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

lanes that are patchy with potholes, narrow from overgrown shrubbery. Not many people use them any more. I haven’t driven down roads like this before. I was almost surprised when we were told that using them would be a way to escape OSIP. We always knew that there was a risk that we could still be caught, but it’s worked for us so far and right now it takes me just a little further.

The charge gauge edges lower as I drive on. I calculate that I will have enough to get me there and a little further still before I’ll need to recharge. I have the money in my pocket if I need it. I’m taking another risk but it makes me calmer to run over the logistics.

918. NNW 1HW.

It feels as though it is far longer than hours since I stole away from Thomas – that could have happened a month ago or longer. Unbelievably it is the same day. Apart from stopping to check the Spheres, the quick nap, all I have done is drive. I’ve urged myself forwards, propelled myself in a sharp, climbing diagonal line across the country.

918. NNW 1HW.

It is settling into the afternoon when I see the sign for a city I have never been to. The turn-off is approaching and my breath catches as I read it.

It’s a gasp, not of surprise, but like I am caught out by a pain that stabs me, that leaves a deep wound.

THEN

The next day, I woke with a hollow, stiff pain in my stomach that made me walk crouched over, my back arched.

I returned to Marie and Leo’s flat as soon as I could but I didn’t bring anything with me, nothing that could suggest that the mood could be brightened, just myself. They didn’t answer the door, though I could hear movements inside. After almost an hour of hoping I would catch them, defeated, I returned to my flat.

There was a pad of writing paper I couldn’t remember buying in a desk drawer and I started to write to them. I told them, as I had that first day, that I would do what I could to help – whatever that was. I hoped, I wrote, but then my words ran into emptiness. I could not offer them hope. There were other things that I could say, things I’d imbibed from the Spheres, about how they could try again. That there was research to show that the extraction of one child could often lead to more successful parenting of another; there was plenty of evidence to encourage repeated inductions. An extraction did not rule out keeping subsequent children.

But I threw the letter away and wrote another that was much briefer: I was thinking of them and if I could help in any way, I told them, they only needed to call. I shoved the letter under their door and waited for a while to see if anyone would pick it up. I left alone.

Then the week after that, it was Elizabeth, the flame-haired neighbour I’d met in the lift, who told me that they had moved on.

‘I heard that she was extracted. And they can’t bear to be in the same place any more. Did you see anything?’

Rather than refute or corroborate, I looked directly at her.

She peered right back at me from beneath her large, sunken lids. I’d not noticed before that her hands never lost a slight tremor or how small she was. Her skin stretched tightly across the small frame of her skeleton. Behind her inquisitive glare, there was a well of something tender, something like sadness.

‘I was there,’ I told her. ‘I was with Marie when they took Tia.’

‘I’d heard that you’d been helping them out.’

I met her stare once more.

‘It was… awful.’

‘It always is.’ Her words hung in the air like the thread of a cobweb, swaying and fragile, almost imperceptible. She must have spoken without thinking because in her next breath she said in a rush, ‘Of course, if the standards are not being met, there’s no better place than the compounds. The facilities they have, the access to education, it’s best for the child. It really is. There’s no getting round it. Every child born these days absolutely has to have the very best start. Where do they say they are located these days?’

I shrugged and let Elizabeth run on. It wasn’t known where the compounds were, although I’d heard a rumour that the Isle of Wight had been especially repurposed.

‘Plenty of green space wherever they are. Just the best of the best. Well, I hope they try again,’ she continued. ‘The next time, it could, it could… stick.’ She shook her head a little as she landed clumsily on the word.

We spent the rest of our lift ride in silence.

I wondered about trying to find out where they had gone. I thought of ways that I could trace them, but as quickly as I did, I dismissed the ideas. What would I say, what could I say, that would make it any better? Maybe it was better to do as they had done, to move on. What good could come from speaking about it any more?

Evie was the one who recognised that something was bothering me. She dropped in to see me after visiting the doctor for a check-up.

‘Are you okay?’ she asked, her eyebrows raised slightly.

She had gained weight since I had seen her last. Her skin was a shade paler and she couldn’t stop a hand from resting on her stomach, which bulged out slightly from the loose trousers I’d never seen her wear before. She had started the induction drugs, and they would have begun to affect her by now, but when I asked her how she was doing, she waved away my concerns and turned the questions instead towards me.

I quickly pulled off the sweater I had worn for the last week, noticing a stain on its front.

‘I’ll make some