The House Next Door Trilogy (Books 1-3)

by Jule Owen

  Gen says, “Do you want a coffee? Something to eat?”

  Mathew shakes his head. “I’ve eaten. Thanks.” They stand together awkwardly in silence for a few moments. “Anyway,” he says. “There’s a few things I have to finish before they come. I need to get O’Malley’s things.”

  Mathew nips back next door, collects O’Malley’s litter tray, his blanket and basket and takes them to Gen’s house.

  “Where should I put them?”

  “Leave them here for now. I’ll figure it out later.”

  “There’s some cat food and litter too. Leibniz can go and fetch it if you ask him.”

  “Okay,” Gen says. “You will keep in touch, won’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Right then.”

  She shows him to the door.

  “Say ‘Hi’ to Clara for me and tell her I’m sorry I missed her today. Tell her I’ll write to her.”

  “I will.” Gen holds the door and watches him walk away.

  Mathew’s travelling bags are by the front door. There are boxes in the front room, things he wants to take with him to his grandmother’s house. They will be sent by courier and so will follow after him later. Everything has been arranged by Panacea.

  On a table in the front room there’s a tall shrilk jar, about the size of a vase, with a lid. It is very plain, very ordinary-looking. Beside the table, Mathew has laid out some package tape, some scissors and a roll of bubble-wrap. He tapes the lid of the jar as securely as possible, laying down strip after strip. Then he cuts a length of bubble wrap and rolls the jar in it, securing it with tape. When he’s finished, he puts the package in a small blue rucksack, zips it up and puts it by the door in the hall with the other bags he’s taking with him in the car.

  Ju Shen, his grandmother, calls while he is tidying the front room.

  “I wanted to check you were alright,” she says.

  “I’m okay,” he replies.

  “When are they coming for you?”

  “Soon. Two o’clock, they said.”

  “Do they still think you’ll be here by tomorrow morning?”

  “Yes, we’re stopping in a motel tonight.”

  “You’ll call if anything happens, won’t you?”

  “Nothing will happen.”

  “But you will call?”

  He understands her anxiety. He hadn’t called her about Hoshi. Panacea had. He says, “Yes,” and feels again the sickening guilt and anger. It is like black treacle inside of him. He can’t breathe for it.

  “You’re bringing her ashes?”

  “I said I would. I’ve wrapped them up.” He doesn’t know why he tells her. Perhaps it’s to make himself feel better about the fact he’s wrapped his mother up in bubble plastic.

  “I still can’t believe what they did. I’ve been talking to a lawyer friend about suing.”

  He sighs.

  “We can’t let it go. They cremated your mother, my daughter, without our permission, without us being present. What they did is not only highly immoral, it is against the law.”

  “I know,” Mathew says. But he doesn’t want to hear it. He simply cannot deal with anything more. Not one more thing. “They said it was because of the nature of her disease. It was a matter of public safety.”

  “It’s a cover-up. They wanted to destroy the evidence as quickly as possible.”

  “Evidence of what?”

  “That she was killed by something from one of their own labs.”

  He knows this is true, but the thought overwhelms him. “I can’t…” is all he says.

  “Okay Mat,” she says, immediately sorry. “We’ll talk about it when you get here.”

  But he doesn’t want to talk about it. Ever. He dreads his grandmother’s questions, the interrogation of the lawyers and political people she has around her who will be looking for a way to take on the multinational, Panacea.

  He wants – he needs – peace.

  It is ten to two. He takes one last walk around the house, checking everything is as it should be, saying goodbye. He goes into his mother’s room.

  It is exactly how she left it, how they left it, the day she was taken into hospital. Leibniz has straightened the bedcovers. Her clothes are still in the wardrobe, her makeup and perfume on the dressing table, her shoes arranged underneath.

  The room smells of her.

  He picks up a brush from the table. It has her hair in it.

  He goes to the window. It is a cold December day; wind blows and bends the trees, clouds pile on clouds and slowly roll in the low sky.

