The Special Ones (16 page)

Still, my hand shakes a little as I turn on my own screen. There’s nothing there, though. No message from
him.
No renewal notice. When it’s time for chat, I go and check on Felicity. She’s pale but awake, and struggling into her clothes.

‘You should rest,’ I tell her, but she shakes her head.

‘If I don’t go you’ll get in more trouble. And it’s my leg that’s hurt, not my hand.’

I can see there will be no convincing her otherwise.

I find it hard to concentrate during evening chat. I keep looking sideways to check how Felicity is going, but I also keep wondering if he has read Lucille’s report yet. I catch Lucille looking at my screen, probably trying to see if I’m writing un-Esther-ish things to my followers. But I don’t even care. I just want the session to finish so I can find out whether I’ll get a message tonight.

When the session finally ends (and I’m careful not to close it down a moment earlier than I should), I put Lucille in charge of helping Felicity back to bed. She looks at me suspiciously. ‘Why can’t you do it?’

‘Because I have to close down the screens,’ I say, in my patient, Esther voice. ‘And Felicity will need some help.’

Reluctantly, Lucille leads Felicity off and the moment they’re gone, I look back at my screen, willing a message from Piper to appear. And when one does –
how are you, Esther?
–I want to rush to reply. But I need to think my words through carefully. I don’t want to make
him
suspicious, should he be looking in on our conversation, but it’s important that I make the seriousness of my situation clear.

The reply is a very long time coming and I feel the panic start to rise. Maybe I’m not communicating with Harry. Maybe I’m talking to some creepy old guy who knows nothing about my situation. The type of person who lurks online, ready to prey on the innocent and the naive – or the desperate, like me.

In the corridor I hear footsteps. The swish of a skirt.
Lucille.
I’ve got less than a minute left.

I’m not expecting the reply that comes.

My stomach drops. It’s exactly what
he
might say.
No!
I want to write back.
Come and get me out of here straight away! I can’t stay in here another moment.

But there’s no time for more writing, even if I dared. Lucille appears in the room and I only just manage to flick off the screen before she comes up beside me. ‘What is it, Lucille?’ I say. ‘What do you want?’

‘I’ve come to help you close down,’ she says.

‘Only I am allowed to do that,’ I tell her. ‘You know that.’

Lucille gives a tight-lipped smile. ‘Actually, that’s not true,’ she says. ‘I checked in your remembering book. All it says is that Esther must open and close the chat-room door. It says nothing about whether one of us can help with the screens and tidying the room.’

I keep my remembering book tucked away underneath my bed. ‘You went into my room?’ I say, shocked.

Lucille meets my eye, defiant, unashamed. ‘I thought at least one of us should be paying attention to the rules.’

The anger builds inside me, but before I can do or say anything Lucille lunges across and flicks my screen back on. I try to turn it off again but it’s too late.

‘There’s a message there!’ she practically screams. ‘Who is it from? Who are you talking to? I know you’re up to something, Esther! Stop trying to hide it!’ Wildly, she kicks at my chair, knocking it over so I’m sent sprawling to the floor. Then she clicks open the message on my screen.

‘It’s nothing to do with you, Lucille!’ I hurl at her as I scramble to my feet. ‘It’s just a late question from one of my followers. You’ve got no right to read it.’

But Lucille is staring at my screen. ‘It’s not from a follower,’ she says. Her voice has become strangely soft and she steps away from my screen, allowing me to read the message myself.

She’s right. It’s not from a follower. It’s from
him.
The room is suddenly way too bright for me to bear. I close my eyes and feel my pulse thrum in my ears.

Esther. Prepare for renewal.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

For a moment neither Lucille nor I say a word. We stand together, staring at the screen in silence. Then finally Lucille turns to me and nods her head. ‘Congratulations,’ she says, stiffly. ‘You were due for it.
Over
due.’

I don’t answer. I’m tingling from the news.
It’s happening.
The thing I’ve dreaded and tried so hard to prevent for two years. I always worried that if I got this message I’d collapse on the spot. But I don’t. All I keep thinking is that I’ll finally be walking through the front gate of this place. And of the small chance that Harry will be waiting for me on the other side.

For the moment I’m not even concerned about what will happen next. I shut down the screen and leave the room, vaguely aware that Lucille is trailing along behind me, talking nonstop. Her words float by unheard.
I’m leaving,
I think.
I’m actually leaving.

That night, for the first time since Harry left, I fall asleep almost the moment I get into bed and sleep soundly, deeply, undreamingly until first light.

It’s not until I have to break the news to Felicity the next morning that I start to feel twinges of concern about what’s about to happen. She looks pale and drawn when she appears at the table and barely eats a thing. Later, when I change her bandages, I see with concern that the wound is slightly infected. I clean it up as best I can and then try to deliver my news softly, but the moment Felicity hears it she starts to cry.

‘Please don’t go,’ she begs.

I sit beside her, feeling awful. ‘It’ll be okay,’ I say, weakly.

Felicity shakes her head. ‘No, it won’t. Who’ll look after me?’

‘I’ll still be here, don’t forget,’ says Lucille, who is loitering in the doorway.

Felicity isn’t comforted by this and I’m not surprised. It’s hard to imagine Lucille telling her stories or jokes when she’s sad.

