Submersion

  ‘I think it’ll do you good,’ I told him, forcing cheeriness into my voice. I followed it with a brave smile. ‘Go get those answers, but just be safe. Be careful. And me? Oh, I think I can cope without a man for a few days!’

  I’m not sure if my sudden enthusiasm for his absence reassured him that it was safe to leave me, or whether it increased his concerns. Whichever, he still left me.

  An hour later, Esther was on the phone. He and Jessie had popped in to see Billy on their way, she announced, quickly following that up with: Are you alright?

  ‘What did he say?’ I questioned, sensing Tristan had broken the habit of a lifetime and confided in my sister.

  ‘Nothing,’ she lied, but I let it go. ‘Maybe we should spend a bit more time together whilst he’s away. An excuse to catch up?’

  I can’t think of anything either of us would like less, I thought, knowing that my sister must be thinking a similar thought. Although, if Esther thought I was in crisis, if she thought there was an opportunity to rescue me, to do some do-gooding, she’d be round in a shot.

  ‘I think I’ll be okay,’ I said, letting her down gently, thinking that was the end of the matter.

  It wasn’t.

  The following evening she called me again: word was out that St Patrick’s had got its electricity supply sorted and my nephew would be going back to school, wasn’t that good news?

  ‘You rang me to tell me your son’s school is operational again?’ I queried.

  ‘Yes, thought you’d be interested,’ she continued, oblivious to the suspicious tone in my voice.

  ‘But you don’t usually call me about educational matters, Esther - just moral ones.’

  That silenced her for a few seconds, allowing me to muster my next line:

  ‘So, what did Tristan say to you before he left that’s got you acting all sisterly?’

  ‘He said nothing,’ she replied, sounding a little more convincing than the last time I’d asked her such a question. ‘Just that he was worried about leaving you. And I said I’d keep an eye on you, for him.’

  I suppressed a laugh.

  ‘So now you’re doing my lover – the man I live in sin with – now you’re doing him favours? That’s progress, Esther.’

  ‘Well,’ my sister continued, and I swear if she had feathers they would have been ruffling all over the place. ‘I apologise in advance for caring about-.’

  ‘I’m fine, Esther,’ I interrupted, softening my tone. ‘And thank you, but I’m going to be fine. I’m a big girl now, but I promise if I need someone, if I need you, I’ll call. Okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ she conceded and, after forcing myself to stay on the line for a few more pointless niceties, we brought our exchange to an end.

  Thereafter, I began to ignore the nightly ringing of the telephone. I knew it would be her. People rarely rang – the energy to run anything was scarce and, by default, expensive. I had no idea how Old Man Merlin could afford to run all that electrical equipment in his house, but in ours, as in most homes, such extravagance was kept to a minimum.

  I knew it was mean – Esther meant well. But my return to work had begun to take it out of me, physically and mentally. And, by the end of a day at the office – albeit a shortened day – all I wanted was some food, a drink and a bit of peace and quiet, not an inane conversation with my well-meaning if ill-advised sister.

  The office I worked in was based on one of the floating industrial platforms on the south side of the city. Externally, the office appeared as an oblong of corrugated iron sheeting, with squares cut out for windows. Whilst no doubt treated with protective layers of something or other, it had suffered due to the surrounding waters, and rust, algae and other signs of deterioration gave it character. Inside, it was pristine – not quite the kind of pristine my sister achieved with her compulsive cleaning, but the surfaces were free of dirt and the air clearer than at home, as if not a particle of the outside had seeped inside.

  There was no reception area – we didn’t receive enough casual visitors to warrant that – so you walked straight into a room occupied by grey desks and grey cabinets. There were three bulky computers where we did some of our work. The far wall was occupied entirely with shelving crammed full with file after file – an archive of every order from the last ten years.

