‘Well,’ she began, searching for the right words. You had to say something like this quite delicately, she thought to herself. You couldn’t just go announcing that two Surpluses had got out like you were announcing teatime, could you?
‘It’s about them Surpluses,’ she said eventually. ‘Them ones in Solitary.’
She saw Mrs Pincent’s eyes narrow and dart over to the man, who was frowning. Maisie shrank back slightly.
‘That Surplus,’ Mrs Pincent corrected her, her voice agitated. ‘There is only one Surplus in Solitary. What about him?’
Maisie took a deep breath. ‘Them Surpluses,’ she continued, her forehead beginning to emit little beads of sweat, ‘on account of there being two of them. Y’see, yesterday, while you was away, that other little tyke – I mean, Surplus, well, she was bothering us. Me and Mrs Larson, see. And it was her what said she should go to Solitary. Said she had it coming to her, what with her rudeness . . .’
Maisie couldn’t help noticing that Mrs Pincent’s mood was blackening. Maisie’s heart started to pound in her chest. She knew she was babbling, but there was nothing she could do about it; she felt barely able to string a proper sentence together. And the worst thing was she hadn’t even got to the bad news yet.
‘And anyway, the thing is Mrs Pincent, and I don’t know how it happened, and I didn’t even know there was a hole in the wall or nothing, but I went down there just now, and they ain’t there any more, see? They’ve . . . they’ve gone, Mrs Pincent.’
She looked up imploringly and winced as the full power of Mrs Pincent’s gaze fixed upon her.
‘What do you mean, they’ve gone?’ Mrs Pincent asked, her voice quiet, and her face thunderous.
‘It wasn’t my fault,’ Maisie said immediately. ‘I wasn’t to know. You want to keep them Surpluses better behaved, that’s what you want to do. How was I meant to know they’d escape? I thought it was impossible to get out. I thought —’
‘Enough!’
Mrs Pincent stepped forward and grabbed Maisie fiercely by the shoulders.
‘Now what exactly are you talking about?’ she asked menacingly, and Maisie shuddered. Mrs Pincent’s eyes were boring into her, and her nails were digging into her ample flesh. ‘And who are they?’
‘The boy and the girl,’ Maisie whimpered. ‘Anna and that boy what was down there already. The new Pending. They’ve escaped, see. Last night, so far as I can tell.’
‘Impossible,’ Mrs Pincent said angrily. ‘There is no way of escaping from Grange Hall. You must be mistaken.’
Maisie was tempted to agree with Mrs Pincent and leave, but she knew she’d only get worse bother if she didn’t stand her ground now.
‘Seems there was a hole in the wall what we didn’t know about,’ she said, eyes lowered. Like a blimmin’ Surplus, she thought crossly. Mrs Pincent oughtn’t to talk to me like that, not really. ‘I saw it, see, when I went to check on them at about quarter to four this morning, you know, just to check they was behaving themselves. But I couldn’t see them anywhere. And then I saw the hole in the wall. And I thought to myself, well, that’s where they must’ve gone, then . . .’
Maisie’s voice trailed off, and Mrs Pincent tightened her grip on her shoulders.
‘This was quarter to four?’ she asked, her voice sounding strangled.
Maisie nodded meekly.
‘And it is now quarter past four.’
Again, Maisie nodded.
‘And why exactly did you wait so long to tell me?’
’Cause I knew you’d react like this, Maisie thought to herself defensively, but said nothing.
Mrs Pincent’s face was now white, Maisie noticed, and the man was standing up, looking like he couldn’t get out of there quick enough.
To Maisie’s relief, Mrs Pincent let go then and grabbed the phone off her desk, dialling a number from memory.
‘It’s Margaret Pincent,’ she barked down the phone. ‘I need you here, now. No, immediately. We’ve had a breakout. They can’t have got far. They must be caught immediately.’
Then she turned back to Maisie.
‘Get out of here, you useless girl,’ she spat. ‘Get out of here now. Tell Mr Sargent to meet me in Solitary, and tell Mrs Larson to wait in reception for the Catchers. And you can tell the Surpluses that breakfast is cancelled today.’
