glory and the triumph.
This is how she removes the final obstacle. One drink.
After everything, this is how it ends.
I die on this island as the villain. She leaves the hero.
Happy ever after.
Anna continues, ‘I was only five years old in 1999. I couldn’t even remember the Sally Turner case. It made no sense for me to be the target. Unless, of course, I wasn’t the target. It just seemed like I was.’
Already my strength is going. My words slurring. Every bit of me malfunctioning. ‘You’ve lost me.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Who then? Who was the real target?’
‘There is one type of pain even worse than death. Only one. A living death. A family member watching it happen to someone they love and being powerless to stop it. That is an agony beyond bearing. It destroys all chance of contentment or resolution. Suffering like that is the worst pain that any human being can suffer.’
The words hurt. But I force them out. ‘Your family then?’
‘In 1999, my mum was Minister of State at the Department of Health. Her portfolio included direct authority over the UK’s three secure psychiatric facilities: Ashworth Hospital near Liverpool, Rampton Secure Hospital in Nottinghamshire and Broadmoor Hospital in Berkshire. I was never the target for your revenge. She was.’
I am struggling to keep any composure. The words form slowly, loosely. I spit out each syllable. Everything seems impossible and eternal. ‘You’re still not making sense.’
‘Twenty-five years ago, Professor Bloom was just a clinical psychologist. A consultant, yes, but nowhere near the level to authorise pilot interventions on the wards of Broadmoor. No, something like the Medea experiment – something which, if it got out, could cause all sorts of sensational headlines – was far above her paygrade. It needed direct approval. More than merely medical. This had to go to the very top.’
‘Ministerial?’
‘Specifically, the Minister of State for Mental Health. Baroness Emily Ogilvy of Kensington. She was the minister who gave legal backing for Bloom to try the treatment methods outlined in her Medea article. Without my mother, it would never have happened. Sally Turner would still be alive. More importantly, you as her biological child wouldn’t have been forced to stand by and watch your own mother suffer like that.’
There is a neat, almost mathematical elegance to it. ‘Targeting Emily directly wouldn’t have been enough,’ I say, following the logic, leading me to places I desperately don’t want to go. ‘The only thing that could cause her more pain than her own suffering was standing by and watching a member of her own family suffer. Just like Child X did.’
‘Like you did, yes. Admit it, Ben. Say the words. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. The ultimate revenge. Two decades in the making.’
‘Do you have any proof?’
‘Bloom treated you like the son she never had. She met you in 1999. I think she rehabilitated you. I think she saw your interest in the mind and tried to steer it in a good direction. Bloom believed in redemption. That no soul was beyond saving. Child X could have a full, rewarding life. Not as the son of Sally Turner. But as the newly minted Benedict Prince.’
I shake my head. But the thoughts won’t leave me. The gaps, the elisions, those shadows in my head. ‘This is absurd.’
‘No, Ben. The best way to escape suspicion is to invite it. That’s why you were clumsy at the crime scene. Once your guilt was raised then discounted, you were free. Everything could be dumped on Harriet. You hounded her into an early grave. She was the special friend you mentioned in your sessions with Bloom. You met her when she was a trainee on the Cranfield Ward. She was with you until she outlived her usefulness. You didn’t even try to hide it. You admitted to being an orderly at secure psychiatric hospitals on the jacket of your first book. You knew that world better than anyone.’
I am struggling. Both mechanically and mentally. My lungs won’t work. The simple act of breathing is difficult. Thoughts stick and stutter in my head. My chest punches, elbows, punches again. False memory syndrome. Dissociative identity disorder. Psychogenic amnesia. Repressed memories. Can that really be true?
And yet I know it can. A patient not even aware of the gap between fiction and reality. Convinced that the false memories are real. The mind splitting in two, protecting its darkest innermost secrets. Memories and actions failing to match. Gaps, absences.
I am about to reply when, finally, I hear it. The elemental roar outside. It happens so quickly that I can hardly imagine what it was like before. Water in a desert. The storm clouds breaking. The violent rain. Days of rainwater gushing towards the ground. The stampede beating at the shed walls. Throat, lips, neck, chest, stomach, gut – all of it is failing me. Raindrops mimic applause, as if this is my final curtain call, banged out of the world. My last encore.
I am desperate for water. Dying to end my thirst with the rain.
‘No,’ I stammer. It is all I can say. Every little mistake, every wrong turning, flashes before me now. My entire life in reverse. I thought she would strike last night. My psychology training predicted spectacle, Anna’s signature. But she anticipated that and did the opposite. She is smarter than me. Always one step ahead. I have been outdone by the limits of my own mind. ‘No, you’ve put two and two together and got five.’
‘Not this time.’
I stare at my whisky glass. My heart rattles. ‘The whole idea is madness. You have no proof. No evidence.’
‘We know Sally Turner had a child of her own. We know Bloom assessed that child at the same time as carrying out her Medea experiment. Most likely, that child was taken into care following Sally Turner’s death and given a new name. All traces of their link with Sally Turner were wiped from the records. After the leaks around the Bulger case, new legislation was brought in to ensure a media frenzy like that could never happen again to a minor. The old name died. The new name was all that existed. Only Bloom would have known they were the same person.’
‘You still can’t prove that person was me.’
Patient X.
Anna reaches over to the voice recorder and stops it. The red eye goes blank. The room somehow becomes more dangerous still. The tremors working down into my hands. The top of my stomach contracting. A stabbing sensation moving directly at my ribcage. My entire body disintegrating. Senses obliterated.
The thunderstorm continues drowning us with rain. I am forced to shout against it, ‘You don’t understand.’
Anna remains silent, still, just like before. ‘Help me, Ben. Help me understand.’
I see the rest now. I will be found in days, possibly weeks. There will be no whisky glass, no bottles. I am a middle-aged man who drinks too much. There are statistics like me in all corners of the globe. I am falling now. The phut of sound as my body hits the ground. Knees, back, head.
‘You’re wrong,’ I force out. ‘Please, you have to believe me. You’ve got it all wrong. There’s only one person who could have got to Harriet in her cell. Only one person who could have done all this . . .’
I look up, the shed empty. I will bellow into nothingness. There will be just me and the walls and the dusty flooring. The sounds crashing into each other, a symphony of noise. Waiting for the thunderstorm to pass, like an invader pillaging the town, leaving destruction in its wake.
Once normality returns, Anna will be gone. All mark of her rubbed out. Leaving just the sea slapping against the shoreline, fragments of half-remembered voices, sun burning like liquid fire into my eyes, and the ghosts of our old house in Oxford and life as it should be and the truth that dare not speak its name.
I hear the recollection of Anna’s dream again. Running through a dark forest to find the answer in a town called Marathon.
I crawl as best I can towards the door. The rain leaks under the flimsy sides. Thunder buffets the air itself. My fingernails scratch for an opening, a last chance for air, the final bid for freedom. I will lie on my back and stare up at the wooden ceiling of the shed and think of KitKat in bed asking me if next time she can be the one to play dead.
She is the last face I remember. The years I won’t get to see. The triumphs and disasters, the boyfriends and partners, the children of her own, an entire span of human life. The rest means nothing. Only love like that survives us.
I wish I could hug KitKat for one last time. Say that my love for her is wider than the sky, deeper than the oceans. More than she can ever comprehend.
‘How is a story like this supposed to end?’ I ask.
‘Like all stories end,’ says Anna now. ‘The righteous survive. The unrighteous do not. Evil is vanquished and order restored. Goodbye, Doctor.’
And in that moment Sleeping Beauty leaves her Prince and travels to a far-off kingdom.
She is never seen again.
AO
London, New York City, Port Maria