About the Author

Louise Mumford was born and lives in South Wales. From a young age she loved books and dancing, but hated having to go to sleep, convinced that she might miss out on something interesting happening in the world whilst she dozed – much to her mother’s frustration! Insomnia has been a part of her life ever since.

She studied English Literature at university and graduated with first class honours. As a teacher she tried to pass on her love of reading to her students (and discovered that the secret to successful teaching is … stickers! She is aware that that is, essentially, bribery.)

In the summer of 2019 Louise experienced a once-in-a-lifetime moment: she was discovered as a new writer by her publisher at the Primadonna Festival. Everything has been a bit of a whirlwind since then.

Louise lives in Cardiff with her husband and spends her time trying to get down on paper all the marvellous and frightening things that happen in her head.

Praise for Sleepless

‘An unputdownable thriller … Had me on the edge of my seat!’

‘Twisty and tantalizing’

‘A multi-layered story that packs a punch … Hooks you in from the opening chapter’

‘A truly skilful novel’

‘Moved along rapidly keeping me sucked in until the end and even then I wanted more’

‘If you like John Marrs, you’ll love this’

‘I was hooked from page one’

Sleepless
LOUISE MUMFORD

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2020

Copyright © Louise Mumford

Louise Mumford asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

E-book Edition © December 2020 ISBN: 9780008412234

Version: 2020-10-27

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Praise for Sleepless

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Acknowledgements

Dear Reader …

Keep Reading …

About the Publisher

For Jason: this book would never have happened without you.

And for my mother and those nights playing hangman in the living room with a child who wouldn’t sleep.

Chapter 1

There was already a gridlock of cars stretching away behind the accident. Her accident. Thea felt a weird ownership over it, like a cat licking at her poor dead kitten.

Her fault – no doubt.

It had to be. In total, she’d probably only slept for four hours … that week.

Behind her was the three-vehicle sandwich in which her car was the crushed metal filling. She staggered back and tried to close the mangled door.

Someone pulled at her elbow: a man, dragging her back from the road where she stood gazing into the traffic. He was uninjured but shouting something, and Thea couldn’t focus, her mind slipping off him in the same way his glasses slid down his sweaty nose.

The actual moment of impact had been strangely soothing. Thea couldn’t remember any sound really, so there had just been this lovely, pillowy-white cushioning as the airbag deployed and then – whoosh! – like a fairground ride, she was spun around.

She hadn’t done it on purpose. She’d thought about things like that quite a few times, in those dead, red-eye hours of the night when she felt like the only person left on earth who was still awake. Ironically, as her car smashed into the one in front, she had actually been congratulating herself that she’d got through the day, that she could do this living thing, even without any sleep, with just a cold sponge for a brain and sandpaper balls for eyes.

She could do it.

But clearly, she couldn’t.

How many years of sleeplessness? Too many. Too many achingly long nights that then smudged themselves into joyless, grey, listless days before lights out and another eight hours of frantic panicking. Too many nights etched into the bloodshot spiderwebs in the whites of her eyes.

There was a woman with the man now and Thea looked for blood on her, expecting broken limbs and jagged wounds, but there was nothing, not even a torn blouse. Both of them worked their mouths madly, like gulping fish, expectantly looking at her and then the cars and then back to her again. She should respond, she thought, but she didn’t know what to say. The words were there, but they were busy dancing in her brain, enjoying themselves – shaken loose by the impact and free to partner up however they chose.

Her car was concertinaed. It was a shock, how impressively the whole thing could crumple, yet keep her whole as a seed inside its tattered fruit.

But, if she was fruit, then she was the rotten kind, she realized with a gulp that turned into a choking gasp. She could have hurt that man and woman staring at her now. She could have killed them. Up until that point, the only damage her insomnia had done had been to herself – her social life, her concentration, mood, skin, memory and general joy in living. It had never affected someone else, never nearly crushed them in a smoking metal box.

There was pain now. Her nose, a tender, pulsating blob, her knees suddenly shakier than they had been, blood on her collarbone where her seatbelt had taken a bite.

Abruptly, she sank to the cold ground at the roadside. Soon there would be flaring emergency lights and sirens; there would be gentle fingers prodding at her and questions asked and, dimly, she realized she would have to get herself together for all of that. More people gathered, but from her viewpoint sat on the ground, they were just feet, their voices so far above her they may as well have been stars.

There would be so much to do after something like this, Thea thought: the forms and phone calls, appointments and claims. The effort. She didn’t have it in her. She felt so light there was nothing left of her and dealing with all of this needed solidity; it needed heft, a person who felt like they left a footprint when they walked. If someone blew on her she would simply dissipate, like dust on the wind.

Idly, she watched liquid seep from under her car and with the same blankness with which she’d thought of everything else, she wondered if the liquid was flammable, or if it was merely water.

She should have cared, one way or the other.

At that moment her hand buzzed. She blinked. Maybe it was an injury of some kind, she thought slowly. She would probably need to get it checked out, once she got up from this really rather comfortable bit of damp ground. It buzzed again and this time her eyes managed to get the message over to her brain that she was still clutching her phone. Looking down at it, a notification flashed up, some advert from one of her apps, something she’d probably seen a thousand times before. At first, she thought it was the universe’s idea of a cruel joke. But then, as she sat there amongst the twisted metal and shattered glass, she came to think of it more as salvation:

Morpheus. Dream your way to a better you – one sleep at a time.

Chapter 2

Thea stared at the frog.

She had successfully risen from the dead for yet another day.

It was one week after the car crash. Thea had removed all clocks from her bedroom to prevent feeling anxious at night about the hours passing. However, this now meant she spent the time feeling anxious about not knowing how many hours were passing, which she wasn’t sure was an improvement. Last night she had certainly spent many hours in bed, a lot of them with her eyes shut kidding herself she was dozing. The sky had been a watery blue when she finally did drop off.

Waking to the alarm was like dragging herself out of a deep grave.

She did the usual estimation again: an hour or so of sleep, tops. That was pretty much classed as sleep deprivation, wasn’t it? Some dictatorships used that as torture. By rights, after years of sleeping like this, she shouldn’t have been walking, talking, working … driving. She should have been huddled in a corner, hollow-eyed and drooling.

Mornings were finely tuned. As adrenaline kicked at brain cells that only wanted sleep, she had discovered that mornings were not a time for decision-making. She washed, dressed in the clothes laid out ready the night before, grabbed her pre-prepared breakfast and lunch and got out of the door, her head beginning to pound.

She was a bruise and the rest of the world was a poking finger.

The frog looked at her.

Instead of work, this morning Thea found herself at the Car Recovery Centre, picking her way through the graveyard of other people’s vehicles with an overly cheerful assistant. She clutched a cardboard box to her chest. It was filled with the belongings that had been rescued from her car. The bright green frog sprawled on top, a present from her mother when she had bought her first car. He had a red kerchief around his neck and a button in his middle that, when pressed, played a selection of children’s songs. His green was clean, his kerchief still tied neatly, his button still working. It was as if the crash had never happened. She, on the other hand, felt as if her own stuffing was showing.

‘We clear out the cars ourselves, but just wanna check that there’s nothing we missed.’ The man edged his stomach past the hulk of an estate car.

‘Umm … I’m okay. You seem to have it all here. I don’t need to see the—’

‘There you go.’ He pointed.

The thing in front of her still had some of the essential features of a car, but they were in all the wrong places: wheels squashed too close together, windscreen crumpled, half the bonnet missing. Suddenly, the car park around her shifted and fell away and she was back in the driver’s seat, the airbags a cushion around her, smoke in her hair.

She took a deep breath.

Someone else could have ended up as twisted and shattered as the lump of metal and glass in front of her.

And then, within twenty minutes, she really was back in the driver’s seat. A different car provided by her insurance, the inside smelling of polish and air freshener.

All she had to do was turn the ignition key.

A woman with a clipboard stood expectantly by the car, waiting for her to drive away, smile frozen.

It was now 10 a.m. and the world had come into pulsing, throbbing focus. Thea popped a paracetamol for her eternal headache, stared at the dashboard and blinked a few times, hoping that would make her eyelids lighter.

The woman waited expectantly.

All she had to do was turn the key.

Her hand hovered near the ignition, but, in her head, she could hear the grinding squeal of metal against metal and the noise was so loud it made her fingers shake.

People as twisted and shattered as that lump of metal and glass.

She fumbled for the door handle and lurched out of the car, grabbing her box of belongings.

‘Umm … Miss Mackenzie?’ She heard the woman call out after her, but the voice was an echo and Thea walked fast, away, out of the car park, not looking back.

‘I’m sorry!’ She shouted behind her. ‘Can you just—? Look, I’ll pick it up later …’

And she kept walking until the whole place was out of sight and she was out of breath, her eyes stinging with tears she hadn’t realized she’d cried. The frog stared at her as she got out her phone to call a taxi, and, once again, the notification popped up on her screen:

Morpheus. Dream your way to a better you – one sleep at a time.

Thea blamed the frog and the broken carcass of her car as the reasons why she found herself that evening in the local pub, squashed between her desk-mate, Lisa, and a man from a different department with a thin face and thinner hair.

The office where she spent her days moving numbers from one spreadsheet to another was a grey, open-plan box. It always smelled of microwave-ready meals from the encrusted kitchen in the corner, had carpet the consistency of Velcro and an air-conditioning system that had a poor grasp of the seasons. She didn’t even have a desk of her own but shared one with Lisa, a middle-aged woman who filled her workspace with so many photographs, paperweights and cute figures that they often made attempts to colonize Thea’s territory. She spent probably too much of her day pushing back googly-eyed unicorns with a pencil. One cuddly car-frog was more than enough for her.

But, this time, when Lisa had asked her to the pub for after-work drinks, Thea had said yes.

She deserved a night out. She deserved the kind of night other people had regularly. One without worrying about how late it could get and that she wouldn’t have time for her wind-down routine and it was Thursday and she had work the next morning and she couldn’t get up late but she wouldn’t get any sleep at all and that car crash would be nothing compared to the mistakes she could make if she was utterly, utterly sleepless—

‘See? Aren’t you glad you came out? You should do it more often.’ Lisa’s nails had tiny daisies painted on them.

It was Margaret’s leaving drinks. Thea hadn’t really known that Margaret had ever arrived in the first place.

‘Too good for the likes of us, eh?’ The thin man smiled.

Thea thought about trying to explain it. She didn’t feel like she was better than them at all; in fact they were all quite clearly better than her – better at being human and sociable and remembering each other’s birthdays and the ages of their children. Thea didn’t have the energy for any of that. She tried sleeping later at the weekends in the hope that would tide her over for the coming week, but it never did. Sleep debt, it was called, and her debt was the kind that got loan sharks circling. She would never be able to repay it.

