The Declaration

incredibly exciting to Anna, who had only ever been allowed to read approved text books on Longevity drugs and Housekeeping, along with long, ponderous works like Surplus Shame and The Surplus Burden on Nature: A Treatise , books which extolled the achievements of Longevity and explained in long, detailed paragraphs the Surplus Problem and the Enlightened Humane Approach, which enabled Surpluses to work in order to cover their Sin of Existence. Anna had read these books again and again, relishing the beautiful words and the cogent, well-structured arguments, which had convinced her, above and beyond anything that Mrs Pincent had told her, that her life was an imposition, that all she could do was to work hard in the hope that she might eventually be so valuable that her Sin of Existence might be forgiven.
    Peter, on the other hand, knew nothing of these books, but he made up for it with knowledge of the Outside, of things that Anna had never dreamt of seeing or touching. Once a year, he told her, he’d been smuggled out of the house for a trip to the country, where there was a piece of land so big he could run around without anyone seeing him or hearing him shout. He would scream and yell as loudly as he could on those brief sojourns, knowing that for the rest of the year his life was to be conducted in whispers and furtive movements.
    Peter didn’t talk much about his parents – not at all, actually – but he said that the adults he knew were all part of an Underground Movement that had been set up to fight the Authorities, to challenge the Declaration. When Anna’s parents had got out of prison, they joined the Underground Movement too, and Peter had gone to live with them. He said that they were trying to find out more about the use of Surpluses.
    Anna didn’t really believe him, and had very little interest in his hatred of the system or tales of her supposed parents. But she treasured the guilty pleasure of listening to him talk about his life Outside, enjoyed the idea of running around a field, shouting and laughing. She thought that she would like that very much.
    It was one such tale of the Outside that Peter was whispering to Anna one evening, just over a month after his first arrival at Grange Hall. The two of them had finished clearing up Central Feeding after supper and were sitting at one of the tables drying cutlery.
    As they picked up the old, stainless steel forks and knives, drying them methodically with old rags, he described sitting by an open fire in the country, made up of illicitly collected driftwood, toasting marshmallows and playing something called a card game. And then he told her about Virginia Woolf, a writer who lived in Bloomsbury many, many years ago and had her first book published in 1915. She wrote all the time, Peter told her, but even her writing couldn’t make her happy and in the end she killed herself.
    Anna listened in silence as she did her best to scrape the congealed fat from the knife she was holding – washing the cutlery in tepid water rarely achieved more than dislodging large pieces of food, and cleaning fluids weren’t considered necessary or affordable by Mrs Pincent. If Virginia Woolf had been a Legal, what could have made her want to die, she wondered. Virginia Woolf could probably have made as much noise as she wanted and wouldn’t have had any guilt at all to carry with her. She frowned, and noticed that Peter was staring at her. She still found it disconcerting the way he looked right at people, unashamedly.
    ‘What?’ she asked. ‘You know, you shouldn’t look at people like that. It’s rude.’
    Peter grinned as if he didn’t really care if it was rude or not, then his face turned serious.
    ‘You really hate your parents?’ he asked her.
    Anna answered without thinking. ‘Of course I hate them. It’s all their fault.’
    ‘What is?’
    Anna sighed. Sometimes Peter could be really dim. ‘Me being here. Being responsible. Paying back Mother Nature for their Sins. Whatever you say, the Declaration was introduced for a reason and my parents abused Mother Nature’s benevolence. They make me sick.’
    ‘And you seriously believe that they’re wrong and the Authorities are right?’
    Anna nodded. ‘Of course I believe it,’ she said flatly. ‘It’s the truth. Even if you do know them, I don’t care. They deserve to go back to prison and stay there for the rest of their lives. Now just shut up about it.’
    Peter looked at her then and