The Glimpse (2 page)

Ana gazed at her fingers in her lap. They didn’t just tremble, they convulsed. Like there were tiny animals inside pushing to get out. She glanced at her father. His six-foot-two figure was al angles. His jaw clenched. He finaly looked up, blue eyes locking on the male Board representative like he was preparing to take out a target.

‘Human traits,’ the man continued, ‘are determined by variations in the genes. The Big3 – schizophrenia, variations in the genes. The Big3 – schizophrenia, depression, anxiety – are a complex mutation of these differences that depend on the state of several interacting genes.’ The Board representative paused. He met her father’s glare, a smal smile on his lips. ‘What perhaps you may not realise, 4

Ariana, is that if one parent is affected by the Big3, every child wil automaticaly become a Carrier, at best. More likely than not, however, they wil develop some variation of the inherited ilness, starting off as a Sleeper and one day becoming Active.’

Ana stifled a gasp. The room seemed to shrink and fold in on itself like an inflatable castle at the end of a children’s party.
Please, no, no. This couldn’t be
happening.

‘So,’ the man said. He prodded a piece of paper on the table in front of him. ‘Three months ago, you contacted the Guildford Register’s Office for a copy of your mother’s death certificate.’

A throbbing pulse began in Ana’s neck and wrists. She and her father had moved to the Highgate Community when she was eleven, a month after her father had taken her to see a dying woman with yelow skin and no hair, who he claimed was Isabele Barber. Ana had always been sure he was lying. The patient with the boiled-egg head and dark craters instead of cheeks didn’t share Ana and her mum’s grey eyes, nor did she have a mole beneath her lip like Ana’s mum. Besides, Ana had seen her mum dead nine months earlier. Did her father think she’d forgotten?

Now, as she sat facing the Board, al she wanted was to take back ordering a copy of her mother’s death take back ordering a copy of her mother’s death certificate.

She never thought proving she was right about her mum’s death would feel so wrong. Because finaly she understood.

Her father’s lies had been protecting her. She should have been raised in the City with al the other Crazies.

I’m not Pure.

Ana’s bottom lip began to quiver. Tears blurred her 5

vision. Life in Crazy-land was a terror-filed battle for survival. You could get stabbed walking down the street, attacked in a supermarket, robbed for your hair, or thrown, possibly by yourself, off a bridge.

The male Board member turned over the paper before him with a flick of his wrist. He pretended to read the autopsy conclusion, but he obviously knew it by heart.

‘Death by car-exhaust asphyxiation.’ He looked up at Ana. ‘Once a popular method of suicide, if that was what you were wondering.’ He slid the certificate across the desk towards her.

The blood in Ana’s body dived towards her feet, as though attempting to abandon ship. She bent forward, put her spinning head between her legs.

‘The Board delivers death certificates now?’ she heard her father say, his voice so holow she barely recognised it.

‘This is a rather special case,’ the man replied. ‘You, Dr Barber, are something of a household name in more educated circles.’

Nobody seemed to notice Ana half under the table, or if they did, they’d decided not to interrupt.

‘The secretary at the Guildford Register’s Office had read about your wife’s battle with cancer,’ the male Board member continued. ‘As you might imagine, this certificate created something of a conundrum. Worth a little investigation. Once the secretary had verified that the Isabele Barber of this certificate was indeed the same Isabele Barber as your wife, she discovered that your daughter is registered as a Pure and alerted us. The big question, of course, is how could the daughter of a depressive possibly 6

be Pure? It’s impossible. Except . . . except that you, Dr Barber, are in the unusual position of having developed the DNA tests for the Big3.’

And therefore are capable of altering the results,
Ana thought. Everyone else was thinking it too. The Board’s in-sinuation left no space for anything else. Her father had covered up her mother’s suicide and then faked Ana’s Pure test.

A moan escaped her, low and whimpering like a trapped animal’s swan song.

Oh God, what about Jasper?
She and Jasper were due to be bound next month, the first steps two Pures took to becoming joined. Ana struggled to inhale, but she couldn’t get any air.

‘You can’t possibly think that these accusations wil stick,’

stick,’

her father said.

