The Declaration

chair tipping over and depositing him on the floor in a pool of blood. Just where Surplus Sheila had lain earlier in the day, Mrs Pincent observed.
    Slowly, she picked up the phone and dialled a number.
    ‘Dad?’ she said, her voice calm and still. ‘I have some important information for you. Please listen carefully.’

Chapter Twenty-six
    ‘You want a sip of this?’ Frank offered his hip flask to Bill, who shook his head. Frank shrugged, and finished the rest himself.
    He looked at his watch. 6.30 p.m.
    ‘Ready, Bill?’
    Bill nodded, and, both taking a deep breath, they efficiently and effectively kicked the front door down.
    Kate Covey looked at her husband Alan in alarm at the sound of the front door being forced.
    She didn’t dare say a word, didn’t dare let on, even to a room empty but for him, that she might be more terrified of the Catchers than any other couple on this street. How had they got here so quickly, she wondered desperately. Why now, when they were ready to leave? They had just been waiting for darkness to fall completely; now it might be too late.
    ‘Can I help you?’ Alan had darted into the hallway to meet them, giving her time to prepare, she suspected. ‘Do you people not knock any more?’
    He sounded only mildly annoyed, but Kate knew it was masking his abject terror. The Catchers could be going to everyone’s house, and there was no reason to give the game away by appearing worried.
    But Kate was more than worried. This could be it, and she knew it. The two of them could take prison again, but not the children. They’d promised them they’d be safe. They couldn’t fail them again. Wouldn’t fail them again.
    She thought, frantically. Could Alan distract the Catchers whilst she got the children out? But it was useless – even now one of the Catchers was coming into the kitchen to find her. If she so much as glanced under the table, the trapdoor would be found. Her children would be found and taken away again, and she couldn’t – wouldn’t – take it.
    ‘Mrs Bunting, I believe,’ the Catcher asked her, and she nodded.
    ‘So that’s definitely Bunting and not Covey, then?’
    Kate went white, and looked up to see Alan being frogmarched into the kitchen by a second Catcher.
    ‘Only, we heard from our superiors that you might have changed your name,’ the Catcher continued. ‘Real name Covey, they said. Of course, they do get it wrong from time to time, our superiors. Think they know it all because they have computer screens and fancy offices. Whereas me and Bill, here, we’re in uniform, but turns out that most of the time, we know more than they do. Funny, that, isn’t it? So, what’s it going to be – Bunting or Covey? Doesn’t bother me either way, see.’
    Kate met Alan’s eyes and in them she saw the sign, the desperate message. As he passed her, his hand brushed hers and something was transferred, something small and pink, something that would dissolve on the tongue, that would bring about an ending and a beginning. And immediately, she knew what they were going to do, and she nodded, a move so slight that it was barely perceptible. But he saw. She knew that he’d seen it.
    ‘Bunting,’ he said calmly. ‘Our name is Bunting.’
    ‘Well, there we are,’ the Catcher said, a little smile playing on his lips. ‘So, Mr Bunting, let me tell you what’s going to happen, shall I? What’s going to happen is that you’re going to tell us where the Surpluses are, we’re going to collect them, and that will be the end of that. Except for you going to prison, of course. You can’t get off that lightly, I’m afraid! Serious business, keeping Surpluses. But then you know that, don’t you? Been caught before, haven’t we?’
    Kate could hardly breathe, hardly dare think about the children, hiding in the cellar.
    ‘So that’s what we’d like to happen,’ the Catcher continued, his chirpy voice grating on and on. ‘Now, if you want it to be more complicated, my friend Bill here has a box of tricks which he loves playing with. So if you don’t want to tell us right away where the Surpluses are, if you’ve forgotten, say, then he’ll be more than happy to take your wife here and cut her up a bit until you remember.’
    As he spoke, the second Catcher opened up the black leather box in front of him and took out a knife.
    Below them, Anna and Peter were staring at each other. They’d heard the door crashing in, and Anna had somehow managed to stop