Anna pulled the heavy curtains around her more closely and sneaked a little look at Peter, who was sitting beside her. He had matter-of-factly found the best position for them, a spot where they could not be seen, but from where they – or he, at least – had a full view of the garden, the door and the house. Once he had made sure Anna was warm enough, he had simply sat still, his forehead creased slightly in concentration, and said nothing.
Until now, that is.
‘There are people in the house. It looks like Catchers.’
Peter spoke so quietly that Anna barely heard him, and yet the words felt like bullets firing into her chest. Catchers? How had they known they were here?
‘Lie down and cover yourself with the curtain,’ Peter whispered, and, trembling, Anna did as he asked. She could feel Peter’s body was tense next to hers, like an animal on the hunt, and she tried to stop herself shaking with cold and fear.
She lay under the curtain for what felt like an eternity, but what was probably more like ten minutes, and then she felt Peter slither down under the curtain with her.
‘They’re coming down to the garden,’ he whispered, and Anna could feel the warmth of his breath against her forehead. Without thinking, she reached out her hand and found his, squeezing it tightly. Then Peter pressed her head on to his shoulder and before she knew it they were wrapped around each other, arms clasped so tightly that they felt almost like one.
And then they heard someone trying the door. Anna froze, fully expecting them to walk right in and find them, but instead the door stayed firmly shut. Peter hugged her closer.
‘You keep this door locked all the time?’ It was a man’s voice and Anna felt her muscles tighten.
‘Of course. Well, my husband does, anyway. It’s full of antiques, you see. Valuable, apparently, although I’ve never cared for them much. Still, each to their own, I suppose.’
Anna felt Peter’s arms tighten around her as she heard the familiar tones of Mrs Sharpe.
‘We’ve been instructed to search everywhere,’ another man’s voice said. ‘Even if it’s locked.’
‘Very well.’ Mrs Sharpe’s voice was exasperated. ‘I think the key’s in here.’
Anna felt her heart thud in her chest. Mrs Sharpe would be looking for the key, which would no longer be where she left it. She would know that they had taken it. The Catchers would find them.
‘Oh,’ she heard Mrs Sharpe say. ‘Well, that’s funny . . .’
‘The key’s gone?’
There was a long pause. ‘Ah, I remember,’ Mrs Sharpe said suddenly. ‘My husband took it. For safe keeping.’
‘Perhaps we should break the door down,’ one of the men suggested.
‘You can try, but I don’t think my husband would like it,’ Mrs Sharpe said quickly. ‘And I don’t see how anyone could be in there anyway, if the door’s locked. You may know my husband, actually. Anthony Sharpe? He’s with the Interior Ministry.’
There was silence then for a few seconds, during which Anna barely dared to breathe.
‘I know of Mr Sharpe, yes,’ one of the men said. ‘I didn’t realise that you were . . . are . . . Well, we won’t intrude any longer, will we, men? Thank you, Mrs Sharpe, for your . . . assistance.’
And with that, Anna heard the most delicious sound she’d ever heard – the sound of the Catchers walking away.
Julia stood at her kitchen sink, her mind racing. The key could have been mislaid. It was possible.
But it was also unlikely. Things didn’t tend to get lost in the Sharpe household.
Frowning slightly, she decided to turn on her computer. She’d been very energy efficient this month, because of the new solar panel installed on her roof, and she felt in need of some company, even if it was virtual.
As the screen flickered on, a newsreader appeared, talking seriously about the kidnapping of the Energy Minister by a Middle Eastern terrorist group claiming that the recently signed global agreement restricting the use of oil was an underhand plot to destabilise their economy. A personalised message appeared along the bottom of the screen reminding Julia that her Longevity prescription was ready to be picked up and that she had four energy coupons remaining this month; there was a second message at the top of the screen urging her to press the red button on her remote control to complete that day’s brain agility activity. Ignoring the messages, Julia listened to the newscast for a few minutes, sighing and shaking her head. Poorer countries were taking desperate measures to convince the larger nations to allow them more energy. What the terrorists didn’t seem to realise, Julia thought to herself, was that everyone was suffering. Hadn’t China and the USA banned all air conditioning, forcing mass migration into cooler states? Hadn’t South American countries been forced to halt their economic progression in order to protect the rainforests?
She remembered a time, when she was young, when energy was still plentiful and people thought that recycling was enough. Before islands started to be submerged by the sea, before the Gulf Stream changed Europe into the cold, grey place it was now, with short summers and long, freezing winters. Before politicians were driven to action because infinite life meant that they, not some future generation, would suffer if the world’s climate wasn’t protected.
