by Gemma Malley
That night, though, if any of the Surpluses had looked closely enough, they would have noticed a listlessness about her; that her eyes were glassy, rather than focused, and that her voice had a tinge of the disinterested about it. She still went into every dormitory and laid down the law, ringing her bell and scolding the Surpluses who were not yet in bed, but there was no energy or urgency about the way she did it. Had anyone disobeyed her or challenged her, she might well have shrugged and walked away rather than ruthlessly punishing them. That particular evening, Anna could not see the point of Ramping. So what if rules were broken? So what if she couldn’t have heard a pin drop as she left each dormitory? What did any of it matter?
But luckily none of the Surpluses did look closely enough, and they fell into line as usual. Several girls were lying on the floor beside their bed, rather than in the bed itself, but that was normal and accepted. When female Surpluses were menstruating, they had to wear a red cloth around their neck to show everyone that they were unclean, that their bodies were dirty, flaunting their fertility, which was shameful and evil. Every time a female Surplus reached puberty and discovered the first drop of blood on a tissue or on their knickers, they were sent to Mrs Pincent to be told that they were no longer victims of their Surplus existence, but potential perpetrators; that their bodies were now enemies of Mother Nature and that the pain they felt each month was imposed by Nature to remind them of their Sins. Any Surplus who dared to soil her sheets with the tiniest speck of blood was beaten and scrubbed with a wire brush to wash away these Sins, to make sure that they saw their bodies as hostile, to be despised and controlled. Few had escaped this punishment, and many girls preferred to sleep on the cold, hard floor when they were menstruating to make quite sure that their sheets remained unstained, a situation that Mrs Pincent encouraged because floors were easier to clean than sheets, and the misery of a few sleepless nights was nothing compared with the destruction their bodies were now capable of imposing on the world.
By 11 p.m., everyone was in bed as usual, Grange Hall was silent, and Anna slipped into her own bed, waiting for everyone to fall asleep.
Sleep was the last thing on her mind, however. In spite of her exhaustion, she felt fully alert and at one o’clock in the morning, when she was sure that all the Instructors and Mrs Pincent were in bed, she sat up and looked around. Outside, through the thin blinds, she could see that the wind was billowing, forcing trees to bend so that they looked as if they were performing a macabre dance, their branches resembling gnarled fingers wagging at her. But the triple-glazed windows meant that not a single snap of a twig could be heard inside the dormitory. The only sound was the gentle breathing of the other Pending girls, fast asleep.
Easing herself out of bed and shivering slightly against the cold, Anna wrapped a blanket around herself and made her way slowly into the corridor.
As Anna walked down the hallway that was so familiar to her and yet somehow so different now, late at night, with no one else around, she realised that this was the freest she’d ever felt in Grange Hall. It might be cold and dark, and shadows, cast by the thin rays of moonlight that managed to force their way through the gaps in the doors, might be moving ominously up and down the corridor, but she felt free here on her own. It had been her decision to get out of bed, not an order or demand. And the sheer exhilaration of doing what she wanted to do, even if it could land her in Solitary, made her feel as if she was floating.
She was still scared; she’d have been stupid not to be. But, she realised, she was also, very deep down, more afraid that she might never again have the opportunity to walk around unseen and unaccounted for.
In fact she was so preoccupied with these thoughts that she didn’t hear the sound of footsteps behind her until she was halfway down the corridor. But as soon as she did, she froze, barely daring to move a muscle.
Terrified, she gradually turned around to face her pursuer, her slow movement in stark contrast to her mind, which was frantically thinking up excuses for being out of bed as she did so. She couldn’t sleep. She needed a glass of water. All rules she wasn’t allowed to break, but which sounded a great deal less serious than the truth. Whatever happened, she had to continue her journey down to Solitary. Peter’s life depended on it.
But when she looked behind her, she couldn’t see anyone. Confused, she looked around, but there was no one to be seen. Had she imagined the sound of feet padding behind her? No, it was impossible. But so was the idea of people disappearing into thin air.
