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

‘Have you got any fresh mint? I’m off caffeine now.’

‘Of course. Erm, no, but I have some peppermint teabags somewhere.’

I rummaged in the cupboard and then swore loudly when I spilled a bag of open rice on to the floor.

‘Let me,’ Evie said. ‘I’m the one who is making you turn everything upside down.’ She went to bend down but gave a small gasp as she did and her hand flew to her stomach once more.

‘Are you sure you’re all right? Maybe you should sit down.’

‘It’s fine,’ Evie said, but she spoke through gritted teeth. ‘The doctor said I should expect this. If it gets worse, I’ll go back. Let me help.’

‘No, I’ll do it. It’s my mess.’

Evie didn’t answer and instead reached out a hand towards me. It was cool, soft and perfumed in mine and we stood for a few moments like that, holding hands, swinging them gently, just as we had done as children together.

‘What’s going on?’ Evie said.

My eyes filled with tears. I had decided as soon as I heard her elated message telling me that she had started taking the induction drugs that I was not going to tell them what had happened to Leo, Marie and Tia.

I shook my head.

‘Come on, Kit. You have to tell me. I’m getting worried now.’

‘You don’t need to, it’s nothing, nothing’s wrong with me,’ I started to say but I couldn’t finish the sentence.

‘Oh Kit, what is it?’ Evie cried as she wrapped me up in such a close hug that for just a moment we were one being, united again, made whole finally. I didn’t want to let her go.

‘Please tell me what’s making you so upset.’

I gave her the briefest outline of what had gone on but Evie pushed me until I told her every gory detail: the enforcers’ impersonal brutality, Marie’s pain and desperation.

‘I didn’t want to tell you, what with all you’re going through. And it won’t be like this for you, I know it won’t,’ I said fiercely.

‘Kit,’ Evie said slowly. ‘It might be.’

The act of saying those words seemed to exhaust her.

‘It might happen to us. We know that it’s a possibility. We always have. Everyone does. You wish, you work hard and do everything you possibly can to make it not so, but there’s always a chance. In the world we are in,’ she finished.

‘I just didn’t want you to start off hearing this, though.’

‘Honestly, Kit, if we hadn’t heard this from you, it would have been someone else.’

‘But no one talks about it, do they? I mean the only reason that we are talking about it is because we are alone and we are sisters and because you bullied it out of me.’ Evie laughed then but I could see there were tears in her eyes too.

‘Listen, extractions happen. That’s it. There’s nothing that you or I can do to change that. I’m just so sorry for your friends.’

‘Do you… have you ever heard about children coming back after an extraction?’ I asked. I looked up expectantly, although I already knew the answer.

‘Returning to their parents? I… well… There’s been some stuff on the Spheres about it. But the compounds do give the children the highest standard of living—’

She hugged me again so she did not have to say the word.

For ever. After an extraction, children don’t come back.

‘Ugh. I wish I could have a drink,’ she said.

‘I have some whisky.’

‘It’s no drinking for me for quite a while now.’

‘It’ll be worth it,’ I said, with a faint smile.

‘Yes, it will be. Whatever happens. We’ll be ready for it, because of you and Dad and Seb’s family. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Family.’

I bowed my head in agreement. Then the moment was over and we cleared up the spilt rice and drank the tea that Evie had come for in the first place.

For months and months afterwards, I would still find an odd grain of rice in some crevice of my kitchen. In the end, I stopped picking them up.

NOW

I walk past two women who are hunkered around the navy dome of a pram. Their bodies stiffen as I pass them, and with every wail of their baby, they lean in a little closer to it.

I look away from them and gaze across the parked cars. I have finally arrived.

It’s just as it was described – a large grey block of a building that looms in front of me – and that fact both comforts and disturbs me. It’s real; I am close, now.

Inside, it’s a maze. The flats are numbered and each zone is given a separate letter but the signs all give different information to each other. It’s either that or I’m reading them wrong. I walk down long corridors, tube-like and narrow, right to their end, until I realise I’ve gone in the wrong direction.

I swear to myself and turn down another corridor, breaking into a run.

918.

918.

Thomas and I promised each other that we would never come here. That was what we first agreed to, a month ago. Time has stretched since then and in those days a whole new lifetime has somehow fitted into those few months. The adjustment to Mimi’s absence has leaked into my whole body, it has changed the way I see, how I feel. The pain has caused me to stoop, the stress has made my skin flaky and red as though it is angered.

I keep walking, peering over my shoulder each time I hear a sound. I am sure that Thomas will come here too once he’s accepted that I have gone. He will know that this is where I’ll come. That was why I had to race, why I was reluctant to sleep, or break at all. If he’d found me before I got here, he would have tried to stop me.

He will stop me not because he doesn’t love me, and not because he loves her any