I am Not A Number

by Lisa Heathfield

  ‘Someone put on the light,’ a woman shouts.

  ‘Are you both here?’ Mum asks and I feel her sitting beside us, her hands reaching for Lilli and me.

  The light turns on. Mum’s arm is tight around my shoulder as I look for Luke. He’s there, he’s safe, his dad is next to him.

  ‘Ruby?’ I hear Destiny call from across the room.

  ‘I’m here. We’re fine.’

  Fine?

  There’s distress and confusion on everyone’s face. No one stands up. We all just sit and look around. Some children are still sleeping.

  Darren is staring into the room. ‘The man and his wife have gone,’ he says. ‘The one who was talking about escaping. And their baby.’

  I never knew that fear was something you could touch. But it’s walked into this room and it’s here in front of us all.

  An older man stands up, his hands gentle in the air.

  ‘Let’s not panic,’ he says.

  ‘Not panic?’ It’s one of the men I saw led from his house on the night we were all taken. ‘Did you not hear what we just did?’

  ‘Yes. But we don’t know for sure what’s happening.’

  ‘They could have fired shots to scare them,’ someone suggests.

  ‘Who else is missing?’

  There are voices everywhere.

  ‘Quiet,’ a woman says, fierce enough to stop the words. ‘Do you want the guards coming in here now?’

  The silence is instant, but it is not clean. It’s thick and muddy and sits heavy in my ears.

  Darren looks up at Mum. ‘There are at least seven people missing,’ he whispers.

  ‘And definitely the baby?’

  ‘Yes. The baby has gone.’

  ‘They won’t have hurt it,’ I say. They must have only fired the shots in warning. In a moment, the door will open and the missing people will come back in. And when the baby cries and we can’t sleep, no one will care.

  I watch the door. I make it open in my mind.

  Some people lie back down again.

  I wait for the door to open.

  ‘Where are they?’ I whisper to Mum. But she doesn’t answer.

  I don’t know if anyone manages to sleep. Mum stays on the bed with Lilli and I. There’s not enough room to move when we lie down, but I don’t care. I just want to see those people again and the mother feeding her baby.

  Darren stays lying on the floor, but he reaches up to hold Mum’s hand, his arm resting against the shallow mattress. The light stays on and I’m glad. I don’t want to know what the darkness will bring.

  My heart won’t settle. It’s still beating hard enough to remind me that all of this is real.

  It’s a long time before morning comes. Enough time for me to wonder if anyone from other rooms disappeared in the night and if Conor was among them. Because I know that he’s capable of doing anything to save his mum. I try to imagine him asleep instead. I move the gunshots as far away from him as I can.

  People are already walking around when the door shoves open. The guard’s face has no expression.

  ‘You’re to get up,’ she says. Her voice is louder than it needs to be.

  A man near her stands. The woman next to him tries to pull him back down, but he pushes her away.

  ‘Some people have gone missing,’ he says. ‘Among them, a mother and child.’

  ‘You have five minutes before you line up in the corridor,’ the guard says.

  ‘You didn’t hear me?’ the man continues. ‘Last night there were more people in this room and now they’ve gone.’

  The guard steps over two people to get to him. She reaches up her hand and I think she’s going to hit him, but instead she wipes imaginary dust from both his shoulders. He stays still, accepting it, but I can feel his disgust from here.

  ‘You –’ the guard says, ‘– won’t speak to me again unless you’re spoken to. Do you understand?’

  ‘No,’ he says calmly. ‘I don’t actually.’

  ‘Yes –’ the woman next to him gets to her feet – ‘he understands, completely.’

  Another guard appears in the doorway. The one with the riding whip that’s now tucked into his boot.

  ‘From now on,’ he shouts. ‘You all do exactly what we say, when we say it. Our society can no longer function with disobedience. Those who don’t understand –’ he glares at all of us – ‘will be punished.’

  ‘Three minutes,’ the female guard says, stepping back towards the door. She leaves the room but both guards are still watching us. From here, I can see the hand of one, their boots and the ends of their guns.

