The Fall (35 page)

‘They say everyone from the Project will be released in the next twenty-four hours. Cole is at a Warden’s Station in Wandsworth. And Nate and Rachel made it out in the Psych Watch van, which is just as well because Simone had a little boy last night and she’d have killed Nate if he hadn’t been there. They’re calling him Miles.’

Ana smiled. So much happiness and sadness pressed to fit inside her that she ached. ‘Did they save the boy?’

 ‘Yes.’ Lila squeezed her hand. ‘And all the others. Once things have calmed down, DNA tests will be taken of all the Arashans. They’ll be able to find his mother. The doctors are calling him Louis for now.’

Ana put her hand over her mouth to stifle a sob.

‘Look,’ Lila said. ‘I’ve brought you a wig and glasses. Dahdah!’ She sprung the items from a plastic bag, like a magician pulling a rabbit from a top hat. ‘It’s so people don’t recognise you while we take the Tube back across the City.’ Lila demonstrated her goods, yanking on the black Cleopatra wig and propping wire rimmed glasses on her small nose.

Ana’s sobs turned to laughter.

‘What?’ Lila said. ‘I’m serious. This is serious. You’ve been on the internet TV for like four different things this week! OK, I might be exaggerating. Check it out though, this is a highly sophisticated disguise.’

‘Thank you,’ Ana said, muffling her snorts with her hand.

*

Four days later, Ana lounged on the end of a springy bed in a hospital ward. It was almost 2 p.m. and Cole would be coming to pick her up soon. A squeak of rubber across linoleum sounded in the corridor beyond. She jumped to her feet.
Louis.
One of the physical therapy nurses appeared, pushing a wheelie bed. Small and scrunched up beneath the covers, Louis had an intravenous drip supplying nutrition and fluids attached to his arm. The yellow tinge was slowly fading from his skin, though his wasted limbs were still too frail to support him.

‘A nurse will be along in a minute,’ the woman said to Ana. ‘I know you’ve got to leave early, but she said if you were here, it would be fine for me to put him on the mat until she came.’

Ana smiled. The rainbow mat was a new addition to the ward. Wary of overloading the Arashan children’s senses, the doctors and therapists had all agreed that the slow introduction of stimulation in the environment needed to be dealt with cautiously.

‘Hello,’ Ana said, crouching down beside Louis’ bed. ‘Want to come and take a look at the rainbow on the new mat with me?’ Louis hadn’t spoken or made any sounds yet, but his hazel-grey eyes focused on her for a moment. The nurse lifted him up and Ana wheeled along the drip. When Louis was lying down, she settled in next to him, arms at her side. They both stared up at the ceiling.

‘I think they put the rainbow in the wrong place,’ she said. ‘How would you like to help me paint one on the ceiling one of these days?’ The room buzzed with a gentle silence. He didn’t answer. She didn’t expect him to. ‘I’m planning a surprise for you. The nurses won’t let me do it yet. Not for a few more weeks. But I’m going to take you out for an ice-cream. Any flavour you want. You can try them all.’

A knock sounded on the ward door. Ana sat up, careful not to touch the boy. Only the nurses moving him about were allowed physical contact.

Cole stood in the doorway. Her heart somersaulted in her chest. The gels had disintegrated in the last two days and the face she loved was back. His hair was dark and closely cropped like the first time she’d met him; his eyes the clear, pale blue of a mountain stream. He carried a wreath of white roses and a black blazer draped over one arm. She got up and went over to him. They kissed, long and gently.

‘Hi,’ he said, once they’d broken apart.

‘Hi.’

He handed her the blazer he’d fetched that morning from her father’s house. It was warm out, but she would wear it at the funeral.

‘I’ll wait for you outside,’ he said.

‘I’m coming.’

He smiled.

‘And thanks,’ she added.

‘No problem.’

After he’d retreated she lay back down beside Louis. ‘It’s my father’s funeral service today,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to go now.’ She gazed at the ceiling a moment longer. ‘Elizabeth or Kate or one of the other nurses will be back in a minute. Will you be all right here until then?’ Silence. She sat up. ‘I’ll see you later.’