But that was going to stop, Thea thought, taking a swig of her wine. She couldn’t let insomnia continue to ruin her days as well as her nights. A life – that’s what she was going to have. Starting now.

‘Cheers, Mark,’ she said, raising her glass with a hand that continued to shake.

‘It’s Mike.’

Luckily, her 7 p.m. boost of brief energy kicked in and she listened, laughed in the right places, bought drinks, admired photos of holidays and children and did it all despite the fact that her brain began to whirl and the noise and heat of the pub began to close in on her.

‘And so, Mark, what do you like to do in your free time?’

He had a weak chin and there was a strange smell to him, as if he’d been out in the rain and left to dry too slowly, but he seemed pleasant enough. Thea smiled.

‘It’s Mike.’

More photos, more drinks, more laughing, more brain swirling, more noise and heat. But the noise was welcome; it drowned out the sound of grinding metal that she couldn’t get out of her head. Lisa’s perfume masked the acrid smell of burnt rubber.

People as twisted and shattered as that lump of metal and glass.

‘Another, Mark?’ She forced the corners of her mouth back up into a smile and motioned with her empty wine glass.

‘Mike.’

‘Shit! Sorry! Really I’m—’

But he had already turned away to the woman on his other side. She couldn’t blame him. It seemed that she could do everything except remember this man’s name. It slipped out of her grasp every time she opened her mouth. The wine churned in her empty stomach and suddenly she wanted to leave, before Mark – Mike! – told everyone how stupid she was, before she threw up the wine, before her exhausted brain refused to tell her equally exhausted body what to do and she had to be carried out of the pub like an invalid.

Using every last bit of willpower, she heaved herself up from her seat and shuffled past Lisa who tried to grab her hand and slur something incomprehensible. Then she was out of the door, the air hitting her like an open palm. She wasn’t sure if it was alcohol or exhaustion that made her steps wobble.

Of course, back at home, after a bath and a ready meal, she was wide awake. This state continued until early the next morning, and, at some point during one of those red-eyed hours, she looked once more at the notifications on her phone, emboldened by the wine still fizzing in her blood.

Morpheus. Dream your way to a better you – one sleep at a time.

She clicked on it.

Chapter 3

‘Well, it’s probably a cult, isn’t it, darling?’

It was a week after Thea’s unsuccessful trip to the pub and her mother was eating haloumi salad, her silk scarf nearly trailing in the food. Luckily, you had to get really close to see that the scarf was printed with tiny little vaginas.

‘You’ll get there and then, give it a few weeks, you’ll be having orgies and giving blow jobs. Constantly. Mark my words. Cult.’

Sometimes Thea wished she didn’t have a mother who said things like “orgies” and “blow jobs” in the middle of a crowded restaurant where the tables were so close you could practically breathe on someone else’s food.

‘A cult might be good for you.’ Vivian speared an asparagus tip thoughtfully. ‘More sex.’

Thea could feel her face burning. She wasn’t sure how much more of this she could stand.

Vivian lowered her voice to a dramatic stage whisper, but couldn’t hide the glint in her eyes: ‘I think I have more sex than you!’

She probably did. Thea had to admit it.

‘Mum! I swear I will leave if you carry on!’ Thea tried to keep her voice stern as Vivian smiled at the few furtive glances she was getting, like a queen amongst her courtiers.

‘Sorry, teapot. Can’t help myself. Winding you up is too much fun. Will be good.’

Thea hated being called “teapot” too. Her mother had started it when she was little because, ‘You had such a sweet little rounded tummy and these skinny arms and legs.’ Vivian thought it cute. Thea disagreed.

‘Right. It’s not a cult. It’s a trial for a new sleep app and they’ll pay for me to be a part of it. All I have to do is apply for an interview. Thing is, it’ll last for six weeks, and obviously the office won’t give me leave for that long so’ – Thea momentarily found her ham panini fascinating – ‘umm … if I’m accepted, I’ll just leave my job.’

That was all it had ever been – a job. Not a career, not a vocation, not a calling. Hers was one desk among many in an office with strip lighting that buzzed. It paid the bills. Of course, those bills would still need to be paid, even if she left that desk …

Unhinged, that’s how she felt. It was as if the car accident had snapped a vital part of her and it was now flapping wildly in the wind, loose from its fixings, hanging in there by not very much at all.

Vivian stopped eating and reached across the table, laying her hand over Thea’s. She stared intensely into her daughter’s eyes and, when she spoke, it was with a deliberate solemnity. ‘That, my love, is the best news I’ve heard this year. I’m delighted! You’re wasted in … whatever it is that you do in that little office. Come help us out at HQ. We always need someone to paint the placards.’

HQ was a living room. The Menopausal Army (‘Probably best to call us Post-Menopausal now, darling!’) had had many names over the years but always the same goal: change. Vivian Mackenzie had spent nearly thirty fervent, bright-eyed years protesting, marching, arguing and educating on anything and everything that needed it. A lot of things needed it. They still did, but Vivian had, over the last few years, taken a step back from leading it all. Thea was banned from calling this retirement.

‘You are a creative soul, anyway – I’ve always thought it,’ Vivian continued. ‘We can find you another job.’ She gripped Thea’s hand tighter. ‘I blame myself, you know, for this inability of yours to sleep properly. We moved around so much when you were little, there was no routine, no stability. You were so well behaved, but it’s left its mark. I see that now.’ She emphasized the next words. ‘I own it.’

There it was. There was the pause, which Thea was meant to fill with the reassurance that Vivian’s chaotic lifestyle when she was little had not irrevocably scarred her in any way. Old age was making her mother sentimental.

‘Mum, it’s not your fault—’

‘Is it dangerous? How does it work? You hear such stories these days. These big companies, they have no morals, no sense of responsibility …’

‘I don’t know. I’m being sent an introductory pack. I can back out if it doesn’t sound right. There are loads of these kinds of sleep apps around. It’ll probably turn out to be crap and I’ll be back at square one.’

Vivian sighed, frowned and fiddled with the huge turquoise bangle on her wrist. Today she was dressed in a bright red tunic top and a necklace in the shape of bats joined together at the wing, even though Hallowe’en was weeks away. Thea wished she’d worn better-fitting jeans, and that maybe she hadn’t decided to cut her own fringe this month. But both jeans and hair were clean, and on some bleak mornings, after only an hour’s sleep, that was all she could manage.

‘I don’t like it,’ Vivian finally proclaimed. ‘But I raised you to know your own mind. So do it if you want to. But you call me the minute anything feels off and I will come and get you wherever you are. And, darling … remember the keys.’

Ah yes, the old key trick: Vivian’s idea of teaching Thea self-defence when she turned thirteen. ‘When out late at night, teapot, hold your keys in your hand like this … yes, that’s it, with the points sticking out between your fingers, like a knuckleduster. Okay, then if any man makes a grab at you, just swipe … yes, like that … mind the cat, teapot … swipe up and nearly blind the bugger.’ She hadn’t yet had a chance to try it out.

‘Okay, Mum.’

Vivian unwound her scarf, shaking it out so anyone left in the café who hadn’t yet seen its print got an eyeful. ‘I suppose you could make some new friends at least, and anyway – you might not even get accepted for this interview, hmm?’

That was the thing, Thea thought as she avoided her mother’s eye. She already had been.

Chapter 4

The male voice was deep, rich and warm:

‘It suddenly seems like everyone is talking about sleep.

‘You already know how vital it is, otherwise you wouldn’t be listening to this. Experts are still not sure exactly what the sleeping brain does. They know it orders and organizes itself ready for the next day, much like a parent picking up after their children. The brain dreams and tries to make sense of the world.

‘You know the scare stories. People who consistently don’t get enough sleep have a higher risk of health issues from cancer to heart disease; they are more likely to suffer from dementia when they get older. They get angry more quickly, feel more stupid, react more slowly.

‘Modern society is caffeine-fuelled and overstimulated. You’ve probably tried all the sleep aids. Your bedroom is a lavender-scented, cool, dark, silk-sheeted, mood-music oasis, right?

‘And yet you still don’t sleep.

‘This is why you have reached out to us.

‘We are different. Brainchild of revered internet guru Moses Ing, this technology has been decades in research and development, combining the best of recent sleep theory to help you fall into a peaceful, restorative, long slumber.

‘But this technology promises even more. With continued use, you can use the app and the hardware to actually reprogramme your brain. Want to lose weight? Manage stress? Stop smoking? Have more confidence? The only limit is you.

‘Intrigued? We hope you are. Be the first to experience the new sleep technology that will change the world – one sleep at a time.

‘Morpheus.

‘Dream your way to a better you.’

The envelope from Ing Enterprises held only two slim cards. On one was the link to the audio file she had just listened to with the words ‘One-time use only’ printed underneath.

The other card simply said:

Preliminary Meeting

Your Sleep Guru is: Harriet Stowe

Venue: Home address

Time: Saturday 16th Sept, 11 a.m.

Chapter 5

Thea felt much the same about people visiting her house as she did about splinters – she wanted them out.

Her house was tiny for a start: the stairs were in the living room and the living room was nearly in the kitchen, with the dining room as merely a cramped corner. She liked it like that. It was her small safe space where she could crawl and hide after an exhausting day spent trying to seem human.

Two people in it seemed too much.

‘So,’ Harriet Stowe said, sat at Thea’s dining table and glancing at an open folder in front of her. ‘I hope you understand the slightly clandestine route we have had to take. Our competitors are ruthless, and we cannot let any significant information out into the public domain, certainly not until we have launched.’

Harriet had put her voluminous, purple-lined coat on the newel post of the stairs. Thea’s fingers itched to move it to the coat hook, where coats were expected to be.

She had no other choice but to be strict about the house. It had to have the right lighting and temperature, it had to have candles and a scent diffuser constantly puffing out clouds of lavender mist. It had to be quiet and clean and peaceful, because that’s what every article about sleep had impressed upon her: you had to create the right environment for it to come, blinking into sight, like a shy, rare animal.

‘I always find, in circumstances such as these, it’s best to be led by the client,’ Harriet continued, pushing her cat’s-eye reading glasses down her nose so she could peer at her paperwork. ‘Please feel free to ask me any questions about the trial that may be on your mind.’

Moving into her kitchen, which was the size of a postage stamp, Thea attempted to remember how much instant coffee a normal person put in their mug. Two tablespoons of it was definitely too much.

‘Thea?’ Harriet steepled her fingers together and rested her little pointed chin on them.

