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

more or less. I’m going to give you a map. On it are the roads that you need to avoid and the safe houses that you can travel to. I was told you have your own car. You’ll swap vehicles a few times. It’s all marked on the map but I’ll take you through it now so you can get familiar with it. Use the next few days to prepare.’

I nodded although my mind was whirring.

‘Will it really work? Just by avoiding roads and moving around, we won’t get caught?’

‘Nothing’s definite but yes, unless you’re unlucky, it should work. Your route takes you through areas with lower resources so there’s less chance you’ll be found.’

‘OK,’ I said, although I still felt unsure. ‘And it’s got to happen so soon?’

‘If you leave it any longer, it might be too late.’ He bent down towards the vegetable bed and cleared a few weeds by hand. When I looked again, I saw that an artichoke seedling that was sprouting there now had space to grow.

‘What about all the stories on the Spheres about kidnappings in Europe?’ I said in a rush. I had all kinds of questions like this and I had the sense that this man might disappear at any moment and my chance would be gone.

‘It happens but it’s not as bad as they say,’ the bald man said simply.

‘And where will Mimi be taken to on Sunday?’

‘It’s best that you don’t know.’

‘I have to know,’ I said. ‘I don’t think I can go through with this if I don’t.’

He shook his head, but he must have seen something in my face as after a few moments he relented.

‘OK, I’ll tell you a postcode and a number – the number will be the flat where she’ll be kept. Don’t go there, though. I can’t stress that enough. You will endanger not only your daughter but everyone involved in this operation.’

‘I won’t,’ I replied quickly.

He gave me some more details, taking me methodically through the map I held in unsteady hands. When he was finally gone, I had the uncanny feeling that I might have just imagined the whole conversation. When I related it back to Thomas he kept asking questions that I wished I’d thought of.

‘OK then,’ he said when he realised I couldn’t tell him anymore. ‘Sunday.’

‘Yes. We are sure about this, aren’t we?’

‘Yes. I mean it’s far too great an opportunity to turn down.’

‘It’s just all happening so quickly.’

‘It has to though,’ Thomas said gently. ‘Remember… it’s our only chance.’

Thomas tried to make me view it how he did – like it was a miraculous discovery. If I hadn’t helped Evie with the formula milk, I would never have known about the library. If there hadn’t been a space, they might not have been able to help us. Though I agreed that it was the right thing to do, I couldn’t shake my discomfort; it all just felt too unreal to come true. I thought a lot about Evie, wondering if, as she and Seb approached the mounting number of IPS for Jakob, she would have considered doing this. I even wondered if she had gone to the library when Jakob was taken after all, despite her emphatic dismissal of the place.

Like a weight hanging around my neck, a part of me questioned what we were doing. Was Mimi really better off with us? If we’d received this many IPSs, would a compound offer her a better chance? I tried to ignore it and listen instead to that fierce, burning instinct that told me she should be with us, that no one could love her more. And wasn’t that better than what a compound would provide her with? I couldn’t voice it to Thomas, though I wondered if he ever thought it too.

But last night, at the charging station, I had seen the Spheres.

Raids were being led by OSIP on houses where they found children who had been hoarded. That was the word that they had used: hoarded, as though they were little more than cargo.

The children were kept under floorboards. They were malnourished, in ill health; they needed urgent medical attention. There was a video clip of them being carried out by enforcers, one after the other. Each child looked more waif-like than the next; their eyes were large and haunted. One, glimpsed covered in a blanket on a stretcher, had not survived.

Despite what Iris and the bald man – we never knew his name – had told us about OSIP not wanting to publicise that people tried to escape them, things were changing. It was out in public, it would only be a matter of time before our faces would be broadcast over the Spheres.

The news piece felt like a message too, directly from OSIP to us. It said: You handed your children over to strangers and look what happened. You didn’t keep them safe. You didn’t protect them.

That was when I decided that I had to come for Mimi, that I would leave the very next morning. I would not wait to debate it with Thomas, who would try to convince me not to believe the OSIP propaganda, who would waste precious time talking over what the best thing was to do. I had to get to Mimi, I had to go to her.

What if they were going to keep her under floorboards? What if she ended up being carried out on a stretcher? I couldn’t let that happen. I wouldn’t.

THEN

Thomas showed me his paintings.

He painted in the hours when he was not at work, either early in the morning or late into the night.

Faces, never turned towards the painter, caught in a moment. It felt almost voyeuristic looking at them, as though I was spying on someone. I stopped in front of one, just the profile of a face, tilted downwards in thought. There was something about the sweep of the hair, how it framed the face in a line, the shape