from The Group. And I am sure that will have left you confused, and maybe even frightened. Please, don’t be.’
He looked so young, early thirties at most, and was wearing a white T-shirt and a string of beads around his neck. His hair was long, like a hippie’s or a surfer’s, and he was also deeply tanned, none of which tallied with Ella’s few, snatched memories of him. But his mannerisms, his movements, his smile; all of those were the same. She watched, transfixed, hanging off his every word.
‘Your destiny, like your mother’s and mine, has always been intertwined with The Group and its work. Our work. I know it may not feel like it right now. But that destiny is also a privilege, perhaps the greatest privilege a person can have. You were born to do good, Ella. To do good in ways that other people might not understand.
‘It’s not an easy path. There is evil in this world, Ella; evil of a pitch and intensity that most people can’t imagine. Sadly, those few who can see it usually choose not to act. They put their heads in the sand. They wish it away. Unfortunately, this often includes our own government.’
Ella’s stomach lurched. She loved her father, and over his long years of absence had come to idolize him, and her mother too. Yet on this recording, William Praeger sounded like every other brainwashed cult member she’d ever seen on TV, ranting on about conspiracy theories and corrupt governments and how only ‘The Group’ understands the truth.
‘Ella, you are blessed with unique gifts. You are the product of love, but also of science. Your brain can function in ways that nobody else’s can. The Group will explain everything to you when the time is right. Right now, we don’t know exactly how far those gifts will take you, or what their potential will be. But your mother and I know that you will use them for good. We believe in you, Ella. We love you.’
Silent tears streamed down Ella’s face. She wanted to climb into the screen and hug him, and kiss him … and then yell at him and shake him till his head hurt as much as hers did. How could he do this to her? Her own father! His so-called ‘gifts’ had condemned her to an existence of daily misery! To headaches, and paranoia, and a loneliness the depths of which he couldn’t possibly understand. How dare he and her mother play God with her life, trying out their experimental genetic bullshit on their own child? Or any other innocent human being, for that matter.
‘Stay true to yourself, my darling,’ William went on. ‘Trust in The Group and try to be patient. What you don’t understand now, you will eventually, believe me.’ Her father’s eyes welled up with tears then, and Ella could see the effort he was making to contain his emotion. ‘Above all, please Ella, never forget how much your mother and I have loved you. Give your grandmother a kiss for me. Goodbye, my precious Ella Mae.’
There was another final hiss of sound, and Ella’s screen went blank a final time.
‘No.’ Ella whispered under her breath. ‘No, no, no, no, no!’ That couldn’t be it? He hadn’t told her anything about her mother. Where was she? Why wasn’t she in the video?
Desperately she plugged the stick back in, trying everything to bring the footage back up again, to rewind. But it was nowhere. Gone, wiped, just like the man said it would be.
Nooo. Ella stood up, pulling at her hair in frustration that bordered on panic. There had to be more! It was bad enough that her mom was missing from Mimi’s box of letters and cards. But why wasn’t she on this footage? Why wasn’t she here on Ella’s screen, sitting next to her father, offering her own explanations, saying her own goodbyes? Hadn’t Rachel Praeger cared about her daughter at all? Had Ella been nothing more than an experiment to her, a sacrificial offering to the all-powerful ‘Group’?
Ella was starting to hate this Group. Who were these people, to mess with people’s lives, to separate parents from their children, then return years later and ‘claim’ those children as their own?
Slamming her laptop shut, Ella tossed it angrily onto the bed. It was useless now, ruined, its hard drive hopelessly corrupted. Like my life, Ella reflected bitterly. She paced the room like a trapped animal, feeling at once exhausted and yet full of restless energy. She had an overwhelming urge to know, to understand. And yet it seemed the more she did know, the more tantalizing nuggets of information were drip-fed into her life, the more maddened with uncertainty and curiosity she became. Was she really even a person at all, a human being with a soul and an identity of her own? Was she her parents’ daughter, or their science project? With each new blow she could feel her self-esteem crumbling. But like an addiction, Ella’s need to understand drove her, even though she knew that it could destroy her too.
Seeing and hearing her father had been exquisite joy and yet, at the same time, agonizing torture. Because of all the things he hadn’t said. Because he was here, but then he was gone. And because he hadn’t said sorry.
He owed Ella an apology for so many things. But mostly for never coming back.
Ella ran a bath and climbed into it, making the water as hot as she could stand. She watched as her skin reddened like lobster flesh, willing the unpleasant, burning sensation to drown out her emotional anguish. It didn’t.
You have two choices, she told herself, steam rising up and enveloping her in a thick, heady cloud. You can sink. Or you can swim.
You can control your own life. Or be controlled.
The footage she’d just watched had confirmed the man’s story about her scientific origins. Her mother and father really had tried to program her, like a computer. So she could be useful to ‘The Group’. Seriously. George Orwell couldn’t have made this stuff up. Ella’s parents had believed they had the right to control not just her mind and her body, but all her future decisions as well. Her ‘destiny’, as Ella’s father had put it. Clearly the Praegers had been brainwashed by ‘The Group’. And now, from beyond the grave, they wanted to send Ella off to be brainwashed too.
No. No way.
Ella had already resisted her grandmother’s idea of ‘destiny’ – a life of isolation and Christian piety up at the ranch, cut off from the rest of the world. It had been painful to break away, but Ella had done it. And she could do it again.
OK, so her brain had been messed with. That was a problem. But it was a problem she could fix on her own, without the help of the cult that had screwed her up in the first place. She could still lead a normal life if she chose to. The kind of life that Bob had, in the city, with a job and a family and friends. She could do it. Bob could teach her how to do it.
Except … the voices. The headaches, the nausea, the endless roar that wouldn’t ever switch off. They would drive her mad in the end. How could she hope to hold down a job, or a relationship, when at any moment deafening tangles of noise and pain could ambush her, bringing her, sometimes literally, to her knees?
She had to learn how to control the voices. How to master the unwanted ‘gift’ that her parents had given her. Because unless she could do that, no life she chose would be worth living.
Climbing out of the bath, dripping wet, Ella lay back on the bed and let the cool air of the room suck the heat out of her body.
However she felt about the man – however profoundly she hated him right now – he was the key to her future. Not because she owed a damn thing to him, or her parents, or their stupid Group. But because he might, just might, be able to teach her how to master the voices in her head. Or at least to introduce her to people who could. Maybe, just maybe, if those voices stopped, she might stand a better chance