Thea came out of the kitchen, carrying the coffees, which were definitely not the right colour. Her mind, rather unhelpfully, went as blank as a badly loaded webpage.

‘Umm … My mother thinks you’re a cult.’

Harriet raised a carefully shaded eyebrow.

Thea put the coffees down. ‘That wasn’t my question! Umm … what risks are there?’

Harriet considered her coffee with a distinct air of trepidation. ‘Ah, good question.’

Thea suspected that was what she always said, regardless of the actual first question offered. Harriet’s stiletto heels sank into the carpet, jabbing deep holes into the pile. She had already left a trail of little woodworm pocks from the front door to the chair.

‘Shall I tell you a bit more about the process first? So you understand, yes?’

Thea nodded and Harriet’s hand hovered near the cup. She was in her forties – older than Thea who was twenty-seven – and dressed in the kind of well-made pencil skirt and blouse that could not be picked up in the supermarket as part of a weekly shop.

‘The six-week trial is made up of three phases and each phase lasts two weeks. Phase One is orientation, where we get to know you. Phase Two is where we start with the tech, fine-tuning it as appropriate, with sleep as our goal. Phase Three is where we then use the tech to help you become the best that you can be.’

Best? Thea would gladly have settled for merely better. Even a bit.

Harriet’s delivery was smooth and expressive, and Thea got the distinct impression that this was a script she had gone through many times before. She still hadn’t picked up the mug.

‘The tech itself comprises two parts, the part you download onto your phone as an app, and the incredibly small discs that fix, completely harmlessly and without pain, to your temples. They work in tandem using a variety of technologies, some well-known, some new, to help you drift into the best sleep of your life.’

A diffuser puffed wheezily.

‘I am assuming you have exhausted all other possible options – therapy? Medication?’ Harriet picked up a pen as sleek and shiny as a bullet.

‘Yes,’ Thea said.

It wasn’t a complete lie – she had at least attended the therapy sessions a few times. And she’d tried medication, which, despite her misgivings, had worked. During the day. The office hadn’t been keen on her napping her working hours away.

‘And how do you think a lack of sleep is affecting you? Relationships and so on? Would you say you’ve got to a critical point?’ Harriet’s eyes ranged around the room, taking in the distinct lack of any happy couple or girl squad photos amongst the candles.

Thea rubbed at her eyes. It would have been a relief every so often if she could have just taken out her eyeballs and dunked them in cold water. The gunk and grit of sleeplessness would float off down the plughole and she could then pop the eyeballs back in, totally refreshed.

‘Critical point?’ Thea went over and hung up Harriet’s coat. ‘Yeah, I think it’s been reached.’

People as twisted and shattered as that lump of metal and glass.

Harriet paused in her writing, ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ she said as she considered her over the top of her glasses. It sounded genuine. All of a sudden, Thea’s eyes began to sting. Harriet pushed her glasses up a little and considered the papers in front of her. Instinctively, she reached out once more for the coffee mug, looked in it, paused, and set it back down again.

Harriet picked up a framed photo. ‘But your mother, Vivian Mackenzie. You spend a lot of time with her?’

Did Harriet mean “too much time”? Thea couldn’t tell.

‘Some. Not much. I have friends.’

She was getting good at lying.

‘And your mother’s … activism? She founded … let me see, The Menopausal Army, no?’ Harriet couldn’t stop the flicker of a smile at the name. ‘At Ing Enterprises we are not so sure this would be such a good fit for us.’

Thea’s coffee sloshed over the side of the mug as she put it down too heavily. Not a good fit. What did that mean? Would she be blacklisted from the trial because her mother had morals and an insane need to march every single weekend, no matter what the weather was like?

‘Oh – that? She’s retired now. Completely.’

The lie came out so easily. But it wasn’t completely untrue – her mother had stopped doing the on-camera stuff and organizing campaigns. She’d definitely taken a step back … just not quite as far back as Thea would have Harriet believe.

Harriet jotted down notes. Thea fiddled with a loose thread on her jumper, wanting the woman gone, and the skin of her safe little house to close back over after the splinter had been tweezered out.

Safe little house.

Thea realized with a cold, sick feeling in her stomach that, in about four months’ time, if she gave up her job and her savings ran out, she would no longer be able to afford this safe little house. That flapping, unhinged part of her mind creaked.

‘Anyhow. We are getting a little ahead of ourselves.’ Harriet smiled. ‘It’s not yet guaranteed that you are the type of candidate we are looking for. May we now move on to the second part of this little chat?’

It was much like delicate dentistry. Harriet magnified and examined, jabbing and poking, blowing air on corners of Thea’s mind that Thea hadn’t really known existed, manoeuvring around any white-hot patches where a nerve throbbed. Questions and topics ranged from her childhood to what perfume she wore, the future of robotics to what type of tea she drank. Thea didn’t know what the “correct” answers were, so had no clue as to whether she was doing well – or not.

She liked to do well.

After about half an hour, Harriet sighed happily and stretched her shoulders.

‘Well, it’s been lovely meeting you. We’ll be in touch to let you know if you have been selected for preliminary testing.’

Once again, she grasped the handle of her mug, a natural move to finish the drink before she left. Before she could stop herself, she had taken a large gulp and that was when Thea knew that Harriet’s foundation was worth the money: it hid the shade of puce she must have turned when she finally tasted the coffee.

Only later, when she was vacuuming the stiletto pocks from the carpet, did Thea realize that she’d never told anyone from Ing Enterprises about The Menopausal Army, or even her mother’s name.

Chapter 6

A beard spoke to her.

‘My name is Rory. I’ll be looking after you tonight,’ it explained. There was a face amongst the hair but, mired in grogginess, Thea couldn’t focus on it.

A door slid open with a sigh.

‘This is your preliminary sleep assessment. You passed the interview stage – well done. We have a few questions to get through first, just some routine paperwork, and then we can begin. You will spend the night here, and we’ll monitor your sleep. As you know, this is the final stage. If we approve you here, that’s it – you’re in. You have your overnight bag?’

The building she’d arrived at was nothing special and, frankly, special was what Thea had been expecting. The clinic room had made up for that a little with its white surfaces like shiny icing on a cake. It was small but more expensively fitted out than the whole of her own house. The bed had a reassuringly plump mattress. At least she’d be comfortable whilst lying awake in the dark for the whole night.

‘I can watch TV?’ Thea asked.

Rory smiled, but it was hard to see under the beard. His eyes were kind though. He was the only slightly scruffy thing about the room with his saggy trousers and a faded T-shirt that had once probably had a superhero reference on it.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘You’re not in prison, Miss Mackenzie.’

Sleep was a demanding god who required silk pillowcases and expensive room sprays, hypnotherapy and the soundtrack of a gentle river flowing through a forest. She’d tried everything.

Except this.

‘Ready?’ Rory asked.

Six hours later, the high-pitched wail of an alarm didn’t wake her up because she hadn’t yet fallen asleep.

Her mind didn’t race at night, because that would suggest that it could eventually tire itself out – no, her mind fizzed like nuclear fusion, something with an infinite capacity to continue fizzing no matter how late, or early, it got.

The overhead light blazed into life, nearly blinding her. Squinting and disorientated by the sound, Thea scrambled out of bed, not sure what was going on, but pretty certain she didn’t want to be in bed to greet it. Rory appeared as she was fumbling with her slippers. She felt herself blush under the bright light, awkward in her sensible pyjamas. He yelled something she couldn’t hear above the pounding, painful sound of the alarm.

Rolling his eyes, he came into the room and took her arm, leaning in close. For some reason, she was acutely aware that her pyjamas had penguins on them. In scarves.

‘SO SORRY! FIRE ALARM! WE HAVE TO GO!’

A few minutes later, Thea was standing in the clinic car park in her fluffy slippers, damp spreading into them from the wet ground. The building itself was a drab blot of grey behind them and the street lights turned the puddles to gold.

Rory had unplugged her but there had been no time to unstick all the patches and wires, making her look like the unfinished science experiment that she was. Other members of the sleep trial and their attendants milled around, making polite small talk and exchanging sympathetic glances.

‘So. Do you come here often?’ A man in shorts and a T-shirt nudged her, his feet bare and turning a mottled purple from the cold. Varicose veins bulged up on his skinny legs like inquisitive worms. He was obviously pleased with his wit.

Thea didn’t like being nudged.

She tried to avoid eye contact with him, but he moved in front of her, an expectant grin on his face. Thea turned to stare at the chain-link fence.

She heard the man sigh. ‘It don’t cost anything to be pleasant. Cheer up, love.’

Thea took a deep breath.

Heat whooshed, not over but through her. She felt as if it could shoot out of her eyes like she’d seen in superhero films. If she looked at him, she could turn him to ash.

Cheer up, love. Be pleasant, even if your brain feels as if it could ooze through your nose. Smile, even if this might be your last chance to get help and you are wasting it out here in the car park wearing soggy slippers. The nice man wants a pleasant conversation. Be nice to the man.

It was a well-known side effect of poor sleep, wasn’t it? Recklessness. She’d read that somewhere.

What happened next, therefore, wasn’t strictly her fault.

She took a step closer and brought her knee up hard, aiming for his crotch. But he, seeing the intention in her stare, angled away just in time and she ended up kneeing him in the thigh instead.

‘So sorry!’ Rory hurriedly appeared between them, leading Thea away and calling back over his shoulder, ‘She’s deeply disturbed. Shouldn’t be unsupervised.’

‘She tried to knee me in the balls!’ the man shouted after them.

‘No, no, that was just … an uncontrollable leg twitch …’ Rory interjected before Thea could say anything.

He plonked her on a low wall. ‘What are you doing?’

‘He was a creep!’ she said, crossing her arms.

‘The world is full of them.’ Rory sighed. ‘Can’t knee them all in the balls.’

Thea watched the man shiver as he walked away, his shoulders beginning to hunch. He looked older and thinner than she’d thought, now that he was further away. It was easy to call him a creep, she found herself thinking, when in fact, he’d maybe just been another exhausted human being like her, trying, in his own ham-fisted way, to make a connection with someone, anyone, because it was cold and dark and wide-awake nights lasted a very long time.

‘Look, I’m sorry but we’ve just been told that this session will be called off for tonight.’ Rory looked down at his clipboard, a plastic ink stamp dangling from it on a piece of string: surprisingly low-tech for such a cutting-edge company. ‘Can’t really get any useful data after this. It’s a shame because this was the last round of tests before the trial begins. You were so close.’

And, to her complete surprise and shame, Thea felt hot tears forming. ‘You mean – that’s it?’

In that moment, she felt the weight of all the years she still had left – all those sleepless years – and that weight crushed her.

