It’s hard to keep track of time at the weekends. Isolated from the world and its day to night rhythm, I often sleep at odd times. Sunday afternoon dozing on my bed is a regular thing and today is no exception. But I’ve been woken from my nap by a faint sound. A strange screeching sound of harsh and inharmonious tones. And as I listen to it, something is awakened inside me. Something I thought was dead and buried forever. Something I vowed never to resurrect. But like the smell of whiskey to a long-dry alcoholic, the sound taunts me and refuses to be ignored. I get up off the bed and feel my way to the door. I open it and the sound is louder and clearer. The audible whiskey fumes lead me onwards, across the landing and down the stairs to the living room door, searching for the source of the sound that resonates so deep inside me. But it stops abruptly as I enter the room and I hear Rob’s voice.

 

“I thought you were taking a nap,” he says.

 

I think his voice came from the sofa. I feel my way over to it. “I was dozing. But there was this sound. Can I sit down?”

 

“Yeah, sure. Just let me shift these papers. I was just trying to catch up on some work.”

 

“And the sound, it’s part of your work?”

 

“Err, yes. It’s on my laptop. I was just having a listen. I’m sorry if it woke you.”

 

“Oh that’s okay. I was only dozing. It’s a strange sort of sound isn’t it.”

 

“Yeah, I suppose so.”

 

I sit down and Rob gives me a quick cuddle and a kiss through my hood. He feels warm and friendly, but my mind is taken up with that sound and what it tells me. I know I vowed never to touch this again, I can feel the anger and hatred that lurks inside me, and used to surface whenever I thought about this, and I know I should keep away from it, but my ego is too big for all that. I was going to be a big shot. I was going to change the world. I can’t let it go that easily.

 

“What ya working on?” I ask, trying to sound particularly like a dumb woman.

 

“Now you know I can’t tell you Love.”

 

“Oh yes. Big secret stuff. Going well is it? Oh, better not tell me. Not that it would matter, I’m just a woman after all. I wouldn’t understand.”

 

“You’re being weird Jem.”

 

“Oh, sorry.”

 

There’s a long, awkward pause and I think about what I’m doing. I know I should let it go, but he’s my husband. He deserves to know the truth.

 

“You’ll never get it to work you know,” I say quietly.

 

“What?”

 

“The tones are all wrong. You can tell just by listening to them. There’s no harmony. It won’t work.”

 

“And how would you know anything about it Jem?”

 

“Oh well, I wasn’t always just a music teacher you know.”

 

“Stop being silly Jem. This is serious stuff and I’m under a lot of pressure with it. I don’t need you taking the piss.”

 

“Is Masterssen still in charge?”

 

“What? Now you’re freaking me out Jem. What’s going on here?”

 

“Think about it Rob. Think about when we first met. Where was it?”

 

“It was in the pub. I was having a drink to celebrate my getting the job at AWE and I saw you across the bar.”

 

“And I ended up being chatted up by a handsome stranger who had too much to drink and couldn’t drive home.”

 

“You gave me a lift back to London in that Italian sports car.”

 

“I did. And the rest is history.” I lean closer to Rob and lower my voice. “But where was the pub, Rob?”

 

“It was The Hind’s Head in Aldermaston.”

 

“And what do you think I was doing in Aldermaston? There’s not really much in Aldermaston. It’s only a little village, but what’s next door to it?”

 

“AWE. You know about that?”

 

“Give the boy a cookie. Your beautiful wife used to work for the Atomic Weapons Establishment. Until she was thrown out for not having a growth between her legs.”

 

“Fucking hell Jem. Why did you never tell me?”

 

“I buried that life after it was taken from me. I vowed never to go there again.”

 

“So why tell me now?”

 

“That sound you were playing, I recognise it. And that’s because I made it. But it’ll never work. Masterssen’s a fraud. He knows shit. He’s a fraud and a fucking rapist.”

