The Treatment. C.L. Taylor
into my brain. I have to find out if she’s still alive.
***
I ring the hospitals first, asking if they’ve admitted anyone by the name of Dr Rebecca Cobey. The first receptionist I speak to tells me she can only release patient information to next of kin. I wait a couple of minutes then I ring back, using a different voice, and say I’m Dr Cobey’s daughter. This time the receptionist tells me there’s no Rebecca Cobey listed. I try the other hospital in town but they claim they don’t have her either. Finally, I ring the police who confirm that there was a motor vehicle accident on the high street but they can’t tell me what happened to the victim.
‘I was there,’ I tell the female police officer. ‘The car sped up. It deliberately knocked her over.’
‘Can I ask how old you are?’
‘Sixteen.’
‘OK,’ she says and then pauses. This is the bit where she laughs at me or puts the phone down. But she doesn’t. Instead, she says, ‘What’s your name and address? I’ll need a contact number for your parents so I can arrange for someone to come to your home to interview you.’
‘Of course. My name is Drew Finch and I live at —’
‘Drew,’ Mum says from the doorway, making me jump. ‘Is everything OK?’
Mum frowns as she reads Mason’s note. Tony, sitting beside her on the sofa, reads over her shoulder.
‘Who did you say gave this to you?’ Mum says, looking up.
‘I told you, a stranger.’
‘Did she tell you her name?’
‘Well, she …’ I tail off. I don’t like the weird way Tony’s looking at me. It’s like he’s too interested in what I’m saying.
Mum glances at Tony. I hate how she does that – deferring to him as though she’s incapable of making a decision without his opinion. She was never like that with Dad. She made all the decisions in our house back then. Dad used to joke that, ever since the motorbike accident where he lost his right leg from the knee down, Mum wore the trousers because they didn’t look right on him any more.
Tony runs his hands up and down his thighs as though he’s trying to iron out invisible creases in his suit trousers. ‘Have you spoken to the police about what you saw?’
‘I rang them earlier. They said they’d send someone round to take a statement from me.’
‘I see.’ He glances back at Mum but she’s looking at Mason’s note again. It quivers in her fingers like a pinned butterfly. She’s rereading the bit where Mason says how scared he is. I can just tell.
‘Jane.’ Tony places his hand over the note, blocking her view. ‘We talked about this. Remember? About Mason trying to avoid facing up to his responsibilities. We both know how manipulative he can be.’
‘He’s not manipulative!’ Mum shifts away from him so sharply his hand flops onto the sofa. ‘My son might be a lot of things but he’s not that.’
‘He’s a liar, Jane. And a thief. Or have you already forgotten that he stole from you.’
‘Tony!’ Mum glares at him. ‘Not in front of Drew. Please.’
It’s not like I don’t know all this already. They sent me upstairs when we got home from school but I didn’t go into my room. I sat cross-legged on the landing instead and listened to Mum lay into Mason about nicking twenty quid from her bag. She told him how disappointed she was. How Tony was at the end of his tether. How they knew Mason had been smoking weed out of his bedroom window. ‘And now you’re stealing!’ she cried. ‘From your own mother. What did I do to deserve that, Mason? What did I do wrong?’ She started crying then. I heard Mason try to comfort her but she wasn’t having any of it. She told him that he’d pushed her to the edge and she had no choice but to agree with Tony and send him to the Residential Reform Academy.
Mason wasn’t the only one who gasped. I did too. When Tony had first mentioned sending Mason away (another conversation I’d eavesdropped) Mum was really against the idea. I wasn’t. Mason might be my brother but he can also be a prize dick. He wasn’t always a dick. He was pretty cool when we were kids but he changed after Dad disappeared. He stopped watching TV in the living room with me and Mum and holed himself away in his room instead. And if he wasn’t in his room he was out with his mates on their bikes or skateboarding in the park. He started finding fault in everything – in me, in Mum, at school. He talked back to his teachers, he started fights and he smashed stuff up if he lost his temper. After he was excluded, I barely saw him. When I did he’d make snidey comments about me being the favourite and accuse me of sucking up to Tony.
‘You’ve got no personality,’ he’d shout at me. ‘That’s why Tony likes you.’
He really bloody hated Tony. He made no secret of that.
‘Drew,’ Tony says now. ‘If this woman told you her name you need to tell us what it is.’
‘I know but …’ I pause. Tony’s the National Head of Academies which means he knows the people who run the RRA. If he contacts them, Mason will get into trouble. He’s not supposed to have any contact with the outside world while he’s away. He wasn’t even allowed to take his phone or iPad with him. I shouldn’t have said anything about this in front of Tony but I was so freaked out by what had happened it all came spilling out before I knew what I was doing.
‘But what?’ He sits forward so he’s perched on the edge of the sofa. ‘Just tell us her name, Drew.’
‘I’m going to ring Norton House,’ Mum says, before I can reply. She reaches into her handbag for her phone and swipes at the screen.
‘Jane.’ Tony touches her arm. ‘Let me deal with this. If you get in touch, Mason will be getting exactly the reaction he was hoping for when he smuggled the note out. He –’
‘Yes, hello.’ Mum twists away from Tony. ‘I’m calling to enquire about my son, Mason Finch.’
‘Mum!’ I jump out of my seat. ‘Mum, please! Don’t tell them about –’
She waves me away.
‘Yes, that’s right. I just wanted to check that he’s OK.’ She covers the mouthpiece with her hand and gestures for me to sit back down. ‘They’re just going to find out how he’s doing.’
‘Honestly, Jane …’ Tony gets up from the sofa. He walks over the window and stares out into the street with his arms crossed over his chest. A bead of sweat trickles out of his hairline and runs down the side of his face. He swipes it away sharply, as though brushing away an annoying fly. The toe of his right shoe tap, tap, taps on the carpet as Mum continues to hold. I’ve never seen him look this unsettled before.
‘OK,’ Mum says into the phone. ‘Right, OK. I understand. No, there’s nothing else. Thank you for your time.’ She removes the phone from her ear and ends the call. ‘He’s in pre-treatment and can’t be disturbed, but they’re going to WhatsApp me some video footage so I can see that he’s OK.’
Tony doesn’t react. He continues to stare out into the street. A new bead of sweat runs down the side of his face. He doesn’t swipe it away.
‘Mum,’ I say, but I’m interrupted by the sound of her phone pinging.
‘Here we go. They’ve sent the video.’ She taps the empty seat next to her, gesturing for me to join her on the sofa. Tony doesn’t move a muscle as I cross the living room.
Mum touches the screen as I sit down next to her. An image of Mason, sitting in a beanbag chair with a PS4 controller in his hands, jumps to life. There are two boys sitting either side of my brother, both on beanbags, both holding