The Resistance

signing?’ His grandfather was looking at him intently; Peter swallowed uncomfortably. ‘Because I was thinking that we should celebrate it. Hold a press conference, perhaps . . .’
    ‘I’m not signing.’ Peter’s voice was flat.
    ‘Not signing?’
    ‘No.’
    There was a pause. ‘I see.’ His grandfather’s face was impassive. ‘Well, isn’t that a shame. Any particular reason?’
    Peter didn’t say anything; his grandfather, though, didn’t appear to need to hear the reason out loud. ‘It’s the girl, isn’t it? She’s stopping you.’
    Peter’s continued silence was all the answer he needed; Richard Pincent smiled tightly, and left the lab.
    ‘I didn’t realise the two of you were so close,’ Peter said archly to Dr Edwards, and pulled on his lab coat.

Chapter Seventeen
    It was mid-morning, and the house in Surbiton was silent; every so often the sound of a distant car could be heard, or the shrill voices of neighbours greeting each other on the street, but within the house itself nothing stirred. Ben was having his nap; the curtains were closed against the cold day, the sky dark and unwelcoming. Anna sat cross-legged on the sofa, her head in her hands, rocking back and forth in a movement that she could trace back to her time as a Small in Grange Hall, where the only comfort to be found had been the reassurance that you could provide yourself. She had been young – not even three – when she arrived at Grange Hall, and her memories of that time were very limited. Mostly she remembered feeling confused, desperate and alone as she gradually realised that the cold, dank top-floor dormitory was her new home; that no one was coming to get her.
    Now, as she slowly rocked back and forth, she tried to reassure herself in the same way. For hours, all she had been able to conceive of was the gaping mouth of a vacuous, empty hell, a hell in which her womb was redundant, futile, in which she and Peter would drift endlessly with nothing to ground them, no new life to nurture and watch over carefully. But Anna had learnt many years before that despondency and despair were the routes to nowhere good. Survival meant adaptation, acceptance, learning new rules as they were introduced, and Anna knew that the situation she now found herself in was no different. She would cope. She would find a way to make herself fit for purpose, for the new reality that had been imposed on her.
    Next to her on the sofa, her Declaration lay spread out for her to sign – something that as yet she’d been unable to do. Every time she looked at it she felt a heavy revulsion force her eyes away, as though by signing it she would relinquish her soul, her very being; and yet, she kept telling herself, by signing she would transcend the fate of that little girl who had rocked to and fro on the top floor of Grange Hall, the little girl labelled ‘Surplus’ and told on a daily basis that Longevity was man’s greatest invention, that she, as an illicit entrant into this world, had no right to benefit from it. Several times, she’d picked up her pen to sign; several times she’d forced herself to bring the pen down on the Declaration, to think of Peter, to try and write her name, but each time she’d dropped it, tears cascading down her cheeks. She couldn’t do it. Something deep inside of her was forcing the pen from her hands; some power within was determined to stop her. Peter was right – she was letting him down, and it made her feel sick to her core.
    So she sat and she rocked, allowing her mind to empty, allowing herself to be seduced by the gentle rhythm until everything felt safer, until the world had all but disappeared.
    It was only the doorbell that startled Anna from her trance, only its piercing ring that was able to shock her back into the real world. Ben was still sleeping – she checked her wrist and guessed that she had another twenty minutes before he awoke, demanding to be plied with attention and love, demanding to be the centre of her world, something that she willingly allowed him. Ben’s needs were so simple, she thought to herself as she wrapped a cardigan around herself and walked towards the front door. They were so easy to fulfil, so reassuring in their urgency. Peter’s needs, on the other hand, were much more complex and fraught with danger, like a field of landmines that she wanted desperately to grow flowers on; one false move and it would blow up in her face.
    The glass panels on the front