But not all countries believed that they were being treated equally by the hastily convened world summit. And why should they? It wasn’t exactly a secret that the richer countries were cheating. That banned energy sources were being used secretly, to provide electricity for essential services. That renewable energy was being imposed on poorer countries as the only available source, whilst corrupt countries traded secretly in oil, in coal. Britain itself had poured money and resources into the race to create a new, problem-free energy source that they could sell to other countries at a huge profit, re-establishing state-funded research departments that had been abandoned a century before along with the universities they’d been attached to, because there weren’t any students any more.
But energy was not something that Julia could do much about; that was her husband Anthony’s domain. Right now she had a rather more pressing problem to consider. There was nothing on the news about the Surplus escape, but that wasn’t surprising – the news would only be reported once the Surpluses had been caught. No point upsetting people unnecessarily, Anthony would say.
She drummed her fingers on the kitchen counter, trying to decide what to do, trying to work out why she hadn’t let the Catchers break down the door to the summer house. Had it been to protect Anthony’s furniture? Or had it been something else? Had it been the mention of the name Anna?
As she pondered that question, the phone rang and immediately she picked it up.
‘Julia? Barbara. Have you heard the news?’
‘The news?’
‘The Surplus breakout. Surely the Catchers have visited you by now? They woke me up, you know. Terribly efficient, aren’t they?’
Julia sat down. ‘I suppose it’s their job to be,’ she said thoughtfully.
‘Well, they told me there were two of them on the loose. So I’ve double-locked all my doors and windows. And I hope you’ll do the same. You can’t be too careful, Julia. I mean to say, who knows what damage they’d wreak given half a chance? Now perhaps people will take the Surplus Problem more seriously. Surplus Halls are a disaster waiting to happen. Keeping them there, using up all those resources. They’re just a melting pot for young thugs, Julia. And so near the village too.’
‘I don’t think they’re dangerous, Barbara,’ Julia said, frowning slightly. ‘And Surpluses are very well trained.’
She thought briefly of her own housekeeper, and of Anna, the one who had apparently escaped. They didn’t wreak any damage. If anything, they seemed pitifully grateful for just a kind word.
‘Well, of course the Surpluses they let out aren’t dangerous,’ Barbara said darkly, ‘but we only see the employable ones. The good ones. The rest are simply stealing from us, Julia. Stealing our food, our energy, our air.’
Julia sighed. Perhaps Barbara was right. Perhaps she’d been very wrong to let the Catchers leave without checking the summer house.
‘And they’re jealous,’ Barbara continued. ‘They dare to want what we have. But they don’t have the right, Julia. Their parents didn’t have the right. That’s what I keep explaining to my Surplus, Mary. Very good, she is. Very hard-working. But the fact of the matter is, she shouldn’t be alive, Julia. She just shouldn’t. And now this escape. I tell you, this Surplus Problem is going to have to be dealt with. If you’re too soft on them, people just won’t be deterred from foisting more of them on us. Do you know how much of our tax goes towards the Surplus Problem? Do you?’
‘No,’ Julia said.
‘Too much, that’s how much,’ Barbara replied ominously.
There was a pause, as Barbara drew breath. ‘Anyway,’ she said eventually, her tone becoming more business-like, ‘the reason I’m calling is that I’m pulling a search party together. We have to protect ourselves, Julia. Have to find those blasphemers and deal with them. We’re going to meet at my house this afternoon. I was sure that you’d want to be involved.’
‘You don’t think this is best left to the Catchers?’ Julia asked tentatively.
‘Julia,’ Barbara said sharply, ‘we cannot stand by and let two Surpluses threaten everything that Longevity has brought us. They could be anywhere, and we need to pitch in, to do our bit. If we let two Surpluses escape, where will it end, Julia? There’s no room for them. They have to be stamped out.’
‘Stamped out?’ Julia couldn’t hide the outrage in her voice.
‘Dealt with, then,’ Barbara conceded. ‘Although I think stamping out a few of them really wouldn’t be a bad idea. It would send a message out, don’t you think?’
Julia took a deep breath and leant against the back of her chair.
‘This afternoon,’ she said eventually. ‘I’ll . . . well, I’ll see you there.’
She put the phone down and sighed deeply. People were so scared of Surpluses, she thought to herself. Legal children, too, although you didn’t see any of those around these days. It was as if everyone had completely forgotten about the good side of young people, had convinced themselves that anyone below the age of twenty-five was dangerous and subversive. Anyone under sixty, rather. That’s how old the youngest person was now, apart from Surpluses and the odd Legal who slipped through the net after the Declaration. A world full of old people, Julia thought to herself, frowning. Old people who were convinced that they knew it all and that anything new or different could not be good – unless it related to Longevity drugs, of course.
