by H M Sealey
“No, he was part of family Matters and he was trying to reunite your family.” Then she shrugs. “That was all before my time anyway.”
I consider these strange new thoughts. “But it wasn’t my real dad.”
She shakes her head. “No, I think it was him.” She taps the locket. “The man in there. The man your mum said you could trust.”
“Trust to warp my thinking, yes. Missy, I don’t want to be a part of anything illegal. I just….I just want to be safe. I can’t ever risk losing people.” I look straight into her eyes. “I could have lost you too, just like Gran. It’s just…...selfish.”
“Selfish?” She says that word as if she can’t believe I just said it. “Elsie, your Gran, my parents, me, we risked our freedom every day to try and rescue families from that authoritarian mess back in Old Britain. We tried to stop people losing their families like you did!”
“But it was still selfish. You could all have been arrested and I…..” I feel my lip wobble. “Like the first time….” I whisper. “It would have been like the first time. Why can’t people just do as they’re told? Then they’d be safe.”
Missy stands up and paces the floor. I can’t tell what she’s feeling.
“Elsie, the safe thing isn’t always the right thing. I can’t live my life if I’m not doing the right thing.”
I lift my head, tears pouring down my cheeks. “Even if the right thing is dangerous.”
“Even then.”
I shift position on the bed and open the locket. As I stare at the faces in the pictures, I remember Kit Summerday telling me there were numbers written on the back. I poke at the photographs inside and realise that they pop out of position quite easily.
Missy watches me from by the wardrobe. “What are you doing?”
“Kit Summerday said there were numbers on the back. Codes. I want to look.”
“Codes?”
Missy crosses the room again, her earlier anger with me forgotten. “Let me see.”
“He asked me what the numbers meant. I didn’t know.” I hold the tiny picture of my mother and brother in my fingers and squint at the numbers written in tiny script on the back.
“May I look?” Missy holds out her hand and I give her the picture. She moves to the light and holds it up. “What about the other one?”
I nod and give her that picture too. “Be careful with them.”
“I will.”
She frowns. “These are definitely our code, but I can’t read them.” Then she seems to freeze and her head turns to look at me. “Elsie, suppose the note in the locket didn’t mean you could trust your family, or not only your family, what if these codes are the names of other people you can trust?”
I shrug my shoulders. “It doesn’t matter now. I don’t care.”
“I care.” She sounds very firm, very adult. I don’t like it. I want the Missy who was brave enough to go into the dark places in the woods when I couldn’t, the Missy who climbed the tallest tree just to show she could.
There’s a tap on the door and Alaia joins us carrying three mugs on a tray .
“I thought you were still awake.” She says with a smile. “I’ve brought hot chocolate.”
She places the tray down on the dressing table, pushing a jumble of scarves and trinkets aside.
“Uncle Baraq says you mustn’t stay long. He’s going to drive to the Border tomorrow and try to find Daichi.” A flicker of concern passes through her eyes. “He hopes he made it over the Border, even without a Border Pass.”
“And then what?” Missy asks.
“He’ll book passage for you and your brother, from Dover.” She glances at me with a warm smile. “If you want to go too, you can Elsie, but he supposed you would want to wait and see your father.”
“Of course I would.” I say. “I haven’t seen him since I was a baby.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Missy says in a sharp voice, her eyes still examining the codes on the photographs. “I have a job to do. I’m not abandoning Family Matters. I need to go back home. I’m not running away. Damn!” She exclaims. “I need an unregistered Bible, but I bet I won’t find one here.”
Alaia gazes at her in surprise. “An unregistered Bible?”
“They cut big chunks out in all the Bibles they allow in Old Britain now, and they don’t even like selling those. But it’s those banned verses I need to let me read this.”
Alaia’s expression becomes a smile. She crosses the room on light feet and pulls a drawer right out of the cabinet, then she reaches in to the back.
