Painkillers by Simon Ings Page A

bedtime; breakfast, bathtime - to you it's just one damn thing after another. You never know what's going to happen next, and of course it's only a tiny step from that to thinking that the next thing that'll happen could be very bad indeed.
    The best you can hope for is a little control. A routine you can rehearse, repeat and comprehend. Lunch at 12.05:00pm and not, under any circumstances, 12.06:35pm, because that opens a window for the chaos to get in. A tea of bread and butter cut always into isosceles triangles of exactly the same size, because a square piece once choked you, and you daren't risk it happening again. And then, just when you think you've got the lid on things - this is where the irony becomes really delicious - there are other people.
    We're all born with a message inside our heads: a piece of information so incredible, it has to be coded in our genes - because we'd never work it out on our own. It says to each of us - if you can believe this that there are other people, like us, waiting to make contact. Think about it: other people. It even tells us what they look like.
    If you're autistic, you can't hear the message. Without it, there is only one reasonable conclusion left for you to draw: you are alone. (The animated furniture around you wants you to join in with their unpredictable games - and sometimes you do - but nothing on earth will convince you that that you are one of them.)
    It was just before four thirty in the afternoon when three hat-stands entered Justin's room. They stood there a moment, flailing and hooting, and then they started interfering with him. Justin's favourite carer, Francis, came and led us to his room. School was over for the day and the kids here were left to themselves until tea at 5pm. Justin was bouncing up and down on the bed when we came in. He was very beautiful. Eva's breath caught in her throat.
    There was his face, of course, but we were used to that. It's that expression of theirs: calm, untouched, transcendent. If you let yourself, you can end up believing it's not a lack of something but - on the contrary - a surfeit, that makes them act the way they do. Popes have canonised such holy fools; there are saints whose lives read like case studies in pervasive developmental disorder. These days, no-one's fooled for long. The real world's the only radio show in town: dare to tune out and you're nowhere but gone.
    Francis crossed the room and extended his hand. 'Justin,' he said, easily, 'come over here.'
    Justin stopped bouncing. His hair, which had grown almost to his shoulders, descended in a fan around him. He shook his head, clearing it out his eyes.
    It was his hair made the difference, I decided. A dark halo for a fallen angel. (Parents are entitled to their metaphors, however trite.)
    'Justin?'
    He turned and looked at Francis with eerie beneficence.
    Francis extended his hand. 'Take my hand.'
    Justin gripped his forearm.
    Gently, Francis brought the hand into his.
    'Remember? It's your birthday. Remember the story? Your birthday.'
    He didn't remember a thing, so we sat down and read it all through with him again, only this time with Eva there too.
    The front of the scrap-book read 'My Birthday Book'. Inside there was a photographic mock-up of the afternoon as we hoped it would go.
    There were Polaroid snaps of the PlayStation game, and its modified handset with outsize buttons. There were pictures of Eva and I; a picture of a birthday cake. Beside each picture there was a sticker with a clock-face printed on it. Francis and I had drawn in the hands ourselves with a gold pen, so Justin could rehearse what was going to happen and when.
    In Justin's world there was no such thing as a pleasant surprise. The previous year we took him to Camber Sands, but it had never occurred to us to tell him that we were only going out for the day. As far as he knew he was going to be stranded in this sandy wasteland for ever, never to see his home again. He spent the day screaming