Q

by Christina Dalcher

  Praise for Christina Dalcher

  ‘The book of the moment!’

  MARIE CLAIRE

  ‘Intelligent, suspenseful, provocative, and intensely disturbing’

  LEE CHILD

  ‘A truly compulsive novel’

  STYLIST

  ‘A novel ripe for the era of #MeToo’

  VANITY FAIR

  ‘A fast-paced, twisting thriller that left me speechless’

  DAILY MAIL

  ‘Thrilling and provocative, you’ll be flipping through the pages at breakneck speed’

  OK!

  ‘Set to dominate dinner party chats’

  COSMOPOLITAN

  ‘This book will blow your mind’

  PRIMA

  ‘Petrifying’

  ELLE

  ‘A dazzling debut’

  GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

  ‘Terrifying’

  RED

  ‘Frighteningly relatable’

  WOMAN

  ‘Thrilling. I was left speechless!’

  WOMAN & HOME

  ‘Extraordinary’

  LOUISE O’NEILL

  ‘Sinister and disturbing’

  THE SUN

  ‘Terrifying in its relevance’

  GRAZIA

  ‘Compelling’

  HEAT

  ‘Utterly shocking’

  S MAGAZINE

  ‘Chillingly imagined’

  SUNDAY MIRROR

  ‘Thought-provoking’

  PSYCHOLOGIES

  ‘Tense and engrossing’

  THE IRISH TIMES

  ‘Be scared. Be very scared’

  FABULOUS

  ‘A cautionary tale for the future’

  BELFAST TELEGRAPH

  ‘Gripping’

  BELLA

  CHRISTINA DALCHER is the Sunday Times bestselling author of VOX. She earned her doctorate in theoretical linguistics from Georgetown University, specializing in the phonetics of sound change in Italian and British dialects. Q is her second novel.

  Also by Christina Dalcher

  VOX

  Q

  Q

  Christina Dalcher

  ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES

  Copyright

  An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2020

  Copyright © Christina Dalcher 2020

  Christina Dalcher 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.

  Ebook Edition © April 2020 ISBN: 9780008303365

  Version 2020-04-13

  Note to Readers

  This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:

  Change of font size and line height

  Change of background and font colours

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  Text to speech

  Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008303341

  In memory of

  Carrie Elizabeth Buck, 1906-1983

  and to the children she and so many others were denied

  They done me wrong. They done us all wrong.

  —CARRIE BUCK

  Contents

  Cover

  Praise

  About the Author

  Also by Christina Dalcher

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Note to Readers

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-One

  Fifty-Two

  Fifty-Three

  Fifty-Four

  Fifty-Five

  Fifty-Six

  Fifty-Seven

  Fifty-Eight

  Fifty-Nine

  Sixty

  Sixty-One

  Sixty-Two

  Sixty-Three

  Sixty-Four

  Sixty-Five

  Sixty-Six

  Sixty-Seven

  Sixty-Eight

  Sixty-Nine

  Seventy

  Seventy-One

  Seventy-Two

  Seventy-Three

  Seventy-Four

  Seventy-Five

  Seventy-Six

  Seventy-Seven

  Seventy-Eight

  Author’s Notes

  Acknowledgments

  About the Publisher

  One

  It’s impossible to know what you would do to escape a shitty marriage and give your daughters a fair shot at success. Would you pay money? Trade the comfort of house and home? Lie, cheat, or steal? I’ve asked myself these questions; I suppose many mothers do. One question I haven’t asked, mostly because I don’t like the answer. Not a bit. I have too strong a survival instinct. Always have.

  Last night, I spoke to Malcolm again after the girls had gone to bed. I tried to put a light spin on things, to not turn him from phlegmatic to angry with my words.

  “I’ve had enough of this, Malc,” I said. “Freddie’s had enough of it.”

  He looked up from his paperwork long enough to meet my eyes. “Had enough of what?”

  “Of the numbers. Of the pressure. Of all of it.”

  “Noted,” he said and buried himself again in pages of reports and memos. I think I heard a relieved sigh when I left to go to bed.

  Things haven’t been good here for a long time.

  I almost can’t remember how it felt before we all started carrying the Q numbers around with us, like an extra and unnatural print on the tips of our fingers, a badge of honor for some, a mark of shame for others. I suppose, after more than a decade, you can get used to an
ything. Like cell phones. Remember not having the entire universe in your back pocket? Remember sitting on the floor, talking to your best friend about nothing, unwinding a curly cord only to watch it kink up again? Remember all that? I do and I don’t. Blockbuster two-day video rentals and bookstores the size of an airplane hangar are distant memories, faded impressions of life before streaming and same-day delivery.

