by Natasha Ngan
But more than anything, Alba wanted to understand why.
What had she done to deserve this? Why did her mother turn into this monster, when other times she could be so kind and loving it almost made Alba forget about when she wasn’t?
Sighing, Alba rolled onto her side. Dolly’s outline was dark against the bleached boards where she lay asleep on the floor. She’d insisted on staying with Alba that night in case she needed anything, even though Alba had promised her she was fine.
Tears pricked Alba’s eyes. She couldn’t imagine what she would do without Dolly. It terrified her to think what her life would have been like if Dolly hadn’t taken a job with the Whites.
Then she felt a slap of self-disgust. How selfish can you be? she thought. It’s not as though Dolly had never experienced Oxana’s anger for herself.
Alba wondered sometimes why Dolly didn’t leave. Was it the same reason none of the other servants left? Fear for their reputation, of not finding another job to provide for their families? But Dolly didn’t have a family. She didn’t even have a boyfriend (despite half the male servants in the house being hopelessly in love with her). Alba didn’t like to admit it, because it made her feel horribly guilty, but she knew the truth.
That Dolly stayed for her.
Too restless to stay in bed, Alba got up, stepping carefully around her handmaid’s sleeping figure. She padded barefoot across her room and opened the door to the hall, cradling her bandaged wrist to her chest.
The landing was thick with that special past-midnight silence Alba loved. This time of night always felt magical to her, as though another world had settled on top of her usual one, making everything silver-edged and new. Starlight spun through the hushed air. She went down the hall towards the main staircase and headed upstairs.
The top floor of the house had beautiful views over the grounds of Hyde Park Estate. On nights like this when she couldn’t sleep, Alba loved to sit in an armchair by the window in the drawing room at the very back of the house and read a book by candlelight. She’d gaze out at the view, and it helped remind her that her life wasn’t so bad. Look at all you’ve got, she’d tell herself. You have no right to feel unhappy.
She’d imagine the teenagers living in South. Many of them probably had parents far worse than hers, and they lived in South. She was lucky, she’d remind herself. Luckier than most.
Tonight, however, nothing seemed to be helping. She had lit a candle in a glass lamp, set it down on the table beside the comfy armchair she was curled up in, book open in her lap. Usually she’d be feeling better by now. But not tonight. For some reason, today’s incident felt different to the ones before: worse, somehow.
And suddenly, in a flash, Alba realised what it was.
I’m done with you.
She heard the words as though her mother were right here whispering them into her ear. Not the most hurtful or threatening words she’d ever spoken to her, but powerful in their simplicity. Alba felt flung aside like a piece of trash. Was she really so unwanted? Did she really mean that little to her mother?
Feeling sick, she dropped her book and scrambled up, pacing restlessly round the room.
I’m done with you.
Alba couldn’t escape those four little words. They followed her, a shadow, a coldness creeping at her back. The fear, the hurt she felt started to boil into anger (it always did in the end). She ran the fingers of her uninjured hand along the spines of the books in the tall shelves lining the walls.
I’m done with you.
Then just leave me alone! Alba wanted to shout. A hot, red fury was taking over her body, burning every vein. She moved quicker, pressing her fingers harder against the books. That’ll be just fine with me. I don’t need you. I’m sick of this cage you and Father have trapped me in. If I really mean that little to you, then why don’t the both of you just SET ME FREE!
In her anger, she slammed her hand against the bookcase she was striding past –
And it gave way, a panel opening up under her fist.
Alba froze, shocked still, waiting to see if anyone had heard the sound of her hand slamming into the bookcase. Nothing happened. She relaxed a little, though her heart was still thrumming, as quick as an insect’s wing-beats. Running her hand along the edge of the bookcase, she realised with a stomach-flip of excitement just what it was she’d uncovered.
A doorway.
Sixteen years Alba had lived in this house. She thought she knew everything about it. But here was a secret, hidden doorway, like something out of a book or a dream.
Alba pushed the panel in the bookshelf open further. It opened into shadows and darkness. Crossing back to the armchair where she’d been reading, she snatched up her lamp. The wet flame of the candle licked across the room as she hurried back to the doorway, held the light out in front of her and went inside.
‘A memorium,’ she breathed, knowing immediately what the hidden room was.
Memoriums were people’s own private memory rooms. Alba had never been allowed anything to do with memory-surfing. Her parents said that until she was eighteen and a legal adult, she hadn’t earnt the privilege to try it herself: just another of their ways to keep her from experiencing the world. Heavens forbid she see anything that made her question the life they’d created (curated, more like) for her in North. They kept Alba away from the boutiques and memory-houses in North offering sessions with memory-machines to its customers, and she’d only once caught a glimpse on a school trip years ago of one of the plush rooms the banks had for their customers to sample memories.
This secret room was big and windowless, and smelled of old wood. Grand mahogany cabinets lined the walls. In the centre of the room was a desk. Instead of a normal seat behind it though, there was a large, sleek-looking metal thing –
A memory-machine.
Alba shut the door behind her. Feathers of excitement tracing her spine, she set her lamp on the desk to inspect the machine.
