The doc.
The doc. The one who knew stuff. Who ran Renie’s show.
‘A friend? Would that be, uh, one of your younger patients? A girl?’
Jackson laughed, a low, reassuring sound.
‘Renie’s never been a patient of mine. She’s got more lives than a cat, that girl. You could throw her off a roof and she’d land feet first. Looking after you today is the least I could do, after all you’ve done for us, Luke Hadley.’
Luke flushed at the unexpected praise.
‘I’ve not done much. Nothing that anyone else wouldn’t do.’
‘That’s not quite true, I’m afraid,’ said Jackson. ‘There aren’t many that see this place for what it truly is. Even fewer who realize that the slavedays aren’t an inevitable part of normal life, but a brutal violation of freedom and dignity, perpetrated by the Equals.’
Luke stared at the doctor. Was that what Luke thought? He wasn’t sure. He’d dreaded his slavedays – still did dread the decade stretching ahead. He both resented and envied the Equals. He hated Millmoor, and the cruelties and indignities he saw here every day. But just like Abi and the rest of the family, Luke had never questioned the fact that he’d have to do days eventually.
‘I shouldn’t get heavy,’ said Jackson, sensing his confusion. ‘You’ve had a wretched time of it this afternoon. Go back to your dorm and rest. But there are a few others like Renie and me, and we get together occasionally as the Millmoor Games and Social Club. If you fancy joining us, we’d be glad to see you. Renie can tell you when.’
With that, Jackson opened the door and yelled down the corridor for his next patient.
To his astonishment Luke woke the following morning pain-free, with only yellowing bruises to show where Kessler had laid into him. Which was good, because he had a job to do. During tools-down, he went straight to the canteen storeroom. Kessler wouldn’t be expecting him back so soon – if at all. He filled his boilersuit pockets with as many packets as he could conceal. That night, he went to the rendezvous spot arranged with Renie for the previous evening, planning to cache the food there. But she was waiting for him.
‘Knew you’d come tonight,’ she said, snapping some definitely-not-Millmoor-approved gum in her mouth. ‘Doc said that if you showed, I was to tell you that the next club meeting’s this Sunday. See me by Gate 9 of the South vehicle repair yard, 11 a.m.’
She stuffed the pilfered food inside her hoodie, and melted back into the gloom.
‘Wait!’ Luke hissed. ‘This club. What did Jackson mean – games and social? What do you do, really?’
The girl’s face reappeared, bobbing disembodied in the drizzle of light from a lamp post.
‘Chess. Scrabble.’ She shrugged. ‘We had Cluedo, but it got taken off us for being subversive. Bumping off poshos in a mansion, and it could have been one of the servants what dunnit.’
At Luke’s disappointed expression, she threw back her head and cackled.
‘Only joking. You’ll find out soon enough. And remember: no one will make you play. We may have chosen you, but you have to choose the game.’
Then she was gone.
Luke lay awake in the dorm that night, thinking about his family, and about Doc Jackson’s club. His whole life he had been surrounded by the noise of his sisters and parents, a sound so familiar that it went as unnoticed as breathing – until it wasn’t there any more. So he sometimes just talked to them anyway. Which wasn’t weird at all.
He’d hear nothing from them until December at the earliest, once he’d been here three months and the customary restriction period on outside communication for all new slaves had passed. And it wasn’t as though he could tell them about the club in a letter, anyway. So a one-sided conversation inside his head would have to do.
What would they make of how he’d spent his first weeks in Millmoor, and his plan to go with Renie on Sunday? Because he was pretty sure the club’s activities were nothing to do with board games.
‘Forget about it, son,’ Dad would counsel from under the hood of the Austin-Healey, hand held out for a spanner. ‘Keep your head down. Just get on with your work.’
‘Don’t go getting into trouble,’ he could hear Mum say. And Abi would surely remind him that he knew nothing about these people he was getting mixed up with.
Daisy might think it rather cool. She’d never been one for doing what she was told. (Though Luke hoped she was being more obedient at Kyneston.) Would Millmoor have turned Daisy into a Renie, streetwise and defiant?
Luke saw that it came down to a single question: was getting involved with the club worth risking another thrashing from Kessler – or worse? Possibly even endangering his transfer to Kyneston?
Mum and Dad would say no, without a moment’s hesitation. But they hadn’t been here and seen what life was like in this place. It wasn’t up to Mum and Dad any more, he realized. It was as Renie had promised: the choice was his.
That realization didn’t help him sleep.
On Sunday morning, Luke reached the vehicle depot half an hour early. He prowled around the wire fence, curious. There was a row of Security 4x4s raised on hydraulic jacks, to be worked on from below. He knew what Dad would have said about that: it was incredibly unsafe without axle stands, too. Were the authorities who ran Millmoor that ignorant, or did they simply not care about the people who slaved here?
Or was it something worse? Were Millmoor’s many accidents – like what happened to Simon’s Uncle Jimmy, or the man who used to do Luke’s job – more than just negligent one-offs? Perhaps they were part of how slavetowns operated. Risky work and harsh living conditions would keep people focused on themselves and their own challenges, unable to see the bigger picture.