The Glimpse Page 10

  ‘It’s about time we found out who she is.’

  Ana dug her nails into her hands. Wake up.

  ‘She’s not going to tel anyone about Rafferty,’ Lila said.

  ‘I’l talk to her.’ She stepped in front of the couch, as though protecting Ana from her brother. From the way they were behaving, Ana decided the little boy must be OK. Her eyes weled with emotion. She’d heard of this sort of thing before – children as young as four or five trying to commit suicide because the Pure test only trying to commit suicide because the Pure test only identified a category of ilnesses, and the child had never been diagnosed correctly, or their parents objected to giving them the proper medication. It made her heart ache with sadness.

  ‘She turns up out of the blue,’ Nate hissed, ‘and pays only in cash and never switches on her interface. She’s obviously 110

  hiding from someone. You can let her know that if she reports Rafferty’s accident, I’l use her ID stick.’

  Ana remembered the hair she’d hidden in the bottom of her tote bag. Thank goodness she’d got rid of it. Her thoughts turned to the weight wrapped around the boy’s ankle. Nate was scared. He obviously believed she might cal the Psych Watch.

  ‘No,’ Lila said. ‘She’s not like that. I’l explain.’

  ‘I’m keeping the stick,’ Nate said. In the silence that folowed, Ana’s heart leapt so wildly against her chest, she was sure they’d hear it.

  ‘Fine,’ Lila answered eventualy. ‘But let her think she lost it. I’l keep an eye on her. If she makes any sign of contacting the Watch, I’l let you know and you’l do what you have to.’

  Nate didn’t respond.

  Inwardly, Ana lurched with foreboding. If Nate had her ID stick, her identity wasn’t safe. And obviously he didn’t trust her. She’d saved his son and instead of gaining his confidence, she’d made him suspicious. He would be watching her every move from now on. How was she going to bring up Cole’s arrest and the was she going to bring up Cole’s arrest and the Enlightenment Project if they were questioning everything she did?

  ‘You should have left her on the quay,’ Nate said, clump-ing up the ladder.

  For a long time afterwards, Ana lay quietly, listening to Lila clean up the kitchen. Roaming around the City with her interface switched off so that she couldn’t be traced was one thing, but being without an ID stick was totaly different. She had no fal-back if she ran out of cash or faced an emergency. Nothing to prove who she was. In the event 111

  of an injury or accident, she would be taken to an insanit-ary, germ-infested hospital for Crazies. She’d have to wait to be operated on by second-rate medics who were over-worked and always striking. And what would Nate do if he used the stick and found out that she was the missing girl bound to Jasper Taurel? He wouldn’t like the fact she had half of London’s Wardens out looking for her, that was for sure. Not to mention the way she’d infiltrated his family to try to obtain information on Jasper’s whereabouts.

  Ana considered going home. Perhaps she could use her father’s and the Wardens’ assumption that she’d been kidnapped and pretend she’d escaped her abductors or been freed. When the Wardens hauled her aside and detained her for hours of questioning she could lie, say she’d been sedated, left in a room, sedated again. And then, for no ex-plicable reason the Crazies had brought her back. But what if Neil, the security guard, confessed the truth?

  Anyway, even if the Wardens believed her, even if she could fool the Board, her father would see the truth –

  he’d taught her how to lie – and he would probably lock her up safe and sound until Jasper’s return, or the Board came to throw her out of the Community. No, there was no going home. Not without knowledge of where Jasper was. She’d known that this morning.

  Ana closed her eyes and found herself remembering last New Year’s Eve at the Taurels’. With only four months until her eighteenth birthday, she’d been too old to hang around in the children’s quarters and too awkward to so-cialise with the young, recently joined couples.

  She’d ended up outside by the pool, lying on a sun loun-112

  ger in the dark and the cold with a foam mat wrapped around her shoulders. Jasper had eventualy found her.

  He came out carrying an enormous fake fur coat belonging to his mother and offered it to her without a word. He watched her put it on.

  ‘You’re staring,’ she said. ‘Like I might burst into tears and have a breakdown. I won’t. You might as wel know I’l never fit in. Even if we did get joined.’

