Government Life

"Luke!" came a hearty voice almost as soon as Luke and Hannah entered the building. David was propped against a column in the foyer. He beamed at Hannah as she shuffled off with barely a glance at her brother. Luke nodded at David, his mouth suddenly dry.

"If you follow me, we'll get you set up. You can start doing proper work!" Luke knew there was an exclamation mark at the end of the sentence. He could hear it in David's voice. He had the feeling that there were a lot of exclamation marks in David's world, especially where work was concerned. He followed him through an impressive set of doors, and promptly stopped, stunned by what he saw. Stretching across the entire expanse of the building were desks, crammed into every conceivable configuration, nooks, crannies, pods. There must have been hundreds of people at work, just on this floor, in this building. David noticed his charge was no longer hot on his heels.

"Oh, it's a little daunting at first, I know, but you'll soon get used to it, find your way around. We need to keep moving, though, son. We're not on this floor." He turned without checking that Luke was following him, and was threading his way between desks. Luke noticed a wave of sudden activity preceded him. Nobody seemed to want to make eye contact with either of them. He suddenly grew more suspicious of Hannah's avoidance techniques when he was questioning her.

They reached a staircase on the far side of the building through a narrow door, partly hidden behind a pair of columns. It wasn't so much that the stair was deliberately concealed, more that the door was added as an after thought. David had to swipe a card across a reader to get into it.

"You'll get one of those once you've been here for a while. Until then, you'll need to make sure someone is with you when you want to come and go." David barely drew breath as he bounded up the stairs. Luke, not used to climbing, was a little slower. He wasn't expected to talk, however, just to listen as David continued.

"Now, for your first day, you'll just be observing things, for the most part. Finding your feet, so to speak. There's no reason for you to feel obliged to actually contribute anything just yet. We'll tell you exactly what to do. Just follow instructions, and you'll be just fine. Hannah tells me you're smart enough, so I'm sure you'll pick up the drill in no time. And here we are, our own little corner of the world."

The stairs opened onto a small landing with five desks, all except one of them occupied. A glass wall surrounded the desks. As Luke moved closer, he could see that there was a view over the floor below. None of the other people on the landing looked up when he entered. They were all busy at their desks, although he couldn't tell what they were doing. David had stopped at the empty desk.

"Now, Luke, this is where you'll sit." It was a brown desk, the laminate peeling from the surface below. An ink stain marked the top with a red smear; cup rings could be seen elsewhere. The chair was ripped and torn, the padding of the seat all but gone; one of the five wheels was missing. Obviously, it was all that was left when his fellow employees had scavenged their share. "If you look in the drawers, you should find pens and paper. Kent! You can find something for Mr Turner to do for you, I'm sure."

With that, David turned and left. A mousy middle aged woman scooted over, still in her chair. She was clearly Kent.

"Here," she muttered, throwing some folders on his desk. "Sort these. Ask if you have any questions."

Luke had all sorts of questions, but he didn't think the woman would be able to answer them for him. Or rather, he didn't think that she would answer them, regardless of her ability. Instead, he put his lunch bag in a drawer of the desk and carefully sat on his chair. The constant sensation of falling was something he would have to get used to until he could scavenge a better seat.

Opening the first folder, he noticed the heading: 'Department of Deportations'. He blanched. Was that where he was working now? A little reading clarified the matter for him. The short answer was no, he wasn't working for Deportations; he was working for the office that oversaw them. This little sample of humanity was responsible for making sure that Deportations followed the rule book. The files in front of him were the justifications for actions. He suppressed a shudder at the implications of the number of them, and got down to sorting, trying desperately not to read too much into what he couldn't avoid seeing. No wonder Hannah hadn't wanted to tell him what he would be doing.

Each file was a sad testament to a life interrupted, Luke thought. He didn't know the outcomes, or the causes, but somewhere, there was probably a record for each of the Li family, for old Mr Hussein, for anyone he'd ever known who had disappeared. Somewhere, a pencil pusher had justified their removal from society. And someone like Luke had sorted the paperwork for filing. He tried to suppress the feeling of something oily coating his hands as he sifted through the paperwork. He didn't want to feel that he was any part of that machine. You need the money, he told himself. Without this, you'll all go hungry. Becca. Hannah. But he couldn't help adding Pete, Georgie in his own mind. The black vans. The Vanished.