  Down below, Mr. Lestrange’s conservatory is as it ever was; unbroken, undisturbed, empty.

  2 Time To Go

  It’s five past two. Dr Assaf and Mr. Truville are sitting with Mathew in his front room. Truville is wearing an expensive grey suit made of shiny material that slides noisily on the fake leather sofa. There are two strangers with them: a man and a woman. Dr Assaf is introducing them.

  She indicates the woman first, a tall, broad-shouldered, square-jawed and serious-looking person. Her head is shaved. She has a nose stud and a tattoo, visible under the cuff of her uniform shirt. Assaf says, “This is Ali Falkous. She’s one of our most senior security officers.”

  Falkous nods at Mathew. Assaf indicates the man, slighter than the woman, wiry, smooth-skinned, clean-shaven, swarthy. “This is Christian Vidyapin.”

  “Call me Vid,” the man says. He smiles slightly. He has large warm brown eyes.

  Truville says, “These are the best people we have, Mathew. We wanted you to know that we take what has happened seriously and we intend to continue to look after you.”

  Mathew notes the word ‘continue’. Anger bubbles in him. He looks at Dr Assaf. A few days ago she had come alone to bring his mother’s ashes. He suspects she did it without asking anyone. He suspects she shouldn’t have done it. Now, on the day he is scheduled to leave London, she is here again with Truville.

  Truville doesn’t leave him thinking for long. He pulls a small portfolio onto his lap from where it has been resting at the end of the sofa by his immaculately shod feet. He opens the wallet and takes out a Paper. Leaning forward, he hands it to Mathew.

  “Before you go, we’d like you to sign this.”

  Mathew watches Assaf glance at Truville, her eyes narrow, her mouth pulled down at the corners. She looks uncomfortable. There are dark circles under her eyes.

  Mathew stares at the Paper. It is displaying an electronic document, legal in nature, he notes, from the type and the language.

  “Here,” Truville says, leaning across again. “You can use my electronic pen. It can verify the writer by biochip.”

  Mathew ignores Truville’s outstretched arm. He doesn’t take the pen. Truville stretches some more, as if Mathew hasn’t seen it, waggling the pen around. Mathew still doesn’t move. He is staring at the document. “What is it?” he asks.

  “Just a formality,” Truville says, as if that explains everything.

  Mathew offers it back to Truville.

  Truville smiles, “No, no. I want you to sign it.”

  “What is it?” Mathew asks again. He scans the adults in the room with wary eyes. Assaf looks distressed; Falkous and Vid look embarrassed. “What does it say? You want me to sign something without knowing what is in the document?”

  Truville smiles indulgently. “It’s a document acknowledging receipt of your mother’s ashes.”

  “It waives your right to sue Panacea,” Assaf says.

  Truville glances daggers at her, but she continues to stare ahead at Mathew. Mathew holds her gaze. Whatever her part in his mother’s death, she’s trying to put it right now, probably at her own expense.

  “It’s a precaution, that’s all. A formality,” Truville says quickly.

  “I’m sixteen,” Mathew says. “I can’t sign this.” As Truville won’t take it back, he puts it on the floor between them, making Truville bend down to pick it up.

  “Ah. Yes you
can. You are next of kin and there is a precedent. A case involving Britannia Utilities five years ago. It changes the age of majority for certain types of contract law. There is a sum mentioned in the document. It would mean you wouldn’t have to worry about money for a long time.” Truville is smiling again. “As I said, we would like to look after you.”

  “I’m not signing anything,” Mathew says. “Not until my grandmother has seen it.”

  “Your grandmother is Ju Shen, isn’t she?” Truville says, frowning. “She is known for having some strong views. Following her advice might not be in your best interests.”

  Mathew sniffs, “You care about me more than my grandmother, do you?”

  Truville stiffens. Mathew thinks he catches a slight smile on Assaf’s face.

  “Right, well. You should think about it. I will send you an electronic version.”

  Falkous shifts in her seat and then stands, “We should be making a move.”

  “Of course,” Truville says, also standing.