Rory considered her. There were little lines fanning out from his eyes and, Thea thought, he was probably one of those people who had a proper, hearty, throw-your-head-back laugh.

‘It’s – what? Around four in the morning,’ he said. ‘You’ve been awake the whole time. And you’ve lived like this for …’

… too long …

‘… pretty much all your adult life. Whoa …’ He exhaled.

Rory gazed at her thoughtfully. Thea imagined him in some sort of flat-share where they all got takeaways and lounged around on cushions on the floor. It was the kind of place where there were always dirty dishes in the sink and a permanent message on a chalkboard in the kitchen: ‘BUY MILK!!!!’

Thea never ran out of milk; she had her groceries delivered every week.

‘Look. I wouldn’t normally do this.’

What? For a crazy moment, Thea thought he was going to ask her out on a date. Would she want to go on a date with him? He was nice-enough looking, under the beard, and he’d been kind to her. But it was dark and she couldn’t see him properly, and beards gave you a rash, didn’t they?

He angled away from her for a few seconds, fumbling with his clipboard, then he glanced to see if anyone was near. It was done so quickly. One moment he’d bent towards her and Thea hadn’t known what to think; the next he was gone.

There was a piece of paper in her hand.

Thea took a closer look. It was all about her: weight, height, sleep history, some graphs and numerical data that she couldn’t decipher. But, more importantly, the form had been stamped:

CLIENT APPROVED.

Chapter 7

It was the kind of place where hitchhikers got chopped up by axe-wielding maniacs. Brown, bare hills, a lonely road, a few run-down houses, clearly abandoned – just sky and grass and a low-level sense of fear at an animal level.

‘One room, one night. You’re the last of ’em,’ the man muttered from behind the reception desk whilst writing in a book as yellowed as his fingers. He looked as weathered and grey as ancient stone, his face pitted as if it had endured centuries of unrelenting rain.

The pub was called “Sanity’s End” with thick walls, mullioned windows and empty hooks where pretty hanging baskets had once swung. Now they were just hooks, as if the pub had armoured itself, porcupine-style. How was it still in business? There was no one else around and the whole area was too grim and stark to be a tourist spot.

‘Busy lately?’ Thea ventured.

The man looked up and put the pen he’d been using behind his ear. A few flakes of dandruff dislodged and fell gently to be reunited with their friends on his shoulder.

‘What do you think?’ he said harshly.

Thea took a look around at the ghost-bar, the stools still stacked on the tabletops, the unravelling carpet and the heavy curtains that had once been red but were now so covered in dust they’d paled to a rusty pink. There was a sticky wood veneer on the reception desk, which held a dusty stand of local brochures and a cardboard charity box in the shape of a lifeboat. Thea put in all the change she had left – after all, she was unlikely to need it in the next six weeks.

‘See there?’ A grimy fingernail pointed to a group of framed photographs on a nearby wall. ‘Used to be a lifeboat man. She were mine.’

Thea dutifully peered at the picture, what she could see of it under a thick layer of dust on the glass that made the boat look as if it was nosing out of a fog.

‘Your lot keeps us going since the tourists stopped.’ He sniffed and turned to consider the three large brass keys hanging behind him. When he moved one, it left a brighter key-shaped spot on the wall. ‘When the monastery closed down over on the island in the Eighties, there was still the lighthouse for people to go and see. But that dried up too, eventually, taking the village ’ere on the mainland with it. No one needed the boat trip over, see? That’s how it goes.’ His bushy brows drew together for a moment. ‘But then you lot came and bought the whole place. Like I said, you’re the last of ’em. They’s been arriving all week cos I’ve only got a few rooms, see? Some of you what comes late in the day, you can’t go out in the boat at night and ’ave to stay over.’

The sleep trial itself was to take place on a small island in a purpose-built Sleep Centre, just a fifteen-minute boat ride away. Privacy was vital, she had been told.

‘Don’t look like that!’ Harriet had remonstrated via Skype. ‘There is a regular boat service, specially constructed, state-of-the-art buildings, living quarters and all the facilities you could want. Think of it as a luxury hotel stay. It’s certainly not Alcatraz!’

Harriet hadn’t mentioned that she’d have to stay in the pub at the end of the world the night before, however. Not quite as hi-tech. The man put the heavy room key, rough with rust, into her hand.

‘Kitchen’s closed because it’s late,’ he continued.

It was 5 p.m.

‘But I could make you a sandwich.’ He shuffled off through another tattered curtain behind him. Thea heard some clunking noises and he emerged with a can.

‘Tuna,’ he said, reading from the label. ‘I can make you a tuna sandwich.’

Thea wasn’t quite so keen on the idea of a tuna and dandruff sandwich.

‘That’s kind but I’m not hungry, thank you,’ she said hastily. ‘Probably have an early night.’

‘Suit yourself. No loud music, no animals, no extra guests permitted in your room. There’s a TV but we don’t get much of a reception up here. Breakfast is paid for so I have to serve it. At eight o’clock, it’ll be. They order it in – fancy stuff, half of it looks like kitty litter.’

He thumped a card down onto the desk in front of her, wrinkling his nose at it as if it smelled.

‘They say I also got to get feedback from you. The guests. You gotta fill in that form. About your stay. Apparently the last ones said I could offer a’ – he stopped and shuffled through the other cards he had in his hand – ‘more sophisticated range of amenities. I mean, what else do they want? They gotta kettle and them little fancy soaps … Anyway. They made me watch a video about it. So, there you go.’ He passed her a snapped-off chunk of chocolate.

Then he stuffed some dry leaves into her hand, ‘Couldn’t get rose petals. Sorry.’

Thea studied the melting, leaf-studded chocolate in her palm.

‘Umm … I think you’re meant to put those on the bed? The chocolate and the … petals?’ she managed.

He stared at her with his arms crossed, a face of stone.

‘I know.’

The next afternoon Thea stood on the deserted dock, feeling queasy.

A seagull screeched above her and she felt the sound in her teeth. There was a rhythmic slapping of waves against concrete and the sky was the colour of stewed tea.

Harriet had said she could opt out after Phase One, no matter what. And Phase One was just orientation, a “getting to know you”, probably some sleep tracking and questionnaires. This was the social media age! Everyone was now accountable for everything! What could they do? The worst was that any information gained on her sleep would then be passed on to some big data company and for years afterwards businesses would try to sell her mattresses and herbal tablets any time she searched the web.

So, all she had to do was buckle up, get through a few weeks and then go home, dignity, data and brain intact.

The queasiness remained.

That morning she had filled in her accommodation feedback form with the comment “Couldn’t have asked for more”. She had found herself kind of admiring the pub owner for his resistance to hospitality even though that was his actual business.

A plate with a bacon roll on it had appeared by her elbow at breakfast. She had glanced up at him as he had left the room, but his face remained a mask of pitted granite. Maybe the feedback card had softened him up. There had even been a sprinkling of flour on top of the roll – at least she had hoped it was flour and not just more dandruff. She had eaten it anyway. It had smelled delicious and he had been right, the breakfast provided had been kitty litter.

Her thoughts about bacon and anti-social pub owners were interrupted by the confident tap-tapping of someone walking determinedly in heels towards her.

It could only be Harriet. She was the only woman who would wear stilettos to get on a boat.

‘Thea! Early. Nice to see. Raring to go?’

Harriet flicked the end of her scarf back over her shoulder. Thea tugged at her bobble hat and nudged the hem of her jeans over her old trainers, feeling dowdy in comparison, a bedraggled stray next to a sleek house cat.

‘Is it just me?’

‘Oh … yes. You’re the last, you see. We had to wait for the weather to clear to make the crossing again for you. Not that I’ll overwhelm you with introductions tonight. Plenty of time for that.’

Thea felt she should fill the pause.

‘What did you do before—?’

But Harriet interrupted her, standing on tiptoe to wave.

‘Boat’s here!’

Thea gingerly stepped on, steadied by the skipper, trying to avoid the slippery bits while Harriet strode through as if she was on a New York catwalk and immediately joined the skipper at the front, which was sectioned off by glass; whether this was to intentionally discourage any more questions, Thea couldn’t be sure.

She kept her eyes on the mainland receding behind her. The queasiness settled as sour bile in her throat. She watched as the coastline became a blocky shape, and then finally impressionist splodges of muted colour. Thea was leaving behind all of that; instead she was out here, in the grey waves, free, released from job, routine, her whole life, such as it was.

‘You okay, Thea?’ Harriet called back towards her.

‘Fine!’

‘Because if you’re seasick—’

‘No! I’m fine!’

She was fine, even though she’d never learned to swim, had never even put her head under the water in the bath and the boat rocked around alarmingly like a fairground ride – except those rides went through safety checks, didn’t they? The sea didn’t.

Not for the first time, she cursed her mother for spending hours and hours trying to save the oceans but no time at all teaching her own daughter how to swim.

What had Harriet said? Think of it like a luxury hotel stay.

Okay, so this was a luxury hotel stay. She could go for bracing coastal walks along the clifftops, read books by an open fire, meet new people … meet some new people … okay only a few new people. She wasn’t great at people. A holiday.

As a lab rat.

‘Look!’ Harriet pointed ahead of them.

Out of the gloom rose sheer cliff walls, black and slick, the waves whirling and churning against them. Dragons. The cliffs looked as if they should have dragons perched on top of them, waiting for one to shrug its wings open and send a scorching arc of fire across the rocks. As the boat got closer, these cliffs blocked out the sky and the world turned to shadow.

Suddenly Thea felt very small.

Chapter 8

‘Good morning, Thea Mackenzie.’

Thea stuck her head out from under the duvet and rubbed her eyes, looking for whoever had just come in. ‘Huh? Good morn—’

‘Your schedule for today is being displayed.’

Thea was talking to the room. She blinked sleepily and her schedule appeared on one wall.

8 a.m.: breakfast, cafeteria, main hall

9 a.m.: welcome address

9.10 a.m.: yoga and meditation, lawn

10 a.m.: health assessment, lab 7

Noon: lunch, cafeteria, main hall

1 p.m.: Sleep School, lecture theatre

3 p.m.: break, free time

3.30 p.m.: cardio, gym studio 2

4.30 p.m.: shower, own room

5 p.m.: health assessment, lab 4

6 p.m.: dinner, cafeteria, main hall

7 p.m.: fitting of sleep monitoring equipment, own room

10 p.m.: recommended wind-down time

Sleep School sounded horrendous. For some reason, Thea could only imagine this being a room full of prone bodies and the sound of chanting as someone yelled ‘SLEEP!’ in the face of anyone who dared to open their eyes.

