5 March 2140
Mrs Pincent is evil. Peter was right – Mrs Pincent is the most evil Legal who ever lived. I hate her. I hate her like I never knew I could hate someone before. I hate her so much I don’t know what to do with myself. She wants to kill Peter and I didn’t believe him. He’s got to escape, to get as far away from here as possible.
I don’t think I want to stay here any more either. But where else can I go? I can’t run away with Peter.
I just can’t.
Can I?
At 9 p.m., having splashed her face with copious amounts of cold water so that although her eyes were still red her entire face now matched them, Anna left Female Bathroom 2. As she emerged into the corridor, she studiously ignored the Surpluses who had gathered outside the door, drawn by the sound of muffled crying inside, and made her way back to her dormitory. As she walked in, she noticed that everyone was sitting on two of the beds, huddled together. Once they saw her, they all jumped off, even Tania, and started doing what they were meant to be doing – namely, sweeping the floor and dusting the window ledges before the evening bell and end of day checks – but Anna, who would usually have barked instructions, or told them off for talking, barely looked up. What did it matter if they were cleaning or not? Who cared if the dormitory was dirty? That’s how she felt inside – dirty and used.
‘Anna? Anna, are you OK?’
Anna hadn’t noticed Sheila slipping on to her bed, and she started slightly.
She met Sheila’s eyes for a moment.
‘I’m fine,’ she said abruptly, forcing any emotion out of her voice. ‘I got something in my eye, that’s all.’
Sheila nodded. ‘I thought you might have forgotten about Ramping Duty,’ she said, looking at Anna curiously.
Anna started. She had completely forgotten. Ramping Duty involved walking around her floor after the first evening bell, making sure that lights were turned out and that all the Surpluses were in bed. Middles were to be in bed between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. depending on their age, and Pendings had to be asleep by 11 p.m. After 11 p.m., not a sound was to be heard anywhere – except for the top floor, obviously. Smalls didn’t understand instructions and bedtimes yet. They hadn’t been here long enough to be indoctrinated, Anna thought to herself bitterly.
‘No, no,’ she said quickly, her voice brittle. ‘Of course I haven’t forgotten. And I’m absolutely fine. Which is more than I can say for those window ledges – you can see the dust from here.’
Sheila nodded obediently and slipped away, busying herself with a duster while Anna breathed in deeply and got off her bed. There’s always something to do, she thought to herself. And you can always rely on Anna to do it.
Anna never found Ramping particularly difficult. Some of the Pendings lacked authority and never managed to instil enough fear in the other Surpluses to achieve lights out and silence, but not Anna. The other Surpluses knew how seriously she took her job as a Prefect, knew that she didn’t shirk her responsibility to discipline them when necessary and knew that they could get away with nothing when she was on duty. Her eagle eyes noticed everything – Domestics smuggling toys in for favourite Smalls, whispered conversations, last-minute trips to the bathroom that should have taken place ten minutes before – and it was said by many that she was closer to Mrs Pincent than she was to any of the other Surpluses.
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?