Pandora (11 page)

The cheerful mothers, all dressed in long skirts and blouses with cardigans over the top, pushing their perambulators or holding the hands of their polite, perfectly behaved children. The pensioners walking cheerfully up and down the High Street, all in blazers or tweed. The cricket team practising on the village green. There was no disorder, no fear, no argument. It was a perfect world.

But perfect for whom? Everyone was polite and well behaved because they had no choice, and what was worse, they didn’t even know that they had no choice. This perfect world had been created by those who held narrow, insular views, who proudly wore their prejudices but disguised them as values. There was no disorder or fear, but there was also no difference, no eccentricity, no motivation to explore, to ask, to develop. There was only unthinking conformity.

And in this world, there were no poor people. No working class, except those on the development. No coloured people, except Zoe and her family...

Her hands shaking, Pandora fumbled her phone from her pocket and tried to dial Zoe’s number. Eventually, she made the connection and paced back and forth as the phone rang, feeling helpless and uncertain. She now understood why Mabel had always been so insistent on knowing who Pandora was friends with and why she constantly alluded to only being friends with desirable people. It was straightforward racism.

Finally, the phone was answered and Zoe’s voice said, “Pan?”

“Zoe? You’re in danger! You’ve got to listen. There isn’t anything here that isn’t allowed,” gabbled Pandora, fear almost making her incoherent. She had never felt so helpless. “There are no single mothers because single mums aren’t allowed! There are no naughty children because naughty children aren’t allowed. If anyone asks awkward questions or disagrees with them, they disappear!”

“Hold on,” said Zoe, trying to stem the flow of words. “Disagrees with whom?”

“Miss Hill, my aunt, Mr Toy, all the people who run this place. It was them all along.”

“You’re saying anyone who annoys them disappears?”

“Exactly! Or anyone who doesn’t fit in, anyone with different ideas—”

“But why should that concern me?” asked Zoe, fear pulling at her voice. “I mean, I’ve never disagreed with any of them or caused any trouble.”

“No, but you’re black. How many other black people are there here?” A dead silence filled the air for several seconds.

“Oh god, Pan,” breathed Zoe, the sob audible in her voice. “They couldn’t, they wouldn’t, not just for that? Would they?”

“You’ve got to get out. Whatever it is they can do, whatever the power is, it’s growing, they said themselves they can do what they want. You have to get out, run, take your mum and go. Zoe? Zoe?” Pandora almost screamed her friend’s name as the distorted sound of a mighty wind echoed down the phone. “Zoe?”

“Oh god!” cried Zoe’s voice. “It’s here! It’s the tornado! It’s here, Pan! It’s everywhere! Mum! Mummy!”

The phone died.

Pandora stared at her phone. The call had disconnected. As she watched, Zoe’s name and number faded from the screen. She desperately accessed the stored numbers and ran down to the bottom, but Zoe’s name had gone, wiped from the phone, wiped from existence. For several seconds she stood rooted to the spot, scarcely able to comprehend what had happened. Then she ran. She had to get to Zoe’s.

The village was as it had always been, with one exception. The new road to the development was gone. In its place was a dirt track leading to the outer boundary of Clatford Woods.

Pandora heard someone walking behind her and spun round to see Mrs Harris, returning home from picking up Helen from school.

“Hello, Pandora,” cried Mrs Harris cheerfully. “How are you today? My, you look flushed. Have you been running?”

“The road,” gasped Pandora, breathing heavily. “Where’s the road gone?”

“What road, dear?”

“Sampson Road. You must remember? Named after Councillor Sampson, who pushed the development through?”

“Councillor Sampson?” frowned Mrs Harris. “Your Aunt Mabel and her friends are the only councillors we’ve had round here for a long time.”

Pandora gaped. Not only had the village committee changed the present, they were now able to rewrite the past. “It led to the development, the new development of houses,” said Pandora, pleading with Mrs Harris to remember. Mrs Harris looked doubtful.

“There was talk long ago to sell the land over there for development. Some felt it would be good for the village, an influx of fresh money and new people, but it was voted down. The village committee felt it would ruin the charm of the village.”

