Stealing Time by Rebecca Bowyer (bearly read books .TXT) 📗

mystified. I watched him touch her asthough confused. She no longer leaked joy that he could soak up.Her reserve of happiness was being held tight inside herself by aKir-shaped plug. Kir fed off her and grew, and her joy fed off himand grew alongside him.

For a while after he was born, my Varyafloated in joy. That child had unlimited bottles of happiness torain over anyone in his presence.

And then, a few short years later, thediagnosis came that changed everything. I watched the hole openagain. I tried to plug it for her, with hope and possibilities ofcures.

But then, the news that there would be nohope. No cure for our Kir, no plug for my Varya. The day we heardthe words ‘rare form of aggressive childhood cancer’ and ‘noresearch funding’ I watched the joy flow out faster.

A few weeks later came the words ‘palliativecare’ and I realised all the joy had gone. My Varya was empty,there was nothing left to plug.

Chapter twenty-seven

Marisa

The morning light retained a chilled, watery qualityto it as Marisa pulled her jacket tightly around her and buttonedit at the front. She wore a very different outfit to the one she’dparaded at the mansion soirée the previous afternoon. Worn boots,faded jeans, and an old jacket were her choices of disguise today.Rest Time Chips had done nothing to change the desperationexperienced by women with children escaping from violent partners.If anything, the pressure to work longer hours to extend their lifefrom forty to sixty-five had pushed them right to the edge.

It was a noble idea, incentivising work likethat. But, unfortunately, the definition of ‘work’ didn’t includeraising the next generation of children. Well, unless thosechildren weren’t your own. Day-care centres still operated withtwelve children to a room. Job prospects had boomed for childcareattendants, with mothers pushed into the workforce in droves andneeding somewhere to leave their offspring. Having a childautomatically added fifteen years to your life span, taking it upto fifty-five. This ensured children were cared for by theirparents until they could look after themselves. But for a parentwho wanted more than that, a mother who wanted as much time aspossible with her child, to see them grow and perhaps have theirown children? Those parents had to join the ranks ofsixty-hour-a-week workers to earn enough credits for the right tolive to the maximum age allowed of sixty-five. It was a cruelchoice to have to make. Less time with your young children at thestart of their lives, more time with your adult children – andmaybe even your grandchildren - towards the end of your ownlife.

Then, of course, there was the problem ofsimply affording to feed, house, and care for the children. Wageswere kept low by the number of low-skilled workers competing for afinite number of menial jobs. Automation had taken over most of themid-wage jobs. That meant that most of the poor worked for longhours performing meaningless tasks for a pittance in pay.

Marisa shook herself slightly. Caring forher own child wasn’t a problem she had to face, nor was poverty.Not anymore, not since Varya and her mad schemes came into herlife. She looked up at the nondescript apartment block in front ofher. It differed from the apartment blocks either side only by theextra locks on the door and the bars on the windows. And even then,it was only one or two extra locks compared to the apartment blockto the left, and the bars extended to one extra storey compared tothe apartment block on the right.

She raised her hand to press the bell andannounced herself and her intention when Tina’s disembodied voicesounded over the intercom.

Tina was a thin woman in her sixties with agrim face but sparkling eyes. She let Marisa in, then disappearedthrough an internal door and reappeared behind a receptiondesk.

“Marisa.”

“Tina.”

“What do you have for us today?”

Marisa pulled her screen out of her pocket,tapped at it, and held it up so Tina could see. In exchange for hersuccess with the soirée set, Marisa had requested five per cent ofthe profits be diverted to support this women’s shelter. It was asmall gesture but one that helped Marisa keep her focus. Herexperience of rare childhood diseases was very different toVarya’s. Her son died in a tiny room with bare cupboards and barson the windows, not dissimilar to the ones laid out above her headnow. There was no expensive medicine sent home with him, they hadto make do with paracetamol. It provided little comfort in the faceof the wracking coughs which shook his tiny frame.

This wasn’t a story Marisa had chosen toshare with Varya. In fact, she’d shared no story at all, just arequest to do this one thing, plus one-hundred four-hour time tabsto distribute each month to the women who lived here with theirchildren. Marisa hadn’t expected her employer to understand and wasglad she’d asked for no explanation.

“Every month?” she’d asked.

Marisa had nodded. “Yes, every month. To beavailable on the first of the month and to be distributed when Iget around to it.”

“Okay.’’ And they’d moved on to the nextorder. The time tabs had been ready on the first of every monthsince then, without fail. Varya never mentioned them, just handedthem over with the latest order. She never asked where they went.Marisa was never entirely sure whether it was because she was beingdiscreet, or because she simply didn’t care.

Maybe that wasn’t fair. We all had a limitedsupply of care factor, Marisa knew. Maybe Varya’s quota was fullyallocated to the Kir Problem. She could forgive that. If she’d hada chance to save her son, she would have thrown her own care factorquota—plus anyone else’s that she could beg, borrow or steal—at hisproblem. Marisa’s son’s problem had been simple, though. Not a rareor complicated disease. Just asthma. Exacerbated by poor health,poor food, and a cold apartment when the heat turned off becausethe money ran out. Rationed medicine because that, too, ran outwhen the money did, which it seemed to do all too often. The nightof his final asthma attack, she’d called the ambulance when hislips turned blue. By the time they came his breath