Читать книгу Perfect - Cecelia Ahern, Cecelia Ahern - Страница 19

“Home” takes us through back roads and trails, away from towns and main roads. Every lamp-post and billboard is covered in election campaign posters. I see Enya Sleepwell from the Vital Party, a politician who attended my trial. I didn’t know it at the time, but she was there to support me. I didn’t even know who she was, until journalist Pia Wang questioned me about her. Enya Sleepwell recently became leader of the Vital Party and one of the main items on her campaign agenda is to discuss rights for the Flawed. It’s a risky topic for a politician: the Guild and the government go hand in hand. But despite her choice of issues, her popularity is growing week by week.

On the poster, her cropped hair and reassuring smile stand above the slogan COMPASSION AND LOGIC. These are my words from the trial, when explaining why I aided the old Flawed man on the bus.

Why did I help him? All the confused faces kept asking me during the trial. It was beyond belief, incomprehensible, that anyone would want to aid a Flawed, a second-class citizen.

I helped him because I had compassion and logic. I felt for him, and helping him made sense. They were the first words that came to me in the court, I hadn’t planned them. The only story that had been planned was the lie that Crevan had wanted me to tell. It feels so peculiar to me to see those words in big, bold writing on posters, like they’ve been stolen from me, and have been bent to someone else’s purpose.

I want to ask Carrick and Lennox a million questions, but I know not to ask anything. The atmosphere is tense in the car, even between Carrick and Lennox as they decide which way to traverse.

The Guild has increased the number of Whistleblowers on the ground. Judge Crevan is in a panic trying to find me; the most Flawed person in the history of the Guild is not allowed to just disappear. Crevan has widened searches to all public and private properties, the hope being that there will be less support for me when members of the public are made to look like Flawed aiders in front of their neighbours.

Crevan has even started delaying the Flawed curfew buses. Designed to bring the Flawed population home in time for their 11:00 PM curfew, people are now missing their curfews at the hands of the Guild and they’re being punished. This is all in my name. Crevan is playing a game with me. I will continue to punish the innocent until you come out of your hiding place.

Riots have begun to break out in the city. The Guild is characterising them as random outbursts from Flawed groups, but Granddad believes it’s not just Flawed who are feeling angry about the Guild. He believes regular people are uncomfortable about Flawed rules too, and that they’re starting to speak out. I know now that there is sense in what I once considered Granddad’s nonsensical rants. Whatever excuses the Guild gave to the public, I know that Crevan’s real reason for this surge in Whistleblower activity is to find me.

There are times when I’ve wanted to give myself up, for the sake of others, but Granddad always stops me. He tells me that I can do more for people over time and they will appreciate it then. It just takes patience.

We see a Whistleblowers’ checkpoint up ahead, and take a sharp left down the back of a cluster of shops, an alley so narrow we have to squeeze by the skips. Carrick stops the car and they pore over the map some more in search of a new route. This happens a few times. The relief that I experienced on seeing Carrick has now dissipated as I realise I’m still not safe. I yearn for that feeling of not having to constantly look over my shoulder.

Beads of sweat glisten on Carrick’s brow. I take the opportunity of sitting behind him to study him. His black hair is closely shaven; his neck, shoulders, everything wide, muscular and strong. Soldier is what I named him in the castle cells before I knew his real name. His cheekbones and jaw are perfectly defined, all hard edges. His eyes, a colour I’ve never been able to work out, still look black in the rear-view mirror. I study them: hard, intense, quick, always analysing, looking for new angles. He catches my stare and, embarrassed, I quickly avert my eyes. When I finally glimpse back I catch him looking at me.

“Home, sweet home,” Lennox says, and I can see them both visibly relax. But I look out the window at our destination and I tense even more. This is not the ‘home’ I was expecting. Or hoping for.

We drive towards a compound surrounded by twenty-feet-high fences with rows of barbed wire. It looks like a prison. Carrick looks back at me again, to garner my reaction, his black eyes fixed on me.

I have broken the most basic rule that Granddad taught me. Don’t trust anyone.

And for the first time ever, I doubt Carrick.