She’d probably got about one hour of sleep. She couldn’t blame the room: there was a bed so plush it threatened to swallow her whole as soon as she got into it. She ran a hand over the surface of her bedside table, almost expecting her fingers to sink in, so glossy was the material – too glossy – it was starting to remind her of a sick, sweaty fever sheen. The only thing in the space that wasn’t cream or white was Thea. She had her penguin pyjamas to thank for that.

As she cleaned her teeth after showering, a towel wrapped around her, she wandered over to the door. Last night, Harriet had closed the door after her as she’d left. Thea hadn’t thought about it since. But, looking at it now, the edges of it merely a pencil sketch, she couldn’t even work out how it opened – let alone try to lock the damn thing. As she was peering closely at it, it slid open smoothly and Thea found herself nearly nose-to-nose with Harriet.

Harriet stepped back sharply, her startled expression quickly replaced once again by a smile.

‘Ah, good morning, Thea. I see you are already up and awake. Perhaps … put on some clothes?’ She held out a stack of neatly folded material.

Thea reddened and clutched at her wet towel.

‘I was trying to work out how the door opened.’

‘There is a biometric sensor – just there.’ Harriet pointed to a spot on the wall that looked exactly the same as the rest. ‘Just look at it and the door opens.’

‘How does it lock?’

‘Lock?’ A crease appeared between Harriet’s perfectly symmetrical brows. ‘A lock isn’t needed, Thea. The same biometric device is on the outside of your door. Only those with clearance have access to your room. Completely safe.’

The smile intensified.

‘Now, the clothes?’

There was a flowing tunic top and trousers in a soft, stretchy material accompanied by a pair of fur-lined moccasins. Her mother would feel vindicated, Thea thought, because there was no way around it – they were cult clothes.

Harriet led her to a cathedral. This cathedral, like every cathedral before it, was built to stun the masses into greater belief. Thea did feel a bit stunned: it was probably all the glossy whiteness everywhere. A glass roof curved over them.

A reverential hush of voices swelled into the space, which consisted of the main hall and the cafeteria. The Sleep Centre was comprised of two large spherical buildings, or “bubbles” as Harriet called them, and currently Thea was in the Client Bubble. Three storeys high, the upper floors were accessed by a gleaming stainless-steel lift in the middle, walkways radiating out from it to the higher floors like rays from the sun.

Out of habit, Thea avoided eye contact as she made her way through the tables.

‘How many people are on this trial?’ she asked Harriet.

‘Fifty.’

And there they all were, choosing food and chatting to each other. It was already making the small of her back sweat. When talking to new people, Thea became an overinflated balloon, stretching out, out, out, until her rubber couldn’t stretch anymore and eventually burst, scattering disjointed small talk. Luckily, Harriet guided her to a table on their own. It hadn’t escaped Thea that Harriet still got to wear her own clothes: today a silky jumpsuit, the kind that didn’t suit Thea because it highlighted the fact that she had too little leg – and too much middle.

‘Until the system gets to know you and your dietary needs, you have a pretty standard breakfast. Hope that’s okay?’

The plate of food was so wholesomely healthy it looked as if it should have been artfully placed next to a bunch of flowers, or a sunset, and then posted on Instagram. Usually, Thea sploshed milk on some muesli in a Tupperware container when she arrived at work. The most important thing in her mornings was to make sure she got out of the house on time, preferably washed, as she was always still half-asleep. Food was way down on her list of morning priorities.

‘So? Excited for today?’ Harriet stirred at some purple sludge in her glass. She didn’t wait for a response. ‘I’ll be with you for most of it, unless you’re having a health assessment, or you’re in a lecture. You’re going to love Sleep School: so informative. Sleep is fascinating, don’t you think?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t get much of it.’ The drink in front of her looked like coffee. She sipped at it. It was definitely not coffee.

‘Made from mushrooms! Amazingly good for you. You’ll get used to it. I swear I’ve lost about a stone working here and I just feel so energized. All the time. It’s crazy!’

It was as if someone had turned Harriet up a few notches. Her smile was wider, her voice chummier, her eyes warmer. She was altogether more … everything … compared to the woman who had come to her house a month or so ago. Maybe someone had slipped something into her sludge. Maybe they all had drugs in their food and, in six weeks’ time, Thea would wake up to find this had all been a mushroom dream.

‘Fellow pioneers!’

A voice rang out. People looked around, confused, trying to locate the person speaking, until others who had worked it out nudged them and pointed upwards.

There on one of the second-floor walkways, a woman stood looking down on them. She had incredibly long, incredibly straight, incredibly red hair.

‘Is that Moses Ing?’ someone whispered loudly near Thea. ‘Thought he was a man?’

Harriet frowned at the whisperer, a young woman with a pencil securing her dark, frizzy hair who smiled widely at Harriet and gave Thea a little wave. The woman on the walkway continued.

‘My name is Delores. On behalf of Ing Enterprises I welcome you here today and wish you a happy and healthy stay with us. We are on the cusp of an exciting future.’

Harriet looked up at Delores with the bright-eyed face of someone who has seen God.

‘A human being sleeps for roughly eight hours every night. Until very recently, those eight hours have been an unknowable land for scientists. Technology is now allowing us to take a peek at that land, to map and explore it. Getting you to sleep will not be a problem; I guarantee it. Give us a week or so to allow the systems to get to know you and we will then be able to facilitate you into the best sleep of your life. But better than that, we will then be able to help you start building the person you have always wanted to be. How? Through the untapped power of your sleep, and your dreams. You lovely people here before me’ – she gestured down to the upturned faces below her, smiling warmly – ‘you are the beginning of something that will help humanity take the next evolutionary leap.’

Harriet started to clap enthusiastically, and others joined in. The way she felt today, Thea would not be able to help evolution make a leap so much as a stumbling sprawl. Her eyes felt as if they’d been put in the oven for too long.

‘One last bit of housekeeping before I leave you all to it,’ Delores said. ‘Those of you who have been here for a few days already know that, for clients, there is no internet coverage nor mobile signal.’ There was a very slight murmuring and Delores raised her hand for quiet, smiling widely. ‘I know, I know – we are all addicted to our phones, myself included.’ She waved her own smartphone at them. ‘But the studies all agree: these gadgets of ours affect our sleep, not only its duration, but also its quality. If we are here to try and fix your sleep issues, it seems foolish to start off with the biggest problem still lurking in our pockets. Of course, landline phones are available free of charge to allow you to keep in touch with friends and family.’

Thea didn’t have a pocket in her cult clothes, but she’d shoved her phone into the waistband of her trousers and she pressed a hand to her middle, feeling the outline of what was now essentially a lump of useless plastic, glass and metal.

‘Enjoy today!’ The woman raised her voice. ‘Enjoy every moment but, best of all, enjoy the new and improved you that is just around the corner!’

At that she stepped out of view. Harriet turned back to Thea and sighed happily.

‘Shall we begin?’

Chapter 9

‘Kiddy fiddlers,’ a man in downward dog whispered to Thea.

‘Huh?’ It was only a few hours after Delores’s inaugural speech and Thea was contemplating her knees very closely.

‘The monks here. The monastery was closed down by the Catholic Church years ago. Kiddy fiddlers. Until then it was quite a nice spot. The monks made fudge.’

Thea wasn’t sure what the expected response would be to that, and they were now in cat pose so she went with a vague ‘Right?’

The monastery itself was up on the hill, not quite at one with the cutesy ducks-and-ice-cream vibe of the green below it where they were currently doing yoga. It was an eyeless, austere blot: a retinal detachment of a place with a bell tower bleeding rust down one wall.

‘Why did people want to visit that?’ she wondered aloud.

Everyone was attempting a back bend. Thea lay and looked at the sky. The man was more successful, his upside-down face turning purple as he gazed at her, a shark-tooth necklace dangling the wrong way up his nose.

‘Beats me,’ he wheezed. ‘Now, the lighthouse – round the other side of the island? That’s where I’d go.’

Maybe one day, Thea thought, people might come to take pictures of the Sleep Centre. It was an awkward cuckoo amongst the rest of the island’s structures, two huge white golf balls separated by a blocky middle bit.

‘Bit phallic, no?’ her mother had observed when Thea had described it to her via landline after breakfast. ‘And in which testicle do you live?’

Thea had smiled. ‘The left one. It’s called the Client Bubble. The other one is the Staff Bubble where the staff live and there are labs and everything.’

‘So, you live in the left testicle. Just making that clear.’

‘Yes, thank you, Mother.’

She hadn’t been able to see it properly when she’d arrived last night, but now, in the daylight, she could fully take in its clean, sci-fi strangeness. If there were any ghost monks floating around the place, she wondered what they would have made of the Centre: crossed themselves and muttered about the devil?

Meditation ended the session. She took a breath in and then let it out …

One …

Two …

Three …

A warm, wrapped chocolate was pushed into her hand. Thea opened her eyes and found the frizzy-haired woman with pencils in her hair from earlier sitting next to her. The woman pressed a finger to her lips and smiled, then she glanced around at everyone else with their eyes closed and carefully reached into her shoe once more, bringing out more chocolate for herself.

The Centre frowned upon caffeine, refined sugar, processed foods and alcohol.

Foot chocolate was still chocolate. Thea ate it and smiled back.

It was the walls.

Perhaps it was their fever-sheen gleam, or the way they swallowed noise, but after only her first day, Thea felt that they just might swallow her up too. One second there she’d be in her beige clothes, the next she would wander too close to the equally beige walls and they would liquidly close over her and she would be like fruit sinking in cream, never to be seen again.

It was late afternoon and she had half an hour to shower after her gym session. The shower had taken her precisely five minutes and now the walls of her room pressed in on her. She had lived on her own for years and had never experienced a problem with walls before. She liked them. The walls of her house had kept the world out and given her a cocoon in which she’d tried to burrow deep and sleep. Walls were fine.

She wandered into a corridor, smiling politely at the people she passed. Maybe that was it. Maybe it wasn’t the walls. Maybe it was the people. In her sleep-deprived experience, people were exhausting, with their egos and subtexts and hints and emotions and needs. She’d always tried to limit people. And now, here she was – surrounded by them.

And the walls.

Her steps quickened.

She had to get out. There was a lighthouse to see, after all, and out in the fields with the empty sky around her, perhaps she would have a chance to think.

Despite half expecting shouts and alarms to go off as soon as she set foot on the gravel, the doors opened without a sound and Thea stepped through. The air was the kind of cold that woke a person up, but politely, without the bite of winter just yet. It was exactly what she needed. There were a few people sitting on the green so she skirted it and took the uphill path that would lead her to the coast.