  They go out into the hallway. “Is this what you’re bringing?” Vid asks.

  “Yep,” Mathew says.

  Vid and Falkous grab some of the bags. Vid reaches for the small blue rucksack.

  “No,” Mathew says. “I’ll take that one myself.”

  “Is this all of it?” Falkous asks.

  “There’re some boxes in the front room, the ones by the table. Dr Assaf said they could be sent up.”

  “Yes, it’s fine,” Assaf says, stepping forward. “There’s a courier coming shortly. You go now. I’ll wait here to make sure they go securely. They will be with you in a few days.”

  Falkous and Vid load Mathew’s travel luggage into the boot of the car. “Ready?” Falkous asks Mathew.

  He nods and steps out into the road. As he gets into the car, he looks back at the house, his home for sixteen years. He glances at Mr. Lestrange’s house. There is no one at the window. He looks at Gen’s house. Gen is standing on her front doorstep. She holds up her hand when he looks at her.

  “You take care of yourself!” she shouts across.

  “I will,” Mathew says. “You too.”

  Falkous shuts the door on him and the two guards get into the front of the car. Slowly they glide away. Mathew turns his head and watches Gen wave. Assaf is standing on the steps of his house. Truville is climbing into a second car. He waves at Gen one last time and they turn out of Pickervance Road.

  In the back of the car there are two fake leather sofas and a digital table. The bottom of the table levers so it can be watched like a Canvas as well as used as a Paper surface or as an ordinary table when flat. The sofas can be flattened to form a bed. There are cupboards behind the back sofa containing a mini fridge, nuts and fruit. Mathew takes a Coke from the mini fridge and reclines his seat slightly. He switches on the news and watches the hyper-partisan coverage of the war, footage of US and allied robot soldiers and drones in battle in Poland and human soldiers helping refugees at the border. The news is on a loop and, thirty seconds into the first repeat, he turns it off, searching the library of documentaries, drama, films and table-top hologames. But his heart isn’t in it. He switches the table off, flattens it, puts his Coke on the top and looks out of the window. They are on an A road heading towards the motorway. It is going to be a long journey to Elgol.

  He sends a brief message to his grandmother, telling her that he has left, and then initiates the Dictaphone program in his Lenz.

  “New file,” he says to the program. “Title: Letter to Clara. New line:

  “Dear Clara, I haven’t seen you since that first awful night at the hospital.” He pauses and breathes. “You’ve left me lots of messages. I’m sorry I haven’t responded. I know you will understand. You will have heard from Gen that my mother is dead. She may also have told you I am heading north to be with my grandmother. I don’t know how long for. I don’t know what will happen to our house. My mother’s lawyer called me the other day to tell me my mother left everything to me. The house is on a mortgage and will have to be sold, but there will be some money from the sale and she had some savings. I don’t know whether I will be able to come home or not. A bureaucrat from Panacea, I think he was my Mum’s boss, visited me today to try and get me to sign some contract to let his company off the hook about what happened to Mum. I think he was offering me lots of money, but I handed the contract back to him. I hate them and I don’t want their money.

  “I still don’t know what happened to Mum. A friend of mine managed to hack into the Panacea network and found some of Mum’s documents. I think she was working on biological weapons and she was exposed to some kind of man-made virus.

  “I feel so exhausted. I don’t seem to be able to focus on anything.

  “I left O’Malley and Leibniz with Gen, so they will both be there when you go round later today for your lesson.”

  The car is accelerating to join the motorway. Mathew looks out of his window as the vehicle slots seamlessly into the computer-controlled flow of traffic, all cars travelling at ideal stopping distance from one another and optimal speed.

  It is a long time since he’s been on the M25. The height of the fence shocks him. Fifty feet high, two lines of electrified steel and wire to keep out the undesirable and the unwanted, hugging the perimeter of London on the outside of the ring road motorway. Somewhere beyond the fence are the thousands of acres of refugee camps he’s seen on Psychopomp, but never on the news on the Nexus.

