Dark Lullaby Polly Ho-Yen (drm ebook reader .txt) 📖

Telling Thomas changed everything.

He went back to the library the next day to speak to Iris or whoever was there. It was as though he couldn’t believe that we might have this chance until he heard it from someone else. When he arrived back, he could barely contain his enthusiasm for the plan. He’d already set up a meeting the next day for us both to speak to Iris about what to do next. He’d asked questions, found out more about the operation than I’d thought of.

‘The library network is part of a larger underground resistance movement,’ he told me. ‘There’s someone involved who works for OSIP who removes the wristbands apparently. He’s the brother of someone, of someone. He’s risking everything. He thinks the wristbands are not only receptors for the IPS data but they are trackers too and so they’ll take them off as soon as they take Mimi.’

I noticed he was speaking about it as though we had already decided it was going to happen, we had already agreed that we would do it. I swallowed hard, trying again to visualise the plan unfolding; imagining, unsuccessfully, us travelling across Europe to safety together.

‘Apparently,’ Thomas continued, ‘though OSIP will be looking for us, they won’t publicise it. They don’t want it out on the Spheres that people are on the run from them. So it’s possible to avoid them if we follow all the instructions and keep a low profile.’

‘Are we really going to do this?’ I said, but Thomas wasn’t listening to me. He had swept Mimi up, high into the air, and so she gave a gleeful chuckle and then dangled her from side to side. But then he wrapped her close into a hug and looked right at me.

‘We have to.’

The following day Iris said she would arrange for us to meet with the person who would oversee us and told us not return to the library unless we had to.

‘We need a meeting place that is private. Away from Spheres,’ she said. ‘It’s better if it’s somewhere that’s linked to you but if you can’t think of anywhere, we can come up with one.’

‘I know a place,’ I volunteered. ‘The allotments in the west quarter.’ Thomas squeezed my hand. I’d taken Mimi there a few times but it was too difficult to keep things going when she was little and I hadn’t been at all since we’d started receiving IPSs.

‘That will work,’ Iris said. I told her in detail which was our plot, drawing it out as a simple map.

‘Be there at ten o’clock on Wednesday morning. Just one of you. Don’t bring Mimi. If no one comes then we won’t have been able to go ahead for some reason.’

‘Why might that be?’ Thomas asked quickly.

Iris frowned. ‘I don’t know, sometimes it’s just not possible.’

She eyed our panic-stricken faces. I hadn’t felt sure of the plan, but now the thought that it might not be a possible felt like a vice griping my heart.

‘Just see what happens on Wednesday,’ she said. I had the strongest sense that she couldn’t be any more reassuring.

On the day of the meet, I packed a bag with a flask of tea, the key to the small shed, my gardening gloves, as though I really were going to spend time at the allotment like I used to. It steadied me to do it. We’d agreed that it would be better that it was me that went to avoid raising suspicion. I had felt utterly torn between the distinct desires of needing to be the one to do it and wanting to relinquish the job wholly over to Thomas.

I’d marched over to the allotments with a briskness that I didn’t feel. After what Iris had said, I felt sure that no one would be there but until that moment came, there was still the hope that there was the chance of not losing Mimi.

I thought I saw a figure standing by the entrance as I approached but as I got closer I saw it was just some loose tarpaulin caught on the hedge. I hurried forwards anyway but when I reached the gate I made myself not look around. Thomas and I had talked endlessly about how we must try not to look conspicuous, that perhaps the person we were meeting was watching us to judge if we were capable of undertaking such a dangerous operation. And so I didn’t linger. I headed towards dad’s old patch with a certainty I didn’t feel and though no one was there, I opened up the shed door, busied myself with finding a fork and started attacking one of the beds, pulling up the weeds that were choking it.

I could feel tears building, a lump in my throat growing; part of me wanted to sink down into the damp earth and howl, but something stopped me. I carried on sorting and working as methodically as dad would have done. I didn’t even notice the man until he was at my side.

‘This is a good place to meet,’ he said, eyes roving over my dad’s neglected beds.

I carried on working, thrusting the fork firmly into the ground, pulling at roots and removing stones as though he wasn’t even there.

‘I wasn’t sure you were going to come,’ I said. I glanced in his direction. He was bald, maybe in his fifties. He wore a grey-green overcoat even though the sun was warm, but I noticed he didn’t look out of place standing talking at the allotments on a Wednesday morning.

As though I hadn’t spoken, he carried on: ‘I understand that you have been taken through what would happen and you want go ahead.’

‘Yes.’

‘I can send someone for your daughter on Sunday afternoon. You’ll have to leave immediately afterwards. You need to take as much cash with you as you can but don’t withdraw it too soon so as not to draw attention. I’ll give you a list of safe houses to go to.’

‘That’s it?’

‘Yes,