  I had been working at for the Food Administration Board for about seven years, but only in that particular building for five – it was constructed in reaction to the flooding. Our previous residence had been washed out when the flood hit it, but quite miraculously, some of the paperwork had survived. The water damaged computers had come from another office at the other end of town – also flooded, just not hit by the initial force of the tsunami as ours was. The fact these machines were spoiled meant that they didn’t always do exactly what they were supposed to. So, Jerry made us keep everything on paper as well, just in case. I was suspicious that these impaired computers had never been replaced with new. Given my other suspicion that sooner or later Jerry’s superior’s would find an excuse to oust my kindly boss, I wondered whether they were hoping the loss of some crucial information – stored only on the big white electronic boxes – would be their way in. As a consequence of this, I was happy to keep the manual files up to date and guard them whenever an unfamiliar face popped in.

  Jerry had made my first day back very easy – and inadvertently gave me my first opportunity to start delving for information.

  ‘We’re more or less up to date,’ he said, sweeping his hands forward towards a desk in the corner that had been mine on a daily basis a few months back. ‘So, nothing too taxing for you today. I’d love a cup of tea, though,’ he added, smiling cheekily, ‘and after that you can spend a bit of time going through emails. You know how I hate them. I’ve not changed my password. Don’t forget to switch it off afterwards – limited resources and all that.’

  Once I’d made teas for him, Shirley – another administration assistant – and Tony - Jerry’s second in command - I was simply left to my own devices in the corner. Reading and replying to emails on Jerry’s behalf, while signed into the authorities’ database under his username. I’d always had his trust and never before had I even considered abusing it for my own gains. And, even on that first day back, despite my desperate need to search for Elinor, I found myself pausing.

  He’ll understand, a voice spoke out in my head – Reuben’s. I felt his presence close, his arm around me, guiding me forward. If you asked, you know he’d say ‘yes’; you know he’d take chances for you.

  The voice was right – Jerry would have done anything for me. Hadn’t he said that many times in the past? So many times that Shirley, my co-worker, had teased me about Jerry’s motives. Not that Jerry had ever behaved inappropriately towards me.

  ‘Yes, he would understand,’ I muttered inaudibly, going through Jerry’s emails as fast as possible, eager to buy time on the computer to search the archives of other departments I hoped he had access to.

  But the problem was, I didn’t really know where to start. I also worried about who might be watching me. Not so much over-my-shoulder, but what if his computer was bugged? What if someone was monitoring Jerry’s usage?

  It’s food administration, Agnes – who’s going to be interested in that? I ignored Reuben’s sarcastic voice. He was underestimating how passionate and possessive the authorities were about their food rationing. It was another way they controlled us. Water. Electric. Clothing. Food. It all added up to power, so I was certain that my fears were not groundless.

  Still, navigating the archives and links on his old dinosaur of a monitor was no easy task. It seemed that Jerry wasn’t just a paper hoarder – we also appeared to keep every digital invoice we had ever received or created. So, I had to trawl past folder after folder of food related files – hundreds and hundreds of files – until I found anything that might be relevant. I tried a few, with a variety of project names – Project Eggplant, Project Onion, Project Protein – thinking they mi
ght have food themes just to put the likes of me off, but, no, it turned out they contained more files and proposals that simply related closely to their folder names – they were the property of the Food Administration Board.

  Over the years, you’d think I might have been privy to information that told me where our food came from – information about farms or factories - but nothing had ever come my way. I suspected, like many, that there was something off-shore, something hidden on the horizon, brought in by boats. I imagined a laboratory, elevated out of the sea, clad in mirrors, reflecting the grey waters surrounding it, making it invisible. Going through the files again that day, uncovering more food labelled folders – Project Fibre, Project Liquid – the truth about the source of our nutrition still alluded me. Wherever it came from, however it was made, wasn’t documented.

  Further down the screen, once I’d scrolled right to the bottom, I finally found some files of potential interest.