Reluctantly, she withdrew to the hospital corridor and stood watching Louis from the doorway. They’d already identified his mother, a young Arashan woman who was now being treated in another part of the hospital. Ana had visited her once. She was disorientated and unable to remember anything, like most of the Arashans. But the doctors were optimistic that one day she would be ready to take care of her son.

Down the hospital corridor, news drifted from the reception flatscreen.

‘Prime Minister,’ a reporter was saying, ‘Your government has denied any knowledge of the Board’s experiments and the inadequate research behind the Pure test, but what is your response to claims of negligence for advocating the Pure genome split?’ Ana’s attention honed in on the flatscreen. In the last few days, all the Communities had been officially dismantled, barriers taken down, people free to leave and enter as they chose.

‘The placing of people with Pure genomes into restricted Communities was done out of a desire to protect an untampered genetic line in our population. It was initiated out of fear of the unknown, fear of what might happen if the geneticists who’d predicted that another twenty years from now and the whole of society would be subject to variant genomes and mental disorders, were right. It was a mistake.’

‘And if the Pure genome test had been more accurate?’

‘We cannot allow our society to be built on fear. I hope we will not be quick to repeat such an error.’

Ana wandered into the reception area and leaned against the wall watching the flatscreen. The image showed the Prime Minister getting into his saloon. Then it panned around to the onsite reporter.

‘The Pure barriers have officially come down,’ the woman said into the camera. ‘Six of the worst offending mental rehab homes have been closed. Patients are being reunited with their families and given counselling and support to readjust to their home lives. Over the last few days, tents have sprung up all over the City with public volunteers providing emotional support to those who have been left traumatised by the photos and news of Evelyn Knight’s inhumane experiments. This is Melissa White, reporting from outside 10 Downing Street.’

Ana waved goodbye to the receptionist and rode the lift down to the hospital lobby where Cole was waiting for her.

‘How are things going up there?’

‘OK,’ she said. ‘No significant changes yet. What about things with the Project?’

‘Still lots of talking. Even if people move back to the Project it won’t stay the way it was.’ Cole’s eyes slanted across the lobby. She turned to look at the hospital exit. Beside a plastic bucket chair, hands thrown in his trouser pockets, wearing a white shirt and smart black shoes, stood Jasper. He looked pasty and shellshocked. The sun shone on his sandy-brown hair and cast shadows in the strong lines of his face. He lowered his gaze when their eyes met, as though he’d been caught witnessing something he shouldn’t have.

‘The bike’s just out front,’ Cole said. ‘I’ll wait for you there.’ He lingered a moment.

She leaned towards him and whispered, ‘Don’t forget whose ring I’m wearing.’

He stroked a thumb over the metal band on her ring finger. A half-smile grew across his face. He kissed her again, then strolled out of the lobby, his broad shoulders straight and powerful. Ana felt the familiar pitter-patter of desire and admiration leap inside her. As Cole left the building, Jasper came towards her.

They greeted each other awkwardly: her offering to shake hands, him bending in to peck her on the cheek.

‘You’re out,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t come and see you. Your mother told me about the fire and your brother’s autopsy report – I’m so sorry, Jasper.’

He nodded, shaking his hands nervously in his pockets.

The pinprick in her chest bloomed into an ache. ‘I’m sorry things between us couldn’t have been different,’ she said quietly.

He gave a melancholic smile. ‘I’m going to miss you, Ana.’

She bit her lip, unsure of how to respond.

‘I’ll be staying with a friend in town,’ he continued. ‘My mother will know where if you ever need to find me.’

‘OK,’ she said.

‘I’m finally going to start practising what I’ve been studying for.’

‘You’ve got a case?’

He nodded. ‘I’m joining the prosecution team my mother’s hired and I’ll take evening classes so that I can do the bar exam next year. Dad’s got about twelve of the country’s top lawyers at the house working on his defense. It’s not going to be easy . . .’ He paused. The heat seemed to be getting to him because drops of sweat formed above his lip and at the sides of his hairline. ‘But you know,’ he shrugged, twisting his hands in his front pockets and scrunching up his shoulders. She felt a faint but distinct pang of loss.

‘I wish I hadn’t kept you hanging on like that,’ he blurted. ‘All those months when you didn’t know whether I’d go through with the binding, whether I wanted to be with you. If I’d just found the confidence to tell you we would have worked through it together and—’ He broke off.
And she wouldn’t be with Cole, now.
He didn’t say it, but it was what he was thinking. Perhaps he was right. But regret couldn’t change the past and Ana couldn’t wish things had been any different.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘Goodbye, Ana.’

