A Calculated Life (21 page)

“We just go to the canteen, eat whatever is served, and walk away,” said Lucas.

“Seems a lot of work,” said Harry, unimpressed.

“Well, their guests did help now and then. One person started to collect dirty plates and others followed suit. One of the men helped to serve drinks. And everyone helped to organize the children—they ate first, but on less expensive cuts of meat.”

“Why?” asked Lucas, wide-eyed.

“I really don’t know. I didn’t like to ask. To me, it seemed a double economy because the children ate less anyway.” While on the subject of the children, she described their game playing.

“The basis of the game might go back a long way,” said Harry. “Maybe there are older, similar games that act as templates, that they repeat and slightly adjust.”

“Children like activities based on swapping things. And running around is another big thing,” said Julie helpfully.

“But what about the stealing? That’s what I can’t understand,” said Jayna.

“If they only steal in a crisis, that’s not so bad. It’s painfully realistic…if you watch the news. That’s down to natural instinct,” said Harry.

Natural instinct. She was sure she was blushing. And now she recalled another instinct; she’d felt jealous of little Alice Slater. That particular feeling had erupted when Jayna left the Slater home. She’d said goodbye to Benjamin and Evelyn and, as she walked towards the limo, Alice had charged out of the house shouting, “Take this! The umpire always gets a prize.” She handed her a stripped twig. “It’s my best one.” Jayna had stared down at what was, by then, a slightly grubby artifact and said, “Tell me something, Alice, is there anything that still makes you cry?” Alice took her hand as though they were the same age and were about to skip down the street together. “When my friends are nasty to me, I come home crying and my mum says that’s just the way little girls
are
and they’ll all grow
out of it. But if it gets really bad she speaks to their mums and to my teacher. Then teacher has a chat with us all and makes us all say we’re sorry and we shake hands. Then we’re best friends again.”

Jayna had then stroked Alice’s hair and ventured another question: “Do you know what you want to be when you grow up?”

It was Alice’s reply to this second question that made her jealous: “I’m only
eight
years old.”

So, Alice was a much-loved child, free to play games with no concerns for the future. Jayna, though, surmised a wider narrative. This young girl was unaware that her parents were already watching for the tiniest signs of her natural talents, which they would nurture. And they would assist Alice in realizing her talents as she entered adult life so that, over the subsequent years, the rewards of professional success would fall into her lap as naturally as a fallen branch followed a watercourse to the open seas. She would enjoy some equivalent of her parents’ lovely white and cream home. There would be crisp Mediterranean salads, medium rare steaks, fine wine, and fresh ground coffee. Jayna recalled one of Hester’s sayings, quite puerile now that she considered it:
What you’ve never had, you’ll never miss
.

Lucas and Harry were stacking the pudding dishes noisily.

“Jayna, you will come out with us tomorrow, won’t you? It’s the karaoke semis,” said Julie.

“I’ll join you later in the afternoon. I have a new assignment for the day.”

“On a Sunday?” said Harry.

She could be upfront now. “Olivia wants me to do some research on the enclaves so they’ve arranged for me to visit a member of staff who lives in Enclave W3.”

“An enclave? Do you really need to go there? You must have all the reports you need,” said Julie.

“They want me to see it for myself. The reports might be missing something or I might be misinterpreting them. I’ll be escorted
around the area for a few hours; should be back sometime around mid-afternoon.”

“But why on a Sunday?”

“It’s all very speculative. Nothing may come of it so I volunteered to make the visit outside office hours.”

“You don’t have to do that,” said Julie, almost indignant.

“It’s give and take, really. I did have an interesting time at Benjamin’s today. He didn’t have to invite me.”

“I suppose not.”

Harry chipped in: “I think I should arrange a trip to the enclaves. If it makes sense for you to go there, it makes even more sense for me to take a look. We have a great deal to say on enclave policies.”

Jayna wondered if he had any idea how those policies affected the likes of Dave.

“I’ll be interested to hear how you get on,” Harry added.

And, as usual for a Saturday evening, they regrouped, taking their drab coffee to their drab common room. On this particular evening, they passed easy conversation about karaoke and Jayna could relax because Julie was always the driver for this topic. Not only did she know the statistics for the most frequently performed karaoke songs but she had also studied their success rates. From the competition results in the UK’s major entertainment zones, Julie could give the statistical chances of success for different songs, depending on the sex of the performer and region of the country. (Some accents just didn’t work with certain songs, Julie had said.) She knew the chances of a less popular song winning to be less than 20 per cent. She worked with the results of quarter- and semi-finalists on the assumption that the tone-deaf and luck-luster competitors had been weeded out by that stage.

“Julie, why don’t you enter…see how far you can get?” said Lucas. “You’re pretty good.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Why not?” he said.

“Maybe it wouldn’t be fair.”

“I don’t see why. It’s not as though you were intended to have a great voice.”