Perhaps ironically, Surpluses were the only subject about which there still seemed to be some political debate, even if it was limited to a very small number of very vocal people. The liberal camp were calling for a more humane approach to the problem, more education to prevent Surpluses from being born in the first place, whilst Barbara and her fellow Daily Record readers thought that the parents of Surpluses should be locked up for life and their progeny put down. Not their own Surpluses, of course, not the ones who cooked their food, tended their gardens, worked on building sites or undertook any of the other tasks that no one else wanted to go near. No, not them; just the ‘others’, whoever they were.
No doubt the Authorities would conduct an opinion poll at some point, Julia thought to herself.
Set up another working party. Give someone like her husband the job of overseeing it for twenty or so years until they had drawn some conclusions. And then . . . well, then they would implement the conclusions, she supposed. If anyone still cared enough about it.
The fact of the matter was, though, that Julia didn’t have twenty years to form her opinion about the Surplus Problem. She didn’t have twenty years to make her mind up about what to do. She wasn’t certain the escapees were in her summer house, of course, but in her experience, two plus two usually made four.
Standing up and taking the spare key from the kitchen, she wrapped a coat around herself and put on wellington boots, then picked up some gardening tools for good measure. Just in case the neighbours were watching. Just in case anyone else was too.
She often wondered what drove the parents of Surpluses to defy the Declaration in the first place. Was it arrogance – a conviction that the Declaration didn’t apply to them? Did they not realise that they’d never get away with it? She’d heard talk of a movement, a pro-new-life movement that believed that the Declaration was wrong, that people shouldn’t live for ever, that youth was better than age. But no one took them seriously.
She’d suggested once to Anthony that Longevity drugs should contain birth control drugs, so there wouldn’t be a Surplus problem. It had seemed so straightforward, so simple a solution. But Anthony said that it wasn’t possible because the drugs were finely balanced and you couldn’t overburden the formula; that birth control implants were better, safer, cheaper. Julia had pointed out they obviously weren’t a hundred per cent effective. Anthony had told her that she simply didn’t understand; that things were never that easy. But it seemed easy to her. She sometimes thought that the Authorities overly complicated things just to make sure they had enough to do.
Julia herself had been one of the lucky ones, of course. She’d had her children by the time Longevity came along. Never had to make the choice.
Well, not children – child. But one was enough, she and Anthony had agreed. One was plenty. And Julia had been delighted when it turned out to be a girl. Someone to go shopping with, to have a bit of a gossip with, she’d thought happily.
Hadn’t turned out like that, of course. Tracey had ended up moving to America when she was thirty-five. Had a career, she’d said, and that’s where it was all ‘happening’. That was seventy years ago now. It didn’t seem that long, somehow, and yet sometimes it felt like a lifetime ago.
Tracey called from time to time, which was nice. And every so often, energy allowance permitting, Julia would fly over and see her, but her daughter was very busy and they hadn’t managed to find a suitable date for the past ten years or so.
Still, she had her friends, Julia thought to herself, forcing a smile on to her face. She had the bridge club, didn’t she? No, she was very happy, all things considered. And if she sometimes wondered what the point was of living for ever when you had no one to love, no one to love you, then she didn’t dwell on it for long. She was one of the lucky ones, she would remind herself. She was really very happy indeed.
As she made her way towards the summer house, Julia wondered whether it was the same Anna. It had to be, didn’t it? But what were she and the Surplus with her planning to do? Were they just hoping to enjoy a few days of freedom before their inevitable recapture, she wondered. Or were they more ambitious – did they actually think they’d be able to hide for ever? Except it wouldn’t be for ever, would it, Julia reminded herself. They were Surplus. Their lives would be so desperately short it could hardly be worth the effort.
Quietly, she approached the small wooden building, and tapped lightly on the window.
‘Anna,’ she called softly. ‘It’s me, Mrs Sharpe. I’m fairly sure you’re in there. The Catchers have gone now. Do you want to tell me what you’re doing here, Anna? Are you going to let me in?’
‘Don’t say anything,’ Peter whispered. ‘It’s probably a trick.’ He was sweating; Anna wasn’t sure whether it was pain or fear.
She nodded mutely, trying to resist the temptation to rush out and thank Mrs Sharpe for sending the Catchers away.
‘Now listen to me, Anna. I need you to open the door. We’ll need to be careful because you never know when the neighbours are looking, but no one can see me here unless they’re in my house, and I can assure you, there’s no one in my house. Not at the moment, anyway. But they might come back, so we probably need to get you out of here as quickly as we can. Does that sound reasonable? Anna?’
Anna looked at Peter. Under the curtains, all she could make out were his eyes, and she could see that they were fearful.
‘I trust Mrs Sharpe,’ she said, squeezing him for good measure. ‘And she didn’t let the Catchers find us.’
Peter looked at her anxiously, then eventually he nodded, and bit by bit they peeled back the curtains.