Frowning, and feeling distinctly unsettled, she continued down the corridor, but within a few seconds the footsteps could be heard again, stepping softly after her. Immediately she turned again, and when she saw who was following her, her eyes opened wide.
‘Sheila?’ she said incredulously, relief washing over her as she realised it wasn’t an Instructor. ‘Sheila, what are you doing?’
Sheila was so thin and pale that she seemed luminous in the moonlight that lit the corridor.
She looked at Anna fearfully.
‘I want to come with you,’ she said slowly, her voice small and timid. ‘Wherever you’re going, I want to come too.’
Anna looked at her uncertainly. ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she whispered crossly, hoping to intimidate Sheila into submission. ‘Go back to bed.’
‘You’re going to find Peter,’ Sheila said, her voice still nervous, but a little look of defiance that Anna recognised creeping on to her face, making her features seem stronger. ‘I know you are.’
Anna’s heart nearly stopped, but she managed to shake her head and look surprised. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said firmly. ‘Go back to bed.’
‘If you’re not going to find Peter, then where are you going?’
Anna stared at Sheila, then stepped closer and put her hands on her shoulders.
‘Sheila, you are to go back to bed now, do you hear me? If you don’t, I’m going to make sure you go to Solitary tomorrow, do you understand?’
She stared at Sheila and narrowed her eyes. ‘Do you understand?’ she repeated.
Sheila nodded miserably.
‘I’ll go back to bed. But if you and Peter go anywhere, you have to take me with you,’ she said, her voice trembling with emotion. ‘Please, Anna.’
‘To bed,’ Anna ordered, her voice firm, but she squeezed Sheila’s shoulder as she spoke. ‘And don’t get caught,’ she whispered, then turned around and continued on her path, listening as Sheila padded despondently back to the dormitory.
Peter was wide awake when she finally arrived in the dank confines of Solitary. As soon as she scratched on the door and whispered his name, she heard him jump up and come to the door.
‘Anna!’ he said, his voice sounding so excited she felt a huge rush of happiness surge through her. She’d never known anyone sound so pleased to hear her voice, anyone speak her name with such elation.
‘I knew you’d come,’ Peter continued. ‘I just knew it.’
Anna smiled, and put her hand against the door.
‘Peter, you were right,’ she whispered urgently when she’d composed herself. ‘About Mrs Pincent. She . . . she wants to get rid of you. You’re not safe here. You need to escape.’
‘Of course I need to escape,’ Peter said immediately. ‘But you’ve got to come with me.’
Anna bit her lip. ‘I can’t,’ she said softly. ‘I belong here. I’m not like you.’
‘You are like me,’ Peter said, his voice choking slightly. ‘Anna, you don’t belong here. You belong with your parents. With me. You have to come with me.’
‘I don’t know my parents,’ Anna said, swallowing furiously as tears began to prick at her eyes. ‘How can I belong with people I don’t even know? How do I even know they want me?’
‘They want you back more than anything,’ Peter said, his voice suddenly sad and serious. ‘I’ll tell you about them. Anna, your parents are really nice people. They took me in and . . .’
He
paused.
‘They want to see you, Anna,’ Peter said gently. ‘They love you, more than anything in the world.’
‘No one loves me,’ Anna said, in a small voice. ‘No one. I’m just a Surplus.’
‘No,’ Peter said fiercely, ‘you’re not. And when we escape, you’ll realise that. You’ll see all the amazing things in the world and you’ll realise that Grange Hall isn’t real. It isn’t the world, Anna. It’s wrong. Everything about it is wrong.’
Anna said nothing.
‘You had a room, Anna. A room full of toys,’ Peter said suddenly. ‘And so many books to read . . .’
Anna felt a tear pricking at her eye and wiped it away.
‘And your parents thought you were the best thing in the whole wide world. They risked everything just to have you, just to give you everything you wanted.’