“The Mutaween found some of my hidden books the other day.” She says in a whisper, a smile dancing around her lips. “But only the ones I wasn’t too concerned about. This is where I keep the things I really need to keep safe.”
Alaia withdraws her arm, and in her hand is a small, tatty, leather-bound book. It looks old. Really old.
Missy joins her, kneeling on the carpet. “Alaia, you’re amazing!”
“This was Uncle Baraq’s. He had to burn anything Christian when he repented of apostasy. I rescued this.”
Missy looks up, concerned. “You could get into trouble.”
“There are a lot of things I could get into trouble over.” They meet each-other’s eyes and suddenly I feel cut out, like they share an acceptance of danger that I don’t. “But you have to do what’s right, don’t you?”
Missy nods. “Yes.”
“It it helpful?”
Missy nods, and squints down at the numbers on the back of the photo.
“This is Leviticus.” Missy says. “Chapter 18. Let me see. Do you have a pencil and paper?”
Alaia climbs to her feet and passes a notepad and pencil to Missy. Missy crouches over the bible and works out the letters. “Three, one. That’s verse three, the first letter. S.”
Missy scribbles each letter in turn until the word Summer appears on the paper.
“Well, that doesn’t make a lot of sense.” She says, scratching her head.
“What about the other picture?” Alaia says. “Maybe it’s only half a message?”
Still frowning, Missy interprets the code written on the photograph of me and the man mum married after she left Dad. I don’t think I like that man. I bet my real dad wouldn’t have let them take my family away from me.
“Day.” She says. “Summer Day. What does that mean?”
I almost fall off the bed. “Kit Summerday.” I say at once. “That’s the policeman! The one who found me when I’d…..well, when I ended up in the Border.” I still haven’t told Missy that I took AS drugs, or what happened afterwards.
“You think he might be a friend?” Alaia asks.
Missy shakes her head. “He was young. Maybe thirty. This note is fifteen years old. It can’t be him.”
I think about this. “Maybe he has a family?” I suggest.
Missy stands and returns the two tiny photographs to me. “I don’t know.” She says. “We were always very careful not to know too many names and details of other people working for Family Matters. I knew there were names in the Bible but I’ve never interpreted them.”
“But somebody must be in charge?” Alaia says. Missy gives a little shrug.
“I wouldn’t know. I know the people I worked directly with, Bibi and Howie….” She trails off. “I know he was arrested.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Howie knew what he signed up for.” She says, setting her jaw in a manner that reminds me of the old Missy. “There’s an elderly man, Zeb’s father, I think he’s on my side but I’m not sure. He has my bible and he knows the code. I have to find him and make certain he’s not going to expose the entire organisation!”
I run this horrible knowledge over in my head, my brain is active tonight, stringing pieces of information together like beads.
“Kit Summerday has a sister.” I say. Both girls look at me and I carry on, remembering everything Kit said. “He doesn’t like her, but she’s older than him, a lot older,
eleven years.” I screw up my eyes to recall every scrap of invitation he unwittingly offered. “She’s called Kat and she runs a Rainbow Centre. He called her a bitch. He said she had Howie. He thinks she’s investigating Family Matters too, but it’s like a personal war between them.”
Missy sits on the bed and hugs the little bible to her chest.
“That could work.” She says with uncertainty. “I heard rumours that Family Matters have people on the staff of Rainbow Centres. But they have to cover up their real beliefs by being really hard-line. I suppose, if this sister was on our side, she might have got hold of Howie in order to help him?” She screws up her face and drops onto her back. “But I could just be really reaching.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway.” I declare, clicking my locket shut. “I don’t need anyone else to help me. I have dad. And when he comes out of the hospital, I’ll come to live with him here.”
I curl up on my side, my back to Missy. I don’t want to know about Family Matters. I’ve found my real family. That’s all I care about.
~
Josh
By the time River is satisfied with Diana’s confession, most of the women in the room are sobbing. The sounds are loud and wretched and my heart feels torn inside me.