With that, she pushed Maisie aside and, signalling to the man that he was free to leave, stormed off down the corridor.
Julia Sharpe stared at her reflection in the mirror listlessly. Her lines were definitely getting deeper, she realised. All that sunbathing was taking its toll on her complexion and if she wasn’t careful she was going to look like one of those women who people stared at in the street. The walking dead, they called them. People who were already old when Longevity was discovered. They may be cured of dying, but they’d already hit old age; now they had an eternity of it.
Julia herself had a static age of fifty. It wasn’t a bad age to stick at, really. Of course, she hadn’t had a choice in the matter. Naturally, it would be a lot nicer to have an unlined face, but everyone had the same problem – even people who’d been taking Longevity from the age of sixteen still got wrinkles, even if they used the most expensive moisturisers. Longevity kept you young on the inside, but only regular facelifts could keep you truly young on the outside. And surgeons scared Julia rigid.
She sighed, and opened the bottle in front of her, taking out two capsules and swallowing them with a gulp of water.
Two little capsules, once a day, keeps the big bad wolf away, she thought with a little smile. But was keeping the big bad wolf away enough any more, she wondered. People said that the new Longevity drugs could do so much more. There was nothing you couldn’t cure with the right stem cells, they said – and whilst state-approved drugs might give you the bare minimum, the new drugs gave you the whole works – self-renewing skin, lower fat levels and more. But that meant the black market, Julia thought with a sigh. And once you started down that path, you had no idea where it might lead you.
Julia didn’t really understand the science of Longevity – it wasn’t something she’d felt the need to know about; after all, what was important was whether it worked, not how. But her friends at the bridge club were adamant that their fresh complexions and firm figures were down to Longevity+. Apparently it was already available from select clinics in the USA, China and Japan, and was used widely by celebrities; the UK was only holding back because of the cost. But was any of that really true, she wondered? People did like to make up the most outrageous things. And then there was the question of where the stem cells came from. Traditional drugs used frozen umbilical cords, but rumour had it that Longevity+ required fresh, young stem cells. And where would such cells come from, she thought to herself, other than through very dubious means?
But maybe she was being too cynical. Just the night before, she’d been playing bridge with Barbara, Cindy and Claire, and she couldn’t help noticing that Barbara’s skin was looking rather . . . dewy. Yes, that was the word. Youthful.
She sighed and decided she would investigate further. You just never knew what they put in those bottles exchanged in dark alleyways for large sums of money. Never knew where they came from. But if they would cure her sagging jowls and lift the wrinkles around her eyes, maybe it would be worth it.
She was interrupted from her reverie by a loud knock at the door, and she looked up curiously. It was only seven o’clock in the morning. Who on earth could be calling at this time?
Wrapping her robe around her, she closed the bathroom cabinet and waited for her housekeeper to open the door. Then she heard another knock, and remembered that she’d lent her housekeeper to Cindy for the day to help her move house. Sighing with irritation, she made her way on to the landing, then down the stairs. Through the spyhole on her front door she could see uniforms, and it startled her slightly. Had there been a break-in on her street? Something worse? She shuddered at the thought. Crime was so rare nowada
ys that even the smallest transgression was infrequent. Julia had often wondered whether crime had gone down now they had Longevity because people were satisfied with their lot and less interested in short-term gain – particularly when short-term was so very short-term. Or perhaps it was that crime was actually the domain of the young and that eradicating the youth was responsible for their safe streets. Her husband subscribed to the latter view, citing the Declaration as the panacea for all the world’s ills, but Julia wasn’t so sure. She rather suspected that everyone was simply too long in the tooth nowadays. No one had the imagination or energy to bother with crime any more.
She opened the door slightly, then frowned when she realised what the uniforms were. One of the men was in a police uniform, but the other two, if she wasn’t very much mistaken, were Catchers.
Raising her eyebrows in curiosity, she allowed the men in.