Somehow, he managed to finish the day. He didn't take a break for lunch; he couldn't face food. At the end of the day, without having spoken to anyone, he got up and took his lunch bag from the drawer. He joined the tide of humanity flowing from the building,  determined that he would never set foot there again. 

"You're what?" demanded Hannah after dinner that night. Luke had just declared his resolution. "You can't quit. You don't know how hard it was to get you in there this time."

Luke looked down at the table, his standard reaction to any confrontation.

"I'm not doing anything to do with deportation, Han." He glanced up at her. "I can't."

She blazed up, angrily. Her coppery hair seemed to crackle around her and she swelled to far more than her usual petite size.

"You can't? You can't work with deportations?" Words failed her for a moment and when she found them again, her voice was a hiss. "What do you think I had to do to get you then job, Luke? You don't think it was my pull that got you in there? Or Dad's? What do you think I've had to do, to keep a roof over you and Becca, and food in your mouths?"

She struggled to control herself. Luke didn't intervene. He knew her temper enough to know that any reaction would fuel the fires. When she spoke again, it was through clenched teeth, the battle for reason showing in her tone.

"You'll go back there, tomorrow, Luke, or you'll move out. If I'm marrying bloody David James to keep Becca in school, you can go to work in that office. I'll be damned if you throw it back in my face. You take what I can offer you, or you leave. It's as simple as that."

Luke was stunned. Hannah was marrying David? It was not what he had expected. Not that he'd thought it fully through. But suddenly the muffled conversation he'd overheard made sense. 

"Congratulations," he spat, pushing away from the kitchen table. "I'll be gone in the morning."

...

The next day saw Luke walking beside Hannah on their way to the office. He was wearing one of his father's suits; it fit him badly, given his tall father's broad shoulders compared to his slim build and medium height, but it was the best that they could manage. Hannah promised to fix it for him when she got the chance. Under the suit jacket, he had on one of his school shirts, a plain white collared style that they'd decided would do for office wear as well, and a tie that came from the supply of clothes Andy has left in his drawers. Luke regularly raided his brother's cupboards when he needed new clothes. It didn't look like Andy was going to be needing them again.

"We'll have to fix Dad's coats for you come winter. And maybe find you some better shoes." She glanced doubtfully down at the scuffed shoes Luke had been wearing to school for the past year. They were the worse for wear, the sole hinting at coming apart from the upper in several places. "I guess you'll do for today, though."

They walked in silence for a while, each head down in thought, not looking at the drab streets they were passing through. There were many people out on the street, also walking to work. Some wore office attire, like Luke and Hannah, but more were in the overalls and blue collar clothes of the manual labourer. Luke looked at Hannah from the corner of his eye, trying to gauge if now was a good time to ask her what was on his mind. She looked distracted, he decided. Now might be the only chance he would get though, so he decided to plunge in.

"Han, what exactly am I going to be doing?" She looked up in surprise.

"What do you mean?" she asked him. "You're going to be in the government. You do whatever they tell you to do."

"Yeah, but what department will I be in?"

Luke tried to tell himself it was just his imagination when she looked uncomfortable. He waited for her to answer, looking with a sigh at the crowd of people around the bus stop instead. It would be a squeeze to fit them all on an empty bus. The ancient bus he could see approaching, belching dark clouds of fumes from its exhaust, was decidedly not empty.

"It might be best if you wait until you see David. He can tell you better than I can." She gestured to the crowd. They were on the edges of it now. If he hadn't known better, he would have thought that she had deliberately held him off. But there was no arguing with her in public. It wouldn't do to cause a stir, especially on his first day in employment. There could be anyone in the crowd around them. 

He bit his tongue and bided his time as they elbowed their way to the front of the crowd and shoved their way onto the bus. It was lucky that he was with Hannah, or he would have been left standing on the footpath. The crowd jostled furiously even within the bus, vying for positions where they would be able to hold onto something rather than falling against their fellow passengers every time the bus hit one of the innumerable potholes in the roads of this part of town. The silence around them was strange to Luke; he was more used to the hustle of the footpath than the bus. His walk to school was always a little rowdy with street sellers trying to tempt passersby with their wares, with school children running around each other and vying to make the most noise. Here, in the world of adults, all was quiet. It was something else that would take a little getting used to, Luke thought to himself.

