Dark Lullaby by Polly Ho-Yen (ready to read books .txt) 📕

inductions becoming obligatory for everyone. I felt it like a shadow falling around me that I could not possibly outrun.

Just then, a woman Evie and Seb had met at induction approached us. She cleared her throat quietly, impatiently.

‘Is the barbeque lit yet?’ she asked, pointedly eyeing the pile of sooty briquettes that were as cold as the stones on the ground. She had neat, bobbed hair, a staged look of concern mingled with annoyance.

I saw, out of the corner of my eye, Thomas raise his wooden spoon in readiness, and suppressing a giggle, I met the woman’s gaze levelly.

‘If it’s not lit are you planning on leaving?’

‘Well, no, of course not. I was just wondering because…’ She trailed off.

‘Because you’re hungry?’ I finished for her.

‘No, it’s not—’

‘Because you want to know what is happening?’

‘I just wondered… if I could help?’

‘The more the merrier!’ I exclaimed. ‘In fact, I was just about to get the salads out of the fridge for the table. Could you do that? It’s Jacqui, isn’t it? I’m Kit, Evie’s sister. And this is Thomas. Together, we are team food.’

Jacqui gave a shy sort of smile, that seemed to surprise even her, and turned towards the kitchen. Then she turned back again, ‘Anything else we need?’

‘Napkins,’ I said. ‘If you can find any. I think they are in one of the drawers in the middle of the dresser. Try the bottom one.’

‘Wow,’ Thomas said, as Jacqui disappeared purposefully into the house. ‘You have a gift. You bring out the best in people.’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t know about that. But most people want to help, given the opportunity. Actually,’ I confessed, ‘I was a little too hard on her. I didn’t mean to be, to be so… so sharp. It just came out, before I could stop myself.’

It was a part of me that I didn’t like to examine too closely, the way I could turn words into pointed claws that could leave a mark, a scar. I hadn’t been able to admit that to anyone else before and yet it felt good, right even, to confide.

‘You were just sharp enough. She was quite rude.’

‘Maybe. But I need to watch myself sometimes.’

‘Doesn’t everybody?’

‘Also, she probably hasn’t had the easiest ride. Her inductions didn’t—’ I stopped myself abruptly and busied myself with placing the cubes of firelighters amongst the ovals of charcoal. My fingertips quickly dusted with black.

‘Do you know her, then?’ Thomas reached for the box of matches.

‘Not really, but Evie’s told me about her. She’s still going through it. Her sister, she has a sister who… has a son.’

I’d almost said ‘still has her son’.

‘How old?’ Thomas asked quickly.

‘He’s three, thereabouts.’

‘Out of the danger zone, then.’ He winced as the words left his mouth. Extractions were far more likely to happen when children were babies. If you passed through that stage, though extraction could still technically happen, your child would most likely remain with you. OSIP cited that early standards were a strong predicator of future parenting.

I tried to clean my fingers of the black of the charcoal, rubbing my hands together briskly, but it only made the dark grey stain more set. Another memory of Evie returned to me: crying, crumpled, after another failed induction. It made my head swim and I felt the weight of tears build just behind my own eyes.

‘Are you OK?’ Thomas asked.

I nodded but didn’t meet his gaze.

Thomas paused and then asked, ‘Do you think then that people have a right to be more rude depending on what has happened to them?’

I looked up at him then. ‘Well, yes – maybe they do.’

‘What about those people who’ve had, you know, a load of shit, and they are still cordial… pleasant to others.’

‘Those people are called saints.’

‘I disagree. We have a terrible tolerance for rude behaviour. It’s a choice when people act that way. They don’t have to. That’s why you’re my hero. You don’t stand for it.’

I wasn’t sure what to say but at that moment Thomas lit the match and the firelighters caught.

Half orange, half invisible flames licked their way round the coals and the warmth they cast off reached me.

NOW

Thomas won’t be able to ring me.

I left my phone, along with my wallet, in my bag back at the apartment, in my rush to leave. When we rid ourselves of our goSpheres, Thomas bought us old mobile phones so we would still have a way of contacting each other if we got separated. We were told that they would be able to trace us through our goSpheres and so they had to go.

Though he has no way of reaching me, and no way to follow, my eyes keep darting to the mirror, to the road that grows behind me.

I only remembered I left my bag behind as I kicked the car into gear and started to reverse away. I slammed down on the brakes as soon as I realised, my mind flashing to the bundles of cash stored within it. The door of the maisonette remained closed. Thomas was not running out after me. I could go back in, quietly, retrieve my bag and leave again. But something stopped me. Just the thought that Thomas might wake, that he might talk me out of what I was about to do. We’d recharged the phones the night before, the power level is still at the maximum. I reached into my coat pocket and found a few notes folded into rectangles there – enough money to fill up again if needed, enough not to risk me running into Thomas. I drove on, leaving my bag and its contents behind.

It’s very early in the morning and I haven’t seen another car but I can’t shift the idea of Thomas pursuing me. He won’t let me go easily.

He could tell the police to look for me. He might say to them that I haven’t been in my ‘right mind of late’ – a distant sort of phrase that I’ve heard