Her first session at Sleep School had taught her there were two stages of sleep. The first half of the night was ruled more by NREM sleep where the muscles relaxed, but then in the second half, it switched to a dominance of REM sleep, which locked the muscles and allowed the brain to safely dream.

If she’d taken anything away from the lesson, it was that she was obviously not getting enough REM sleep. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what a lack of it could do to a person – maybe she’d skip that lecture.

Thea’s thought process was interrupted. She hadn’t really ever done much rambling and she was discovering that, as it was the middle of October, the polite cold was actually becoming pretty sharp, especially as she hadn’t been issued with a coat and was only wearing her thin cult clothes. Worse than that, nature, at that moment, had turned into a stony path, which she wasn’t sure her stupid soft-soled moccasins could handle.

Thea had to stop. She was more out of breath than she was going to admit and, so far, she hadn’t seen any sign of a lighthouse. The moccasins were not going to make it, she could feel sharp little stones gouging into the butter-soft leather with every step and she wasn’t keen on destroying them on her first day. She resolved to ask for outdoor shoes.

The path, however, had taken her somewhat closer to the monastery. A small field of scratchy-looking plants separated her from its stone walls, mottled with moss and pockmarked like diseased skin. Nasty things had happened here, and walls remembered.

She gazed up at the empty glassless windows, the wind blowing her hair in her face, so she wasn’t sure later, when she thought about it, whether the slight movement at one shadowy aperture had been her own hair, or something within. It flicked across her vision with the speed of a snake’s tongue.

Her hair.

Probably.

Or a bird.

Though, for the briefest second, she could have sworn she saw the pale blob of a face.

Chapter 10

Rory’s beard, and the rest of him, was waiting for her at her health assessment the next day.

‘Hello, Miss Mackenzie. Tried to knee anyone in the balls lately?’

His colleague looked rather startled and a deep blush spread across his acne as he scuttled from the room. Thea hopped up onto the bed and swung her legs back and forth, feeling at ease for the first time since she arrived, even with the pale blob of a face at the monastery window still lingering in her mind.

‘Haven’t had to. Don’t give me a reason.’

He chuckled at that and started flicking through the papers on his clipboard.

‘I’ll do my best. Pretty straightforward. We’ve done all the baseline tests so now this is it: the big day. Time for the tech.’

Thea waggled her feet. The walls seemed to have less of that sticky sheen in Rory’s lab, not that she could see that much of them – the Centre’s sleek simplicity had been elbowed out of the way by monitors, wires, coffee mugs and little action figures posed mid battle.

‘You didn’t say you’d be working here too,’ she said.

Rory turned to consult a computer screen. ‘Didn’t know at the time. A place came up.’ He faced her again. ‘Weird how things work out, eh?’

‘I’m perhaps not the best judge of weird right now.’

She could have asked him about the monastery then, and the face that was probably not a face but something else completely. Maybe there were more staff quarters over there. That was probably the explanation, Thea thought – steadfastly ignoring the fact that the place was clearly a ruin and uninhabitable.

Just as she was about to open her mouth, Rory brought a box over to her and they both stared inside, Thea acutely aware just how close his arm was next to hers. He was wearing a chunky black watch that looked as if it had had a hard life so far and today’s T-shirt was as baffling to Thea as the last one: a logo for a university that was probably some hip television reference. She returned her attention to the box, not knowing what to expect.

Inside were two five-pence-size metal discs.

‘This is such amazing tech,’ Rory whispered as if he didn’t want to disturb the discs. ‘Eventually, when it’s gone public, each person will need these little beauties and an app in order for it all to work properly. But there’s already rumours that they’re working on a completely hardware-free version.’

‘No discs? How?’ Thea lowered her voice too, in case she woke the disc-babies.

‘If I knew that I wouldn’t be here, would I?’ He carefully lifted one out and held it balanced on the tip of his finger. ‘I don’t know how it works – that’s not my pay level. I just read the data as it’s fed to my computer. So, welcome to Phase One.’ He gave an elaborate bow. ‘The discs will get to know you for the next two weeks and find out your sleep patterns. Then it’ll know what to do with you.’

He gently placed a disc on each temple, so gently that Thea didn’t think they would stick. She touched one gingerly and it felt rock solid. There was no pain.

‘How?’

‘Magic.’

Thea made a face.

‘How do I get the bloody things off again?’ she said, shaking her head to see if she could loosen them.

‘Well, you don’t have to worry about that right now. They’re perfectly safe and you can’t accidentally knock them off in your sleep. They slide right off when we’re done.’

He tapped away on the tablet computer he was holding. Thea imagined electric signals needling their way into her brain, meeting her blinking, beleaguered neurons and fizzing life into them, making them judder and dance.

‘So have you met him? Moses Ing?’ She poked at the discs on her temples.

Rory didn’t look up from his swiping, the screen bathing his face in a frigid glow. ‘Not yet. Won’t hold my breath. Not sure I’m important enough.’

‘I thought it would have been him greeting us on the first day, y’know, doing the speech. Not whatsername.’

‘Delores.’

‘Hmm. Seeing as it’s his invention.’

‘She’s top level at Ing Enterprises, though. Everyone’s heard of her. Scarily clever. And, y’know … scary.’

She could have said it at that point. Rory would have listened. The pale blob of a face in the monastery window where no face should be.

‘And …’ she smiled ‘… it’s not going to end up brainwashing me to … I don’t know … want to kill the prime minister when I hear an ABBA song?’

Rory laughed out loud at that and his laugh was just as she thought it would be, deep and rich, the sonic equivalent of a chocolate mousse.

‘No brainwashing. I’m pretty sure of it.’ He rummaged amongst the printouts and tiny action-figure battles on his desk, his back to her. ‘I spotted you yesterday, by the way. Thought you’d got away with it?’

Thea stopped swinging her legs. How had he seen her? He must have followed her from the Centre, all the way to the monastery—

‘Here.’ He grabbed something from the desk and offered it to her.

Blinking, Thea saw a chocolate bar in his hand.

He smiled. ‘There’s no staff restriction on chocolate – that’s just for the clients, y’know, to keep you healthy. So, technically this is contraband. But I won’t tell if you won’t.’

Tell. There it was: her chance again. Tell him, she thought, as she looked at the chocolate bar and up into his kind eyes. But she’d probably imagined it, hadn’t she? It had been a bit of plastic fluttering in the wind, a bird, an old bit of paper, a trick of the eye.

Not a face.

Chapter 11

‘The white-crowned sparrow, when it is migrating and has to be in flight constantly, can go pretty much completely without sleep. Nifty little trick, right? But, get this, the bird does this with nearly no side effects.’

Weirdly for a lecturer specializing in sleep, it didn’t look as if he got much: he was twitchy and hollow-eyed. He stopped here to let his words sink in, smoothing back his threadbare hair.

Thea had been attending these Sleep School lectures for a few days now. Sometimes, she realized during those lectures, she was so busy looking thoughtful and attentive that she forgot to listen to what the lecturer was actually saying. She quickly corrected that now and tuned back into him.

‘Imagine you are that bird, hmm?’ the lecturer continued. Thea wrote down notes; there might be some sort of test on all of this and she didn’t like to fail at things. Failing at sleep was enough. ‘Every spring and autumn, tens of thousands of white-crowned sparrows (Zonotrichia leucophrys) migrate the 4,000 kilometres between Alaska and Southern California. They fly day and night with little chance for rest. Imagine it: flapping away constantly, on the move to your winter home, you can’t fall asleep because you’d plummet from the sky and die. You’ve also got to keep an eye out for predators and keep yourself fed. Solution? Stay awake, of course! Scientists are currently trying to understand what is going on in the bird’s brain at that time, especially … and this is the key part … especially as these birds sleep two-thirds less than normal yet, in certain tests conducted, performed no worse than other sparrows on tasks of learning and memory.’

He paused for a moment.

The man a seat away from Thea was drawing a bird in his notebook; it had angry, bloodshot eyes and a coffee cup held between two wings. The speech bubble coming from it said, ‘Caffeine! I need more caffeine!’

‘Imagine it, hmm? Imagine not having to waste all that time asleep … and for it to have absolutely no effect on your physical and mental wellbeing. Well, Morpheus is already imagining that.’

Surreptitiously, Thea glanced at her phone. Without internet connection or a mobile signal, it was now nothing more than an ornament. She didn’t know why she continued to carry it around with her, much less why she couldn’t help but glance at it throughout the day, checking for notifications that would never appear. The landline phones meant Thea had got a few calls in with her mother:

‘So, teapot. Cured yet?’

‘Mum, you are aware that you’ve asked that every time I’ve phoned you? And I phone you every day!’

‘Well, clever company like them, they should have got it sorted by now. Are you?’

‘NO!’

‘I’d be thinking about getting my money back, if I were you.’

‘It doesn’t work like that.’

‘Oh. Well, that’s disappointing. Are you eating?’

‘Yes, Mum. You’d love it, it’s all avocado and mung beans. Actually, you wouldn’t like the coffee. They call it that but really it’s some kind of evil concoction made of—’

‘I heard of a drug trial once. They gave them all something for the common cold and it made their hair fall out. All of their hair, even, y’know, the hair on their—’

‘My hair hasn’t fallen out, so we’re okay.’

‘Made any friends?’

Thea rolled her eyes. ‘Not yet, we’ve only been here a few days. And I’m not six, thanks, Mother. Want to also check I’m wearing clean knickers and eating my breakfast? Look, I have to dash—’

‘Wait! Before you go, I’ve thought of a safe phrase you can say if it turns out to be a cult and they start to listen in – that is, if they’re not already.’

‘Mum!’

‘So this is it okay? I’m really missing the cat. That’s the phrase.’

Thea hadn’t even known that they still made phone handsets like those – chunky, curved white things that people used to have fixed to their walls in Nineties sitcoms. The room had been big enough to fit a side table and a comfortable chair, one of a few similar places scattered around the Client Bubble that had to be booked before use. Thea had thought it would be tricky to get a slot with fifty people trying to phone home at the same time like a bunch of lemming ETs – but she hadn’t had a problem so far.

‘Unfortunately, we are not little white-crowned sparrows,’ the lecturer continued. ‘Well, not yet anyway—’ Cue some polite laughter. ‘There are some people who can actually survive on only a few hours’ sleep, say two or three, and who don’t seem to have any ill effects. The Sleepless Elite, we jokingly call them. Let these people not be mistaken for some celebrities who insist they do fine on such shortened sleep, but their erratic, ill-judged behaviour would suggest otherwise. Name no names, eh?’ More laughter. The lecturer brightened up.