When they pushed their way off the bus, Luke wanted to pursue his conversation with Hannah. As soon as they were out of hearing of their fellow passengers, he tried again for information.

"How do you know him, then? David?"

"I work with him," she responded, giving him a strange look that he couldn't interpret. Her tone suggested it was a stupid question, but her cheeks were flushed slightly.

"But if you work with him, why can't you tell me what I'll be doing?" They were approaching the building as he asked. It loomed above him in all its dirty, grey, eight storeyed glory. There was a flow of foot traffic pushing them into the doors. Hannah pulled him out of this human tide and turned him to face her. Her face was serious, worried.

"Luke, you can't ask questions. There's a reason why we never talked about work at home. It's not good to question things. It gets you in trouble. When you're in there, you do what they tell you to do, whatever it is. Do you understand me? You don't question anything you are told while you're inside that building. And you don't discuss it with anyone. Am I clear?"

Luke nodded.

"OK then. Let's go get you started."

They walked into the building, and Luke's working life began.

...

Luke stopped going to Becca's locker at the end of the school day. Never really involved in classroom activities, he stopped trying at all. His teachers noticed, but they had other students who were more of a priority. Luke no longer had a father with influence in the government. Hannah was sufficiently lowly that she couldn't even manage to get Luke a job; there was no reason for them to waste their energy in finding out what was going wrong in Luke's life when his classmates had more power behind them. With no classroom contact and little sight of Becca outside school, Luke barely spoke to anyone for days on end. He found that he almost preferred it that way. What he did hear from people wasn't to his liking.

'Luke, you have to come in here for a minute.' It was Hannah, calling from the front room that had been their parents. She'd moved into that room soon after the funeral. Before that, she'd been sharing with Becca. It was one of the few positive changes in the house, that they all had their own rooms now.

'What's up?' he asked her from the door. He didn't like to go in anymore. It still had his parents' dark, timber bed, their worn, old fashioned clothes in the closets, their pictures on the faded blue walls. Hannah had barely made an impression on their years of occupying the room. It was like she was only squatting. But she wasn't alone.

'Luke, this is David,' she told him, gesturing to the pale faced man perched on the edge of the bed. Luke nodded at him, wondering who he was. 'He thinks he can get you a job, Lukie.'

Hannah was excited. She'd been trying her best for him, he knew. Her influence didn't stretch very far; not as much as their father's had when he'd found employment for Hannah and Andy within the government. Luke looked once again at the man, not impressed with what he saw.

'Luke,' he nodded, standing up and extending a smooth white hand to shake. His dark hair fell to his shoulders, carefully maintained. Luke noted with surprise that he was taller than him; David had seemed smaller when he was on the bed. In fact, Luke decided, he was difficult to read. He was tall, but seemed small. He had smooth hands but dirt-blackened nails. He was, in short, a bundle of contradictions that Luke could find no solution for.

'Hannah tells me that you're almost finished school. It would be a shame to miss out on the certificate now, don't you think?' Luke flicked a glance at Hannah, wondering what she had told him. When Luke didn't respond, David continued. 'But if you're set on it, then I could find you something in my department. We're always looking for bright youngsters, especially with a good background.'

Luke suddenly understood why Hannah had brought him into their parents room; it was the least threadbare of the rooms. She was trying to impress him. She was nodding enthusiastically at him, trying to get him to move. Her springy curls bounced around her face as she urged him to say something, anything, to acknowledge his acceptance of the half hearted offer.

'That would be good,' Luke finally muttered. 'When would I start?' Hannah looked relieved.

'Is tomorrow too soon?' laughed David, heartily. The volume seemed inappropriate for the room. Luke was taken aback.

'Tomorrow? But I -' he stopped when he saw Hannah's face. 'Tomorrow would be fine.'

'Great! Excellent! Well, Hannah can show you where to come. I'll see you then.'

