The Legacy

I was just . . .’ She trailed off as she saw him grin, his eyes twinkling, and realised that he wasn’t annoyed with her, wasn’t going to tell.
    ‘I know exactly what you were doing,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Just don’t let Dad catch you.’
    She nodded, and pulled herself off the chair wearily.
    ‘He’s fixed the tractor,’ Albert continued.
    Molly’s eyes lit up. The tractor had been out of action for days now, resulting in aching limbs and backs for all of them. ‘He did? How?’
    Albert shrugged and put his hands in his pockets. ‘Dunno. Ben was helping him. Engine was dirty or something.’
    Molly rolled her eyes. ‘Dirty?’ It never ceased to amaze her that her brother showed so little interest in anything of a technical nature. ‘Do you know how an engine actually works, Alby?’
    ‘No, and I don’t want to,’ he said, winking. Molly laughed and followed him down the dirt track towards the fields where they spent their afternoons every day. Mornings were for learning – her mother was always clear about that. Words and sums and science and questions were what mattered in Mum’s eyes. ‘You have to question everything,’ she’d say. ‘You have to always ask why, and if you don’t understand the answer, you ask again.’
    So Molly did. She asked questions all the time, demanding to know how things worked and why, discovering what happened when you added one thing to another, finding out how to make things and how to break them. She also asked about the past. She’d been too little to remember the Old World much – all she remembered was heated conversations and moving around a lot and staying inside because ‘the hoodlums’ were smashing up the high street and pillaging. She remembered her father disappearing for what felt like years to join the New Underground Army to patrol the streets and divide things up fairly, to Manage the Handover. She still wasn’t sure what the Handover was, but she knew that what was being handed over was valuable and that the people who had it didn’t want to give it away.
    Her parents didn’t talk about the Handover much – they said it was too recent, that the New Civilisation was still too fragile. But they answered Molly’s questions about the Old World happily enough. What was it like to have shops instead of having to produce your own food? Was there really a time when there were too many people? What was wrong with Mrs Baker up the road, and where had Mr Baker gone?
    The shops were OK, her mother told her, but you weren’t always free to buy what you wanted and sometimes things were so expensive you couldn’t get them even if you were allowed. That led to another question about money, which sounded very exotic and exciting to Molly, but her mother assured her it never helped anyone much.
    Yes, the world was indeed too full once, her mother told her, and no children were allowed at all because no one died. Molly used to love and hate that story in equal measure. It had been her favourite bedtime tale when she’d been little – a world with no children, with Catchers and Surplus Halls and no brothers to play with, no space to play in. They had all the space in the world now, her mother would tell her. They were very lucky, even if it was cold sometimes and there weren’t many other children to play with. They had each other and that was more important than anything. They had the future too.
    As for Mrs Baker, her mother told her that she was one of the Old Legals. There weren’t many of them left because most had died a long time ago from the Virus, but some had survived – no one really knew why. Now she was very, very old and she couldn’t do much more than sit her time out, which was why they had to look after her and Molly was sent round every day to read to her, to make things more bearable until the end came. Mr Baker had already gone to the Other Side. It was good to go there, her mother told her, when it was your time. No one should outstay their welcome.
    ‘Come on, slowcoach, or you’ll have no supper before bed.’
    Molly looked at Albert and raised an eyebrow. Her parents always threatened that when one of them was naughty, but they never went through with it. Mum used to be hungry a lot when she was little, Dad had told Molly once. That was why she never let them go without a meal. That was why the sight of protruding bones sent her racing into the kitchen to bake bread. Uncle Ben used to tease her sometimes,