 

“Rapist? What are you saying Jem?”

 

“Well, attempted rapist anyway. Has he got a scar on his forehead?”

 

“Above his left eye.”

 

“I gave him that. He pushed me over a desk and tried to take me from behind. So I whacked him in the face with a computer mouse.”

 

“You hit him with a mouse?”

 

“It was all I could lay my hands on. Smashed the thing to bits when I hit him with it. He had to have stitches apparently.”

 

“Fuck, Jem. Did you go to the police?”

 

“No. There were no witnesses. It would have been my word against his. Fucker. He’s a fraud too. He knows fuck all about it all. Everything he thinks he knows he got from my documentation and notes. But I was on to him. I knew what he was up to. He used the fact that I was a woman to get my contract terminated and was going to step in and take the glory after I was gone. But there was no glory because I corrupted all my notes and falsified the documents. That sound you’ve got, it’s my fucked-up version. That’s how I know it’ll never work.”

 

The thing that they can’t get to work is all to do with bubbles. If you can create bubbles of vacuum in a fluid then unlike air bubbles they will naturally collapse in on themselves. The molecules of fluid on opposite sides of the void rush in to fill it and when they all meet in the middle it’s like a whole load of express trains smashing head on into each other. The energy this releases causes a tiny pocket of extremely high temperature to be produced, and if the collapsing bubble is perfectly round and big enough then the heat can be intense enough to fuse atoms together. Creating such large and perfect bubbles of vacuum is not easy, but it can be done using patterns of ultrasonic waves to agitate the fluid. But the patterns required are complex and very critical, and getting them right is as much an art form as a science. You would need to put away the computers and listen with an appreciative ear. You would need an exceptionally brilliant acoustics engineer who also happened to be a musician. And then you’d have the Holy Grail of nuclear physics, a simple, cheap fusion reactor that can be built on a desktop.

 

“I got it to work you know.”

 

“You got it to work? You can’t have.”

 

“I did. I got neutrons until the water boiled and stopped the voids forming. I got that many neutrons I set the radiation alarms off. And my contract was being terminated because I was a woman, and Masterssen was going to take it all. So I destroyed it.”

 

“You destroyed it?”

 

“I’d been running it with duterated water. So I fucked it up by spiking the water with tritium. It was quite spectacular.”

 

“The damaged lab. That was you? You blew up that lab with a fusion bomb?”

 

“Well it was only a little one. And technically it wasn’t a fusion bomb, it was a steam explosion. The water in the pressure vessel boiled so violently that the steam pressure blew it apart. I wish Masterssen had been sitting on it. There obviously wasn’t enough left for him to piece it back together.”

 

“Fuck! Jem, I’ve been working on this for over three years with about fifty other people, and you’re telling me you know all the answers.”

 

“I used to be more than just a pretty face and big hair you know.”

 

“But this is big stuff Jem. You can’t just keep it quiet.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“Think of what it is Jem. What it means to the country, and to the world.”

 

“And what‘s the country and the world done for me? Sack me? Take everything from me? Put me in a fucking hood? Put my friend in chains? I don’t owe the world anything. I’m just a woman remember. I’m only good for being pretty, doing housework and satisfying men. Why should I help a world that’s done all that to me? And if I made another one and gave it to them, imagine what would happen. Imagine how much money the government would make out of it. It would make them so powerful we’d be stuck with them for a hundred years. When we’re free again, when women can vote, can wear what we want to, can take off our collars and chains and hoods, maybe then I’ll tell what I know. Until then I’ll just teach music and the world can go fuck itself.”

 

There’s a long silence. It seems like I’ve left Rob speechless. In normal circumstances I’d be able to tell, to look at him and see his expressions and his body language.  But in my hood I can’t see any of that. I can’t tell if he’s happy, impressed, angry, frightened or any fucking thing else. The only thing we can do is talk. And if he’s not going to then I have to keep going.

