The Beneath (4 page)

CHAPTER 4

There was no time to lose. I had to come up with a plan – and quickly if it was going to have any chance of working. Snapping the book of short stories closed I turned to face Aria.

“OK, so here’s what we are going to have to do. The story will have to wait until a bit later. Nan’s out at the moment but she’ll be back before too long.” I sneaked a glance at my watch. “Oops, not long at all actually. I can let you stay here tonight, but as you can see there’s not a lot of room so it would be weird for you to stay longer.” I could see her start to ask a question. “Don’t worry, I’ve got something in mind for tomorrow. I just need to sort out the logistics, that’s all. Right now we need to come up with a story that Nan will swallow and you can remember.”

A grateful look flashed across her face before the worried frown replaced it again. “Do I get to meet Nan then? What will I say to her?”

“Try and say as little as possible, I think; just listen. I’ll tell her that you are terribly shy – that will stop her being suspicious. And don’t call her Nan; that will be odd.”

“Isn’t Nan her name?”

“Of course, but it’s because she’s my old nanny, so only I’m allowed to call her that. You can call her Mrs Wakefield, or Mrs W, perhaps. Elizabeth – or Lizzie – Wakefield is her full name, but I wouldn’t risk that just yet.”

“Old nanny – what’s that?”

“When I was little she helped my mum to look after me,” I explained.

“And is she old?”

“I guess so. She won’t say exactly, but she must be well into her sixties by now. She’s not that healthy either, so that makes her seem older.”

“Over sixty…” Aria shook her head. “No one in the Community is that old. All our Elders are in their forties. No one gets to be sixty…”

She tailed off, staring into space.

“Really?” I asked, appalled. “What happens to everyone? Here people usually live until they are seventy or eighty, and sometimes much longer.”

“Eighty?” she squeaked, eyes widening in surprise.

“Sure. Some get to be a hundred. Why do you all
die so young?”

She avoided my gaze.

“That’s … that’s just the way it is. What else do I need to know about your home then?” she added, as if she was keen to change the subject.

I thought about the flat and how it might appear to someone from what amounted to a different world.

“Let me give you a quick tour,” I said. “I don’t want you screaming at things again.”

I held out my hand to help her up from the low, squishy bed and she took it gingerly, letting go as soon as she was upright.

“OK, I have no idea about how you live, so let me just point out a few things and if you know how they work, then fine. Is that all right?”

Aria nodded, so I started my tour.

“Electric lights?” I asked, flicking the switch on and off.

“We have those, but not so bright, and we don’t get to turn them on and off.” She pressed the switch a couple of times, testing it.

“OK, one to you then.” I looked at my laptop. “Computer?” Aria shook her head. “No time to explain that right now.” I wondered how on earth I was going to describe the Web to her. Nothing else in my room seemed too challenging, so I opened the door and slipped into the corridor.

“Now, bathroom. First, don’t touch anything in the
medicine cupboard. There’s enough drugs in there to fill a small shop. If you feel ill, ask me and I’ll find the right stuff for you.” Nan had always locked that cupboard when I visited as a child. Her hobby seemed to be collecting medicines, and as she used to work in a chemist she was able to get her hands on quite a lot. Now, though, she used the Web, and parcels of stuff were always arriving at the door. I had never got a straight answer out of her about why she needed so many, but I rarely had to go to the doctor. Nan always had something for me to take.

I shut the cupboard carefully. “Next – do you have flushing toilets?”

I pulled the chain and hoped that I wasn’t going to have to explain that in too much detail. Aria peered over my shoulder into the minuscule bathroom.

“I understand this but it’s very small,” she said, pointing at the loo. “And there’s only one. How do you talk?”

“Umm, we don’t, not usually. This is a private room and you lock yourself in when you’re in here, see?”

I shuffled round to face the door and showed her the small bolt.

“That’s really funny!” she laughed. “I can’t imagine having to—”

“OK, moving on,” I interrupted quickly, not keen on finding out about the toilet habits of her home. “Next is the kitchen.”

We worked our way through the other rooms in the house, and I explained the basics of the gas cooker, the
microwave and the TV, which mesmerised her.

Lily presses a button and one of the moving pictures appears, the colours glowing. There are people sitting at a table and talking, looking straight at me. I lean down towards the picture, trying to work out if they do see me, but close up it’s a blur of colour. As I reach forward to touch it Lily takes my arm.

“Here, come back a bit, you’ll be able to see it better,” she says. “It’s called a TV.”

I step back. The colours are fantastic, and with a sudden burst of music the people sitting at the table change to a different person standing in front of a coloured wall full of shapes. The woman is talking about high pressure and rising temperatures. Then Lily clicks the little black box in her hand again and the woman is replaced by figures with big heads and wide eyes. They look like drawings come to life. The music is loud and jangling. I step back in surprise and feel the edge of something bang into the back of my knees. Glancing round I see the soft seat behind me. I sit down – sitting is safer, and it makes the pictures easier to see.

“What’s this?” I ask. “What are those odd things?”

“That’s Postman
Pat
,” she laughs. “He’s always odd. It’s a kids’ programme.”

I still want to touch the surface to prove to myself that these figures aren’t really there, but I can’t reach. What other wonders do the Aboves have for me to discover?
Lily hands me the black box, which is covered in little buttons.

“Here, you can use this to change the channels, find something you like.”

I take it carefully. The buttons feel soft. Lily reaches over and presses one with a tiny arrow on it.

“You use this one,” she says, and the happy little people in the picture change to a glum-looking man dressed in grey with a very bright necktie. He’s talking about a terrible accident where a family have been burned in a fire. I don’t like it, so I press the button again and the picture changes to more moving drawings. I like those.