In front of her was the frizzy-haired woman who had given Thea chocolate during yoga. She had used her name badge as a hair clip and stabbed pencils into her hair, arranging them so they stuck out like a spiky tiara. Rosie, the badge told Thea. There was a heart drawn over the letter i. One pencil drooped and fell onto Thea’s desk with a clatter that made heads turn. Rosie tried to pull the other pencils out, but one snagged and hung precariously, dangling over Thea’s notes until she reached out, carefully unwound the hair where it had caught on the metal part of the eraser and tapped Rosie on the shoulder.

‘Thanks,’ Rosie whispered, taking the pencil from her. She smiled.

Thea was somewhat startled when she felt her desk tremble as a scuffed boot came into view. The woman calmly climbed over the desk, apologizing as she sent other people’s notebooks and pens sliding to the floor, and plonked herself down next to Thea.

‘Hi!’ She smiled brightly. ‘I’m Rosie.’

Heads turned again. Thea felt the heat in her cheeks, but the lecturer continued, oblivious.

‘The technology each of you is currently wearing is light years ahead of any rival company. The leaps we are making …’ The lecturer glanced sideways as if someone was watching from the wings. He coughed.

Rosie spoke to herself, ‘Hello, Rosie, nice to meet you. My name’s’ – she took a look at Thea’s badge – ‘Thea – ooh, nice name.’

This time, Thea was almost sure the lecturer frowned at her. She slouched in her seat. Rosie yawned dramatically, ‘Are you bored yet?’

The lecturer raised his voice. ‘But, hey, I am jumping ahead of myself a bit here, aren’t I? Let’s get back to the here and now, hmm? As a society we are now realizing that sleep, once denigrated and dismissed as a weakness almost, could actually hold the key for mankind’s next evolutionary leap.’

Thea yawned and black blobs drifted across her vision. Eye floaters. An optician had explained that the jelly substance in some people’s eyes could become more liquid and then bits of it could clump together to do laps across their vision. ‘No need to worry,’ her optician had reassured her. It had certainly sounded worrying. Her eyeballs were literally melting and bits of them were indulging in a spot of synchronized swimming but that, apparently, was okay.

She yawned again and tried to hide it this time in case she offended the lecturer. The first few nights in a new place were always tough: pillow too soft, then too hard, duvet too warm, then too cold and there was always a light blinking somewhere. It made holidays such a joy.

Thea glanced around at the others near her, all of them with their little silver dots attached to their temples. She wondered how many hours each one of them had slept that night. One man called Richard with a scrawny neck and a thin-lipped tortoise head was already nodding off, his head dipping to a rhythm of its own. Head jerking too low, he woke himself up, caught Thea’s eye and gave her a sheepish smile.

‘We’re not even allowed coffee, y’know,’ Rosie stage-whispered again. ‘Well, they call it coffee, what they serve, but it’s made from mushrooms or something. Not magic ones either. Not that I’ve tried magic mushrooms, have you?’

Thea wasn’t sure Rosie was trying her best at the whole whispering thing.

‘Shush,’ Thea gently admonished, stifling a smile.

‘Sorry.’

‘And no. I haven’t tried magic mushrooms.’

Rosie took a look around at everyone else and then raised her voice just that little bit more. ‘Do you want to?’

Thea couldn’t help but laugh. Someone shushed them and that made her want to laugh even more. She didn’t think she’d ever been shushed in her entire life.

The lecturer coughed. ‘Luckily, you are here, at the heart of cutting-edge research into the science of sleep. But that is only a start. Wait until you find out the kind of learning the brain can do whilst you sleep – you will be astounded. And that will be the focus of our next lecture. Thank you for …’

A bell rang. Rosie gave a little fist pump. People began to move, gathering pads of paper and pens. The lecturer had to shout the end of his sentence.

‘… listening.’

‘So – I’ve decided. You’re going to be my friend during all of this. Sorry but you don’t get a choice, okay?’

Outside the lecture theatre, Rosie linked her arm through Thea’s and gave her a little lopsided smile.

‘What if I turn out to be a nightmare?’ Thea asked, trying to keep up with Rosie’s pace.

‘Well, the best friendships are those you have to work at – or some such bollocks. Don’t be a nightmare. Simple!’

Thea laughed. Rosie was wearing her cult top knotted at the middle and had tied a bright green ribbon around the waistband of her trousers. One of her pencils fell out of her hair and clattered to the floor. She rushed to rescue it. Thea tried to think of something to say, but luckily Rosie had enough to say for the both of them.

‘Look at us all,’ Rosie gestured to the other clients coming out of the hall. ‘So, you have now officially joined The Desperados, the worst-dressed bunch of people ever – with added head jewellery!’ She tapped at her disc. Around hers she’d drawn a heart. ‘I would ask you what you’re doing later, y’know, small talk – but we all know that this afternoon will be another round of torture in the gym and more prodding by the lab nerds.’

‘Did someone say lab nerd?’ Rory appeared so suddenly at Rosie’s side she jumped and lost another pencil from her hair. ‘I do like to appear when summoned.’

Thea laughed and stopped Rosie’s pencil from rolling away with her foot. ‘Rosie, this is Rory. He works here.’

‘And obviously by lab nerd, I meant highly intelligent and well-respected member of staff, yeah?’ She regrouped, grabbed the pencil and twirled it as if it was a mini baton.

‘Ah, I’m okay with nerd, don’t worry.’ He surreptitiously slid a chocolate bar out of the inside pocket of his white coat and passed it to Thea, looking around to see who was watching in an exaggerated way, whilst she slid it up her sleeve. ‘See ya later. Got to practise my prodding.’

Rosie snorted.

‘No! Wait!’ Rory backed away. ‘That came out wrong. Let’s all just believe I said something witty and cool, yeah?’ And he walked off.

Rosie raised her eyebrows meaningfully at Thea. ‘Well, I see you’ve already been busy making a friend.’

‘Do you want some of the chocolate or not?’

Rosie began to sing quietly, ‘Thea and Rory sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N—’

But she never got to G because Thea flicked the pencil out of her fingers and they both headed towards the doorway, laughing.

Perhaps this would work, Thea thought, as she walked through the double doors, arm safely linked in Rosie’s, Rory’s chocolate bar nestled against her wrist. Perhaps, despite the fever-sheen walls and cult clothes, the glimpse of white in the monastery window and the cold metal at her temples … perhaps this was exactly what she needed.

Chapter 12

A week later and, for Thea, the world around her, which had been grey and flat like a broken pop-up book, suddenly sprang open.

There was no doubt about it: she was getting more sleep.

Not much. She fell asleep at around 7 a.m., but now she was waking later, nearer 10 a.m. The usual one hour of sleep had blossomed into nearly three. Those hours were a cool aloe vera gel smoothed onto her brain and eyes.

Odd hours though. She couldn’t get away from that. It was as if her body was fighting sleep the whole night and then, like a stubborn toddler, gave in just as the day started for everyone else. If this was her normal sleep pattern then she would be seriously out of step with … well, the world.

Sleep therapy took place in a room with one curved white wall and a view of the old monastery. Seeing its streaked stone and ravaged eyes reminded Thea of that twilit walk she’d taken over a week ago. She turned away.

It was a bit of plastic fluttering in the wind, a bird, an old bit of paper, a trick of the light.

Not a face.

Rosie patted the empty seat next to her and Thea sat down.

When was the last time someone other than her mother had saved a chair for her? Thea wondered. It took her far too long to come up with an answer.

They had been put into ‘families’ for most group sessions, each one overseen by a sleep guru. Thea’s family consisted of about ten people and she only knew the names of a handful.

‘I used to have an Action Ken to go with my Barbie when I was little.’ Rosie stared dreamily at one of their group, Ethan, over her cup of mushroom coffee as they waited for the session to start. ‘And that guy over there is exactly like a walking Action Ken! You would, wouldn’t you?’ She angled Thea’s face towards him. ‘Wouldn’t you? You would.’

She wouldn’t let go of Thea’s face until she’d agreed that yes, she would. Which she did because Rosie holding her chin and staring at her intently was starting to catch people’s attention. Including Ethan’s.

‘I wonder what he’s in for?’ Rosie continued. ‘I’d like to see one of those people who just fall asleep anywhere. I saw it on a documentary once. They, like, sneeze, and then just collapse to the ground, completely asleep. It’s amazing. I get these night terrors, right? Like, awful, awful night terrors. I wake up screaming, then the dog starts howling and I’m sweating like I’ve run a marathon. It’s just wrong. I mean, I’m single at the mo, but that could change, you know, any day now, and I can’t be waking him up every night like a banshee, can I? It’d put him off. What’s your thing?’

Rosie made it sound a bit like a superpower.

‘I just don’t sleep much,’ Thea replied, a little dazed because talking to Rosie was like being on permanent fast-forward. ‘Don’t get to sleep until it’s time to wake up for work in the morning.’

‘Whoa. Weird.’

On one side of the room there were little canapé trays of vegetables masquerading as something more enticing. Rosie got up and filled a plate, thoughtfully picking through the selection before returning to her seat.

‘Being awake for so long on your own must be boring though, no?’ she said, unwinding a carrot concoction. ‘What do you do with all that time?’

‘Read.’

Rosie blinked.

‘Think.’

Rosie blinked again.

‘Watch television sometimes …’

Rosie’s face lit up. ‘I love a good box set! But not those nature docs – they’re brutal. I do not want to see another baby seal being mutilated while I’m eating my Pot Noodle.’

But Thea was hardly listening. In her mind she was back at the monastery walls as the daylight slunk away, looking up at a flicker of movement in the window.

Harriet tapped on her tablet a few more times and then stood up, clapping her hands once for order.

‘Okay, everyone. Let’s make a start.’

Thea saw Ethan mutter something to himself. Harriet turned and smiled at him.

‘Let’s start with you, Ethan,’ she said brightly, flicking her ponytail over her shoulder with slightly more vehemence than was needed. ‘Everyone, this is Ethan’s space. Ethan, tell us why you’re here.’

‘Because you’re paying me.’ He crossed one ankle over a knee and studied a fingernail. Rosie’s description of him as a Ken doll wasn’t so far off the mark, Thea thought, except a Ken doll had a happy smile painted on his chiselled face.

‘Yes. How droll.’ Harriet narrowed her eyes. ‘I meant, why can’t you sleep? You have nightmares, yes?’

‘Ooh! We have something in common!’ Rosie whispered excitedly to Thea.

Ethan switched his concentration to something on the sole of his shoe.

‘You have no trouble going to sleep but then are woken up by the nightmares and can’t fall asleep again. Am I correct?’

Ethan put his foot back down and, for a moment, just sat there with his hands on his knees, staring at the floor. Then he stood, quickly fixing Harriet with a challenging stare.