The dismissal was clear. There was nothing else for Luke to say. He fled the room, outraged that this man, this stranger, had taken charge of his parents' bedroom, had engineered his departure from school, had done everything that his father ought to have been doing for him. His father. Luke pulled up short at his bedroom door. Why, he asked himself, was this man prepared to help him get a job? Why was he still here, after Luke had accepted the offer? With quiet steps, Luke went back to the bedroom door and listened to the muffled voices within.

'David, you know I can't say anything about that. Becca will still be at school. She can pick up Luke's things for him. He will be in the office tomorrow. That's all we can manage for now. It's only been a couple of weeks. I don't want to rush things and find later that I did it for the wrong reasons.'

'But surely -' came the pleading voice of David. Luke liked him less and less.

'No, David.' Hannah was firm. 'Not yet.'

Hearing David's steps approaching the door, Luke quickly and quietly dashed back to his own room, shutting the door just in time.

'Well, I guess I'll see you tomorrow then,' he said.

'Yes, tomorrow,' came Hannah's reply. There was the sound of a kiss, then he was gone. 

Broken...

Luke found that life adjusted to the absences; first Andy's, now his parents'. He still went to school until he could find a job. He studied. He existed. And at the end of every day, he still went to pick up Becca. Now she was at the high school as well, wearing the pleated skirt and blazer of a senior student and part of the gang of girls who ran the school. In his eyes, though, she was still the disorganised one in the family, the one who needed his help. Each day he would go to her locker and make sure she was ready for the night and the next day.

“Becca,” said her friend Lanie, “why does he meet you here every day?”

Becca blushed, conscious of any difference to her school mates. Luke felt the comment even more than Becca, just as the girl intended.

“I don't know, he just does.”

Her other friend, Anna, took a turn to twist the knife a little, as teenage girls know best.

“Doesn't he have his own friends to hang out with?”

Luke could sense Becca turning to look at him as she answered. He could feel the sneer that had been growing more and more common on her face since she fell in with this group of girls.

“He used to,” she responded. “They all got themselves arrested to get away from him.”

Luke slammed the locker door and turned around to face her, angry. When he opened his mouth to talk back to her, however, her innocent face disarmed him. Instead of the preening teenager she was, he saw the little girl he remembered, the sweetness, and he saw suddenly that she had exactly the same eyes as Andy. He couldn’t fight against her. He turned and walked away instead.

When he got home, the letterbox was stuffed with letters. He removed them and shuffled through, relishing the task. It was usually the one chore that Becca could be trusted with and she took great pride in being the household postman. He wondered how she could be so different at home and at school. Luke jiggled the keys a little in the lock, making a mental note to fix it, and stepped into the house. He turned to close the door behind him, the juggling act of keys, letters and bag becoming too much and the letters tumbled to the floor. As he crouched to pick them up, a handwritten note caught his eye. It was addressed to the family. Without pausing for thought, Luke ripped the envelope open. He recognised the handwriting.

It was a brief note scribbled on a photo. Three lines that set his pulse racing.

Hi all. Everything fine. In touch. A.

Another message from Andy, the same words as the last but this time a different photo showing a deeply tanned hand against an indiscriminate background. Luke stood and walked to the kitchen, setting the other mail on the hall table before sitting down to study the letter before Becca arrived home. He didn’t have long.

Within minutes there was a noise at the door, the sound of opening and closing. Luke shoved the letter into the pocket of his school blazer. He got up without a word as she burst into the kitchen. He began to prepare their dinner while she studied him in silence for a moment. He had just taken the vegetables from the refrigerator when she finally spoke.

“Lukie, why didn't you wait for me?” she asked him, clearly aggrieved.

Luke didn’t turn away from the bench where he had begun to chop food.

“You're big enough to walk on your own now,” he finally said.

“But you always walk with me,” she protested. “What else have you got to do? Apart from following me around, I mean. In fact, what do you ever do, Lukie? Why don't you have a job yet?”

Luke snorted. The sting was taken out of her nastiness when there was nobody else there. At home, he could hold his own.

“Because of you, actually,” he bit back. “If you could tie your own shoelaces and remember your head without being constantly reminded, I'd go and get a job. But no, Baby Becca needs a babysitter, and we need someone who can actually manage to do some housework. So here I am. Nanny, chef and cleaner, all rolled into one helpful package.”