Chapter Seventeen
Anna pulled the heavy curtains around her more closely and sneaked a little look at Peter, who was sitting beside her. He had matter-of-factly found the best position for them, a spot where they could not be seen, but from where they – or he, at least – had a full view of the garden, the door and the house. Once he had made sure Anna was warm enough, he had simply sat still, his forehead creased slightly in concentration, and said nothing.
Until now, that is.
‘There are people in the house. It looks like Catchers.’
Peter spoke so quietly that Anna barely heard him, and yet the words felt like bullets firing into her chest. Catchers? How had they known they were here?
‘Lie down and cover yourself with the curtain,’ Peter whispered, and, trembling, Anna did as he asked. She could feel Peter’s body was tense next to hers, like an animal on the hunt, and she tried to stop herself shaking with cold and fear.
She lay under the curtain for what felt like an eternity, but what was probably more like ten minutes, and then she felt Peter slither down under the curtain with her.
‘They’re coming down to the garden,’ he whispered, and Anna could feel the warmth of his breath against her forehead. Without thinking, she reached out her hand and found his, squeezing it tightly. Then Peter pressed her head on to his shoulder and before she knew it they were wrapped around each other, arms clasped so tightly that they felt almost like one.
And then they heard someone trying the door. Anna froze, fully expecting them to walk right in and find them, but instead the door stayed firmly shut. Peter hugged her closer.
‘You keep this door locked all the time?’ It was a man’s voice and Anna felt her muscles tighten.
‘Of course. Well, my husband does, anyway. It’s full of antiques, you see. Valuable, apparently, although I’ve never cared for them much. Still, each to their own, I suppose.’
Anna felt Peter’s arms tighten around her as she heard the familiar tones of Mrs Sharpe.
‘We’ve been instructed to search everywhere,’ another man’s voice said. ‘Even if it’s locked.’
‘Very well.’ Mrs Sharpe’s voice was exasperated. ‘I think the key’s in here.’
Anna felt her heart thud in her chest. Mrs Sharpe would be looking for the key, which would no longer be where she left it. She would know that they had taken it. The Catchers would find them.
‘Oh,’ she heard Mrs Sharpe say. ‘Well, that’s funny . . .’
‘The key’s gone?’
There was a long pause. ‘Ah, I remember,’ Mrs Sharpe said suddenly. ‘My husband took it. For safe keeping.’
‘Perhaps we should break the door down,’ one of the men suggested.
‘You can try, but I don’t think my husband would like it,’ Mrs Sharpe said quickly. ‘And I don’t see how anyone could be in there anyway, if the door’s locked. You may know my husband, actually. Anthony Sharpe? He’s with the Interior Ministry.’
There was silence then for a few seconds, during which Anna barely dared to breathe.
‘I know of Mr Sharpe, yes,’ one of the men said. ‘I didn’t realise that you were . . . are . . . Well, we won’t intrude any longer, will we, men? Thank you, Mrs Sharpe, for your . . . assistance.’
And with that, Anna heard the most delicious sound she’d ever heard – the sound of the Catchers walking away.
Julia stood at her kitchen sink, her mind racing. The key could have been mislaid. It was possible.
But it was also unlikely. Things didn’t tend to get lost in the Sharpe household.
Frowning slightly, she decided to turn on her computer. She’d been very energy efficient this month, because of the new solar panel installed on her roof, and she felt in need of some company, even if it was virtual.
As the screen flickered on, a newsreader appeared, talking seriously about the kidnapping of the Energy Minister by a Middle Eastern terrorist group claiming that the recently signed global agreement restricting the use of oil was an underhand plot to destabilise their economy. A personalised message appeared along the bottom of the screen reminding Julia that her Longevity prescription was ready to be picked up and that she had four energy coupons remaining this month; there was a second message at the top of the screen urging her to press the red button on her remote control to complete that day’s brain agility activity. Ignoring the messages, Julia listened to the newscast for a few minutes, sighing and shaking her head. Poorer countries were taking desperate measures to convince the larger nations to allow them more energy. What the terrorists didn’t seem to realise, Julia thought to herself, was that everyone was suffering. Hadn’t China and the USA banned all air conditioning, forcing mass migration into cooler states? Hadn’t South American countries been forced to halt their economic progression in order to protect the rainforests?