‘Sorry, Harriet. Got to go to the bathroom. You’ll have to start with someone else.’

He walked off and Harriet pressed her lips together firmly, as if trying to stop herself from saying something. She took a deep breath and then switched her smile back on.

‘So? Anyone else like to start?’

Luckily, hands went up. Thea couldn’t remember many of the others’ names apart from a couple. One of them was Moira, a middle-aged woman with thick, round, owlish glasses. She went sleepwalking almost every night. ‘Which is scary because I live alone and what happens if I manage to get the front door open? Once I even made myself a peanut butter and jam sandwich, completely asleep!’ She yawned. ‘And I don’t even like peanut butter and jam! But at least I know why I can’t ever lose any damn weight …’

Thea recognized tortoise-Richard from the lecture – the man who had nodded off. There were big dark smudges under his eyes and he was so softly spoken that everyone had to lean in a little to hear him properly.

‘I wake up and I can’t move. I’m paralyzed, as if something is pinning me down and I’m petrified because then it feels like I’m choking.’

His hand went to his neck.

‘And I’m trying to move and I’m trying to breathe and it all just gets worse and worse. It’s over in a few minutes but I can do that a couple of times a night. Lucky I have no one to wake up, eh?’

He lowered his voice even further to a sad little whisper. ‘I’m too scared to go to sleep.’

His head drooped.

There was a pause and Harriet looked up from her tablet. ‘Right! Lovely!’ she said and Thea got the distinct impression that she hadn’t been listening. ‘Now, next. Please think of a dream or nightmare that has stuck in your head and share it with your partner.’

If she’d had nightmares, which she didn’t, nor dreams either really – but if she did, Thea would have had nightmares about the monastery. The rust staining the tower wall, spires like needle teeth and the blank dark windows where the blackness inside the old place came seeping out …

If she had nightmares, she would have had them about the pale blob of a face, only half-glimpsed.

‘I was in a cuckoo clock,’ Rosie said in a soft voice. ‘It must have come from my grandparents, right, because they had this cuckoo clock I was absolutely fascinated with as a child. Huge old thing. Anyway. I’m in the cuckoo clock having scones and tea with the cuckoo and it’s great. It’s all warm and cosy and the cuckoo is telling me how much she loves her job. She’s wearing a shawl and she’s got little glasses perched on her beak, even though her eyes are totally on the side of her head, right, so they’d be useless. Every so often she gets up and shoots out of the door to call the time, but she always comes back and we carry on having tea. I loved it in that cuckoo clock and I was really sad when I woke up.’

‘Have you still got the clock?’ Thea asked.

‘Nah. I was too little when they died. My mother sold all their stuff, used up the money. She’s a peach, my mum.’ Rosie’s smile didn’t quite convince. ‘Was. She was …’ She sniffed.

Thea started to say something but was interrupted by Ethan marching back into the main hall holding his mobile phone aloft as if it was lighting his way.

‘This is bollocks!’ He tossed the phone onto the little table they were clustered around and crossed his arms, those much-appreciated-by-Rosie biceps bulging. ‘We should be able to use our phones, like normal people. I didn’t sign up for this!’

Eye contact was carefully avoided.

Harriet massaged the bridge of her nose for a moment and clenched her jaw before going over to him, stilettos stabbing the floor. She whispered something to him that the rest of them couldn’t hear.

‘It’s not bloody good enough!’ He continued in the same loud tone. ‘You’re a bunch of tech geniuses who don’t approve of Wi-Fi?’

There were a few sniggers. Harriet sighed and turned to them all.

‘Respectfully – yes, you did sign up for this. No one reads the small print, do they? And you can use a phone; there are plenty provided, they’re just not yours.’ Harriet paused and smiled kindly at the group. ‘And a bit of a tech detox doesn’t seem to have done anyone any harm. Now, are there any other issues people want to raise, or may we proceed?’

To her own surprise as much as Harriet’s, Thea raised her hand.

Chapter 13

She didn’t know why she’d done it.

Harriet had asked and up had gone her hand, seemingly of its own accord.

She blamed the extra sleep.

They were now sat on the green. Nearby, the monastery gift shop was meant to look like a picturesque cottage with its peaked red-tiled hat. But there was nothing picturesque about it. Its wooden front door, warped by damp, bowed out slightly as if the whole place was a pus-filled spot, holding its wrongness inside, the outside skin stretched so tight it could pop and ooze at any moment.

It wasn’t forbidden to spend their lunch and breaktimes outside, but it was late October and, invariably, Rosie and Thea found themselves alone on blanket-covered wet grass even though the weather wasn’t too cold.

Normally, in her sleepless world, the hours after lunch were a dirty water stain on the day: grey, shapeless, ever spreading. Today, however, Thea gazed around her with a new clarity: eyesight sharp, brain sharper.

‘What’s the big deal about outdoor shoes anyway?’ Rosie asked.

How could Thea explain it to Rosie? That sometimes, when she was in the Centre, she felt that the walls would suck her in, the glossy cream closing over her completely, sealing over her mouth when she tried to scream?

The face in the monastery window.

‘I just like getting some fresh air,’ was all she could articulate. She’d thought about telling Rosie what she’d seen but, however she played it in her mind, it just sounded silly. No one was there. A few carefully worded questions to Rory one day had confirmed that the monastery was abandoned and had been since the last monk had shuffled out in the 1980s.

‘Yep, well, it is certainly fresh today.’ Rosie pulled another blanket tighter across her shoulders. The sky didn’t look fresh at all; it looked grimy, like over-handled dough. ‘I’ll come though, if you want to go for a walk. Could use the exercise.’

‘Ladies.’ Rory sat down next to them.

He rustled the bag invitingly.

‘What is it today?’ Rosie sat up and made a swipe for it.

She was too slow and Rory hid it behind his back.

‘Today, my fellow connoisseurs’ – there was more rustling as he fumbled with the bag behind him – ‘we have a veritable feast, a delight … a delectation … of cocoa and milky goodness!’

With a flourish he produced a bunch of chocolate bars and laid them reverently on the grass, fanning them out like cards.

Rosie pounced on one and tore the wrapper off immediately.

‘God, I love you, Rory Thirwood,’ she said, her mouth full of chocolate bar. ‘Seriously, I will have your babies. My stash ran out a week ago. Bloody inhuman, not letting us have chocolate.’

‘I aim to please,’ he said modestly, unpacking a sandwich and an apple for himself. ‘But I’m not in the mood for procreation right now, thanks all the same.’

Thea rolled her eyes and chose a chocolate bar.

‘So, I hear you’ve been making a name for yourself.’ Rory turned to Thea.

‘It’s just shoes! God! What is the big deal? Why do we have to wear these stupid slippers all the time anyway?’

‘I think in therapy you might want to consider “talking through” your problem with moccasins.’ Rory ducked as Thea threw his apple at him. ‘And your anger issues.’

Thea leant back on her elbows and stretched her legs out in front of her, wiggling her feet. She’d been awake for most of the previous night, the dark hours a staircase and her mind a small ball gathering speed down its stairs. Usually the stairs were unending, but again last night, the ball had finally come to rest. She had slept longer.

‘Bring on Phase Two,’ Rosie said, never one to let a silence linger. ‘I am done with my night terrors. I woke up so sweaty last night, I had to have a shower at one in the morning.’

‘What was the nightmare?’ Thea asked.

‘Rats. They were gnawing my toes off.’ She licked the wrapper clean and then flopped back onto the grass. ‘It’s going to work, right? The tech?’

Rory rubbed his apple on his trousers. He was wearing baggy cords and a T-shirt over a long-sleeved top. This time the T-shirt had a print of zombie mermaids eating sailors.

‘Well, there’s a lot of tech. And a lot of clever people doing a lot with that tech, so yeah, hopefully, it’ll work.’

Thea wasn’t listening. She was marvelling at how fast she could think, and how she didn’t feel like her joints were gummed up with sludge. There was so much space in her brain, now she wasn’t always obsessing about how tired she felt, or how she’d get through the day, or whether she’d had enough coffee to attempt driving. But there was another kind of space opening up too: it was picnic-blanket-sized and big enough to fit jokes and gossip and random chat that went nowhere. It was big enough for Rosie and Rory.

Thea clenched her fists. ‘Look. I think I saw something. Up at the monastery. I went for a walk up there when I first arrived and I saw … something at one of the windows.’ She picked up pace. ‘And I know it’s stupid but I can’t get it out of my head and I need proper outdoor shoes to get up there again and, no, I don’t believe in ghosts and, yes, I totally understand if you think I’m crazy—’

She gasped for breath. It was probably the most she’d said in one go since she’d arrived. Rory and Rosie stared at her.

‘Ghosts?’ Rosie said hopefully.

Someone cleared their throat behind them. ‘It was you, wasn’t it – you’re the one who asked for shoes?’

Thea twisted to see Ethan stood behind her, feet planted wide, arms crossed like a bouncer in a nightclub doorway. Rosie hurriedly smoothed her hair and swiped chocolate stains from her mouth.

‘Yes,’ Thea said. ‘I did.’ She hoped he hadn’t heard her rant about ghosts and faces in windows.

He nodded and frowned. ‘This phone thing …’

‘Chocolate?’ Rosie offered.

Ethan ignored her and stared off into the distance, as if the trees were doing something he disapproved of.

‘Sometimes you sniff the milk and it smells okay, but you know – despite the smell – that it’s about to turn,’ Ethan said, still staring.

Rory turned to get a better look at him. ‘Are you okay, mate? Look, there really isn’t anything to worry about. Studies show that smartphones—’

‘Thea!’ Harriet called to her as she teetered over the grass towards them, the wet earth sucking at her heels. ‘Thea, so this is where you are! Really? In this weather? You’ll catch a chill. Anyway … ‘She stopped at the small group of people and inspected the damage to her shoes. ‘Delores would like a little word with you.’

She began to wobble back to the Centre, calling behind her, ‘Come on then!’

Thea got up, clutching her blanket to her, feeling a bit light-headed. ‘Wait! Why—?’

But Harriet was too far away. Was this about the shoes? Was Thea about to be reprimanded by the headteacher for a stupid pair of stupid shoes? It seemed so ridiculous.

Ethan caught her eye and muttered softly, ‘Yep. You can’t smell it yet but, the milk’s about to go bad.’

Maybe it was some kind of prickle in her soul that made her look up, past the windows on the first few floors of the Sleep Centre, higher, to a window at the top of the Staff Bubble, where someone stood, probably watching over the green. To Thea though, it really seemed like she was watching her and her alone.

Delores.

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