One of Us (25 page)

Greg laughs. He reaches for my bag. “I've got a car.” His arms are brown. “It was for my sixteenth birthday, but we only got it last week.”

“I didn't know you could drive.” I don't mention that I can drive too, because my driving was kind of unofficial, long ago on the runway of a disused airport, in a tractor with other kids from the children's home.

The car is an old four-door hatchback. As I get in, I see black grease spreading out from under the wheels.

Greg looks down. “It always does that.” He drops
his keys on to the seat while he puts my bag in the back. “It's not far.”

I pick up his keys. The key fob is a round object. “What's this?”

Greg whistles, and it begins to flash and bleep. “You never know when you might lose your keys.” He gives me a sheepish smile.

I shake my head and laugh. He looks sideways at me, a little bit worried. Then he laughs too. He starts the engine and pulls away from the curb.

“Is it nice to be with your family?” I ask. My voice comes out dry.

“It's good,” says Greg. “My sisters are driving me crazy, though.” He glances at me again. “But don't worry, they'll love you.”

Suddenly I feel very nervous. I don't know how to fit into a family.

G
REG STOPS THE
car outside a weathered stone house. The front door is open, and a little girl is skipping up and down the top step.

“That's Angelina,” says Greg. “Don't take it personally if she just giggles at you.”

A tall girl with long brown hair appears behind Angelina. That must be Meredith. Then I see Greg's parents in the hallway as well. The whole family is framed in the doorway. I can't decide if that makes them look like they're guarding the house or welcoming me. They look close. When I see them I think,
Greg's family
. Not
Brotherhood family
. Oh, but what will they think of me?

Greg puts his arm around my waist and pulls me toward him. “This is Verity.”

I glance up at him. He's beaming again. He looks proud of me, and that makes me feel a stab of pain.

Angelina hops down the steps, her straight chestnut hair swinging over her shoulders. She looks up at me. “Are you Greg's girlfriend?”

“Um,” I begin, but it doesn't matter, because she breaks into peals of cackling laughter.

“Shut up!” Meredith frowns.

Angelina grabs hold of my hand in her small strong one and drags me into the kitchen, where the pine table is set, ready for dinner.

“Let's show Verity her room first,” says Rosanna, Greg's mom.

She takes me up to the top of the house, to an attic room under the sloping roof. Greg follows behind her, with Angelina at his heels.

“This is Greg's room,” she says. “He's sleeping downstairs.”

Behind her, I see Greg raise his eyebrows. I look around the room. There are books piled under the desk and on top of it too. Outside, trees with feathery leaves whisper against the window.

We go back to the kitchen. On the way down, Greg takes my hand, and I grip it in mine.

“You sit here, Verity,” says Angelina, pulling me down on to the seat next to hers. She knocks a fork onto the floor and dives under the table.

Greg sits opposite me. Our eyes meet and he smiles. I've never seen him smile so much. It's almost
unnerving. Meredith sets a big dish of chicken in the middle of the table. Greg's dad, Gerontius, opens a bottle of red wine. Rosanna is already at the table, leafing through a medical journal. She pushes her glasses up her nose. “There's an interesting article about ulcerated feet here, Gerry.”

“
Mom
,” says Meredith.

Greg directs a heavenward glance at me.

Rosanna tosses her journal onto the kitchen cabinet, where it totters for a moment on top of the stack of other magazines, books, and papers. “Help yourself to chicken and rice, Verity.” She pushes the dish toward me.

“There's two pieces each,” says Angelina quickly.

“Angelina!” Meredith glares across the table. “Don't be rude.”

“Well, there are.”

I take a piece of chicken.

Gerontius sets a full glass of wine in front of Rosanna. “I got stopped today in town,” he says to her.

“Again?” Her voice is sharp.

Gerontius shrugs. “It was a patrol car this time.” He pours water into Angelina's glass, spilling some down the side. “They were actually going in the opposite direction. Then they saw me, and that was it. Lights, siren . . .”

A silence falls. Across the table I become aware of Greg's eyes, fixed on me. He and Meredith exchange glances.

Angelina looks from face to face. “Why, Dad?” she begins.

Rosanna shakes her head at Gerontius.

“Who stopped you?” Angelina's voice is insistent.

“The important thing is to remove the necrotic tissue before it spreads to the bone,” says Rosanna quickly.

“Oh, yes?” Gerontius helps himself to brown rice.

Rosanna whips around to get her journal and flashes a photo of an ankle oozing pus at them. “See?” she says brightly. “Too late to operate on the foot drop at this stage.”