It was open at the front with a cushioned seat built into it, made from a soft, spongy material that moulded round her hand when she pressed it. Clasps stuck out of the armrests. At the top was a rounded cap on an adjustable slide. A logo was printed on the back of the machine – a pair of black wings, spread wide as if in flight – and there was writing underneath:
SONY LIFE-FLIGHT v7.8.
Alba was just reaching out to touch the logo when a noise behind her made her heart stop.
9
SEVEN
The girl turned slowly, as if in a daydream. Her mouth fell open and her hands curled into fists at her sides, but apart from that she looked surprisingly unsurprised to see Seven standing there. In fact, he thought, she even looked a little guilty herself.
Seven decided he disliked her immediately. He’d seen the girl before on observation trips to the house, but up close she was far too pretty. Rich and beautiful and well fed (she was chubby – you didn’t get that way without plenty of food).
Some people had it so easy.
Scowling, he took in her pink cheeks, her cascade of dark red hair. The white nightdress she wore shimmered in the low light, skimming across her milky skin, which was as soft and pale as moonlight.
Seven wondered why he wasn’t running away. Instead, he was just standing there dumbly. They were both just standing there dumbly, staring at each other.
Perhaps if she had been an adult he’d have tried to escape. But this girl looked not much younger than him, and utterly harmless. She seemed like the kind of girl who was weak, soft, and more likely to huddle up and cry if you annoyed her than throw apples at you.
Eventually, the silence made Seven so uncomfortable he had to say something.
‘Er … ’ he began. He rubbed the back of his neck and attempted a grin. ‘Well. This has never happened before.’
The girl blinked. She had wide green eyes, deep and soft, the same colour as fresh grass or the water of the Thames at sunrise. They flitted to the door behind Seven, which was still half-open
.
She’s gonna scream, he realised, heart thudding, fear at being discovered finally hitting him as the shock of finding her in the room wore off.
Carpenter’s voice sounded in his head.
You need to be on your best tonight for this job, S. It’s not one you – we – can afford to mess up.
The girl glanced at the door again. Suddenly she spoke in a rush of tumbling words, her voice clipped with the poshest North accent he’d ever heard. ‘If you’re not planning to rape or kill me, could you please just shut the door?’
Seven stared. He had to have misheard her.
‘Oh,’ she breathed when he didn’t move. She shut her eyes and stepped back, grasping the table behind her, letting out a little puff of air. ‘You are planning to rape or kill me –’
‘What?’ Seven gasped. ‘No!’
Without really knowing why (he could have closed the door with himself on the other side of it, surely?), he pushed the door shut. The girl watched him, head tipped low, a curtain of hair fallen over her shoulder and half-covering her face.
‘What are you here for, then?’ she asked, jutting up her chin and pushing off the table. A steely undercurrent sharpened her voice. ‘I’ve had a bad enough day without having to deal with you too, so if you could just get whatever you’re planning over with and leave me in peace, that’d be wonderful. Thank you very much,’ she added, as though remembering her manners.
Seven gestured round the memorium. ‘Well, I kinda need to use this room.’
‘You need to use this room?’ she said warily. ‘Why?’
‘To steal something.’
The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. But then again it was pretty obvious what he was here for, him being a complete stranger and having broken into her house in the middle of the night.
He coughed. ‘So what are you doing here?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘I said, what’re you doing here?’
The girl’s nose wrinkled. She took a quick huff of breath. ‘You don’t ask someone why they’re doing something in their own house.’
Seven shrugged. ‘Just seems kinda odd, you being here in the middle of the night. Getting me to shut the door ’cause you’re scared someone in the house will hear us and find you here.’ He forced down a grin. He kind of wished Loe was here to high-five him. She would have appreciated that.
The girl looked guilty again for a moment, before rearranging her expression into anger. ‘Oh, I could tell on you. Don’t think I won’t. My father certainly won’t be very happy to see you here. Do you know who he is?’
Just like that, Seven’s heart began hammering away again.
‘I’ll give you a clue,’ she went on. ‘His last name begins with a W.’
Seven eyed the girl, wondering whether he could bring himself to punch her. If he could just knock her out, he’d be able to steal the skid and go. But she was a girl. It wouldn’t be right to hit her. Besides, she’d seen his face: she’d be able to tell her father exactly what he looked like.
He ran a shaking hand through his hair. The way he saw it, he had two choices. Either he ran away and hoped to effing hell Alastair White couldn’t be bothered to dirty his shoes in South to find him, or he told his daughter exactly why he was here.
The girl pursed her lips. ‘Well? Shall I call for Father? I should warn you – he will not be happy being woken at this hour.’
Seven scowled, doing a quick mental calculation. Face the girl’s father? Certain death. Face the girl … living was a decent probability.
He’d take those odds.
‘I’m a skid-thief,’ he told her, ‘and I’ve come to steal one of your father’s memories.’
10
ALBA
Throughout their exchange, Alba had been convinced someone in the house would hear them. The whole time she’d been imagining what her parents would do if they found her here in their memorium, and with a boy, no less.
It wouldn’t be pretty.