‘We have already redone your daughter’s test, Dr Barber.’

A wooden chair creaked as the man leaned back.

Beneath the table, Ana saw him press his fingers together in the shape of a steeple.

‘The interface virus?’ she croaked. Last week, several students had been sent to the school nurse after the deputy head announced that an interface virus had wiped a few student medical records. Tamsin had joked that the deputy was running a smal business on the side seling Pure DNA for cloning.

The Board rose from their chairs with synchronised movements. A large white envelope lay on the desk before them, its gold stripe glinting in the morning sunlight. Ana’s redone test results lay inside it.

7

She couldn’t move, not even to straighten up.

Instead of living happily ever after with Jasper, she would be battling to survive the giant loony bin of the City, waiting for the day she would wake up and decide to kil herself.

The Chief Warden coughed. ‘Sorry, Ashby, a couple of the boys are waiting for us outside. I’m going to have to take you in.’

Through spread fingers, Ana watched her father push to Through spread fingers, Ana watched her father push to his feet. The Chief Warden locked metal cuffs around his wrists.

Ashby looked livid. ‘I hardly think this is necessary,’ he said. He crossed in front of the window towards Ana. A large, shackled hand pressed into her back. ‘I’l be out on bail in a couple of hours,’ he said.

The tears roling down Ana’s cheeks dried. Numbness spread through her. She had no idea how bad things would get from here on. But she did know that she would never let her father touch her again.

8

2

Binding

Two years, ten months, and nine days later.

The chauffeur-driven saloon cruised along Hampstead Lane, a mile-and-a-half-long road which stretched the border of the Highgate Community from the south-eastern checkpoint to the south-western one. Ana pressed her nose against the window, watching the ten-foot-tal wal crowned with metal spikes flash past. It was one of the wals that kept the Crazies out.

Lake, Ana’s joining planner, sat beside her in the back seat of the car fiddling with a lighter. In her mid-twenties, Lake wore the oatmeal trousers and cream blouse Ana’s father had paid for. She stank of cigarettes. Her frizzy curls were scraped up in a ponytail and she’d stripped her face of its usual heavy make-up, revealing eyes as light as summer. Joining planners organised the joining light as summer. Joining planners organised the joining ceremonies and were on hand at the bindings to supervise dress, make-up and hair. Ordinarily, they came from the Community, not the City. But none of the joining planners from Ana’s Community had been ‘available’.

Open lighter, let lid drop; open, flick, close, click. The saloon’s electric engine buzzed. Both sounds chafed Ana’s 9

nerves. Her stomach churned. Al day she’d been too nervous to eat. She kept wondering if Jasper would show up for their ceremony. In half an hour, they were supposed to meet at the Hampstead Community Hal, and finaly (two years, nine months and three days after they were supposed to) take their first steps to becoming joined. Folowing the binding ceremony, they would be alowed to spend time together alone. Over the next four weeks they would see each other every day, and at the end of the month they would each declare whether they wished to go ahead with the joining or desist.

This was Ana’s last chance. In one month she would turn eighteen. If she and Jasper weren’t bound today and joined before her birthday, she would be turned out into the City with the Crazies.

Ana squeezed her fingers together until the tops lost feeling. Jasper had postponed several times, but they’d never got this far before. She considered what she might say to reassure him when they saw each other. If he showed.

She couldn’t think of anything. Jasper wasn’t the same boy she’d met at the Taurel Christmas party the year she and her father had moved to the Community. She would have known what to say to the bright-eyed, smiling have known what to say to the bright-eyed, smiling Jasper who hadn’t yet lost the big brother he idolised.

Ana closed her eyes, remembering how overwhelmed she’d been – an eleven-year-old country girl entering the Taurel’s festively decorated mansion. The coloured lights and holy, the beautiful women in black and red evening dresses, and the chaos of the children’s quarters.

She had slipped away through empty corridors to an 10

unoccupied wing, found a library overflowing with paper books and an adjoining chamber with a desk and a dusty upright piano. Without thinking, she’d sat down on the piano stool and begun to play. She’d played a melody her mother had taught her. She’d played barely conscious of the silent tears streaming down her cheeks.