Peter got up and limped over to unlock the door, then shrank back towards Anna, his eyes darting around as if checking for an escape route if things turned sour.
Mrs Sharpe edged around the furniture and then manoeuvred herself so that she was beside the bed which was leaning up against the wall. Two pairs of wide dark eyes were fixed on her, one set looking at her cautiously, the other looking at her like a puppy dog, grateful to her for not drowning it.
‘Oh, Anna,’ she said, as she took in the state of them – the dirt and the bruises and the matted hair. ‘Oh, my dear girl, what have you got yourself into?’
Mrs Pincent narrowed her eyes at Frank, the lead Catcher assigned to the Grange Hall breakout.
‘You will catch them,’ she said. It was a statement, not a question.
Frank smiled. ‘Always do,’ he said comfortably. ‘Of course, usually we’re chasing hidden Surpluses. Acting on a tip-off. It’s not often we’re chasing escapees from Surplus Halls. Don’t get that very often at all.’
He gave Mrs Pincent a meaningful look and she glowered at him.
‘They got out,’ she said, her voice angry, ‘because the Authorities didn’t think to mention to me that there was a tunnel out. I can assure you there has been no other breakout in my time at Grange Hall, and nor will there be another one.’
Frank shrugged. ‘Don’t matter either way. We’ll get them back. Haven’t got anywhere to go, have they?’
‘What about the Underground?’ Mrs Pincent asked, her face contorting with distaste as she spoke. ‘I think the boy might have connections. He was new, you see. Too old to come to a Surplus Hall in my opinion, but there we are.’
Frank shrugged. ‘The Underground?’ he asked dismissively. ‘Bunch of woolly liberals, that’s all they are. All mouth and no trousers. They try to hide the odd Surplus once in a while, but we always sniff them out, don’t you worry.’
Mrs Pincent nodded curtly. She knew all about woolly liberals. They wrote her letters from time to time, asking about the treatment of Surpluses. Sent in petitions, requesting that criminal parents be allowed to see their Surplus children on release from prison. Mrs Pincent hated liberals.
‘What liberals don’t understand,’ she said, suspecting that in Frank she may have found someone who shared her views on Surpluses, ‘is the price we must pay for Longevity. They live for ever in a world that is stable, prosperous and safe, and they conveniently forget what created this world for them.’
Frank nodded, and his eyes lit up. ‘They’re ignorant, that’s all,’ he agreed heartily. ‘Poor Surpluses? Don’t make me laugh. You and I are on the front line, Mrs Pincent. We’re the ones who know the truth. If it wasn’t for us, the world would be a very different place, you know.’
‘Indeed,’ Mrs Pincent said. ‘Now, when you catch these Surpluses, they’ll be brought back here, will they?’
Frank nodded. ‘That’s the normal procedure. If they’re alive, of course. Sometimes, you’ll understand, there are . . . complications.’
Mrs Pincent looked at him for a moment.
‘Try to keep the girl alive,’ she said, then stood up. ‘The boy probably isn’t much use, if you know what I mean.’
Frank grinned. ‘I know exactly what you mean,’ he said cheerfully.
‘Good,’ Mrs Pincent said, her eyes narrowing. ‘Now, I had a little thought. Anna did some work for a woman in the village a year or so ago. Might be worth following up. I’ve got her name somewhere in the file.’
Sheila sat in Decorum, staring ahead at Mrs Larson and pretending to listen intently.
Anna’s seat was bare, and no one else thought anything of it because she’d been sent to Solitary. But Sheila knew. Sheila knew what had really happened. She knew because she’d now read the whole of Anna’s diary, had read about her plans. And she also knew because she’d been awake in the early hours of the morning when Maisie had shrieked in anger.
It had made Sheila very angry too, because Anna hadn’t taken her with her. Of all the people in Grange Hall, she was the one who deserved to leave, she told herself fervently, not Anna. Anna liked it here. Anna was a Surplus. Whereas Sheila despised every moment spent behind these grey walls, wanted more than anything to see the Outside again, to see her home, her parents.
But still, Sheila was at least comforted by the fact that Anna wasn’t as clever as she thought she was. Anna liked to think that she thought of everything, that she was the most Valuable Surplus ever to have lived. But would a Valuable Surplus have left her journal behind? Would a truly Valuable Surplus have allowed Sheila to delicately take the journal from her pocket as she was dragged through the training room by Mr Sargent, and to hide it in her own pocket, where it joined the beautiful pink knickers she’d appropriated during Laundry?
No, Sheila thought to herself. Anna had made a big mistake in not taking Sheila with her.
Thrusting her hand into her pocket to feel the soft suede against her fingers, she smiled, and looked up at Mrs Larson.