  He sat down beside her on the sun lounger, leaving a re-spectable distance between them.

  ‘Has it ever struck you,’ he said, ‘that what’s going on with the Pures and the rest of the population is like a kind of scientific racism? The Pures think they’re better, think they have a divine right to rule, because, according to them, everyone else isn’t in their right minds. It’s like the use of science to sanction a belief in biological use of science to sanction a belief in biological superiority.’

  ‘Science isn’t racist. Science is just an understanding of the physical workings of things. It’s how we interpret and employ the knowledge that can turn it into something corrupt.’

  ‘Ah, but if there’s a goal behind a scientific discovery or development, surely that colours the expected results?’

  Ana shook her head. ‘Scientific fact is scientific fact, whether discovered by induction or deduction.’

  Jasper smiled. ‘You might be too clever for me,’ he said.

  Then he stood and held out a hand to help her up. ‘We should go inside. If we wish the Board to let the binding go ahead I guess we should start folowing protocol.

  Don’t want to give them any reason to change their minds, do we?’

  Ana took his hand. It was warm and soft. Dipping her 113

  chin into the fur colar of her coat, she smiled to herself.

  Jasper was inteligent and provocative. He might have his faults, but he had great strengths too. They walked side by side without touching. Before they entered the living room through the wal-to-wal glass doors, he stopped.

  Coloured lights glowed in the flowers and shone up at the house.

  ‘This is for you,’ he said, reaching his arm around her and removing an envelope from his mother’s coat pocket. The closeness of their bodies sent a hot flush through her. She held her hands to her cheeks to cool through her. She held her hands to her cheeks to cool them. The party lights tinted the Board’s gold seal on the envelope green. Beyond the glass doors, Ana could hear people counting down. Only seconds remained until the hour struck midnight.

  She took the envelope from Jasper and her fingers fumbled to open it. The last time she received an envelope with a gold seal was when the Board came to school with her redone Pure test results.

  ‘Five . . .’ people shouted. ‘Four . . .’

  Ana read the card.

  A binding between

  Jasper David Taurel and Ariana Stephanie Barber is scheduled for

  Friday 21st March 2041

  at the Hampstead Community Hal

  at 5.30 p.m.

  ‘Three . . two . . . one!’ Great cheers erupted from the house. Party crackers popped and from the far side of the 114

  pool, a Catherine wheel began to spin, lighting up the water with yelow and pink sparks. The doors to the living room opened. Sound burst forth as people poured into the garden, shouting at each other to mind the pool.

  Jasper had finaly set a date.

  Ana couldn’t speak. He leant towards her as though Ana couldn’t speak. He leant towards her as though about to whisper something in her ear, but instead his lips brushed gently against her own.

  ‘I should probably stay away from you now,’ he murmured. ‘Or I’l just keep breaking protocol.’

  He slipped off into the crowd, leaving her rooted to the spot in his mother’s coat, her frozen fingers clasping the envelope, the Catherine wheel spitting and fizzling against the night sky.

&
nbsp; She’d spent so much time worrying about Jasper ditching her, and feeling guilty about what sort of life she’d be taking away from him, she’d never realy seen how happy they might have been together.

  Ana blinked back the sting in her eyes, then strained to lift herself up on one elbow. She cocked her head towards the kitchen and saw Lila, sitting at the narrow table with paper, scissors and glue.

  ‘Hey,’ Lila said, looking over. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Could I . . .’ Ana clutched her palm around her throat, which felt as if it had been scraped raw, and motioned for a drink.

  Lila fetched a glass of water and came to sit beside her on the sofa. Ana sipped slowly.

  ‘Aspirin?’ she asked. Lila nodded, got up and went to rummage through a kitchen cupboard. She produced a 115

  packet of cereal, shook out the contents and popped a pil from a silver packet at the bottom of the box.

  pil from a silver packet at the bottom of the box.

  ‘We have to keep them hidden, because . . .’ Her voice broke off.

  Because of Rafferty, Ana thought. Because they were living with a suicidal four-year-old.