 

“I’m telling you this because you’re my husband. You deserve to know the truth. And you deserve something better than working for that piece of shit Masterssen. Get out of there Rob. Get out before he fucks you up too. I only have another four months to go and then I’ll be free of this hood. We can start afresh. Just you and me. We can get out of London, get out of Britain if you want. Go to Canada or New Zealand, or Brazil or any fucking where, I don’t care. Talk to me Rob. Talk to me.

 

 

oOo

 

 

I suppose if you’ve spent three years of your life working hard on some big thing that you thought was going to change the world, then it’s rather tough to find out that it was all a waste of time and your boss is a fraud. Tougher still to find that your wife knew the answers all along and didn’t tell you. I can’t blame Rob for going into a sulk and hardly speaking to me for two days. My stupid ego. Once again it’s gone and fucked everything up.

 

I’m sat in the staffroom at work, trying to figure out how I’m going to fix the mess I’ve created, when Joan appears and tells me I have a visitor in the department head’s office. So I wander off down the corridor, intrigued to know who’s come to see me.

 

In the office I find Mrs Riley, the department head playing host to an extremely well-groomed man who looks to be about sixty and is wearing a very expensive-looking suit. Mrs Riley is of similar age and there is an atmosphere of romance in the office. She clearly fancies him. A lot. She introduces him as Mr Shank and he apparently has some confidential business with me. After much polite fussing, and a reminder to Mr Shank that he can come to dinner anytime, Mrs Riley reluctantly leaves the office, closing the door behind her.

 

“You’ll have to excuse me, but our records are a little confused,” begins Mr Shank in a perfect, Home Counties English voice. “Should I be addressing you as Ms Melstrom or Mrs Macintyre?”

 

“Well that depends. To my friends I’m probably Mrs Macintyre. I’m not sure if you’re my friend though, Mr Shank.”

 

“Mmm, quite so. Well I hope I will be your friend, at least in a professional sense. Of course there is also the possibility that I should be calling you Doctor Melstrom.”

 

“Doctor Melstrom? I haven’t heard that one for a while. You said ‘our records’ are confused. Who exactly is ‘our’?”

 

“Yes, well the answer to that is rather complicated I’m afraid, but let’s say I am a one of a group of people which believes the country is going a little off the rails at the moment and needs a gentle nudge to set it back on the straight and narrow.”

 

“A gentle nudge? More like a whack with a very big hammer.”

 

“Well, possibly. But I think we’d like to try a little nudge first and see how that goes. I know it might be difficult given your circumstances and the general situation at the moment, but could we just for the moment assume that I’m one of the good guys? I’m not here to arrest you or order you to do anything. I would just like to speak to you and nothing more.”

 

“Well I suppose someone who wears a suit like that would have people to do his arresting and dirty work for him. It is a nice suit. Alexander McQueen?”

 

“Err, Maurice Sedwell actually.”

 

“Ah. Well in that case I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt for now. What is it about little old me that interests a man who wears a Maurice Sedwell suit?

 

“Thank you, err I’m going to go with Doctor Melstrom for now, if that’s alright with you. It’s a bit of a cliché to say that information is power, but I’m afraid it is true. And so anyone hoping to be powerful enough to nudge the direction of the country needs information. Lots of information. The problem is that there’s so much information whizzing about these days, and most of it is just dross. The smart information seeker doesn’t bother listening to and watching everything in the hope that a tasty morsel will fall serendipitously from the giant cloud of trivia. The smart information seeker gets computers to listen to it all and filter out anything that might sound interesting. I don’t like to think of it as snooping but I suppose that’s what it is. And since the country is covered in cameras and microphones these days, it’s not difficult to snoop. So when a computer that’s hooked in to the Corrective Restraint IT system picks up words like ‘deuterium’ and ‘tritium’ and ‘atomic weapons establishment’, it decides that that conversation might be something worth snooping into and it passes it on to someone for a closer listen.”