‘You won’t come back!’ sobs Felicity. ‘Harry hasn’t and I bet you won’t either.’

‘Of course she’ll come back,’ says Lucille, in a tone that is probably meant to sound reassuring. ‘And Harry will too. And they’ll be all fresh and full of energy.’

Felicity doesn’t say anything but a look comes over her face that makes me realise she doesn’t believe this. I feel bad for her, but I actually feel bad for Lucille too. It’s true that she did her best to get me renewed, but I suppose she was only doing what she thought she had to do. Life will be much harder for her once I’m gone – although she doesn’t yet realise it.

My renewal will almost certainly happen in just a few days and there’s a lot to do before then. I want to prepare things for Lucille and Felicity, stock up on supplies for them to use after I’ve gone.

Felicity brings me the last of the tomatoes – a huge effort, given that she can barely walk – and I make as much pasta sauce as I can, sealing it into glass jars and stacking them in the storage cupboard. After that, I bake – biscuits sweetened with dried berries and honey as well as hard, salty, rusk-like bread sticks. The rusks are not exactly tasty but they’ll be filling, at least, and it reassures me to know that I’ll be leaving behind enough food to keep Lucille and Felicity going for a while.

Whenever I can snatch a moment I write detailed notes, listing all my tasks and explaining how to carry them out. I record the sort of information that I would’ve found handy when I first arrived. I record most of the recipes I’ve developed, as well as explaining how to do battle with the stove. I make a detailed explanation of how to set up and shut down the chat room. The notes are for Lucille, as she’ll have to take over from me when I go, but they’re also for whoever eventually comes to replace me. It’s a strange thought – someone else filling my role, wearing my clothes, being the Esther. Maybe, I think ruefully, she’ll be better at it than me.

Over the next couple of days I veer from emotion to emotion – nervousness, excitement, terror. The strangest part is how sad I feel. I find myself looking around at the all-too-familiar details of the house and wanting to cry, although that’s so stupid. How can I feel unhappy about leaving a place I’ve felt trapped in for so long? I’ll miss Felicity, of course, and I’ll worry about her. Her wound seems to be getting worse, no matter how often I wash it or how much herbal ointment I apply. But it’s not just that. I’ve been playing the role of Esther for so long that I’m not sure I’ll remember how to be me again – should I even manage to survive the renewal process. But I don’t allow myself to think about that.

Time disappears rapidly. Each day evaporates, rising in a cloud of smoke around me. I float along – not yet free, but not the prisoner I was before, either. There are no messages from Piper. I spend the first couple of days hoping Harry will burst through the door and that together we’ll get the other two to safety. But as the days pass, I have to admit to myself that this is very unlikely.
He’ll be there when you leave the farm
, I tell myself.
It’s the easiest way to rescue you.

Lucille is clearly struggling to finish my renewal dress, so I begin working on it with her. I don’t ask her if she needs my help and she doesn’t tell me not to. We sit across from each other in the changing room, for hours at a time, heads bent. Lucille has barely spoken to me since my renewal notice arrived but I’m glad for the silence. It gives me a chance to think about what still needs to be done and to continue the silent conversation with Harry I’ve been holding in my head.

I tell him about my worries.
Felicity is getting weaker and weaker. She needs to see a doctor, take some antibiotics. What will happen once I’m not here? How will Lucille manage? She thinks she knows it all, but she really doesn’t.

One time, as I’m deep in conversation with Harry, I’m startled by a loud sound from Lucille. I look up to see she’s burst into tears. ‘Lucille! What’s wrong?’

She shows me the piece she’s been working on – one of the sleeves. ‘It’s much shorter than the other one,’ she sobs. ‘And I don’t know how to fix it.’

‘Hey, don’t worry,’ I say, coming to sit down beside her. ‘We’ll just shorten the other one.’ For some reason this makes her cry even more.

Later that day, Felicity becomes feverish and I put her to bed, even though I know that
he
would not approve. But I don’t care. She can barely stand. There’s no question of her working, even though this means the animals will not be fed. I am not at all surprised when I log on that evening to find a message from him.

That’s it. There’s no
thanks for the last two years,
or
I’ll miss you
. But then, there wouldn’t be. I’m not scared, as I thought I might be. I’m relieved. Felicity can’t get out of bed, and Lucille can’t go into the farm to tend to the animals or collect the vegetables. If there’s to be any chance of any of them surviving beyond the next couple of days, I have to get out of here.

I stay in Felicity’s room that last night, trying to keep her fever down. In the morning she seems a little better – or, at least, she’s exhausted enough to sleep – and I rush around tidying up, removing all traces of myself from the farmhouse. I strip my bed and boil the sheets and all my clothes except the things I’m wearing, and then hang everything out to dry on the verandah. I scrub my bedroom floor, the walls and the window. I give my ‘things’ – my bristle toothbrush, my apron, my ribbons – to Lucille. I only keep one thing for myself: the comb from Harry.

For my last meal I prepare a vegetable soup, hoping that I can tempt Felicity to eat some. She insists on sitting up at the table and valiantly swallows a couple of mouthfuls before shaking her head apologetically.

None of us eat much. I put the remaining soup in a jug and leave it covered, in the coolest corner of the cupboard. With luck it will still be fine to eat tomorrow.