Dark Lullaby by Polly Ho-Yen (the gingerbread man read aloud TXT) 📗

and I was reminded of the woman that I first met at the building meeting all those months before. ‘I’m sure they are going to take her.’

‘You don’t know that. You’re doing so well. You all are.’ But Marie crumpled as though a great weight was bearing down on her. ‘We’re only one away from extraction, Kit,’ Marie said. ‘Just one IPS.’ Marie and Leo had received several already. They’d come in a flurry, starting on the day I’d seen Marie crying in the park. ‘But then – oh God, I can’t believe I’m telling you this – sometimes I think that it would be better for her if she was extracted. They would take better care of her in the compounds. I’ve heard, I’ve heard…’

Marie looked around the room as though she were checking that we were alone, and then down to her daughter.

‘I’ve heard that some families will try to get an IPS on purpose. When they know that they have made a mistake. When they realise that they can’t cope – they can’t handle being parents. They know that the compounds would be a better place for them.’

‘On purpose?’

‘For the good of their child. Before the child gets hurt. To give them a better life,’ Marie stared hard at Tia. ‘It makes sense, doesn’t it? It’s actually a selfless act.’

Although I’d seen the compounds in countless films on the Spheres, I realised that I’d never actually met anyone who’d grown up in one. I wondered if in fact I had but that they chose to keep that part of themselves hidden. Maybe they weren’t the best places for extracted children despite everything we’d been told. I wondered about asking Marie what she knew about them but I could see that there was something more she wanted to tell me.

‘Sometimes I have a thought, like a whisper in my ear – what would happen if I dropped her right now? What would happen if I just stopped feeding her, if I just let her scream? I don’t actually do it, but I think it, Kit, I think it. That’s not right, is it? And when I think about that I know that I deserve the IPSs. We got them because we aren’t good enough. We shouldn’t have become parents.’

‘I don’t believe that,’ I said. ‘I see the way you are with her. You love her, she loves you. No one can love her like you and Leo do. Those thoughts that you are having – they are something else. They are depression or tiredness or working so hard to be as good as you can be. And you haven’t acted on them, have you? That’s the important part.’

Marie started to speak but was interrupted by a sudden knock on the door.

It was so loud and so sudden that when it stopped, I wondered if we had imagined it.

But then it came again, a fierce drumming that shook the door.

‘Are you expecting—?’ I started to ask.

But Marie clenched my arm tightly in alarm. ‘It’s them,’ she said. ‘They’ve come to take her.’

The knock came again.

‘What do I do? I didn’t mean what I said. I don’t want them to take her, I don’t—’ Her voice was twisting and shrill.

‘Of course – I know that.’

‘What do I do, Kit? What do I do?’ Her grip on my arm tightened; I didn’t realise she had such strength.

A hundred scenarios played through my head. The person knocking at the door was actually just Elizabeth from the building. Or it was the enforcers but we barricaded the door and so Marie and Tia managed to escape by going through the window and miraculously not injuring themselves in the fall. Or the knocking would stop and we would continue sipping our tea while Tia giggled to herself on her playmat, safe in our watch.

But none of these came to pass.

NOW

My eyes flicker closed for a moment longer than a blink: I picture a playmat, I hear the sound of a light giggle.

I wrench my head upwards. The movement wakes me.

I see the road, hard and unforgiving ahead of me and I try to sit up straighter, open my eyes wider. I try not to think of the hours that I have already driven this morning and the hours that I still need to drive.

The man we met said that it would be possible. You could avoid being caught if you stayed away from main roads, if you moved evasively across the county from quarter to quarter. It could be done. There would not be a wide alert out for us on the Spheres because they didn’t want it to be news that there was a family on the run from OSIP. Of course there was always the risk that they would catch up to us but we were prepared, we learnt the routes, we changed vehicles, we didn’t leave a trail. We had been told which municipalities had low resources and so there was less chance of spot checks.

I can’t let all that preparation be wasted because I fall asleep at the wheel.

I must stay awake. Or I must rest.

There’s a turn-off approaching and I take it. I drive down unused roads, weeds sprouting through the tarmac. There are empty car parks and silent buildings that, for just that moment, are beautiful and inviting, lit up by bleached golden sunshine. It’s an old shopping centre, the faded signs are still in place although they appear fragile, as though they might fall if anyone disturbed them. It’s late morning now, a Saturday, and I wonder for a moment what this place would have been like before, packed with cars and people and bustle.

I swing into one of the spaces and park, ignoring the signs that tell me I can’t.

There’s a way to make my seat go down so it becomes almost level but I can’t find the lever. I push the thought from my mind that Thomas would be able to do