Off-key notes resonated from the untuned piano, but she didn’t care, she poured her yearning into it, pretended the music could traverse time and space to reach her mother’s ears. When she stopped, she became aware that she was no longer alone.

Two boys stood in the doorway. One closer to a man than a boy – seventeen or eighteen. The other perhaps fourteen.

They looked alike – blond, wavy hair, hazel eyes, strong, slim faces. She quickly wiped away the traces of her tears and tried not to stare at the handsome younger brother.

‘Who are you?’ the older one said.

‘Ariana Barber.’ Her voice sounded smal and tight from crying.

The older one’s eyes narrowed. ‘The geneticist’s daughter?’

She nodded.

‘Why aren’t you with everyone else?’ he asked.

‘There are too many of them.’

The younger one laughed. His face radiated warmth.

‘She’s right,’ he said. ‘There are far too many of them.’

They escorted her back to the party, the older one teasing the younger about a girl. ‘She’l be joined long before you’re old enough to express an interest,’ he said.

‘Anyway, what’s the rush? Just because you can be joined at fifteen, 11

doesn’t mean you have to be. You could be eighteen, nineteen, twenty or twenty-five. A ten-year gap is nothing.’

The younger boy glanced at Ana, embarrassed and sheepish, and she stared back at him, hoping he’d take his brother’s advice and wait until her fifteenth birthday when she became eligible.

The folowing two years, Ana anticipated the Taurel’s Christmas party with love-sick longing, but she only caught glimpses of Jasper through the crowds. The third year, several months before she came of binding age, she decided she wouldn’t leave the party until she’d talked to him.

She found Jasper sitting on the servant stairs at the back of the house with Juliet Mango, a pretty girl from the year of the house with Juliet Mango, a pretty girl from the year above her at school. They were laughing and flirting and their hands were fastened together with a scarf. Devast-ated, she’d bolted out a back door, crossed several gardens, scrambled over two fences, and sprinted home in the bitter cold without her coat.

So on April 21st, Ana’s fifteenth birthday, when Jasper personaly delivered his binding invitation, she was beside herself with shock and joy. Like everyone else, she’d known the Taurel–Mango joining hadn’t gone ahead because Juliet had returned to school after the Christmas holidays.

But she hadn’t imagined Jasper might ask someone else, least of al her, so soon after. Obviously last year, when Jasper had praised her piano playing at the school variety show, she hadn’t made such an idiot of herself, nodding and blushing and being too stunned to speak, as she’d feared.

For three blissful weeks after the invitation, Ana dreamed she would have the future she’d fantasised about.

12

But then the Board came to school with her redone Pure test. And a fortnight after that, Jasper’s brother Tom died.

By the summer, Ana’s father was vindicated of al charges, the Board admitted a possible mistake on their part and Ana was given a reprieve: She could stay in the Community until her eighteenth birthday as long as her ilness had not begun to manifest. If she and Jasper were joined during that time, her reprieve would be extended indefinitely until the day she became sick. But Jasper put indefinitely until the day she became sick. But Jasper put off setting a binding date again and again. As the weeks turned into months and then years, Ana’s hope shrank and her heart hardened, expecting disappointment.

And now it was realy happening. She felt like the time when she was eight and her mum stopped getting out of bed. For days she’d prayed her mother would do something,
anything
. But the morning her mum shook her awake, threw clothes and books into the old car her father had left them in case of an emergency, and driven them away from the farm at high speed across bumpy lanes until the petrol ran out, Ana’s happiness was crushed with no-tions of getting lost, becoming stranded in the middle of nowhere, crashing. She’d got what she’d wished for. And al she could think about was disaster.

The saloon slowed as they approached the south-western checkpoint. Two square cabins stood on either side of the road harbouring guards who let the traffic through. Ana sat up, alert. Nick, the chauffeur, handed over their IDs.

Crazies could not enter any of the Communities without going through the Wardens’ approval process, and even then the date and hours had to be specified. Pure men came 13

and went as they pleased. Pure women, for their own safety, were always accompanied into the City.