by Mike Bursell
“Lena,” he emphasised, “you're not, are you?”
“Not what?”
“Not – a Youth Enforcer.”
Now it was my time to be silent. I was horrified that Mo might think I'd be a Youth Traitor, particularly as I'd feared, before, that this was what he thought. And then I experienced a shift of perspective so sudden that it was almost dizzying: what must Mo be thinking? If he really does believe that I might be a Y.T., then everything that he's been doing, everything that he's been working for, is for nothing. The one person that he's trusted to help him, to guide him and to share all his secrets with has been betraying him from the very outset. And he must be expecting someone to break through his bedroom door any second. He must be so scared. At that point, I wanted to reach out and just hold him, the way I'd held Mum earlier, in the kitchen.
I realised that he must be waiting for me to speak. “Mo – Floyd. No, I'm not. I promise.” I could hear him letting out a breath that he must have been holding all that time. “Do you believe me? Can you believe me? I'm … I'm your friend. I'm me.” I wanted to say so much more, though I wasn't sure what. “I'm not an Enforcer. Never.”
“C. Yes, I believe you. I had to ask.”
If it hadn't been for what Mum and I had been through today, I might not have understood, but having witnessed Mum's doubt, I could see where Mo was coming from. “That's fine. I understand.”
He took a breath and then continued: “You going to fill me in, then?”
And as quickly and simply as that, it was over. Just as I thought that I was getting a handle on boys in general, and Mo in particular, I discovered that they – or he, at least – could be deeper and more impressive and more sensitive and understanding than I'd ever have expected. I wasn't sure about other girls, but I for one wouldn't have been able to move on that quickly. I'd have had to ask more questions, satisfy myself that I'd been told the full truth, that I'd got to the bottom of what was going on. Mo had asked a question, got an answer, accepted it at face value, and got over it. There's more to this boy than I'd thought.
“Right – so after school, when he was waiting outside our class, I thought maybe he was going to want to talk to you, but he waited until everyone else had gone out, and asked to speak to me. So we sat down, and he told me that he thought you were a part of Floyd.”
“How did he jump to that conclusion?”
“What do you mean, 'jump'?” I scoffed. “It's not as if he's wrong!”
“Maybe. But he must have had some reasons for thinking it.”
“Well, he'd been watching you, and noticed how you reacted at lunch, during the reports of the latest attack. And he's noticed the network traffic from the school servers – though he hasn't tracked it to you. There were a couple of other things: not really enough to be evidence, but unluckily he worked it out and got it right.”
“And he came to you because he thought you were a Youth Enforcer?”
“Yup.”
“What made him think that?”
I nearly mentioned what Kareem had noticed about my watching Mo, and caught myself blushing, even though he couldn't see me. “Oh, a bunch of things. I don't hang around with people much, keep myself to myself, that sort of thing.” I didn't elaborate. “I told him not to tell anyone: we're going to need to work out what to do. For now, he believes that he needs to keep quiet and keep this to himself while I 'keep you under surveillance', but I don't know how long we can keep that going.”
We talked about that for a while, until I glanced at my watch. Mum's going to be calling up to get me to come down for supper in a minute! “Floyd – I've got to go. I need to do my homework. I've not started it yet: Mum and I had a big chat. We need to expand what we're doing if we're really going to make a difference. Somebody needs to do some serious damage to the Government, and I think it needs to be us."
"And what have I been saying? For weeks? 'We need to extend what we're doing, really hurt Them.'"
I smiled, ruefully. "Yeah, I know: you were right. Look, I'll talk to you about that tomorrow, maybe, but I've really got to go.”
He agreed, so we rang off and I started off on my homework. Luckily, the only thing I had to get done by the morning was some Maths and to read a few chapters of Animal Farm for English. I'd already done that, as I'd really got into the book when we'd started it at the beginning of term, and had finished it off in under a week. I skimmed the chapters to remind myself what was going on, in case there were questions in class, and started looking at the Maths.
I'd got about half of it done when Mum called me down for supper. She'd made a lovely stir-fry, and we sat down to enjoy it. Mindful of our mobile phones sitting on the side, the conversation started off a bit stilted. After a while, however, we settled down into an easy chat about what we might do over the summer holidays, and had a relaxing meal together. She offered me – silently, in case they were listening – another glass of wine, but I refused it, as I still had some Maths to do.
