“We shouldn’t be talking about this in here,” Katie said suddenly in Eva’s ear.
“Ah, who cares, Katie? This room is pretty secure; they don’t monitor the Center like they do outside. Anyway, the plan probably hasn’t got that much chance of working, has it? Not when the Watcher can read our every thought.”
“No, it can’t,” stuttered Katie. She paused a moment, then, “Anyway, the plan will work.”
“If you say so,” Alison said. She stood up quickly. “I’m going back to my room.” She stalked away.
Katie glanced at Eva, then ran after her friend. Eva was left alone in the lounge. The grey mist outside turned to gentle rain and Eva stared out at the blurred green limes.
“Look over in the corner, Eva,” said the voice. “Look over behind the viewing screen.”
“Hello again, voice,” said Eva. “What do you want now?”
“I told you. Look behind the viewing screen. Didn’t you notice it when you came in?”
Eva got up and walked across the room, the plastic soles of her sneakers sticky against the vinyl floor. Behind the viewing screen was an old intercom. A small white rectangular box with a grille facing. Two grubby white wires trailed down the wall to vanish into the floor.
“It heard you,” said the voice. “It could hear you speaking.”
“It’s just an old box, left over from when they first built this place. It isn’t connected to anything.”
“How do you know? If I were the Watcher, I would be listening to all the old equipment. My ears would be pressed to every forgotten intercom, every CCTV camera, every pneumatic tube.”
“Every pneumatic tube? You’re making this up as you go along.”
“And you are arguing with me now. You’re not trying to pretend that I don’t exist anymore. Eva, be careful. You’re not escaping; you’re being led into a trap. The Watcher is cleverer than you. Cleverer than both of us.”
There was a huge rattle outside the room. The skies had finally opened fully and were emptying their load in vast grey sheets of rain that splashed and sluiced down the glass. Eva looked out of the window onto nothing but shades of grey. A gust of wind sent a grey wave bursting across the panes.
“Who are you?” she called above the noise of the rain. “How do you know all this? How are we going to be trapped?”
Her shouting alerted Peter, one of the orderlies, who appeared in the doorway to the lounge wearing a gentle smile. He relaxed a little when he saw who it was.
“Easy now, Eva. What’s the matter?” he said in his surprisingly soft voice.
Eva suddenly realized she had been shouting. She looked down at the floor, flustered and embarrassed.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I was just…just…”
“This place isn’t a trap,” soothed Peter. “You know we’re only here to help you?”
“I know. But I wasn’t…”
He put his hand on her arm and led her back to her own room. “Come on. Why don’t you lie down for a while?”
Eva lay on her bed gazing at the ceiling. The rain had lost some of its earlier violence, but it still poured down in a steady stream that streaked and blurred the view from her window. She wondered if it rained harder out here in the middle of the countryside than it used to in the city. She remembered South Street rain as being either a tired and miserable mist, or huge fat drops that left sooty, greasy stains where they fell. There was none of this cold violence, this clear division between the inside and the outside. Eva had never felt so isolated in all her life, trapped in the cocoon of the Center, floating away on a grey sea, the rest of the world left far behind.
There was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” called Eva, but the door was already being pushed open. Alison walked in, closely followed by Nicolas. Eva could see Katie hovering in the background.
“I’ve come to say I’m sorry,” said Alison.
“What for?” asked Eva.
“Being so silly earlier on. I nearly blew the plan. I shouldn’t have spoken about it in the lounge.”
“That’s okay,” said Eva. She hesitated for a moment and then said, “Should you be talking about it in here?”
Nicolas gave a grin. “Safest place, probably. They wouldn’t dare tap our rooms unless they could prove it to be in our best interests, and then they’d have to let us know. They could be sued for malpractice.”
Eva sat up on her bed to make space for the others.
Alison sat down next to her. “Go and get yourself a seat from the lounge, Nicolas,” Alison said.
“Okay.” He walked happily from the room to fetch the chair.
“Don’t you want to sit down, Katie?” invited Eva.
“Katie will stay standing,” said Alison. She had washed her hair since that morning and changed into a pair of jeans and a cotton top. She stared at Eva. “I’m not being mean or bossy. I just know that Katie would prefer to stay standing, wouldn’t you, Katie?”
Katie nodded. She reached into a pocket of her jacket, pulled out a bottle, and handed it to Alison.
“We bought this in the village last week. Vanilla whisky. Some new thing they’re trying to put on the market. Alcoholic and incredibly sweet. I can’t imagine it ever taking off. Still, it makes you feel nice and warm, and there’s nothing else to do on a wet afternoon like this except drink and tell stories.”
Nicolas carried a chair from the lounge into the room, knocking it on the doorframe as he did so. He placed it in the middle of the room and sat down on it. Katie went to the window and looked out. Alison unscrewed the top of the bottle and looked around her.
“Cups,” she said.
“Here,” said Eva. There was a stack of disposable cups by her bed. She shook them apart and handed them out.
Alison poured them each a measure of vanilla whisky. The clear liquid smelled sickly sweet, and seemed to want to stay stuck to the plastic sides of the cup. The four conspirators looked around at each other. Alison wriggled back on the bed so that she leaned against the wall, her bottom on Eva’s pillow, her feet stretched out across the duvet. Nicolas sat in his chair in the middle of the room, sipping at his whisky, grinning at the two women on the bed and thinking heaven knows what. Katie lurked by the doorway-keeping watch, Eva realized.
Alison spoke first. “We’re escaping first thing tomorrow.”
“How?” Eva asked. “Where are we going?”
“We don’t know. We’ll toss coins to decide. It’s the only way we can be sure that we’re not being second- guessed by the Watcher.”
“You must have
“Several excellent ones. All so perfect they can’t be ours. So we’re going to extemporize.” Alison smiled.
“Extemporize?”
“Make it up as we go along.” Alison wriggled again suddenly and messed up the duvet. She kicked her tiny feet up and down on the bed.
“Oh, I feel so much better than this morning. It’s amazing what a hot bath can do.” She flashed Nicolas a dirty look. “Or a shower, eh, Nicolas?”
“Oh yes,” said Nicolas. He looked at his feet, confused.
“Have you ever thought about what it must be like for the Watcher?” Alison said, glancing at Nicolas with a suppressed smile. “It can access all that information. It knows everything, and yet it’s impotent. What can it do?” She wriggled a little more on the bed, shifting her breasts beneath her cotton top. Eva noticed how closely Nicolas watched them.
“She does it deliberately, doesn’t she?” said the voice. “That’s how she keeps him following her around, like a pet.”
“I thought that was obvious,” Eva muttered.
“She’s doing it again,” said Katie from her position by the door. “Did you see her, how she relaxed and went all blank?”
“I did, Katie,” said Alison. She gazed at Eva. “You just heard the voice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Eva said uncomfortably.
“What did it say?”
