Читать книгу Perfect - Cecelia Ahern, Cecelia Ahern - Страница 22

“You two have plenty of time to talk,” a woman calls suddenly, startling me. She’s standing at the open door of the cabin that the noise was flowing from. “Come join us, Celestine.” She has an enormous welcoming smile on her face.

I blink. Then I realise: my face has been in the news for weeks now; of course this stranger knows who I am.

“Um, thanks,” I say.

“Celestine North,” she says as I reach her. She opens her arms and embraces me. “It is an honour to meet you.” She wraps me up and I’m stiff at first but slowly relax into it. When is the last time I received a hug? I think of my mum and dad and fight the emotion that follows. “I’m Kelly – come inside and I’ll introduce you to everyone.”

I look back at Carrick for help, but Kelly takes me by the hand and brings me along with her. Once inside the cabin, I see a roomful of strangers staring at me. Carrick follows us into the room and disappears into a corner somewhere.

Kelly introduces me. “This is my husband, Adam.”

Adam hugs me warmly. “Welcome.”

“Come and meet Rogan,” Kelly says, dragging me away.

In a darkened corner, a younger teen lurks.

“Say hi to Celestine, Rogan,” Kelly coaxes him, as a parent would do with a much younger child.

He gives me a weak wave, like the effort to care is too great.

“Oh, come on,” Kelly says to him, and he slowly stands, shuffles over to me with feet too big for his body, trousers too big for his waist, and reaches out to shake my hand. It’s limp. It’s damp. He doesn’t look me in the eye and quickly scampers back to his bean bag. If I was on the outside I would say he was disgusted by a Flawed, but in here, in the company of so many Flawed and assuming he’s one of us himself, I put it down to shyness. Kelly talks a mile a minute, introducing me to the rest of the group.

There’s Cordelia and her little girl, six-year-old Evelyn, who shows me that her top teeth fell out, pushing her tongue through the holes. I’m surprised to recognise the two men I was standing beside at the cash register when the entire drama started at the supermarket riot two weeks ago. Now I know their names are Fergus and Lorcan. Fergus has stitches across his forehead, and Lorcan is covered in bruises. I meet Mona, a girl around my age, with a smile so bright, and sizzling energy that would light up the darkest day. I immediately like her. There’s an older man named Bahee, a chilled-out dude wearing circular blue-tinted glasses and a long grey ponytail, who’d look comfortable sitting round a camp fire and singing “Kumbaya”.

“And you already know our eldest son, Carrick.” Kelly smiles. Carrick comes a bit closer. “I’m so glad you were with him in the castle.” She takes my hands, her eyes filled with tears. “We know how horrific the experience is. I’m glad you were there with my boy.” She reaches out to him, but he recoils slightly. It’s as though his actions have surprised himself, but it’s too late—the damage is done. Kelly pulls her hand away from him, trying to hide her hurt expression.

“You found your parents?” I ask in surprise.

I look from Adam to Kate, finally and suddenly seeing a resemblance between Carrick and his dad. But he’s nothing like his mother – she’s tiny, birdlike. Carrick towers over her, though he does with most people. She’s more like Rogan, who would barely shake my hand. I look to Rogan then and realise that he’s her son.

“That means you two are …”

I wait for them to say something but nobody speaks. They don’t even look at one another. There’s such an awkward atmosphere, so much tension. But of course being reunited with loved ones after thirteen years was never going to be easy.

“They’re brothers!” Mona suddenly announces. “Yay! Do I get a point for that?” she asks sarcastically, punching the air. “It’s just one big happy family around here, isn’t it, guys?”

“Mona,” Adam says, annoyed, as Kelly turns away. It doesn’t seem to bother Mona in the slightest.

“You didn’t tell her you found us, Carrick?” Kelly asks, confused and hurt.

There’s a long silence as Carrick pulls at his earlobe self-consciously, trying to search for an answer that will help his situation.

“Hey, has Carrick shown you the sleepboxes yet?” Mona jumps in at just the right time.

While I deal with the shock of Carrick finding his parents, I’m dragged away by a chirping Mona, who talks so fast I can barely keep up.

“Doesn’t matter, I’ll show you. You can share with me.”

The accommodation is a series of Portakabins piled on top of one another, but not just regular cubic cabins with basic beds inside; these are modern, state-of-the-art. I steal a glimpse inside one of them as we pass and see an entire living space cleverly built in the pod. There’s a bunk bed – single on top and double beneath – built-in shelves, drawers beside the beds. There’s even a toilet and shower. Everything is glossy white.

“Each sleepbox has an en-suite bathroom, air-conditioning, a flat-screen TV and a personal safe,” Mona says in a funny accent, as though she’s my hotel guide. “The rooms all include a double bed and a single bunk bed.”

I laugh. “I’ve never seen anything like these before.”

“Nothing but the best for CCU workers.” She lowers her voice, though the section of non-Flawed living space is so far away nobody could possibly hear us. “The owner of Vigor is sympathetic to the Flawed. None of us have ever met him; he’s a secret shadowy figure,” she says sarcastically, eyes wide and fingers moving spookily.

“Is that Eddie?”

She laughs. “No. Eddie runs the place. I’m talking about the big boss: the owner, creator, inventor, whatever, of Vigor. Bahee claims to know him, but I’m not so sure. Bahee is a scientist; he can sometimes be a little bit …” She whistles to finish the sentence. “Anyway, Eddie knows about us. He keeps us living away from the others, manages shifts to keep us apart most of the time. Nobody but him and us knows that we’re Flawed, and it has to stay that way. Obviously here we’re all evaders.” She rolls her eyes at the term. “So you won’t see any armbands on us. If you have a brand on your hand, you get a job that requires gloves; if you have a brand on your temple, you get a job that requires a hard hat or you find a fancy way of keeping your hair down. Don’t trust make-up to cover it. It gets hot here; it can melt off your face faster than you know. If the brand is on your tongue, you don’t talk too much. Get it?”