He had long been bitter about the way his family had assumed he would look after the house, look after Becca. Hannah had been allowed to go and get a job. Andy had worked. Why he had to stay as a housekeeper he couldn’t understand. The extra money would surely have been useful, once Andy’s wages had stopped coming in. He'd fought Hannah for the right to stay at school, but he'd conceded to himself long before that he wouldn't finish.

“I don't know why we don't just employ someone. Anna and Lanie do.”

That brought Luke’s preparations to a halt. He placed the knife on the chopping board and slowly turned around to study her.

“What?” she demanded, disconcerted by his staring.

“Bec, what rock do you live under?”

“What? All the girls at school have maids and cooks. Why can't we?”

“Because we're not rich, Rebecca. Why else do you think that you never saw Mum or Dad or why Hannah isn't here, why I'm leaving school? It takes more than Hannah can earn, just to keep us in food, clothes, power. The only reason we go to that damned school is because we were the token local paupers on scholarships. Didn't you ever notice?” Becca shook her head.

“Notice what?”

Luke stared at her a little longer, then sighed. “Just forget it Becca. Don't worry your pretty little head.” He turned back to the food and picked up his knife once again, unable to stop himself from shaking his head a little. The thought of the photo in his pocket gave him some pause, but he decided not to tell her about it. She would hardly care now, it seemed.

Broken

It was a grey day, just like in all the cliches. There were a small group of mourners for the funeral, a sad indicator of just how much impact on the world the adult Turners had had in their lives. Apart from the priest, there were the three children, a distant cousin and a couple of co-workers. As the service finished, the others drifted past and offered words of little comfort. The priest didn’t even try to console them, in spite of Becca’s sobs. He turned and walked away from the paupers’ graves where the bodies now lay. Luke stood between his sisters, one clutching each hand. He didn’t have the words either.

“Come on, then,” Hannah finally said. “We’d better head home.”

Later that night, Luke spread his books on the table. Funeral or no funeral, he had exams to study for. With only months of schooling left, the pressure was on him to get good grades. Hannah was doing the housework for a change, drying the freshly washed dishes by the sink. As she set the last glass on its open shelf, she turned to look at Luke, taking in his concentration and the hand flying across the page as he took notes. She sighed.

“Lukie, I need to talk to you.”

He looked up from his studies and, when he saw her serious face, set down his pen. Hannah moved to the table and sat in their mother’s seat, next to him.

“Lukie, you need to get a job.”

Luke seemed dumbstruck, fumbling for words for a moment as he adjusted to the unexpected topic.

“But school, Becca, the housework - they take up all of my time. When am I supposed to work?”

Hannah hit the table. She’d been forced to shoulder more than she could contemplate since the accident. She needed to share the load, the grief.

“Dammit, Luke, we were barely keeping afloat when there were four of us working. How the hell do you think we're going to survive now Mum and Dad are gone too?”

“But you work for the government,” Luke said, still dumbfounded.

“Yes, I work for the government and it's killing me. I get paid next to nothing to do a horrible job that I can't believe I do.”

“Ssh. Someone will hear you.”

“Let them bloody hear me!” she yelled. “It's no secret that I hate what I do. I do it because I have to. You've already had more time at school than Andy or I had. It's time you left and got a job. And Becca can look after herself. We're going to lose the house, Luke.”

Luke was once again stunned into silence. He hadn’t thought about the house payments. It had come as a shock to him to learn that his parents owned only a tiny percentage of the family home. He’d always assumed that the reason they’d lived in such a dump for so long was that they couldn’t afford anything better. He never realised that it was because they couldn’t even afford what they had.

“But what can I do? I'm not qualified for anything.”

“We'll find you something, somehow. We've got no choice, have we, since our sainted brother ran off. Heard from him lately, have you?”

Luke paused, suddenly remembering the photo, still in his pocket from the night it had arrived. He had never gotten around to sharing it with any of them. The accident had happened that night.

“There was something in the mail the other day,” he said quietly. Hannah looked at him disbelievingly.