“OK, Aria, this is the plan,” says Lily, perching on the edge of the squashy seat beside me. “I’m going to tell Nan that you are a friend from school, that you are very shy and don’t like speaking much. That all right with you?”

I nod, not able to take my eyes off the moving pictures on the TV.

“I’ll tell her that I’ve said you can stay the night because we have a deadline for a drama project and need to work late. If she asks about it, say that we have to produce a piece about … um…” Lily stares off into the distance for a moment. “Bullying – kids being mean to other kids. Say it’s about bullying if she asks, but she probably won’t.”

When Nan came in she made a fuss about dinner being late, so the first time she had the chance to speak to Aria was when we were sitting down together to eat.

“So you’re a friend of Lily’s then, from school?” she asked, as she speared a pasta tube in her macaroni cheese.

Aria nodded. “Yes, that’s right.”

“And where do you live then?”

I tightened my grip on my cutlery hoping Aria would remember what I told her.

“Acton,” she said, going pink and bending over her plate.

“That is a long way,” said Nan. “It’s such a shame that Lily has to live so far from school, but we didn’t want to move her, not with her GCSEs coming up. I rarely meet any of her friends, do I, Lily?”

It was my turn to go pink. “No, Nan, hardly ever. But you can’t expect them to come all the way over here. It’s not exactly convenient.”

After that I managed to steer the conversation on to safer topics, and Aria didn’t have to say another word. As soon as we finished eating I said that we would clear up so that we could work on our project, so Nan disappeared into the sitting room to watch TV. I pulled out some school books and scattered them over the kitchen table, just in case she came back in, and then opened a notebook. I handed Aria a pen.

“Can you write anything at all? Just try.”

Aria took the pen from me carefully, rolling it between her fingers and peering at the point. Then she sniffed it, wrinkling her nose slightly.

“I’ve never seen one of these before, not in real life anyway.”

Her hand had already started out to pull over the notebook, but she waited for me to nod before she began, pressing the ballpoint on the paper, bottom lip clenched between her teeth. Very slowly she drew a line, and then, with a nervous glance towards me, she drew a very shaky “A”.

“‘A’ for Aria,” I said, smiling when I saw what it was.

She suddenly beamed.

“Is it? I was told ages ago that it was, but I wasn’t sure if I could believe him.”

“Who taught you?”

“It was Morris, one of the older boys. He was being very smug about how much more he knew than me. He said he had been taught to write, and I thought he was too stupid to learn. I said I didn’t believe him, so he drew me the A on the eating table using some water and his finger. He would have been in big trouble if he had been caught.” She paused, looking down at the letter. “I never forgot what it looked like.”

“At least he taught you one letter. Perhaps he’s not as bad as your leader.”

“Maybe, but he’ll never be our leader so it won’t make any difference.” Aria looked up at me from behind her
long dark hair. “We need a new leader before anything can change.”

She held my gaze for a fraction too long, making me feel that I was missing something.

“Well, there’s not much you can do about that now, and you’ll soon find out that things are very different here. Your friend was right about the ‘A’ though. Would you like to know how to write the rest of your name?”

She hesitated for just a second before nodding, and we were soon copying out the whole alphabet. We were so engrossed I didn’t notice that Nan was in the doorway. She was watching Aria intently, frowning. I thought she was about to speak so I jumped up and pulled her back into the sitting room.

“Look, Nan, I hope you don’t mind, but I’m giving Aria a few catch-up lessons. She’s a bit behind at school so I’m trying to help. She feels pretty embarrassed about it so would you mind not mentioning it?”

I stumbled over the words as I was trying to say them all so quickly. Nan stared at me for a moment before smiling. She gave me a quick peck on the cheek.

“I think that’s lovely, dear. It’s nice that you’re taking the time. She seems very nervous though. Is everything else OK?”

“She doesn’t get out much, Nan. Her family are part of an odd religion so she spends a lot of time alone.”

“Well, it’s good to see that she has a friend then – that you both have a friend, actually.” She smiled at me and
gave me a quick hug. “I’m just going to turn in. Can you sort out a bed for your visitor?”

“Sure. See you in the morning.”

Even Nan had noticed that I didn’t have any friends. It was a relief to know that she was safely shut behind her bedroom door and there would be no more need for lies for a while.

“Nan’s gone to bed,” I announced as I went back into the kitchen, wondering just how much of our conversation Aria had heard. “Do you want to carry on with this or go to bed too?”

“Sleep sounds good,” she said, stretching, “but I’d really like to learn some more of this tomorrow.”

Her long fingers traced the outline of her latest attempt to copy her name.

“It’s my mission!” I laughed, gathering up the books. “I’m going to teach you to read.”

I made up a bed on the sofa for Aria but I could tell that she wasn’t happy there. She picked nervously at the duvet cover as her eyes darted around the room.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I’ve … I’ve never actually slept alone before. Is it safe?”

“Of course it’s safe! Who do you normally have in the room with you?”

She looked even more miserable.

“It used to be my sister, until she was Assigned. As soon as that happened I was moved into the dormitory.
No one ever sleeps on their own.”

I sat down on the end of the makeshift bed, curling my feet up underneath me.

“Sounds a bit weird. Why do they do that?”

Aria pulled her knees up and rested her chin on them.

“I’ve no idea, it’s just how it is.”

“So do you have just the one sister?” I asked.

Aria nodded. “Yes, Carita.”

“So when she left where were your parents? Why didn’t they stay with you?”