  It’s the same way with the Q numbers, although we’ve carried numeric strings with us in one form or another for most of our lives: our social security numbers for tax returns; our home telephone numbers in case an emergency call to Mom became necessary; our grade point averages that would fill boxes in dozens of college application forms. Men, in a clothing store, became thirty-four long or sixteen-and-a-half, thirty-three. Women became dress sizes: six, eight, fourteen. In the more upscale shops, we were our measurements. In doctors’ offices, we were our height and weight, watching one number creep down while the other number crept up.

  We’ve always been our numbers. DOB. GPA. SSN. BP (systolic and diastolic). BMI. SAT and GRE and GMAT and LSAT; 35-22-35 (Marilyn, damn her); 3 (the Babe). PINs and CSCs and expiration dates. Jenny’s phone number from that old song. And, for the extreme among us, the entire sixteen-digit sequence on our Visa cards. Our ages. Our net worths. Our IQs.

  I think about this in the grocery store, while I stand in one of the priority lines with close to a hundred bags and cans and boxes in my cart, enough to get my family of four through a few days. Yesterday, at Safeway, five other women glared at me from three lines over. One of them, I remembered from high school. I think she was a cheerleader. Pretty, thin, not too bright. What the hell was her name? Paulette? Paulina? Patty? Patty. That’s it. She was fifth in line at the only open nonpriority checkout, holding a carton of skim milk. Patty’s one item compared to my one hundred. I nearly let her cut in before me, but the cashier shrugged and shook his head in a hopeless no.

  “Her card won’t work in this line,” the kid said. “You know.”

  He scanned my card, my magic card with its magic number encoded on it. Nine-point-something. It’s the first digit that matters.

  Patty didn’t say a word. She would have, once. She, or one of the other women, would have rolled her cart over and refused to move. I saw a fistfight break out at a gas station once between a short man in a suit and that guy who worked at the hardware store down on Main. No competition there. The suit checked over Mr. Ex–High School Football once, got back into his Lexus, and drove off. When his card wouldn’t work, Mr. Ex-Football punched the gas pump display until his fists were bloody and the police showed up. I don’t know what his Q number was, but it sure as shit had to be below nine.

  Now we’re all used to the lines and the tiers and the different strokes for different folks.

  I guess, if enough time passes, people can get used to anything.

  Two

  There are nine alarms in my house now. One next to my bed set for five o’clock, one that chirps an hour before Anne’s school bus arrives, three more to mark the final thirty minutes, fifteen minutes, and seven minutes. Same for Freddie’s bus, which shows up slightly later. Nine pings and pops and chimes, five days a week. I feel like I’m on a goddamned game show.

  All so my daughters don’t miss their ride to school.

  When I was a girl, my mother would call up the stairs. Her voice walked the fine line between gentle and firm as she spoke my name, spurring me on to get up, get dressed, get ready. I still failed to reach the bus stop on some days, only arriving just in time to watch it turn the corner, see the red taillights disappear in the morning fog. Everyone missed a bus now and then. No big deal.

  There weren’t incentives to make sure you got on the bus—the right bus. Not back then.

  Malcolm’s already out the door, ensconced in a bright office with some junior aide bringing him coffee and whole-grain bagels glazed with nonfat cream cheese. He never sees his daughters, two contestants in the daily Who Won’t Make It to School on Time? show, on weekday mornings. It’s too bad, really. The prizes aren’t anything to get worked up about, but the penalties bestowed on the losers make for solid motivation.

  “Freddie!” I call from the kitchen, sounding less like my mother and more like a desperate lioness with a pack of hyenas circling my cubs. “Anne!”

  Her thirty-minute warning pings while I’m spooning yogurt from a quart-sized tub and teetering on one leg to hitch the ankle strap on my left heel. Anne pokes her head around the corner and gives it a quick, silent shake.

  Freddie’s not ready, not even close.

  Shit.

  On the second testing day of the school year, I’m running late, my daughter hasn’t shown up for breakfast, and all I can think about is the yellow bus idling up the street with the Child Catcher sitting behind the wheel.

  When I was young, I had dreams of the Child Catcher from that old musical, the one with the flying car and Dick Van Dyke stumbling through a bad British accent. He lurked outside my house in predawn shadows, grease-slicked black hair and Pinocchio nose. Waiting.