“What, a photo of Paris, was it? A letter from Rome? Tokyo? New York? Johannesburg? Where has he been all this time then?” Her voice was harsh and bitter. She had never spoken of Andy since he disappeared. Luke hadn’t understood before just how much she resented him for leaving. They’d always been close until then.

“It was just a photo of desert, and a foot in the bottom corner.”

Hannah sat down at the table in surprise. The news seemed to mean more to her than it did to Luke.

“Andy's in the desert?” she asked in a whisper. The anger was gone now, replaced by worry.
“Yeah, it looks that way. Why?” Luke couldn’t understand her sudden change in mood. She buried her head in her hands, looking much older than her twenty-two years. Suddenly Luke could see his mother sitting in that chair, in the same pose, the morning that they had realised Andy was gone. He hung his head to hide the sudden tears the memory evoked.

“Don't you know what's in the desert, Luke? That's where the camps are supposed to be. the camps for the Vanished. There's stories that there are other camps there too. Not run by governments.” Hannah’s voice sounded weary.

“You think he's –?” Luke trailed off, unable to voice what Andy might have become.

“Yeah, I think he is." They sat silently at the table for a few moments. Eventually, Hannah ran a hand through her hair and got up from her seat. "Go to bed, Lukie. You've still got to go to school tomorrow, whatever happens after that.”

She pushed her hair back from her face and offered him a half-hearted smile. Luke began to tidy his books. He piled them together and scooped them off the table as he pushed his chair back and turned to walk from the kitchen.

“And Lukie?” Luke stopped in the doorway and looked over his shoulder at his sister.

“Don't tell Becca. She's too little to know this.”

...

The school bell rang out the end of another day and Luke packed his books away. The walk to his locker for his school bag was a lonely one, jostled by others who were far more eager to get home than he was, escaping what they considered the grind of education for the freedom of the park, the shopping centre, anywhere that wasn't here. Luke was in no great hurry. Not that he enjoyed school more than they did, or disliked his time at home, more that he was never really in a hurry to get anywhere. There were things he liked about school and things he disliked about home. He dragged his feet where the other school boys ran.

Pete was waiting for him at his locker.

"Come on Lukie," laughed Pete. "you're always so slow. Hurry up and we might have time for some kick-to-kick before we have to get inside. What do you reckon?" Pete was football mad. He could happily fill a day kicking a football around a park, whether or not he had company. Luke was obliging enough not to mind it whenever Pete asked him to join in, so he picked up his pace a little as he pulled out whatever he'd need at home that night to finish his homework and put it into his bag.

'I've gotta go by the primary school for Becca, though,' he reminded his friend. Pete just smiled and nodded. He knew the routine as well as Luke did by now. They'd been walking home together since they were old enough to go without adults, and had stopped off to pick up Luke's little sister on their way since she'd started school.

'Bet you'll be glad when she starts here next year, huh,' offered Pete to break the silence. Luke simply grunted a reply that could have gone either way and kept walking at his normal steady pace. Pete was always running laps around him, trying to get him to walk faster, but nothing would disturb Luke in his rhythm. Pete decided that it was probably better not to interrupt him today. Something seemed to be on his mind; he was even quieter than normal. Idly wondering what it was, Pete tried to slow his own pace to match Luke's and made an extra effort to keep the impatience he was feeling from showing.

They walked through the streets in silence, neither of them taking in their surroundings. They'd been walking the same way for so many years now that they didn't even really need to look. Luke had tested it once, closing his eyes as he walked, and found that he could navigate as well from his memory of the road as he could from seeing what was going on around him. There were rarely any changes, and none that would interest the two school boys.

When they arrived at the primary school gate, Pete waited outside in the yard, taking a football out of his bag to keep himself occupied while Luke went inside for his sister. The teachers had started keeping the kids inside until someone came to collect them in the past year or so. It was easier, reflected Luke, when he'd just had to go to the big fort at the back of the school to find Becca, when he hadn't had to face up to her teachers before being able to take her home. It had all come out of some idiot taking a bus load of kids over the edge of a cliff; since then there'd been plenty of changes at the primary school. Not so many at his school, though. Most people seemed to figure that they could take care of themselves a bit more up there. Still, he was certain that he'd be picking Becca up just the same from the high school. He crossed the playground and entered the school building through the front door, memories of his own time at the school coming back to him as always.