  Lila sat down beside Ana again and fiddled with her fingers. Ana forced herself to swalow the aspirin and gulp some water.

  ‘You saved him,’ Lila said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Where is he?’ Ana asked. Her voice cracked.

  ‘On Nate’s boat.’

  ‘He should be in hospital.’ Ana sipped more water to ease her throat. ‘There could be complications.’

  Lila shrugged uncomfortably. She flicked back her dark hair and looked away. ‘He’s fine.’

  Even if the boy was bleeding to death, Ana sensed these people wouldn’t take him to a hospital.

  ‘A doctor then,’ she suggested.

  ‘You should have a shower.’ A warning lurked in Lila’s tone. ‘You don’t want to get sick from the water.’

  Ana nodded, but she hadn’t saved the child so that he could die from hypothermia later. ‘Cold water exposure can cause organ failure,’ she said. ‘You have to get him checked.’

  Lila turned and stared at her for a long moment. ‘I’l try,’

  Lila turned and stared at her for a long moment. ‘I’l try,’

  she said.

  *

  Warm water dribbled across Ana’s back. Crouched on her haunches, she tilted her face towards the shower head, 116

  gratefuly washing out the rotten-cloth smel from her hair and scrubbing away the possible toxic waste clinging to her body. She could hardly believe that only yesterday morning, she’d showered in her own pristine power-shower, unaware of the luxury as spray pummeled her from al angles. This morning she’d been too preoccupied to think about the creams, soaps, hair products and the hairdryer she didn’t have here. Now their absence felt like another layer peeled away, along with the hair she’d always worn long, her piano, her interface, and her ID

  stick. She couldn’t even risk checking her interface to see if after her dive into the canal it stil worked. The Wardens would have tagged her by now, which meant the moment she powered up her interface or Nate checked her ID, the activity would be reported and her whereabouts traced.

  Ana shut off the shower, slicked back her hair with her fingers, and dabbed herself dry. Lila had leant her a loose sweater and bottoms. She put them on. The shapeless, cotton trousers rippled as she moved, lightly touching her stiff thigh muscles. Adolescent Pure girls rarely wore trousers, and these made her even more self-conscious than her tight jeans.

  Arm pressed against the ache in her chest, she exited the bathroom and crept barefoot down the narrow halway.

  bathroom and crept barefoot down the narrow halway.

  In the kitchen, a female and a male voice were disputing something. Ana reached the half-open door and saw Nate and Rachel. She wondered if Nate had tried using her ID

  stick yet. Hearing her, both of them stopped talking and turned. Rachel carried on slicing potatoes. Nate shoved his hands in his pockets.

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  ‘You look . . . uncomfortable,’ he said. ‘Something you’re not teling us?’

  A pang of anxiety contracted Ana’s chest. She winced, and suddenly the pain made her furious at his ingratitude.

  ‘And you don’t look uncomfortable enough,’ she replied.

  ‘Or wasn’t that your four-year-old son I just fished out of the canal with a stage weight wrapped around his leg?’

  She glared at him, heartbeat drumming in her ears.

  Forget trying to get on his good side, she thought.

  Nate clearly only responded to aggression. You probably had to fight him to gain his respect.

  Nate flushed. Rachel put a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Now hang on,’ she said. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I know what I saw.’

  ‘It’s hardly his fault,’ Rachel said.

  ‘Wel there’s a lot of people that would disagree with

  ‘Wel there’s a lot of people that would disagree with that. When was the last time you took the boy to a Mental Watch Centre?’

  Nate’s nostrils flared. Even Rachel started to look charged up. Ana was pushing it too far. She didn’t even believe in the check-ups, but she couldn’t rein in her anger. ‘Is he receiving his free monthly psychiatric evaluations? Have you registered him with a local psychiatrist?’

  Rachel’s hand slipped from Nate’s shoulder. A taut silence strung across the cabin.

  ‘You have your reasons for keeping out of the way of the Watch,’ Ana continued, careful to use their word for it,

  ‘and I have mine.’

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  Wood creaked. Lila descended the wheelhouse ladder, stepping into the living area, breathless and buoyant.