I helped put the dishes and cutlery in the dishwasher and headed back upstairs. The last few questions didn't take that long, and I pushed my chair back from the desk in my room and switched the machine to standby to save energy. I was tempted to get back to Mo, but I realised that I'd been doing quite a lot of that recently, and wanted to have some more time with Mum. I headed downstairs, through into the kitchen and went over to the kettle to make both of us a cup of tea. Before I could fill it up, Mum, who was sitting on the sofa, reading a book, shook her head. “Shall we sit out in the garden again?” She glanced meaningfully at our phones, both still lying next to each other on the side.
“OK.”
She went to the fridge, and pulled out the bottle from before, which still seemed to have a couple of glasses' worth of wine in it. She handed it to me, and got out a couple of glasses as we headed out into the garden again. It was still light, but it would be getting a little chilly soon, so I grabbed a cardigan on the way out and draped it over my shoulders. Mum put an arm round me and we ambled to the end of the garden, where we sat down again in the same chairs as before.
“Finished your homework?”
“Yes.”
“You seem to spend a lot of time in your room these days.”
“I guess.”
“Not struggling with the work?”
“No.” I realised that I was sounding like a typical defensive teenager, but it was true, and I wasn't going to tell her what I really was doing if I could help it.
“I've heard you chatting from time to time.”
“Sometimes.”
“Friends?”
“One in particular.”
“The not boyfriend? Mo?”
“Yes,” I confirmed, “usually.”
“Well, that's good.” I thought she was going to pry deeper, and I was steeling myself to say something that would satisfy her curiosity without exactly lying, but the answer seemed to be enough for her, and she leaned back in the chair, holding out one of the glasses to me. I took it, and she held out hers, to be filled. I obliged, and filled mine, too.
We sat in silence for a minute or two until Mum seemed ready to speak. “We never really talked about the Internment Camps, did we?”
“No.” I paused. “First you had to be away, and then I wasn't sure you wanted to talk about it, so I left it.”
"I'm sorry: we should have done. But you're right - I didn't really want to discuss it. But maybe I should have." She sighed. "As soon as they announced them, they cancelled all police leave and put everybody on double shifts. That's why I was away for the best part of a week. They had us rounding up loads of children from anybody the Government labelled 'troublemakers'. Which meant anybody who disagreed with them, or anybody doing anything they didn't approve of. Or anybody who'd been reported to the Enforcers for pretty much anything. I wasn't on one of the teams taking kids away from their families - I think our bosses tried to keep officers with kids off those duties - but I did have to look after some of them in
the station."
She took a sip of wine. She wasn't looking at me, and I got the feeling that this was so difficult for her that she was worried that if she did, she wouldn't be able to continue.
"That was bad enough, but then I was assigned to a team which took them to one of the Internment Camps. I'm not sure how many there are around the country, and they keep their locations pretty secret. This one was nearly empty the first time I was there, but over the past few weeks, I've been making more trips, and more and more children have been turning up. At the one I’ve been to, they have National Service Volunteers," she huffed at the irony of the word, "building an extension to house more and more children, but there must be hundreds there already."
"Who looks after them?" I asked.
"We're not encouraged to ask questions, but there seem to be lots of National Service Volunteers doing cooking and other duties. But the guards are all Enforcers - not police. And there are towers. Guard towers at the corners of the camps with Enforcers in. There are even rumours they have guns."
Chapter 24 – Us Floyd?
Guns? In a Child Internment Camp? That makes no sense. "To protect the children?" I asked, confused. "Who from?"
She looked up at me then. "Lena. Really?"
"What?" I asked in confusion.
"It's not to stop people from getting into the camps."
"Then wha..." the words died in my mouth.
Mum nodded as she saw the look of horror and realisation spreading across my face. "It's to stop anybody thinking about getting out of the camps."
"You think they'd shoot children?"
Mum shrugged. "It's just a rumour, and frankly I don't think so. And anyway, it's probably just for show: to scare people. But honestly? I wouldn't put it past them. Lena: you know I hate what the Government is doing. You know I don't agree with Them. Lots of us in the police - lots of us across the country – feel the same way. But I can't risk it. I can't risk Their taking you away to a camp. I can't lose you."
I could see her trying to control her tears, so I put my wine down and held out my hand. She grasped it, and she gripped it tightly, but my mind wasn't there, because I'd realised what we had to do to move Floyd to the next level and really hurt the Government: I needed to get inside an Internment Camp.
Let me stop there for a moment and explain. You might think that given what Mum had been saying about the Child Internment Camps would have led me to the obvious conclusion: that I should do anything I possibly, possibly could to stay out of them. After all, if I wanted to grow Floyd into an organisation - a movement - I needed to be on the outside, not stuck there. But I realised that to understand what was really going on, and to get in touch with any existing opposition groups, there was only one way to do it. The only place to make links with existing groups - and there had to be some, even if they weren't active enough or high profile enough to have attracted much notice in the media - was in one of the Camps. I could grow Floyd, but I'd need to get into a Camp to do it.