He backed away slowly.

She watched him, wondering whether the bright-eyed laughing Jasper she’d met when she was eleven, would ever return from the Arctic landscape he’d become lost in after his brother’s death. She hoped he would.

As he passed through the automatic doors, she called out, ‘I had to sell the joining ring to the woman who hijacked the BBC.’

Jasper turned, mouth raised in a half-smile. ‘I hope you got a good price,’ he said. ‘It was worth a fortune.’

*

Ana and the Warden Dombrant had chosen a crematorium in Golders Green for her father’s funeral, an area not far from the Project wall and disbanded Highgate Community checkpoints. Cole drove through the open gates and pulled over in a courtyard circled by low buildings and a tall chapel with a bell tower. A handful of middle-aged men in suits and ties – people her father worked or played golf with – congregated near the entrance to the crematorium, their saloons dotting the car park.

After everything that had happened, Ana hadn’t known if any of them would come. Dombrant talked with a beautiful forty-something woman whose eyes were red from crying. Tamsin stood apart from the crowd with her parents, one hovering on either side of her. She’d cut her hair since she’d got out of Three Mills. Her scabbed, translucent skin was turning more opaque and pink. Light make-up covered most of the blemishes and she looked beautiful, mysterious, the black vine tattoo winding up her neck.

‘I want you to meet someone,’ Ana said, getting off the motorbike and taking Cole’s hand once he’d kicked out the stand.

‘The infamous Tamsin?’ he asked. She nodded. When she’d gone to visit Tamsin three days ago, she’d done so without Cole. After the shock therapy, Tamsin was uneasy around people she didn’t know. Her long-term memory had remained fairly intact, but her parents had warned Ana that there were moments when she forgot what she was doing and where she was, and would grow fraught.

Ana hugged her friend, greeted Tamsin’s parents and introduced Cole. They chatted for a few minutes until the funeral director came out and beckoned everyone inside. She and Cole entered last. Dombrant was in the outer hall leaning over a table with a stone plaque that bore her father’s name.

‘I’ll just be a minute,’ she said. Cole kissed her wrist and went into the room where the ceremony would be held. Ana drew up beside Dombrant and lay the wreath of white roses she was carrying beside several bouquets. For a moment they both studied her father’s small grey headstone. When she turned to the Warden his eyes were bright and glazed. Grief surged inside her.

‘You ever need anything . . .’ he said.

She nodded.

‘You’re gonna be all right, kid.’

Two large teardrops fell down her cheeks. She brushed them aside with the pads of her fingers. ‘What about you?’ she asked. ‘Are you going to be all right?’

‘I’m a survivor.’ She held his stare. So much lay between them. More than the words she had.

Finally, she nodded. ‘We’d better go in.’

He gently tucked his arm around her and they strode together through the open wooden doors.

Epilogue

Sometimes, as I hover on the edge of sleep, the smell of firewood burning through Enkidu, the warm sounds of Cole composing at his upright piano, I remember the first night I met him and his music stirred me back to life, like the sun warming the earth after a long winter.

Sometimes, on summer evenings, while Cole is up on deck showing Rafferty the first stars and Nate is up there with him, rocking baby Miles to sleep, I tinker at the piano and think about the Writings and Tengeri. Lila says I was the angel. Others from the new Project say the angel dies and they are still waiting for her. But I have cast off the labels – Pure, Big3, Angel. I have no need for them. I was all of these things and none of them.

To me, the future is the greatest unknown there is. We are writing it now, each of us, shaping it with the choices we make and the struggle to become who we want to be.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank everyone who has contributed to making The Glimpse Duet possible. Special thanks to my editor Rebecca Lee for helping me kick The Fall into shape, to my agent Jo Williamson at Antony Harwood, to editor Susila Baybars for taking a chance on Ana and Cole in the first place, and to all the Faber team.

Thanks to my crit partners Sandra Nickel, Tioka Tokedira, Mina Witteman and Stephanie Sauvinet. Thanks to Cassandra Griffin for all the feedback and notes on both books – congratulations on nabbing an agent! You’re next!