He paused again, and then Peter began to tell Anna all about them, about the people who seemed to want her back so desperately, about the life that could have been hers – should have been hers, he said. And as he talked, she felt as though she was being lifted up, as if all the pain and treachery of the day was evaporating beneath her. Wrapping herself in her blanket, she closed her eyes and allowed herself to imagine the things that he described. It felt almost as if she was following him up a beautiful mountain; with each word, he was showing her the wonderful views, and the higher they climbed, the more beautiful it became and the fresher the air felt. Cautiously at first, she allowed herself to follow him, but with every step she felt a great fear taking hold. Fear of heights, fear of the unknown, fear that when she finally got to the top and saw for herself how incredible it was, she would find that she was standing on a cliff face and would lose her grip and fall.
But was falling such a bad thing, she wondered. Was it, perhaps, better to see the top of the mountain, even if only for a moment, than never to even try? Or was it as Mrs Pincent would have it – that the higher you allow yourself to climb, the further you have to come crashing down to earth?
Chapter Twelve
6 March, 2140
I am going to leave Grange Hall.
Peter and I are going to run away through a tunnel in Solitary.
He has a Plan.
It’s impossible to escape from Grange Hall. The Catchers will come after us, and Mrs Pincent will too. But we have to go. Mrs Pincent was talking about Peter and she wants to get rid of him. She said that I was stupid too. Indoctrinated.
I hate Mrs Pincent. I thought I liked her. I thought Mrs Pincent knew best. I thought she did horrible things for our own good. But she doesn’t. She’s cruel and mean and she doesn’t think I’m Useful at all, even though she told me that I was, even though I’ve always done everything that she said I should.
I’m scared about leaving Grange Hall, though. I don’t know anything about the Outside. On the Outside I won’t be a Prefect. I won’t be set to be a Valuable Asset either. I don’t know what I’ll be on the Outside. Just an Illegal, I suppose.
I’d like to run away with Peter to a big field, the one he told me about, where he used to run around and shout. Or I’d like to go to the desert – no one would ever come looking for us there and we’d always be warm.
But Peter says we have to go to London. Peter says we have to go back to my parents. They live in Bloomsbury, in a house which has three storeys. Mrs Sharpe’s house was only two storeys. I’ll have new clothes, Peter says. And the Underground will protect us and hide us so the Catchers won’t be able to find us.
Peter says that in Bloomsbury I won’t have to scrub and clean and be Obedient; that my parents will teach me about literature and music and that I can join the Underground Movement.
I don’t like it underground. That’s where Solitary is. It’s dark and dank and scary and you’re left on your own for hours and hours and you start imagining things – like noises that sound like screaming and weeping, and footsteps too, in the middle of the night when everyone’s asleep and no one’s walking around anywhere. And you wonder if maybe you’re not even imagining them; maybe they’re real.
The route out is in Solitary. Peter knows about it because Grange Hall used to be a government building before and my parents got hold of the floor plans from a neighbour who is ‘sympathetic to the cause’. Peter coming to Grange Hall was part of a plan to get me out, he said. I didn’t believe him at first – why would anyone go to all that trouble for me? I can’t even remember my parents. But Peter says they remember me.
The tunnel was built in case of terrorist attacks. It leads out to the village, past the cameras outside Grange Hall, Peter says.
I don’t want to go to Solitary. What if I can’t get out? What if I get left there for ever?
I won’t, though. I trust Peter. Peter’s my friend.
We’re going to escape tomorrow night. Tonight, I mean. I suppose it’s morning now, even though it’s still night really. I should be in bed, but I can’t sleep. I’ve got to do something wrong so they put me in Solitary, and then in the middle of the night, we’re going to ‘make a run for it’. Peter says the tunnel is hidden behind a grate in the wall. He’s loosened it too, he said, so it’s all ready. He said that Mrs Pincent would kick herself when she realised she’d put him in exactly the place he wanted to be. He said it like he was enjoying himself in Solitary, but I don’t think he is really. It might have a tunnel out, but it’s still cold and dark and lonely.