Somehow, she’d managed to fudge confidence and bluff well enough to convince the boy she might call for her father (if only he knew). It was all rather ridiculous, Alba thought. He was the one who’d broken into her house, but it was her that was in the real danger.
Now she knew what the boy was here for, a strange sense of peace filled her. All he wanted was some stupid memory.
Let him have it, she thought. Anger flared in her chest. Good riddance. I wish he could go into my mind and take away some of my memories, too.
‘Which one are you here to take?’ Alba asked, fiddling with the hem of her nightdress, trying – unsuccessfully – to tug it lower over her legs. She was really regretting her decision not to wear a dressing gown. The boy’s eyes kept drifting to where the dress skimmed the top of her thighs.
‘Like I said – one of your dad’s,’ said the boy.
Alba was too busy studying him to take this in at first. His features had an exotic edge to them that she couldn’t place. Perhaps he was part Japanese? Dark, messy hair fell into slim grey eyes. His mouth was small, and he spoke with it twisted up at one side. He was certainly weird looking (he was so tall and lanky Alba felt like a hippopotamus just being in the same room as him) but there was something strangely attractive about him too. Perhaps it was his smooth, tanned skin, or how he smelled of mint and sweat and boy, an enticing, sweet mixture of scents she’d never come across before.
Alba blinked, dragging her thoughts back to the moment. ‘What do you want with my father’s memories?’ she said warily.
The boy shrugged. ‘Dunno. My crew leader wants it.’
‘Crew leader?’
‘All skid-thieves are part of a crew,’ he said with an impatient huff, as though she were an idiot for not knowing. ‘The leader’s the one that organises our jobs, what skids we’re gonna steal. That sorta thing.’
Alba frowned. ‘You keep saying skid.’
A lopsided grin flashed across the boy’s face. ‘You haven’t heard of memories being called skids before?’ Laughter teased his words. ‘It’s after skid-marks. You know, when you go to the loo and –’
‘Yes!’ she said hurriedly. ‘I’ve got it now, thank you very much.’
Alba’s cheeks were hot. She couldn’t believe she was here, talking to a boy about toilets. It was strange enough to be talking to a boy in the first place; the Knightsbridge Academy only encouraged male and female students to mix at social events. It was unheard of to be talking to one in the middle of the night in her family’s secret memorium (about toilets).
‘So that’s your job?’ she asked. ‘Memory-thieving?’
He smiled proudly. ‘Yep.’
Alba didn’t know how to respond. The boy didn’t seem to care that his job was a crime punishable by death. Despite his casual attitude, she felt a shiver of unease. This boy was a criminal. The type of person her father sent to their death every day. Memory-thieving was the highest form of betrayal, her father had said at dinner. And here she was talking to a memory-thief as though they’d just bumped into each other in the street!
The irony was that Alba was more afraid of her parents finding her here with this boy than she was of the boy himself. She couldn’t let them discover him. He’d be arrested in a heartbeat. She would send him to his death, and sentence herself to a life even more caged than it was now. If her parents knew a memory-thief had been in their house – had even come into contact with their own daughter – they’d never let her out of their sight again.
None of it was fair, and thinking about her parents made Alba angry more than anything. This boy seemed so free. He came and went into people’s houses and lives and memories as he pleased. How wonderful it must feel to be able to slip away from your own life whenever you got sick of being you.
Alba bit her lip. ‘What do you do with the memories you’ve stolen?’
‘Well, the skids go to my crew leader, and he trades them on the black market.’
‘Do you ever …
ever surf them first?’
The boy laughed. ‘Yeah. Course. Every time.’
He didn’t have to say it; Alba could just see it in the way his grey eyes were shining. Surfing memories was clearly what he lived for.
Suddenly it seemed as though all of today’s events had been leading to this. Why had Alba discovered the memorium tonight? After sixteen years of living in this house, she just happened to be here at the very same time this boy came to steal a memory.
She and this boy were destined to meet. She was sure of it.
Alba drew a shaky breath. ‘Can you show me how to do it?’ she asked, touching the curving back of the Sony Life-Flight. Excitement sparked through her. ‘Show me how to memory-surf, and I’ll let you steal the memory you came for without my father ever knowing you were here.’
‘Now? With that?’ The boy pointed at the machine, scowling. ‘No way. I wanna get out of here as soon as possible. And the Life-Flights keep a record of every session. I’m not leaving behind any clues I was ever here.’
That was her opportunity to back down. But Alba wasn’t ready to give up on the promise of freedom yet. Not when this boy who could give it to her had walked right into her life as though sent from a god, on the very night she needed him most.
She stepped towards him and looked straight into his eyes, fiercely, daring him to object. ‘Then take me back with you,’ she said. ‘Take me surfing on your memory-machine.’
11
SEVEN
He woke late the next day from a dream about pirates and an endless ocean. Loe had been there, laughing as they’d jumped off the side of a ship into glittering, sun-drenched water. It had been a good dream (not because Loe was in it, he might add). Seven just liked dreaming of the sea. All that open water made him feel clean and free; two things he never felt living in South.