  He continues, “I had another one of those dreams, like the one I told you about. In the dream, I broke into Mr. Lestrange’s house. I actually stamped on his conservatory roof this time, to break it. The book was in the dream, the one with my name on the cover. I put it on the table in his front room, opened towards the end. I’d decided that the older me could help me cure my mother. Lestrange’s Darkroom let me into the future. I travelled with a huge army called the Accountants. They were the people the government had excluded from the cities. They marched north to this amazing new city called Silverwood, named after Cadmus Silverwood. It was the city he wanted to build, an Adaptation city. It had a huge dome growing over it. There was a building a mile high called the Cadmus Tower. On the way to Silverwood, I met Mr. Lestrange. He told me I was in a game, which I was ruining and he needed me to leave. We went looking for the door to come home through. Then I heard someone call the name ‘Hoshi’ and I broke out of the room where we were hiding and I saw someone who looked like my mother, but it was not my mother and I watched as she was shot. I was shot too. Then I saw my older self. I had grey hair and I’d gotten fat. You were there, but you were older, and there were other people I didn’t know. While I was looking at him, my older self was killed. Then I woke up.”

  The car is slowing again; they are exiting the motorway, driving around a long bend, ahead a series of toll gates. They pull up to one. In the front of the car, Vid winds down the window and talks to a man in uniform. Vid opens his door and he and Falkous get out. The uniformed official scans them with a biochip reader. The official then points at Mathew. Vid opens the car door.

  “He wants to scan you,” Vid says.

  Mathew nods and climbs out of the car.

  The official is stone-faced. “Turn around, please,” he says.

  Mathew does as he’s told. The official bows Mathew’s head with his hand and Mathew feels the scanner run across the back of his neck. The scanner beeps.

  “Okay. Thank you,” the guard says, looking at Mathew a bit more respectfully.

  The official walks away to scan the occupants of the car behind them.

  “What was that about?” Mathew asks Vid as they get back in their car.

  “He just found out you’re a homeowner.”

  Vid shuts the door on Mathew. The barrier in front of them lifts. They drive on.

  3 Northward

  Mathew and the guards, Christian Vidyapin and Ali Falkous, are on another motorway. They pass a blue road sign reading, “The North.” Here the land o
n either side of the road is covered by a sheet of water as far as the eye can see. Many years before, the motorway had been raised so that it couldn’t flood and now it is a bridge cutting through an inland sea. They pass a small hamlet, a gaggle of houses huddled together in the midst of the lake, submerged to their top windows. Later on, a half-drowned forest, the tops of leafless winter branches like arms stretching out for rescue. They stop for a comfort break at a service station, the car auto-docking for electricity while they all visit the bathroom.

  Back on the road, it grows dark. Mathew closes his eyes and falls asleep.

  He is woken by the stillness. Then a light comes on. Vid has opened the door and is peering in at him, grinning.

  “Don’t tell me,” Vid says. “You were resting your eyes.”

  Mathew smiles, embarrassed. “What’s happening?” he asks.

  “We’re stopping for the night. Dinner and then a proper bed.”

  Mathew grabs his blue rucksack, takes out his overnight bag from the boot and follows Falkous and Vid out of the car park, towards the motel.

  They are parked on a kind of island. Tall streetlights pick out the edges of the land above water, and cast reflections on the flooded land beyond, rippled by wind.

  “Bit of a breeze,” Vid says to Falkous, gathering his coat closer around him. “I hope it’s not a storm brewing up.”

  “Forecast is good for tomorrow. We’ll be fine. A straight run through.”

  They check in and are assigned three rooms in a row. Mathew drops his bag in his room, a plain, basic but clean place, with its own bathroom and a double bed. He joins Vid and Falkous in the corridor, bringing his blue rucksack with him, and they head off to the motel restaurant. There are only two other guests eating.

  “This place is buzzing, hey?” Vid says, grinning at Falkous.

  She scans around and smiles ruefully. “It’s probably busier when the country isn’t half under water and there’s not a war on.”

  Vid accesses the tabletop menu and flicks through the options. “Food looks alright.”