  Darren fixes the red material on my arm, tying it carefully so that my number is clear. His face shows his devastation and I want to piece him back together bit by bit until he’s the Darren I know. Luke comes to stand next to me, but without a word Mum separates us and he has to walk behind me. I don’t have time to tell him how frightened I am for Conor if he tried to escape.

  The sickly corridor light eats into my skin. I match my strides to the man in front to try to calm my breathing as we go out into the bright daylight. It doesn’t feel right that the sky is so blue. There’s no sign of the rain, not even a cloud. But there’s no sign either of the people who’ve disappeared.

  We’re lined up as before. There are so many of us, stretching like a misshapen snake along the tarmac, reaching past the length of the other building. More people have definitely arrived, I’m sure of it. Among the mass of them, Conor has to be there.

  We’re told to chant their words and so we do.

  Our great country. Unity for all. Over and over until they’re simply sounds that escape my lips.

  Tiredness is gripping tight to my bones. It doesn’t let my arms, my legs, my skull escape. It drags the sound of those gunshots with it. Could the Trads have shot them? Are they capable of killing people?

  Our great country. Unity for all.

  I find my eyes searching the ground for blood. Were they here? Were they killed on this spot? Has any evidence been washed away? I’m sure the gunshots sounded in the building, but did the people still manage to run, did they make it to the outside? I need to think of something else, but the mother is here, running, her baby in her arms. Running to the fence as her back explodes into a crimson flower. The petals scatter. They filter into my brain and make me feel sick.

  ‘Take a deep breath,’ Luke whispers from beside me. He squeezes my hand quickly enough for no one to see.

  I try to take the rumours and twist them back on themselves. That the guns were shot in warning and maybe the missing people are being held somewhere as a punishment before they’re returned to us. But deep inside me, in a place that I know is absolutely true, I’m sure that death has walked into the camp.

  It’s not the general who starts roll call, but the guard with the whip. The line moves forwards, but those who are signed in aren’t led to the dining room. They’re being sent back to the building we sleep in.

  ‘Maybe breakfast isn’t ready yet,’ I hear someone whisper. Hunger is making every part of my body ache and the thought of not eating soon nearly takes my legs from under me.

  And then I see him. Conor. He’s further ahead of me with his mum, his arm around her, holding her up. I feel guilty at the relief I feel when so many people have still disappeared. But those gunshots didn’t take him and seeing him there, walking forward, spreads hope into me.

  I get to the head of the line. My tongue is dry against the roof of my mouth, sticking to the number they force me to say, before a guard pulls me to the side.

  ‘You come with me to the general,’ he says. This time, I’m not worried, but the memory of those gunshots stops me from asking for food first.

  As I walk with the guard, I wonder if there’s any way that I could overpower him and take him by surprise, so that I could steal his uniform. But I know I wouldn’t stand a chance. Beyond the window in the corridor I can see the blackthorn bush that Conor and I stood near when we sneaked
out of the kitchen. We could dig our way to freedom. I don’t laugh at the thought now. All I think is maybe. Maybe we’ll need to.

  With the bucket and cleaning things in my hands I wait outside the general’s office. Now I’m here, my nerves are spiralling. I know I need to get answers from him, but I’m scared about how I’ll ask.

  ‘Enter,’ the voice calls. The guard pushes me inside, before he closes the door behind me.

  The general is sitting at his desk, the same as before. He looks up and I want to believe that his smile is genuine.

  ‘You came back,’ he says.

  ‘I had no choice.’ I didn’t mean to reply like this. Hunger is tangling my sense. His face changes a little. It stops me telling him that I haven’t had breakfast and that my cleaning will be even more rubbish if I don’t get food and water.

  ‘Maybe you could dust today?’ he suggests. ‘I’ve heard that it’s an invisible killer.’

  Like you?

  But I have to think clearly. Maybe he can admit what’s been done to those people. Perhaps he can tell me that they’re somehow still alive.

  ‘I’ll get started, then.’