 

“Ah, a collar with a microphone. How could I have forgotten? Did you tune in to us making love too? He takes me up the arse you know. It must make for a good show.”

 

“I am sorry Doctor Melstrom, and I can assure you that your love life remains a closed book which I have no intention of opening. We were assuming I’m with the good guys for now.”

 

“It’s getting a hard assumption to keep going with. And if you listened to the whole of that conversation you’ll know that I’ve got nothing to give you on deuterium or tritium or anything else. I’m just a woman remember.”

 

“I understand your position Doctor Melstrom. But you are aware of the importance of the device that you could apparently make? There are teams of people all over the world trying to get it to work and no one has succeeded yet. Except perhaps you. And there appears to some evidence that you did indeed do what you said. An explosion, even a small one in an atomic weapons establishment is not easy to cover up completely. So what if I were to offer you a deal Doctor Melstrom? What would it take to get you to build your machine again?”

 

“How about the prime minister’s head on a plate? Just for a starter while I think about a main course.”

 

“Well of course I couldn’t condone actually beheading him, I am one of the good guys remember, but metaphorically speaking all things might be possible.”

 

“Well forgive me if I don’t pull out my nuclear physics manual right away. It takes more than just a Maurice Sedwell suit to make good on that sort of promise.”

 

“Indeed it might. But as I said at the start, I only wanted to talk to you today. I think before I can ask you to make any sort of deal with me I will have to convince you that I am on the right side. On your side, so to speak.”

 

“I might take a lot of convincing.”

 

“I shall send you a sign Doctor Melstrom. A sign that will hopefully demonstrate my good intentions towards you. Perhaps then you might agree to talk with me further.”

 

“A sign? What sort of a sign?”

 

“Oh I think you’ll know it when you see it. Now I’ve taken up too much of your time already, but I do have one tiny favour to ask of you now. Could you show me a way out of the building that doesn’t involve meeting Mrs Riley again? She’s very pleasant, but there are only so many dinner invitations a man can refuse before it starts to become rude.”

 

 

oOo

 

 

Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuck! You stupid, stupid, stupid fucking bitch Jemima. Why the fuck did you have to open your big mouth and fuck everything up? You couldn’t let it go could you. Jemima Melstrom just has to change the fucking world. Fucking egotistical bitch! I had a nice, quiet little life. I had slipped away from them, and that fucker Masterssen had discredited me so thoroughly that they had let me go, thinking I knew nothing. I’d gone from their radar. But now I’m right back on it, shining out like a fucking lighthouse. They’re coming for me and they’ll torture it out of me. Or they’ll torture those I care about until I give them what they want. If I had any guts I’d stop it all right now by killing myself. Fucking stupid bitch.

 

For three days I berate and torture myself, while waiting for them to come. I wonder how they’ll do it. Will I be snatched off the street by some anonymous thugs in a black van? Will I be arrested for some made-up crime? Will I be summoned to Corrective Restraint for some fabricated infringement with my hood? And when I’m taken to some secret lab somewhere, will they have Rob, and Sarah, and Jack, and my brother, and everyone else I care about locked up there and ready to torture if I don’t cooperate, or will they just show me photographs of them and make veiled threats about what might happen?

 

It’s late on Friday afternoon. I’m alone in my classroom, about to head home and then confine myself in my hood for the weekend. That’s when they’ll come. That’s when I’m at my most vulnerable and helpless. They won’t even have to bring their own hood. I look around the classroom, at the musical instruments, at the books, and at my writing on the whiteboard. I don’t think I’m going to be seeing any of it on Monday.

 

There’s a knock at the door and it opens. The characteristic swishing noise of legs in a long, tight skirt and the tapping of heels on the floor announce Joan’s presence, and she has two other people with her.

 

“Sorry to disturb you Jem, but these people would like to talk to you. They say they’re from the police.”




To be concluded in Part Fifteen.