I nod emphatically. I have a brand in every place she’s mentioned, and more.

“Cool.” She studies me to make sure she believes me and seems happy with what she finds. “Had a girl in here who fell in love with a scientist. Lizzie. She shared my room. She kept talking about telling him. Needing to share with him her true self because she was so in love.” She rolls her eyes. “Honestly, I had to hear this crap every night. Well, as you’ll see, that didn’t work out too well for her. She told him what she was, he was grossed out, and so she ran off. Could have got us into a whole lot of trouble,” she says angrily, unlocking the door to her cabin and pushing the door open.

It’s identical to the cabin I stole a glimpse of. The single bed above is clearly Mona’s, with posters and possessions, a teddy bear, on the bed. Beneath it is the double bed. It’s just a naked mattress, where Lizzie once slept, where she thought this place was her home, where she was in love with a scientist, and then abandoned it. How replaceable we all are.

I understand how this girl Lizzie must have felt when she wasn’t wanted by her boyfriend as soon as she revealed that she was Flawed. I recall the way Art looked at me in the school library after my brandings, how he couldn’t bring himself to kiss me. I suppose that is the point of a tongue branding. They say it’s the worst of them all. In fact, it turned out to be the second worst. Crevan himself held the hot weld to my spine to show that I was Flawed to my very backbone. But no one here will ever know about that, no one but Carrick, who witnessed it.

“When did Lizzie leave?” I ask, looking at her empty double bed.

“Two weeks ago. No goodbye,” she says angrily. “She left most of her stuff here too. You spend every day with someone and you think they’re your friend … Anyway—” She changes the subject, pretends not to care, though it’s clear she’s hurt. “So ground rules. You sleep here, wash there, and do your thing in there. Depending on your job, you can go to bed and get up whenever you want. There are night shifts and day shifts. You can help yourself to the food in the kitchen in our rec room. The plant has a better cafeteria – more options, tastier food – but it’s harder to avoid people getting too close there. Kelly and Adam work in the kitchen; Bahee is a scientist; Cordelia a computer whizz; I’m a cleaner. You can talk to the other staff, but don’t get too close. No one knows we’re Flawed, but some people ask too many questions, you know? Best thing is to keep to yourself, but not too much, or you’ll stand out. Whatever you do, stay away from Fergus and Lorcan; they’re only after one thing.” She looks at me knowingly.

“Oh, right, sex.”

“No.” She bursts out laughing. “I wish. No –” she turns serious – “revolution. I mean, Carrick probably is too; he hangs out with them, but he’s a quiet kind of a guy, you never know what he’s thinking.” She leaves a silence, while she studies me with a smile. “I see you’ve already caught his attention.” She raises her eyebrows.

“It’s not like that with me and Carrick,” I say, unable to explain how it really is.

Our connection goes deeper than that. We shared something that will link us forever, something I’ll never have with anybody else. Though I don’t know if it’s a good thing, to look at him and always remember that he was the person there in the Branding Chamber during the toughest moment of my life. It causes me to remember it, over and over again. Maybe being away from him would help me to forget.

Mona is looking at me for juicy details, but I’m uncomfortable. To tell her what bonded us would be to tell her what happened, and nobody can ever know what happened.

“How long have you lived here?” I ask, looking around.

“Oh, you’re as bad as Carrick, deflecting the questions. Whatever. Don’t tell me, but watch out, those institution boys are famous for only wanting one thing.” She steps on my double bed with her big black leather boot and climbs up to her bed. She sits on the edge, her legs dangling over my bed.

I think about it. “Revolution?”

She grins. “Nope. Mostly, they want sex.”

I have to laugh.

“I’ve been here one year. To answer your question.”

“You’ve been Flawed for one year?”

“Two years.” She looks away, reaches to a glossy cabinet on the wall with no handle, pushes it to pop it open. She takes bedsheets from the shelves and drops them on to my new bed. Then she stamps on my bed with her big leather boots again and jumps to the floor, where she busies herself with the sheets. I try to help her, but she waves me off, talking as she goes. I can sense it’s easier for her to be busy while telling me her story.

“My family threw me out of the house when I was branded Flawed. Dad said, ‘You’re no daughter of mine’.” She puts on a deep voice and pretends to make fun of the situation, but it’s no laughing matter. “He had my bags packed when I got home from school one day. He walked me out to the taxi while Mum watched from the window. He gave me enough cash for a week and that was it.” Her eyes are distant. “I lived on the street for one year as a fully fledged Flawed. Then I started to hear about these evaders, these magical people who were able to live without having to report to Whistleblowers, without the Guild breathing down their backs. I always thought it was a myth, that evaders were like fairies, but they turned out to be true. I came here finally. Best thing that ever happened to me.”

My eyes widen and I realise how lucky I am to have a family that supported me all the way through. And what my poor granddad is going through now to protect me.

“What did you do?” I ask.

“I spent a year doing this and that, following the rules, doing what I was told by my Whistleblower, but then I got tired of that – it wasn’t for me. I couldn’t get a job; I couldn’t get work, so I couldn’t pay rent. Moved around some homeless shelters. I can tell you it’s bad being Flawed with a roof over your head; you can imagine what it’s like without one.” Her eyes glisten. “So I made a decision and came here,” she replies, eyes back to me.

“What did you do to become Flawed?”

Her tears disappear immediately, her eyes darken, and I learn the first rule of being Flawed. Never ask a Flawed person how they became Flawed.