  ‘He’s OK,’ she panted. ‘The doc’s given him a very thorough examination and he says Rafferty’s fine.’

  Ana glanced at Nate. So his sister had managed to persuade him to cal a doctor. That was something. Nate caught her eye, his expression unforgiving.

  Lila passed through the waist-high wals that delineated the kitchen and seeming to sense the tension, pushed between her brother and Rachel to grab Ana’s arm. She drew Ana into the living area.

  ‘Glad to see you’re not blue any more!’ she laughed.

  Ana’s lips twitched up at the sides, but with her adrenalin Ana’s lips twitched up at the sides, but with her adrenalin starting to drain away, she felt weak. Feeble. ‘You can sit and relax if you want,’ Lila went on. ‘Watch a film.

  We’ve got discs for the screen. We’re going to pamper you. It’s the least we can do. And tonight you’l stay in the cabin again, no charge.’ She smiled, but Ana noticed her eyes shift towards her brother.

  ‘Yeah,’ Nate said. ‘It’s the least we can do.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Ana wondered if this was part of their plan to keep an eye on her, or if Nate had checked her ID stick and had something else lined up.

  Don’t lose your nerve, she told herself. He believed she was on the run, so he’d know there was a high probability that she was tagged. If he had any sense, he’d avoid checking the stick.

  Lila switched on the screen, but Ana went over and hovered by the piano.

  ‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ Lila asked.

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  ‘May I sit?’

  Lila nodded.

  Ana perched on the piano stool. ‘Whose is it?’

  ‘Cole, my oldest brother, the one I was teling you about.’

  ‘The one that was arrested?’ Ana asked, itching to play something.

  something.

  ‘It’s not exactly an arrest. It’s caled detention,’ Lila explained. ‘When somebody’s suspected of a terrorist or politicaly subversive act, they can be held up to forty-two days for questioning.’

  ‘The 2017 Terrorism Act – pre-charge detention,’ Ana nodded. There’d been a paper about it on the Oxford first-year law sylabus.

  ‘Right,’
Lila said, trying to suss out why Ana might know this. ‘It’s the third time they’ve picked him up. A Pure is abducted and so they take him in for questioning. They don’t have anything on him. It’s discrimination. Just an excuse to try and grind him down.’

  Ana became aware of Nate and Rachel in the kitchen.

  They’d stopped talking in low voices and though they were pretending not to, they were obviously trying to listen in.

  Did they suspect Lila was saying things she wasn’t supposed to? Ana raised her chin. This was it. She had to push, to find out what she could before Nate silenced his little sister.

  ‘Why would they target your brother like that?’

  ‘Lots of reasons,’ Lila said, waving away the question with her hand. ‘I suppose mainly because he was at the concert.’

  Shock and excitement fizzed through Ana.

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  ‘He was there when the Pure was abducted?’ she asked, fighting to keep her voice steady.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Lila said. ‘The justice courts have given him the same lawyer as the last time to turn over the forty-two-day detention rule, but the guy’s totaly useless.’ Lila bit her lip. ‘I don’t think Cole can do another forty days,’

  she said, almost to herself. ‘It isn’t the solitary confinement that’s so bad. It’s what they do to them. He never said anything, but I’m sure they tortured him last time.’

  Ana straightened her shoulders. Torture was obviously ilegal. It went against the 2020 Torture and Inhumane Treatment Act. Would the Psych Watch break the law to get a suspect to talk?

  ‘Why do they think Cole’s involved?’ she asked.

  ‘The Pure guy was snatched from a car park under the concert hal,’ Lila said. ‘There’s video surveilance of Cole getting in a lift that goes down there at the time of the abduction. And Richard Cox, the leader of the Enlightenment Project, practicaly raised my brother.

  When they found Richard guilty of the Tower Bridge explosion five years ago, they tried to get Cole too.

  They’ve been after him ever since.’

  Images of the colapsed, smoking monument filed Ana’s mind. The Tower Bridge explosion had been on every news site for a week. Eighteen people died in the bombing, another sixty were injured.