She remembered a time, when she was young, when energy was still plentiful and people thought that recycling was enough. Before islands started to be submerged by the sea, before the Gulf Stream changed Europe into the cold, grey place it was now, with short summers and long, freezing winters. Before politicians were driven to action because infinite life meant that they, not some future generation, would suffer if the world’s climate wasn’t protected.
But not all countries believed that they were being treated equally by the hastily convened world summit. And why should they? It wasn’t exactly a secret that the richer countries were cheating. That banned energy sources were being used secretly, to provide electricity for essential services. That renewable energy was being imposed on poorer countries as the only available source, whilst corrupt countries traded secretly in oil, in coal. Britain itself had poured money and resources into the race to create a new, problem-free energy source that they could sell to other countries at a huge profit, re-establishing state-funded research departments that had been abandoned a century before along with the universities they’d been attached to, because there weren’t any students any more.
But energy was not something that Julia could do much about; that was her husband Anthony’s domain. Right now she had a rather more pressing problem to consider. There was nothing on the news about the Surplus escape, but that wasn’t surprising – the news would only be reported once the Surpluses had been caught. No point upsetting people unnecessarily, Anthony would say.
She drummed her fingers on the kitchen counter, trying to decide what to do, trying to work out why she hadn’t let the Catchers break down the door to the summer house. Had it been to protect Anthony’s furniture? Or had it been something else? Had it been the mention of the name Anna?
As she pondered that question, the phone rang and immediately she picked it up.
‘Julia? Barbara. Have you heard the news?’
‘The news?’
‘The Surplus breakout. Surely the Catchers have visited you by now? They woke me up, you know. Terribly efficient, aren’t they?’
Julia sat down. ‘I suppose it’s their job to be,’ she said thoughtfully.
‘Well, they told me there were two of them on the loose. So I’ve double-
locked all my doors and windows. And I hope you’ll do the same. You can’t be too careful, Julia. I mean to say, who knows what damage they’d wreak given half a chance? Now perhaps people will take the Surplus Problem more seriously. Surplus Halls are a disaster waiting to happen. Keeping them there, using up all those resources. They’re just a melting pot for young thugs, Julia. And so near the village too.’
‘I don’t think they’re dangerous, Barbara,’ Julia said, frowning slightly. ‘And Surpluses are very well trained.’
She thought briefly of her own housekeeper, and of Anna, the one who had apparently escaped. They didn’t wreak any damage. If anything, they seemed pitifully grateful for just a kind word.
‘Well, of course the Surpluses they let out aren’t dangerous,’ Barbara said darkly, ‘but we only see the employable ones. The good ones. The rest are simply stealing from us, Julia. Stealing our food, our energy, our air.’
Julia sighed. Perhaps Barbara was right. Perhaps she’d been very wrong to let the Catchers leave without checking the summer house.
‘And they’re jealous,’ Barbara continued. ‘They dare to want what we have. But they don’t have the right, Julia. Their parents didn’t have the right. That’s what I keep explaining to my Surplus, Mary. Very good, she is. Very hard-working. But the fact of the matter is, she shouldn’t be alive, Julia. She just shouldn’t. And now this escape. I tell you, this Surplus Problem is going to have to be dealt with. If you’re too soft on them, people just won’t be deterred from foisting more of them on us. Do you know how much of our tax goes towards the Surplus Problem? Do you?’
‘No,’ Julia said.
‘Too much, that’s how much,’ Barbara replied ominously.
There was a pause, as Barbara drew breath. ‘Anyway,’ she said eventually, her tone becoming more business-like, ‘the reason I’m calling is that I’m pulling a search party together. We have to protect ourselves, Julia. Have to find those blasphemers and deal with them. We’re going to meet at my house this afternoon. I was sure that you’d want to be involved.’