“Ugh!” Angelina covers her eyes.

“Do you have to?” says Meredith. “Please?”

“What?” Rosanna peers around. “Oh. Sorry. Sorry, Verity. I always forget.” She reaches back to replace the journal and the whole pile slides off the dresser. “Oops,” she says. “Gregory could have been a doctor, Verity.” She fixes Greg with a sudden stare, very like the one he's directed at me so many times. “But instead he's throwing away all chance of that and he wants to study cartoons.”

A
FTERWARD, WE ALL
wash the dishes together. Greg and I dry, and the girls put away. It's so ordinary, yet so strange to be part of a family routine. When we've finished, Rosanna announces, “Angelina, it's time for bed.”

We go into the sitting room. Greg and Meredith and I sit down on the comfortable old sofas, then Angelina comes bouncing in.

“I want you to read my story, Greg.”

He gets up, but in the doorway he turns to me and says, “Don't go away!”

I wait there for him, even after Meredith goes upstairs too. I pick up a magazine about Physiotherapy.

After a while Rosanna's footsteps clip down the hall. “Did you get Meredith's passport replacement form?” she says.

I hear Gerontius walking toward her. They're just outside the room. “Yes, I did,” he says. “But I wish we could wait until after the Reconciliation Agreement becomes law. Look at the questions.” Papers rustle as Rosanna flicks through them.

I don't think I should be listening to this, but I feel too awkward to go out. If only Greg would come back. I try to concentrate on the journal, but it's dense scientific jargon.

But then Rosanna reads out from the form: “If a citizen, go to page thirty-five. If Brotherhood, answer questions eleven-A to twenty-nine.”

“Let me see.” There's silence for a moment. Gerontius's voice sounds tense with anger even though he's trying to talk quietly. “What sort of questions are these? All your family and friend connections? Detailed information about where you go on weekends? It's outrageous.”

“We can't go back abroad knowing Meredith's passport will expire while we're still away. And we must have done it for Greg,” says Rosanna.

“Yes, but then we couldn't expect anything better,” insists Gerontius. “Now we can. If we could just hold on for a couple of months, there'll only be the one form for everyone. Meredith won't ever need to be on the fingerprint database.”

“That's true . . .” Rosanna sounds worried. “She won't need an ID card until she's sixteen anyway . . . But we haven't got any choice.” I hear her putting shoes in the shoe rack. “And let's just hope the Reconciliation Agreement isn't derailed,” she says darkly.

Greg's family have had years of this to deal with. Thanks, Oskar, for putting
my
fingerprints on
my
ID card when I didn't even need to have one. But I've only lived like this for a few months. I don't think I've ever felt so horrible. Such an impostor.

Suddenly I know I can't ever lie to Greg again. I'm going to tell him the truth, whatever the consequences.

He comes back in. I look up at him. He's smiling the loveliest smile as he sits down beside me. “Hey,” he says softly. “What's wrong?”

“Greg,” I say, “there's something I have to tell you.”

But before he can reply, his mother breezes in. You'd think the conversation about the passport form had never happened.

“OK, you kids,” she says with forced cheeriness, “let me help you get your bed ready, Gregory.”

It's clear Rosanna wants me to go. Between her and little Angelina, it's going to be almost impossible to be alone with Greg today. And so I have one night to lie in his bed, listening to the swishing of the trees that he listened to when he was a child, remembering his eyes as he said good night. Knowing that we are still friends.

W
E SPEND THE
next morning picking blackberries to make jam. Meredith stirs the bubbling mixture. She's
so hot that her hair has frizzed up all around her face. Every now and then she drips a bit onto a plate and tips it to see if it's set. So far it's still running.

I pour hot water into the jam jars on the draining board. It's an old wooden board that slopes down into the porcelain sink, so the jars aren't level. Angelina is sitting at the table writing “Blackberry Jam” and the date on sticky labels.

“You'll never finish that if you do each letter in a different color, Angelina,” says Meredith.

“Yes, I will. And I want them in different colors.”

Greg hums softly to himself as he rolls out pastry on a marble slab set into the kitchen counter. He has a smudge of flour on his nose and his hair is sticking up wildly at the back. Angelina is humming too, a different tune. Meredith sighs at the jam. She rubs her nose furiously with the back of her hand.

What am I doing here? I feel hot and cold suddenly at the hugeness of my deception. This family has trusted me as a true friend, someone who is the same as them. Not a spy like the passport form, snooping into their lives to find out where they are.