I let go of her hand and leant back in the seat. "Does anyone ever get out of the camps, Mum?"
"Escapes? I doubt it. Not with the guns."
"People escaped from prisoner of war camps in the Second World War."
"They were adults. Soldiers, sailors, air crew: trained military. And many didn't, and got captured, or shot. Who'd risk that? But a few children do get released: that's about the only job I can bear doing around the Camps. From time to time I get to return a child or two to their parents. The children are always scared it's a trick, then excited to be going back. When we arrive, the parents are just scared - that the children will be taken away I again, I think. And scared of us, because they associate the police with the Government. I suppose the Government needs to give people some hope that they'll get their children back. Maybe they realise that some people are put there who shouldn't be, or maybe parents agree to keep quiet, or stop whatever they were doing that upset the Government so much."
So, I thought, there are ways out. You need to be careful, and lucky, and preferably innocent, but you can get out. I could get out. I looked at Mum, who had sat back in her chair and was finishing the last of her wine. If I go into a Camp, it'll nearly kill her. What would she do? At that point, she happened to look over at me, and smiled. It all became clear: I know I can rely on her. She'll do everything in her power, fight with every breath she has to get me out.
It was an enormous revelation: suddenly I felt a sense of absolute certainty which made my future path feel so astonishingly obvious. But I knew that following that path would mean exposing Mum – the person I loved most in the world – to enormous pain and suffering over me. I couldn't warn her, couldn't tell her what I had planned, not even breath a word that might give her a hint, but I could trust her with my life. I picked up my glass and stood up out of my seat. "I should be getting to bed, Mum. I've got a busy day tomorrow."
"I'll stay here for a minute, if you don't mind."
"OK. Good night." I leaned over and gave her a kiss. "Love you." And I walked back inside, plotting, scheming and worrying. And the worrying wasn't not for me, but for her.
The next day was actually very quiet, to my surprise. I had a bunch of dull lessons, a couple of good ones, and we did volleyball - which I actually enjoy almost as much as badminton – for P.E.. I stayed away from Mo, knowing that we had lots to talk about, but that we needed to be more careful about contact given what Kareem had told me the day before. Kareem, it turned out, stayed away from me as well – to the extent of actively turning away and heading down a different corridor when I happened turn a corner towards him near the library. This didn't seem to bode particularly well, but he also seemed to be going out of his way to avoid being anywhere Mo, which at least suggested that he'd taken on board what I'd said to him about "not alerting Mo or any of the organisation's members". I tried to spend some time thinking about how to get Mo safe, and defuse the whole "Kareem-thinks-I'm-a-Y.T." situation, but I was still buzzing with the realisation that I needed to get into a Child Internment Camp to think about that in too much detail.
In fact, the more I thought about getting into a Camp, the more I realised that that was the easy bit. I could think of lots of ways to get into a Camp, but all of them revolved around doing something that, in the Government's eyes, made me deserve to be there. In other words, doing something that would actually make me guilty of something. Or worse, get Mum into trouble. None of those plans, as far as I could tell, would let me get back out of a Camp any time soon - or possibly ever. I needed a way to get into a Camp, spend some time there, and then get back out again, and I just couldn't see a way of doing this without getting sent to a Camp, but actually being innocent, which seemed next to impossible.
After school, I got back home to discover a message from Mum saying that she'd been put on night shifts again, and had already left. I did my homework on the kitchen table, eating some stew that Mum had left for me, and then headed upstairs to my bedroom. It was a little earlier than Mo and I would normally call each other, so I listened to a little music to try to help me think, but it had no effect, so in the end I sat on my bed and reached down the side of it to retrieve the phone.
I picked up the receiver and dialled Mo. There was no answer, so after a few rings, I put it down, and went downstairs to put the washing on. By the time I got back up, the light on the receiver was flashing, and I picked it up.
“How's things?” asked Mo. Sometimes we started like this: just having a relaxing chat. I really looked forward to hearing his voice and enjoying a bit of normality outside school.
“Pretty good. You?”
“Mm-hmm. What was it that you talked to your Mum about yesterday, then?”
“Oh yeah: that. Actually, we had a couple of chats in the end. Some of it was, well – mother-daughter type stuff – but the first chat we had was about the Government.”
“That's not like her.”