The Declaration

They got their two minutes of glory and then they got shipped out to a detention centre. Hard labour was what Mrs Pincent called it. Anna shuddered at the thought. Anyway, she did Know Her Place and didn’t want to argue against science and nature and the Authorities. She felt bad enough about existing without becoming a troublemaker to boot.
    Mrs Pincent frowned. ‘No, not Small. Make the bed up in the Pending dormitory.’
    Anna’s eyes opened wide. No one had ever joined Grange Hall as a Pending. It had to be a mistake. Unless he’d been trained somewhere else, of course.
    ‘Has . . . has he come from another Surplus Hall?’ she asked before she could stop herself. Mrs Pincent didn’t approve of asking questions unless they involved clarification of a specific task.
    Mrs Pincent’s eyes narrowed slightly. ‘That is all, Anna,’ she said with a cursory nod. ‘You’ll have it ready in an hour.’
    Anna nodded silently and turned to leave, trying not to betray the intense curiosity she was feeling. A Pending Surplus would be at least thirteen. Who was he? Where had he been all this time? And why was he coming here now?

Chapter Two
    Peter didn’t appear until a week later. He turned up in the middle of Science and Nature, and Anna tried not to even look at him because that’s what everyone was doing and she didn’t want him to know she was curious. No doubt he’d think he was something special and she wasn’t having that.
    Anyway, she knew something that no one else knew. She knew that he hadn’t arrived that week; he’d arrived the week before, just like Mrs Pincent said he would. Only he had arrived late at night, and they must have taken him away somewhere because his bed hadn’t been slept in when she looked the next day.
    It had been about midnight that she’d heard him arrive seven days before. Everyone else had been asleep, but Anna had been up on Floor 2, scribbling in her journal before hiding it away in the one place that she was sure it would never be found. The whole of Grange Hall had been silent except for a few dripping taps and the usual faint crying from the top floor, which suited Anna perfectly because it meant she was safe, that no one would interrupt her.
    On her way back from Mrs Pincent’s office earlier that evening, she had told herself that she would throw the journal away, ashamed that she’d succumbed to temptation so easily.
    But the thought of losing it made her wince with pain and longing, and immediately arguments for keeping it flooded her head, the most convincing of which was that it would get found if she threw it away. There was no way a beautiful pink suede journal would sit in a dustbin unnoticed, and even if she wrapped it up with old newspaper, someone would find it at some point, and when they did they’d find her writing in it.
    No, she’d decided, it was much safer hidden, and Female Bathroom 2 was the only place she could think of. Female Bathroom 2 was situated on Floor 2, and it had contained a secret long before Anna’s journal entered Grange Hall – a little cavity behind one of the baths. Anna had discovered it years before when she’d dropped her soap down the side of the bath by mistake. Knowing she’d get beaten if she lost it – soap had to last four months and being Wasteful was considered a form of subversion that merited night working as a punishment – she’d managed to squirm into a position from which her arm could reach down where the soap had fallen, and had found it sitting on a little ledge which was completely hidden from view unless you knew what you were looking for.
    At the time, she hadn’t really thought much about it – she was so relieved to have got the soap back, she’d just finished her wash quickly and raced back to the dormitory for Evening Vows. But later on, she’d realised that she’d found a little hiding place, and it made her feel both anxious and excited all at once. It was her little secret. And although she couldn’t pick it up and take it with her, it was, apart from her Grange Hall overalls, toothbrush and facecloth, the first thing she’d ever owned.
    Surpluses weren’t allowed possessions; they had no right to own things in a world that they’d gate-crashed, Mrs Pincent said. And although Anna didn’t think that a secret cavity really constituted a possession, in the weeks afterwards, as if encouraged by this one first step on the ownership ladder, she’d begun to acquire things that