  I pressed click on Authority Links and found myself inside a folder full of opportunity – a library of links to the whole government database, I was absolutely certain. Key words appeared to flash at me, tempting me to click again, but suddenly I was nervous. Two things in particular bothered me – one, I was really risking Jerry his job and it seemed an unfair reward for his saving mine for me; two, despite the time wasted searching through files I had no interest in, it had been relatively easy to get here.

  Press one! Reuben told me, but I tried to block him out. I didn’t want him influencing this particular decision; if I or my friend was to suffer the consequences of my snooping, then the decision had to be all mine.

  ‘Time’s up!’ a voice told me and I mentally cursed Reuben – get out of my head! – when I realised the voice wasn’t imagined. It was directly behind me. Jerry’s. ‘Time to go, as well, Agnes. We agreed reduced hours.’

  And so finished my first day at work. I wondered for a second if it would be my last, but then Jerry added: ‘See you same time tomorrow. Good to have you back!’

  With that, I picked up my belongings – a small satchel that contained my lunch box, my purse, my house keys – pulled on my outdoor gear and left, rowing away in my small wooden boat a minute or so later. All the way wondering if Jerry had noticed exactly what I’d be looking at or not.

  Day two brought that answer.

  From the minute I walked through the door, I felt something was wrong. Jerry was not there, neither was Shirley, my admin counterpart. Just Jerry’s deputy, Tony.

  ‘They’re out,’ he told me, once I’d disrobed and pulled my gas mask off. ‘Won’t be back for an hour. I’m going out too. He’s left you something by the computer.’

  With that, Tony disappeared through a door to another room at the rear of the office. I was on my own. I moved to my desk and switched the computer on. Whilst it buzzed itself to life, I examined a piece of paper with Jerry’s writing on it, secured to the desk by an old chipped paperweight – a small starfish trapped in a half-sphere of glass. Agnes – that’s all that he had written in his rough, shaky hand. Agnes.

  I tried to put all the pieces of this odd start to my day together. Shirley and Jerry’s absence. Tony’s swift departure. My own name written on a tear of paper – purposely, I assumed – left next to the computer.

  They were encouraging me. Their disappearance suggested they wanted as little to do with whatever it was they had assumed I’d got up to on my first day. And my name on the paper? Agnes. I realised very quickly what it was and it deepened my guilt over the risk I was taking in Jerry’s name. Agnes. A password. Jerry’s password to those links was Agnes.

  ‘Oh, Jerry,’ I murmured, wondering exactly what I was committing to by accepting this gift.

  Pushing any distractions aside, making my search for Elinor the priority, I switched on the computer monitor, clicked on the document folder and moved my way as quickly as possible back to the Authority Links. Opening that folder, I scanned line after line of links to the government’s databases, searching for something that might be relevant to my cause. The link I chose couldn’t have made itself more obvious – Education reports. It let me in without the need of a password, but only led me to another long list of database entry points. The name St Patrick’s literally screamed out at me. I hit this and then what I’d been expecting occurred – a boxed popped up with the command password. I entered Agnes and felt my heart hit my ribcage.

  ‘Please, please,’ I begged the screen, hoping it would give me something. But it didn’t. Instead, the words access denied appeared. Maybe I had mis-keyed the letters? I tried again, entering each digit slowly – A g n e s. Again – access denied. Suddenly, my chest was beating with panic instead of anticipation. What if this had been a trap? What if Jerry… No, no, not Jerry, but maybe Tony? I had only his word that Jerry had left me something by the computer. Or maybe it was Shirley, jealous of… No, this was all nonsense. I knew these people. Had worked alongside them for years, safely shared opinions and voiced gripes against the authorities. Then what? Why wasn’t the something I’d assumed was the password working? Hadn’t it been waiting by the computer for me? Agnes written on a piece of paper, weighted down by a-. I stopped; an idea struck me. I tried a different password: p a p e r w e i g h t. Nothing. Then, glancing at the creature frozen in the glass, I made a final attempt: s t a r f i s h. And I was in.