River checks the recording several times before she seems happy.
“There, that wasn’t too hard was it? You should all be ashamed of yourselves, you and your businesses and your grand houses. You make me sick, all of you.”
She glances towards the clock on the wall. “I set the security system to unlock itself in five minutes.” She tells them. “So you can all go home.”
“W – what about the antidote?” Kai Clarke asks, his face is sheet-white.
River holds up the little bottle and unscrews the lid.
“You knew what this was used for, didn’t you?” She stares into Kai’s face. “You were producing something that enslaves people. You’re making money out of human misery. You repulse me.”
To everyone’s horror – including mine – River tips the battle upside down and the liquid slops out onto the carpet. There’s a collective howl of horror and Kai leaps forward on his knees, scrabbling at the fibres with his fingers.
“You idiot girl! What have you done?”
“I’ve done the world a favour, eradicated a few leaches.” She marches towards the door. “Come on Josh, the security system will end the lock-down in a minute. “
I don’t move. “River, you can’t just kill all these people.”
She pauses in the doorway and slides a pair of ice-cold eyes over her audience, over the pale, desperate faces and mascaraed eyes puffy with tears.
“Do you think they deserve to live?”
“I don’t think it’s your place to pass judgement.”
River doesn’t move, her face is set in the deadliest expression I’ve ever seen, like a snake waiting for its prey. I don’t know this girl at all.
“I didn’t give you the AS drugs in the end.” She tells the room. “I nearly did. But I decided I didn’t want to kill any of you, even accidentally. You’re perfectly safe.”
All around the men and women sag to their knees in relief and the sobbing increases. River clutches her phone and there’s a click and the sound of thunder as the security grills roll back up, releasing the house from their grip.
“I’m going now Mum.” River tells her. “I’m going to see your confession is uploaded to every news-site I can find. By this time tomorrow, the whole world will know about your horrible scheme and I hope they burn you like the witch you are!”
We leave the house together, still in our party clothes. I don’t say anything. I don’t know what to say.
Once we’re out of the gates and halfway along the road, River turns to me with the biggest smile I’ve ever seen her give.
“I did it Josh!” She says. “I got mum to confess. I can prove to the country just how disingenuous and evil NuTru is.”
I follow like a frightened puppy. “River, you terrified those people, threatened them.”
“It was the only way to get her to admit what she’s up to.”
“That was….it was just horrible.”
River doesn’t pause, not for an instant. “I know it was horrible. But it was necessary.”
“Was it? Your mother seemed perfectly reasonable to me.”
“She’s a politician Josh, of course she seemed reasonable.” Her eyes narrow. “Or are you just upset because I spoiled your chances of getting a job?” She takes my arm suddenly. “Come on, there’s a pub I always used to go on the corner of the next street. Let’s have a drink.”
Right now a drink sounds good, so I let River lead me to an old-fashioned looking building with big, oak beams and little windows. A sign outside says The Old Vaults. Music slides out from beneath the door along with light and smoke.
River pushes open the door and I instantly cough from the weight of the smoke in the room.
“I thought there’d been a ban on smoking for fifty years?”
“Not here. There’s no ban on anything here.”
The pub is full of cheerful looking people in groups, some staring in excitement at the football game playing on a huge television suspended from the wall, others engrossed in conversation. Voices rise and fall, laughing at the world. I don’t feel I want to laugh at anything tonight.
“People don’t laugh like this over in Old Britain.” River tells me. “People are too careful about their jokes in case they offend someone. Here the jokes are racist, sexist and bawdy and nobody complains. Touch a girl’s backside in Old Britain and the man will be up on charges so quickly his head will spin. If he does the same here he’s likely just to get a drink thrown in his face.
We make our way to the bar which is a big, solid wooden thing with a selection of real ales advertised. I order one of the local specialities which turns out to be delicious, and River and I sit together at a small table near the lead-lined window.