Pandora looked at Mrs Harris and Helen with fresh eyes. Both were cheerful, polite and respectful, because neither knew any other way–they couldn’t even imagine any other way. Their ability to think beyond approved lines had been removed by the committee’s power. They were puppets on the end of a string.

Feeling sick, Pandora turned and ran down the dirt track that just ten minutes ago had been the road leading to the development. She glanced at where the huge quarry had been. Now it was a small patch of gently sloping grass with a few gravelled paths running through it. According to an information board, it was an area of natural beauty.

In the middle, where the pool and the rusting car had been, stood a child’s playground. The swings were all barely an inch from the ground in case any child fell. The slide was slightly shorter than a five year old and about as long, for anything larger had been deemed to be too dangerous for a child.

The roundabout was likewise small and safe, and no matter how much the glum-faced children tried, they couldn’t make it spin with any speed. Underneath the playground was fake grass, and an officially approved warden watched over the children, ensuring that none could hurt themselves by swinging too high, sliding too fast or running too energetically. The sounds of the children were muted, damped down, their fun controlled for their own good.

Pandora ran on, tears blurring her eyes, until she reached what had been the development. She stopped in horror. She had been expecting to find nothing but fields and grass, the area returned to the way it had been before the estate had been built.

Instead, the development was still there, but it was now a set of smoking, scorched ruins.

Clearly, Mr Toy’s fear that they didn’t have the ability to remove the development had been correct. Rather than wishing away the estate as though it had never been, the committee had only been able to reduce it to rubble.

Pandora walked numbly through the blackened, smoking ruins. The houses were still standing but most were reduced to their cheap wooden frames, all scorched almost black as though a bomb had been set off. The new roads were still laid out, but they too were burnt. The tarmac had warped with the heat, sinking in some places and bubbling upward in others.

It was difficult to know which way to go. The road signs had been burnt away, the gardens were all gone, and so had all the landmarks. No birds sang in the air, no cats slept on doorsteps, no dogs barked. Everything had been purged except for the frame of the unwanted development.

Pandora forced herself to think. When coming onto the estate off Sampson Road, she passed three–no four–roads on her right and took the next turn after that. Then, she took the second on the left, then it was left again and she should be at Zoe’s. She ran on, miscounting one turn and having to double back when she realised the burnt-out homes were laid out in a different formation to the block Zoe lived in, until at last she found Zoe’s house.

She recognised the configuration of the street–the cluster of three small bungalows followed by the larger cluster of terraced houses. She looked at the first house and knew it was Zoe’s, even though it was now nothing but a burnt shell. There wasn’t even a door left on the front, and she stepped straight in.

She called out Zoe’s name, knowing it was pointless, knowing she had to try. She cautiously climbed the stairs, each brittle board creaking, and made her way to Zoe’s bedroom. It, too, was bare. No bed, no wardrobe, no posters on the walls, nothing. Pandora tried the rest of the house, but it was the same all over. All trace of the living family had gone, been wiped away. All that was left was the dumb woodwork and thin brick walls.

A second chill engulfed her. All of the outsiders had been removed except Pandora and her family, the family of Mabel Whitemarsh, but that was no reason to think that they were safe. Zoe and her family were black, and they had therefore been destroyed. Pandora’s father was Greek and had a deep Mediterranean colour. And Pandora herself took after him.

Pandora ran, faster and harder than she had ever run before, faster than she could ever have believed possible, but she was still too slow. She reached her house and saw the tornado was already there, hovering above the roof, the blue lightning crawling over the house like the spindly fingers of a grasping miser. Then, with an abrupt crash of thunder, the tornado was gone and the sky peered down, tranquil and calm.

Pandora rushed into the house, screaming “Dad! Sarah? Anne?” She got no response and headed for the kitchen, the usual place to find her mother since the move to the village. She burst through the door and saw the twins sitting at the kitchen table, their homework spread out in front of them, while Mrs Laskaris stood by the stove, stirring something in a saucepan. Pandora looked into her mother’s guilty eyes and realised she was now part of Mabel’s conspiracy.