  ‘Agnes, you vain fool,’ I chided myself, suddenly feeling foolish about my assumptions that Agnes would be the password, rather than a note attracting me to the item that would lead me to the answer.

  The link took a few minutes to open – the line connecting me to St Patrick’s library was slow, its fire-power limited. There were many documents to look through, all of which were simply labelled with a combination of numbers and letters, so I had to open each one individually to see if anything of significance was held within.

  After half an hour, Tony returned and gave me a nod, and I knew it was a signal – shutdown and start work. So, I did just this and after another five minutes, Jerry and Shirley joined us.

  ‘Good morning, Agnes,’ Jerry chorused and, if he knew what I’d been up to, if he knew that his password was exactly what I needed, he gave no indication. ‘Sorry we’re late in. Meeting with the directors. Right, let’s see what I need you to do today…’

  This is how we carried on. Nothing was said directly to me. No one acknowledged that I had returned to the office solely to exploit its resources. No one acknowledged that they were aiding this activity, either. Not in a word or a look. Each morning, Tony would greet me and disappear for half an hour or so, then he would return, signal with a nod, and I would return to permitted duties.

  Yet, on the third morning, something different happened – I found something. Not a lot – but something, at last.

  Most of the articles in the archives related to budgets or policy. There were invoices going back decades, spreadsheets detailing termly costs, budgets and donations covering a similar period, too. Names known to me appeared in a Benefactors Log, local government officers, high-ranking police officials, and another name, well known for less legal activities – Monty Harrison.

  ‘That old crook,’ I mused, distracted by his mention, finding his name and donation again and again in the ledgers. Often, it was his monetary donation keeping St Patrick’s afloat. ‘That and a steep hill.’

  But the references to Monty Harrison revealed nothing further than the extent of his generosity, and there was nothing in those ledgers that helped me on my quest to find my daughter. As I was closing the last of these files, two final names did catch my attention. The first puzzled me – Augustus Riley. A first name that was grand and unusual, the second more common, but known to me. A relative of Xavier’s? Maybe, but unlikely. But it was enough to pique my interest. The other name that drew my attention was very familiar – Ronan Newton. His contribution wasn’t large – he wasn’t a wealthy name – but it was touching to think he had made a contribution to Elinor and Billy’s school. I kn
ew he considered them grandchildren, even if Esther did her best to push him out. He never married our mother, she would remind me, but all those years together, nursing her through her final days, that was as good as.

  The majority of the policy files - while of interest had time been of no consequence - gave up very little information of use. There were ancient articles on staff expenditure, educational trips, technological upgrade plans – all of which became mere fantasy, legends, following the floods. Some were still relevant – absence and truancy policy, child and staff disciplinary regulation, examination standards. It was here that I found the one item of relevance to my quest – an item dated just three months before Elinor vanished. Entitled Classroom Restructure Proposal, it detailed the school’s plan to measure the intelligence of every single child and reorganise the classes according to ability, rather than age. I read the item thoroughly, seeking understanding, and suspecting corruption and ulterior motives throughout. But I found none. I was neither disappointed nor relieved – maybe a little dumbfounded by the arrogance and superiority it emitted. The motive was pure and simple – focus on the best, improve the school results and increase the funds allocated as a consequence. There was even a proposal – under further consideration – to expel any children below a certain level, using a points system. Yet, nothing in the piece suggested any underlying sinister reasons for applying this policy. If anything, it appeared ignorant of what such a policy might suggest, given how children deemed super-intelligent had been exploited and abused in the past.

  Caught up in my shock, I hadn’t noticed I’d been joined. A sudden cough eventually alerted me to the fact. Tony was at my shoulder – it was later than I realised.

  ‘It’s really time to close it down,’ he said, in a low whisper. There was a slight scold in his voice, as if I’d broken a rule, putting him at risk. ‘We want to help,’ he added, as if to reassure me whose side he was on, ‘but we can’t be involved. We can’t see anything. You understand?’