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.
Lying in bed and pulling her blanket around her, Anna shivered. Whether it was with cold, fear or anticipation, she wasn’t sure; all she knew as she drifted back to sleep was that from today, her life was going to change. Today, for good or ill, everything was going to change.
Sheila opened her eyes and watched silently as Anna fell asleep. She’d waited for her in the corridor, waited for over an hour. And then she’d seen Anna’s outline coming back up the stairs, but Anna hadn’t gone back to the dormitory. So Sheila had slipped after her, so quietly Anna didn’t hear a thing. And she’d watched, her brow furrowing with curiosity as Anna softly opened the door to Female Bathroom 2 and went inside.
And now, hours later, she was back. Anna had secrets, Sheila realised, and she wanted to know what they were.
Looking around the dormitory, and satisfying herself that everyone was asleep, Sheila pushed back her covers and slipped lightly out of bed, then padded gently out of the dormitory and down the corridor.
A few moments later, she arrived at Female Bathroom 2, opened the door and closed it behind her.
Then she pursed her lips and frowned, looking around the sparse room, not knowing exactly what she was looking for, but certain, nonetheless that she was in the right place. This wasn’t the first time Anna had disappeared into this bathroom. There had to be something in here. Some clue.
She moved over to the scrubbed basins, got down on her hands and knees to survey the floor, and finally sat on the bath and sighed, rubbing her arms with her hands to stay warm.
And then, suddenly, she noticed something. A slight gap between the bath and the wall. Not something that would stand out to anyone who didn’t know the value of secrets, but which Sheila instantly recognised as a hiding place. Quickly, she hopped into the bath, taking care to wipe her feet first so that she didn’t leave a single speck of dust in it, and carefully slipped her thin, pale arm down the side of the bath. Moments later, she pulled out Anna’s journal, the softest, pinkest thing that Sheila had ever seen.
She opened the book and began to read. As she worked her way through the first few pages, her eyes widened with indignation. But she couldn’t read it all now. Not when the morning bell was due any moment. Carefully, Sheila put it back in its hiding place and, checking that the coast was clear, she darted back down the corridor to her dormitory and slipped into bed just a few seconds before the violent ringing started, announcing the beginning of another day.