  ‘Good,’ he says.

  I stay on this side of the room and begin with the paintings. There are two of them together and they’re almost identical, each with a horse staring out, but there’s no background so the horses look like they’re floating. I wonder if he chose them. My hand still shakes slightly as I rub gently on the front of one. There’s no glass on it, so I can feel the bumps of paint through the cloth.

  ‘We’ve got friends who won’t be happy that we’ve gone,’ I risk saying. ‘They’ll want to know where we are.’

  ‘People know that you’re on a rehabilitation programme.’

  ‘But we’re not addicts,’ I say.

  ‘There’s a fine line between ingesting a harmful substance into your body and ingesting harmful views into your mind.’

  I pause to show that I’m giving time for his words to settle. ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that.’

  ‘Sometimes all it needs is a bit of exposure to the correct way of thinking. Re-education.’

  ‘If you’d come into our school, I think you would have been able to convince a lot of us,’ I say, as I wipe the duster along the top of the picture frame.

  ‘You included?’

  ‘Maybe. We never had a really good speaker visit from the Traditionals. It would have helped us see both sides.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s something I should think about doing,’ he says.

  ‘You’d be good at it.’ I turn round, wanting him to see his daughter in me and needing to feel safe in the palm of her memory. ‘I find it interesting to talk to you.’

  ‘Good.’ I can almost see the smoke of his pride as I reel him in.

  ‘How old was Zoe?’ I glance at his computer, but the screen is turned away from me.

  ‘Fourteen.’

  Younger than me.

  I move to the next painting. Up close I can see that it’s not so similar to the other. The horse’s head is straighter, its eyes looking further into the distance, far beyond this room, away beyond the horror of last night’s gunshots.

  ‘Did she like to ride?

  Both the general’s elbows are on the desk, his fingers forming a steeple. ‘To ride?’ he asks. ‘No. Zoe was a dancer.’ There are two frames on his desk facing him. Maybe one of them holds her picture. ‘She had dreams of dancing at the Royal Opera House.’

  ‘Do you have other children?’ I ask.

  ‘A son. Older.’ He looks up suddenly remembering I’m here. ‘You must clean now.’

  Our conversation is whipped fast from under me. It makes me lose my balance enough for me to hold on to the wall.

  Hunger has found its way into my mind again and now it sits here, taunting me. It gnaws into the silence. I have to go to the filing cabinet, but I can only think of food. I don’t move quickly. I know I’m useless, but the general doesn’t shout at me. How strange it is to feel safer in here. Maybe it’s because there are no guns on show.

  I move the cloth over the handle of the cabinet and open the drawer to supposedly clean inside. There are papers stacked close together and I run the cloth over them, trying to separate them to read any of the lines.

  ‘You can close that,’ the general says. He’s noticed before I have a chance and as I push in the drawer I feel a drop of hope fall through my fingers. ‘You can clean behind it. I doubt anyone has moved it for years.’

  I try to pull it, but it’s too heavy. So I stand next to it, push it to the side and forwards, enough to fit in a foot behind it. He doesn’t help. Even though I’m so tired that it makes my arm shake, he doesn’t come to help me.

  Behind the cabinet, there’s thick dust, but I just want to curl up in the shadow darkness where no one can see me. I’ll sleep. Then I’ll wake up as his daughter and I’ll be free.

  Zoe. The thought of her pulls me back to where I am. I have to use her. I have to get the general to trust me. I drag the cloth along the floor, until dirt sticks fast to it.

  ‘Please can I rinse this?’ I ask.

  ‘Of course.’ And he points to the sink, even though I already know where it is.

  I walk across the room and when I twist on the tap I want to drink the precious water but instead I let it spill through the material and disappear.

  ‘Did you teach Zoe about the Traditional beliefs?’ I ask.

  ‘The Traditional themselves didn’t exist then,’ he says. ‘But yes, I used to talk to her about politics. I felt very let down by the government of the time and I used to tell her that.’

  ‘Did she agree?’