Peter’s amazing. He knows everything about everything.
I told Peter that’s how I felt in Grange Hall – cold and lonely. He said that he sometimes felt like that too. Even though he was on the Outside. He lived with my parents until he got caught. But only for a while – since he was ten, he said. Before that he lived with some sort-of parents. Lots of different ones.
Peter was Adopted, which means that he’s never lived with his real parents. He doesn’t know who they are. Parents quite often leave Surplus babies somewhere to die, Peter said. It’s so they don’t go to prison.
He said his parents didn’t want him, that he was a Mistake, so they left him outside a house where someone from the Underground found him. He didn’t have anything with him except a gold ring called a signet ring on a chain that had been put around his neck, and on the inside were two letters, ‘AF’, which he thinks might be the name of his mother or father, and on the top there was an engraving of a flower. It was taken away when he was caught, though. The Catchers found it, even though he’d hidden it in his mouth, and they told him that the Central Administrators would be very interested in it. They gave it to a man in uniform at the place they took him to before they brought him to Grange Hall. And the man kept asking him questions, and told him they needed more information for his file. Peter wouldn’t tell him anything and kept asking for his ring back, but the man wouldn’t give it to him. Peter said that when we’ve escaped, he’s going to get the ring back somehow. He said that once he’s got it back, he’s never going to take it off again.
The people who took him in when he was a baby and all the others who had him after that could have gone to prison for looking after him, he said, or even have been hanged, but they did it anyway because they said that ‘children are important’ and ‘every life matters’. And they made him feel special and loved, while he was with them.
Then when he was ten, the people looking after him got arrested, but the Underground Movement smuggled him out of the house before the Catchers could find him, and my parents said they’d hide him and look after him. He said that’s how he knew my parents were the kindest and most wonderful people, because they were ‘risking everything’ for him and he wasn’t even their child. Imagine what they’d do for you, he said.
I can’t imagine anything. I can’t even imagine having parents.
When we’re on the Outside, Peter said he’ll take me to the field where we can run around.
I’ve never seen a real field.
I like the sound if it, though.
Peter said he’d come to
the desert with me, if I wanted. He said we could live there.
He said that we belonged together because he was born with a flower and I was born with a butterfly and that flowers and butterflies need each other for survival.
I think I’d like to live in the desert with Peter. I think I’d like . . .
Anna woke with a start, and sat bolt upright. She was on the floor of Female Bathroom 2, her head resting on her beautiful pink suede journal. Quickly, she looked at her wrist and her heart jumped when she realised it was 5.30 a.m. – in just thirty minutes, the morning bell would go. How had she let herself fall asleep? If she got caught now, everything would be ruined.
Or would it? She thought for a moment, her nose wrinkling in concentration. She had to do something bad enough today to go to Solitary. Wouldn’t being caught out of bed at 5.30 a.m. be just the thing? But immediately she rejected the idea; being caught out of bed was one thing, but being caught with a journal that clearly described their plans for escape was a pretty stupid idea.
She hadn’t even been going to write in the journal but she couldn’t help herself. She was bursting with the information Peter had given her, and writing everything down had helped to calm her mind. It had also made it more real. Now she’d written everything down, it had to be true.
Quickly, she stood up and, putting the journal safely back in its hiding place, she tiptoed out of the bathroom, along the corridor and into her dormitory. Everyone was asleep, she noticed with relief, even Sheila, whose little snores could be heard clearly from the corner of the dormitory.
Looking around her cautiously, Anna slipped into bed. Closing her eyes, she found herself picturing the Outside in her head – although the only images she could conjure up were of Mrs Sharpe’s house, so she superimposed on to them the things Peter had described. But even as she allowed herself to dream of a new life, she knew how unlikely it was she’d ever really see it for real.
Even if they did get out, they would be fugitives. Surpluses that didn’t Know Their Place. And she would never now get the forgiveness of Mother Nature.