“This is a proper old pub.” I say. “It’s not a modern one made to look that way.”
“I know. Nice isn’t it.”
“I don’t feel very nice after what we did.”
“Lighten up Josh.” River takes out her phone. “We did something good. The WiFi in here’s always excellent.”
I sip my drink while River surfs the Internet, posting whatever it is she intends to post. I sit back in the little booth and let myself focus on all the faces around me. I haven’t seen genuinely happy, relaxed faces for a long time. The people I knew were always so guarded, always watching their tongues for fear of voicing the wrong opinion.
My eyes fall on a man leaning against the bar. I notice him because he’s staring at me. Eyes fixed on my face.
“River?”
“Not now Josh, I’m busy.”
I slip out of my seat and approach the man with caution.
“Mr Scott?”
Mr Scott takes a gulp of his drink and gives me a rough nod.
“Skye.”
“Josh.”
“Like I care.”
“What’re you doing here?”
“Getting blind drunk. What does it look like? That bitch of a woman had my Border pass cancelled, that means I can’t find work. So I’m fucked. Just like you.”
He takes a big swill of his drink and slams it down on the bar.
“Why did you pretend to believe in everything you were teaching?” I ask.
“Jesus Skye, that’s a fucking stupid question. Why does half the population smile at the idea of paedophilia and same-sibling relationships when they’re screaming inside at the insanity of it? Why do they take brave photos of their friends transitioning into some other fucking species and call it progressive instead of madness? Because the inmates are running the asylum.”
I slide myself up onto the stool beside him.
“What will you do?”
“Get extremely drunk every night until my money runs out. Then top myself the old fashioned
way. No AS drugs even if I could get hold of them.”
I don’t mention the AS drugs scandal River just uncovered, I’m still stunned inside from it anyway.
“But you didn’t do anything really wrong. You’re not a murderer or anything.”
Mr Scott gives a long, cynical laugh, before emptying his glass. “What planet are you living on? These dickheads worked for years to muddy the waters between speech with action. To them, telling a woman she’s a bitch is a hate crime and that’s as bad as murder. If fact, they don’t give a fuck about murderers, a good lawyer can get a murderer off. No lawyer would touch me with a barge pole.” He shoves his glass back towards the barman. “It’s my fault.”
“Your fault?”
“All our faults. The people who saw it happen and did fuck all.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. Me too. You want a drink?”
Mr. Scott is offering me a drink in a pub. This would have been the stuff of nightmares last week. Now it just feels rather sad.
“Okay.”
There’s a great deal I want to ask him but our conversation is cut short by a sudden commotion outside the pub. The heavy doors are flung open and a fat man in a heavy-metal tee-shirt staggers in and collapses against the bar.
“The fucking Security Police are combing the area!” He gasps. “Looking for a pair of terrorists.”
I stiffen. “Security Police?”
Mr. Scott drops down from his stool and sways on his feet.
“Fucking thugs.” He slurs. “Private army.” He tells me. “Diana Lamont’s private army.”
I look at the barman, he’s a big man with a moustache and hairy eyebrows. He’s gone white.
“Not again.” His hand trembles as he takes Mr. Scott’s empty glass. He shouts to the crowd in the pub who are now noticeably agitated. “Take it easy everyone. Don’t provoke them. If you’ve done nowt wrong you’ll leave you alone.”
The barman reads my quizzical expression. “You’re not from round here?”
“No.”
“Most of the bigwigs have private armies.” He explains. “They can afford them. They’re a bit paranoid like that. So they take ex-army and ex-police and ex-prisoners, give them guns and a uniform and employ them over here. Great money, no restrictions. Sometimes they get a bit trigger-happy and smash things up but if you keep out of their way, you’ll usually survive. Look.” He turns his head to the side and reveals a large scar running down to his ear. “They came looking for a journalist who’d pissed Diana Lamont off a couple of years back. I learned to let them do what they want. If they’re looking for someone, they’ll find him.”