“What have you done?” demanded Pandora in furious loathing.

Mrs Laskaris flinched at her daughter’s accusing tone. “I did it for your own good,” she whined before checking herself. “There isn’t anything bad going on. We’re all working for the good of the community!”

“By erasing Zoe from existence?” yelled Pandora. “What gives you the right to do that?”

The twins looked at their sister in disapproval for her passionate outburst, and for shouting at their mother.

“The committee knows what is best for people,” responded Mrs Laskaris. “I wouldn’t have joined otherwise.”

“And when did this honour befall you?” sneered Pandora.

“Just this morning,” said her mother with a touch of pride.

“Wait a minute,” snapped Pandora, swaying slightly. Her head was beginning to throb. She focussed her attention on her mother and failed to see the blue light crawling along the floor, sniffing and probing, moving noiselessly toward her. “You joined this morning and this afternoon the tornado hits our house and... What? What have you done? Did they need you on the inside for some reason?”

The look on her mother’s face again gave her away.

“Oh, god, that’s it,” gasped Pandora. “They needed you for some reason.” Her scattered thoughts tried to concentrate as the blue light moved unseen around her ankles and began to creep up her legs. “They didn’t need anyone to get rid of Craig and Wayne, or poor old Mr Gilchirst, because they just pulled them from existence. And Zoe and her family were the same, but we’re still here...” Pandora looked in terror at her sisters. “Anne, Sarah, are…are you both all right?”

“Of course we are,” said Sarah in puzzlement.

“We’re just getting on with our homework,” added Anne, showing Pandora the huge book she was engrossed in.

“And then we’re going to learn how to make upside down cakes,” said Sarah. “Mummy promised.”

“But only if we finish our homework,” said Anne in a stern tone. She and Sarah turned back to their workbooks.

“But you’ve never been interested in cooking or homework,” whispered Pandora in pain. She realised with a savage lurch of her stomach that the twins were speaking individually, and were no longer overlapping and finishing each other’s sentences.

“We’ve always loved cooking and cleaning,” replied Sarah in astonishment.

“And homework, though we must improve and do better,” said Anne. “Our teacher said so.”

“What about Biscuit?” asked Pandora in desperation.

“Biscuit?”

“Your unicorn stories. You had Biscuit travelling over the enchanted sea.”

The twins looked at each other in bafflement. “That sounds very silly,” said Anne blankly.

“Yes,” agreed her sister. “Unicorns aren’t real. Why would we be interested in stories that aren’t real?”

“Aw, bless,” said a voice from the back door.

Pandora swung heavily around and nearly fell, wondering how she could have failed to hear the door opening. The blue light had now stretched up to her waist and was pulsing gently, detaching her from the world.

“Isn’t that good,” beamed Mabel, and she walked into the kitchen. The village committee followed behind her. She crossed to the twins and stroked their hair back from their faces, in the way that Pandora used to do. “They have put away childish things.”

“But they
are
children,” snarled Pandora, feeling revulsion that Mabel should dare to touch the twins and horror that the twins didn’t object.

“They still play,” said Mrs Laskaris defiantly. “They play house, cooking, cleaning, sewing...”

“But only once their school work has been completed,” interrupted Miss Hill, her eyes glowing. “It is never too soon to learn the importance of responsibility, of working hard, of achieving set targets.”

“Set targets?” snapped Pandora. “They’re only seven years old.”

“It is never too early to develop a sense of responsibility,” echoed the Reverend Cope. “Both social and moral.”

“It makes society better,” said Miss Hill.

“But you’re not,” replied Pandora, sweat dripping from her face. She had never felt so ill before. It took all her strength to concentrate on what was being said. “You’re just deleting people from existence.”

“We
are
making society better,” retorted Mabel. “We remove the disruptive and violent elements, leaving the decent people behind.”

“Decent people,” echoed Pandora, looking at the nervous, sweating face of Mr Jackson. “What’s so decent about him? He spies on kids!”