  ‘She did. We had interesting conversations.’

  ‘So you think she would have been a Traditional?’

  ‘Absolutely.’ He says it with such certainty.

  I walk back to the filing cabinet. My knees hurt as I kneel on the floor, but at least from here he can’t see my face as I clean. He can hear me though.

  ‘My younger sister chose the Traditional band in school.’

  ‘She did?’ The general’s voice definitely perks up and I feel sick that I’ve brought Lilli into this room. But I need him to know, because maybe her choice will save her. ‘Why do you think she did that?’

  Already the cloth is filthy again and I have to go back to the sink. I feel more exposed out in the open of his room.

  ‘She’s had a few problems back home with online stuff. Nothing major, but a bit of bullying and things.’ I’m not lying now. Lilli and her group were targeted a bit when they started secondary. ‘She likes the idea of you monitoring the internet more. She thinks her friends will be happier.’

  ‘I understand her suffering. I had peers at school who didn’t treat me well at all. Children can be very cruel. Even in here I’ve heard reports that some of them are being difficult.’

  ‘It’s not easy for them being cooped up,’ I remind him.

  ‘Still,’ he says. ‘They should be easier to control.’ When he looks at me, I can feel his eyes picking into my mind. ‘You must have heard John Andrews speak of it? How the behaviour of young children must be monitored and adjusted accordingly. They are our future, after all.’

  This time I don’t hide behind the filing cabinet. Instead I stand next to it and force myself to keep eye contact with him. ‘Of course I don’t want bullying and I like your idea of a happier society. But it worries me how much it will be controlled.’

  ‘We don’t see it as control,’ the general says. ‘It’s more regulated.’

  ‘Is that why you’re regulating us so much here?’

  ‘That’s exactly why. Oak trees aren’t grown in a day. We have to try everything we can because we have a real chance to replant the seeds, as it were, in a better soil.’

  ‘So you’re sort of like experimenting on us?’ I feel myself stepping on to unsafe ground, but I know I have to go there. ‘You want to literally change our minds? The way we think?’
/>
  ‘That’d be the ideal,’ the general says. ‘Yes.’

  ‘How would that work, though? Won’t you have to physically do something to our brains?’ I’m struggling to keep my face neutral as I think of the twins who’ve been taken, but he’s looking at me so intensely I’m sure he can see into my thoughts.

  ‘We have a chance to cleanse our country of crime, of anti-social behaviour. We can make our nation the cleanest, most pure society in the world. We will create a place where everyone feels safe on our streets, loved and respected in their homes.’ He hasn’t answered my question and he sounds as if he’s reading a manifesto leaflet. There is no emotion, just soulless words.

  ‘You want to make a country that would have been good for Zoe,’ I suggest.

  ‘Exactly. It’s part of what drives me now, because this is still her society.’

  ‘You’re doing what’s best for her.’

  ‘Yes,’ he nods.

  And while he’s vulnerable, I take my chance. ‘Did they die?’ I ask.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he looks confused, still lost in his daughter’s world.

  ‘Seven people went missing from our bunk room last night,’ I say. ‘We heard gunshots and they haven’t come back.’

  His face shuts down. ‘They went missing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘By that, I think you mean that they decided to leave the room they were told to stay in, with intentions to leave the compound without permission.’

  ‘Were the gunshots only to scare them?’ I ask, my blood beating fast.

  ‘Tell me,’ the general says. His fingers once again form a steeple. His nails are too long and I have to swallow back the taste of bile. ‘What would you expect us to do? If we’re trying to instil the fundamental basics of obedience, yet someone deliberately disobeys?’

  My mind has so many answers, yet my sentences get messed together because I know what he’s admitting. I know that those seven people, that baby, no longer exist.

  ‘Sometimes we all have to do things we don’t like,’ he says. ‘For the greater good.’

  ‘But how can one human destroy another? Isn’t that the one thing that stops us being human?’

  ‘What exactly are you saying?’ The muscle in his jaw ticks. I feel him slipping through my fingers.