“I guess not. I expect it’s just an accident.”

“I don’t think you can call perfect pitch an accident,” said Jayna. “You make it sound as though it’s a problem.”

“Well, we all know we wouldn’t enter quizzes of any kind. I mean, I’m perfectly comfortable competing with other rest stations but it’s different at the Domes. We can always work out how to do something better than everyone else…Anyway, what would be the point in winning?”

Which brought that particular conversation to a dead end.

On the roof again with one shoe on, one shoe off. Over the past week, she’d grabbed every chance to steal away after dinner. It didn’t always work out. She told herself she wanted time alone but if she were honest she’d admit she wanted to watch the apartment block opposite. She spent hours following the movements of people within their private spaces. Straining to hear any arguments, looking for real families. But this was an inner-city apartment block and that meant well-paid singletons living alone or sharing. And, tonight, she recognized they all had the same easy movement that she’d noticed at the Slaters’—the way Evelyn negotiated her way around her home, the way she knew the contents of every kitchen cupboard (and the way Alice knew every weed at the bottom of the garden). She noticed how each resident could walk from one room to another, from the kitchen to the living area, to the bedroom, to the bathroom, without walking through a communal corridor. Not like the rest station at all. They had
multiple personal spaces, not to mention private balconies with the ubiquitous potted fig trees.

It was a hot night. Sliding doors were open in the apartment block and fly screens were drawn closed.
Is it inevitable now?
She slapped a mosquito dead on her knee.
I’m on a path and it’s leading me towards a gaping hole; I’m bound to fall in. But, perhaps I should see it differently. I’m on a path that leads to a mountain, or an escarpment. I’m not heading for a downfall. I’m
climbing
…away from all the rules and restrictions. I can see it. I’m sitting cross-legged on a grassy ledge high up on the mountainside. It’s dewy and fresh and I’m looking down on everything I’ve left behind.

She watched two figures leave a balcony. They entered their bedroom, switched on the lights. The lights then dimmed. One of the figures approached the window and shut the blinds.

She didn’t care about the dangers. An ambulance siren screamed somewhere close by. She crept back to the roof access, retrieved her shoe, and took from her pocket a cheap metal teaspoon that she’d taken from the canteen four days earlier. She held the bowl of the spoon, with her thumb close to the tip, and scraped it hard along the wall as she walked down the stairs. With every three steps, she paused and made a small gouge in the wall. Small flakes of paint and plaster dust dropped to the steps. Whenever she found an old blemish on the wall she worked into it, grinding and enlarging the hole to make a much larger fissure. So satisfying. Her vandalism was carefully measured and was partly disguised because the cream paintwork was similar in tone to the gray plasterwork underneath. This encouraged her to do more. She made her marks at different heights. With a high scratch she saw a wardrobe catching the wall. With a low gouge she saw a chair carelessly man-handled. The scratches at thigh height were the buckles on bags.

Three flights down she sat on a step, leaned against the wall, and looked up at the stairwell. The dimmed lights still picked out
the scars. If only she could add color. Some minutes later she stood and spread her hands across the wall, feeling the marks with her palms and fingertips. She laid her cheek against the cool surface.

Her room lights had already faded. She let her clothes drop to the floor and crawled into bed naked. She tried to slide into the shallows of sleep but the tap at her sink had developed a drip, at four-second intervals.

CHAPTER 14

T
oast, scrambled eggs, sausage, and orange juice.
Sunday breakfast was her favorite meal of the week. The canteen assistant piled her plate and looked up. “Extra egg?”

“No thanks.”

He withheld the plate. “It’s not a proper fry-up, y’know.”

“Excuse me?”

“It should ’av’ bacon, black puddin’, and fried bread as well. But they said it’s too un’ealthy”—he passed the plate to her—“an’ bacon’s way too pricey.”

“I’m not sure I could eat so much in one meal.”

“Yer’ve not lived till yer’ve ’ad a proper fry-up.”

“I expect not.”

She had arrived early for breakfast and now sat alone. Resting her elbows on the table she massaged the muscles at the back of her neck. Avoiding her friends; the half-truths were making her tense. But what else could she do? She positioned the components of her meal as though banishing uncertainty: a two-centimeter gap between her plate and her knife to the right, fork to the left; her glass, four centimeters from the tip of her knife, with the center point of the glass base sited on the axis of the knife; bread plate positioned to the left of her fork, centers of both plates aligned. And then, she could begin. First, she buttered the toast using three sweeps of her knife, inserting the knife inside the soft interior of the bread to clear the metal surface.

She’d heard people talk of the holy trinity of food (bread, cheese, and red wine, apparently) but for her there was no better combination than hot buttered toast and room-temperature orange juice. They were made for one another. She indulged in this private reverie while thinking, thinking very hard. What to do about Dave? She tapped the tip of her knife on the table.
I definitely need to sort something out.