  The Child Catcher wasn’t immediately scary, not when his wagon tinkled with bells and lights, or when he danced around in a Technicolor coat, or when he promised all good things and sweets to children. After all, what child shies away from bells and colors and sweet things? And you didn’t know the first time around that the wagon was really a cell with iron bars, or that the Child Catcher wore black underneath his robes, or that he would take his prey to a dark cave.

  But you knew the second time you watched the movie. And the third. And all the times after that.

  You knew exactly what he was waiting for.

  In my early forties, I learned there’s still such a thing as the Child Catcher.

  He’s old, and his hair is a blurred froth of white through the windshield of his bus, the one with Federal Schools printed in black along the sides. Instead of colored robes, he wears a plain gray uniform with the Department of Education logo embroidered on twin shoulder patches, a peace-symbol design in three colors—silver, green, and yellow. Around it are the words Intelligentia, Perfectum, Sapientiae. Intelligence, Perfection, Wisdom. I’d know two out of three even if I didn’t speak Latin. The yellow paint on the bus—Chrome Yellow, they used to call it when it still contained lead, but it’s been National School Bus Glossy Yellow for a while now—is chipped and peeling around the fenders and the accordion door. I guess no one gives much of a shit about what the yellow buses look like. It’s not essential, given where they’re headed, or what their cargo is.

  The green ones and the silver ones are always in good condition, polished to a high sheen, not a dent or scratch or mark on them. When the doors open, they slide silently and smoothly, unlike the creaking doors on the yellow bus that rumbles along our street this morning. Drivers of the green and silver buses smile as children climb aboard, dressed in uniforms advertised as Harvard Crimson and Yale Blue, even for the five-year-olds.

  There’s something else about the yellow buses. You don’t see them every day, picking up their cargo in the early fog of morning, dropping off in that time that could only be called the after-school show-and-snack hour, that limbo when the kids are no longer temporary wards of the state but once again home and settled with their families.

  The yellow buses come only once every month, always the Monday after testing day. And they don’t return in the afternoons.

  They never return. Not with passengers, anyway. Also, they don’t roll into neighborhoods like ours.

  If I’d kept newspaper headlines from the past ten years, they would tell the story better than I could.

  IMMIGRATION RATES CLIMB—PROJECTIONS FOR 2050 DIRE

  SCHOOL OVERCROWDING, TEACHER SHORTAGES: LAWMAKERS IN STANDSTILL OVER SOLUTION

  GENICS INSTITUTE PARTNERS WITH DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, OFFERS EXPANDED Q SOFTWARE

  FITTER FAMILY CAMPAIGN RELEASES GUIDELINES

  NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND MEANS ALL CHILDREN SU
FFER!

  INITIAL DIRECTIVES TO BE ROLLED OUT IN COMING MONTHS

  It started with fear, and it ended with laws.

  I pour a third cup of coffee and check the clock. “Freddie! Please.” I’m careful to keep my voice low and steady, mom-like. Anything I can do to keep her calm.

  The yellow bus is idling across the street, two houses up, at the end of the Campbells’ driveway, which is strange, since Moira Campbell doesn’t have children anymore, not at home anyway, and since today is testing day. Still, across and up the street is better than in front of my own house, whether or not the bus is on schedule. The thought makes me shiver, despite the heat wave from a late Indian summer. When did something as banal as a yellow school bus become such a threat? It’s like taking a smiley face and giving it fangs. That’s so fucking wrong.

  “Freddie!” I call again. “For chrissake!”

  Here’s the thing about nine-year-olds: As bad as the pain in the delivery room was, as hair-raisingly chaotic as night feedings and croup and terrible twos were, as much as you now dread that first I’ve got a boyfriend, Mom! from a kid who seemed to be waddling around in diapers just yesterday, there is nothing worse than the pretween girl. Mainly where morning bathroom routines are concerned. I know I shouldn’t get my temper up, not with Freddie and the way she is.

  Note to self: Change tone. Take it down two octaves and a million decibels.

  “Hurry up, hon! Test today!” I say, this time with more sugar in my voice, wondering if I’m going to make it to my own job on time. I try leveraging the big sister, making her the bad cop. “Anne! Get your sister out here in two minutes. Matching barrettes or not.”

  This seems to work. Anne, when she isn’t nose-to-screen on her iPad, scouring the Q rankings of every boy in town for a homecoming dance date, is the responsible one. Always ready, always on time, always coming home after testing day with that insouciant little smile on her face and beaming when the app on her phone or tablet pings its pass alert later that night. It’s Freddie who stays in the bathroom, worrying over her bangs, washing her hands five more times than necessary. Once, I found her slouched over on the toilet, head between her knees, shaking, refusing to leave.