Читать книгу To See The Light Return - Sophie Galleymore Bird - Страница 6

Primrose hadn’t been due for harvesting for another two days. Clearly her escape attempt had brought it forward; when she woke after fitful sleep, old Dr Harrow was already in her room, a vague presence in the pre-dawn light.

Alise and her bed were absent, rolled out and into another room so the gurney blocking the corridor could be manoeuvred through the door and the other girl wouldn’t be freaked out by witnessing the procedure. It would be her own turn soon enough. Dr Harrow turned towards Primrose when he heard her grunt of surprise, pulling on surgical gloveswith a loud snap. His face – even through its gnarls and wrinkles – smoothed into the mask she was becoming used to seeing on the faces of the few people she met these days. The polite blankness that masked their shock. She wasn’t sure which was preferable, that or outright revulsion.

Last year, Dorcas had allowed in a field trip from the village school, organised by the Mayor. The children, most of them too young to remember Primrose, had stared at her as if they were at one of the old zoos she’d read about; not horrified but brimming over with questions and wide-eyed fascination. ‘Do you get to eat cake every day?’ and ‘I bet you never have to eat vegetables.’‘Is it true you’re so greedy you’d eat your own shit?’ This last from Hector Junior, the snot-nosed ten-year-old grandson of the Mayor; he had the same narrow gaze and high, domed forehead.

Of all of them, he would be the only one to benefit directly from the farm. All fuel that wasn’t sent direct to Spight was supposed to be kept for emergency heating and to run the old fire truck and few remaining ambulances, but it was an open secret that it was also bestowed as ‘special grants’ of generator rations, as tractor fuel for favoured farmers, and to run Spight’s private fleet. She’d seen the Mayor and his family from the farm’s windows, driving past in one of the few cars in the village still running, and wondered if she was the one supplying the fat it ran on.

Mrs Prendaghast hadn’t been with the class; that day they were in the care of Mrs Harrow, the Doctor’s wife, leader of the Door Knockers, and the only person Primrose knew who resembled the women in old magazines, with shiny, stretched skin that failed to make her appear younger. Primrose had been sorry not to see the teacher’s friendly face, sure she would, at the very least, have sent Junior out of the room for asking that rude question. Someone told her later that Mrs Prendaghast had refused to come, saying she would not be party to such disgusting practices. It was the first time it had occurred to Primrose that what was happening to her wasn’t sanctioned by all the villagers.

‘I hear you gave Dorcas some trouble last night, hmmm?’ It wasn’t a real question, Dr Harrow never really spoke to any of his patients, just made these little pronouncements, so she didn’t bother to reply. He drew the trolley of instruments over to the bed, its wheels squealing and bumping over the uneven floor. Primrose’s gut contracted with fright, but at least there was a full hypodermic there, glinting on the green cloth next to the dull rubber of the hose attached to the much bigger needle he used for the liposuction. They weren’t going to punish her. Or at least not now.

Dr Harrow picked up her arm as if it was a side of beef, deftly swabbed inside her elbow and slid the hypodermic needle under her skin.

‘Count down from twenty,’ he instructed and, habituated to obedience, she began.

‘Twenty, nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, sixtee … four...’ The room went dark.