That spot over there was where they used to play rounders at lunchtime. Their never-ending games of tag used that fire hydrant as a safe haven. He'd tripped and skinned his knee on that patch of bitumen. That was his music class room. There was the spot where he'd first been told that he didn't fit in. Over there was the spot where he'd had his first fight. That seat was where he'd been sent when he'd been hit with a stick in the playground. This was the corridor where he learned that it wasn't enough to have your parents spend everything they ever earned in trying to get their children a better education - and a better life - than they had had themselves. Here was the place that taught him you also needed money left over for other things. Only Pete had been on his side back then, on the same side of the growing divide between him and his class mates.

"Luke, hi,' said Becca's teacher as he came into the class room. There were about 10 eleven year olds left in the room. The other 12 or so had already been picked up by parents who didn't have to go to work or, far more likely at this school, their nannies.

'Hey Miss Jarvis.' She'd taught Luke when he was in Becca's grade and knew his situation better than most. She treated him as his sister's parent since she saw him more often than them, and knew that he was the one to make sure Becca got her homework done. 

'How'd she go today?' he asked. This was a normal interchange between them, sharing the details of Becca's day.

'Good, as always,' laughed the teacher.

'Anything I need to know about?'

'She's got a project to do for next week, some maths for tomorrow and a story for Friday. Library tomorrow as well, so she needs to bring back any books she borrowed last time around. It should all be written in her planner, though, so if you look there you'll find out anything that I've forgotten. Oh, and there's an excursion in a couple of weeks.' Luke's face closed over. Excursions were a sore point in their family, and usually meant Luke missed a day of school since they could neither afford to sends Becca on the excursion, nor trust her to be home alone.

'It's a free one this time,' offered Miss Jarvis. 'Just a form to sign. It'll be good for her to go.' Luke blushed at her knowledge of their family situation. He hated having to admit that they couldn't have sent her any other way, hated the knowledge that someone else didn't even need to be told that, but knew it already.

'Where are they going?' asked Luke in an attempt to distract himself. He did have some genuine curiosity as well; free excursions were a rarity.

'It's a government rally, I think. I'm not certain. I was just given the forms and told that the kids could all come along. You know the sort of thing, though. Lots of kids waving flags as politicians talk over their heads to the cameras. The usual. But we will be getting back a bit later than normal. It's all on the form,' she finished, losing her concentration as two of her charges started to bicker loudly.

Luke took the moment while the teacher was settling the dispute to study his sister as she played. She still hadn't noticed him in the room, so involved was she in marshaling her group of classmates. He watched her carefully for a few moments, looking for the signs that he knew had to have been there for him at the same age, had he only been able to see them.

'Rebecca's a good kid, Luke,' Miss Jarvis said softly. He wondered where this was going. 'She's popular, bright. There's no need to worry about her.'

Her tone was gentle, and he wondered how she'd been able to tell what he was thinking. He was uncomfortable just thinking about it all, and tried to hurry his departure.

'Come on Becca, time to go.' She looked around in mid-command of whatever the complicated game was that they were playing, and her face fell at the sight of her brother. It made him wonder what she was thinking. Unlike the uncanny Miss Jarvis, he wasn't good at reading other people's thoughts. Or maybe it was that they were better at hiding theirs. Whatever the reason, he didn't like that his sister was disappointed to see him. Or that it happened most days when he came to get her. He sighed. 'Come on.'

'Just a few more minutes?' asked Becca hopefully. 'Please? And if Jamie's nanny gets here soon, can he come and play?'

Jamie was apparently the friend of the moment. They still seemed to change a lot. Luke guessed that he was the boy with the rampant ginger curls who was being bossed around the most - a sure sign that he was Becca's current favourite. Another sigh slipped from Luke, knowing that he was about to disappoint her again.

'Not tonight Becca. I've got a mountain of things to get through, and Pete's already waiting for us at the gate.'

Breaking...

"Luke?" comes a tentative voice beside him. His eyes shift focus to find a vaguely familiar face peering up at him from behind a sheet of glossy red hair. He is startled to have someone who looked so well-maintained and expensive speak to him, and he mentally runs through a catalogue of Josie's friends to see if any fit her appearance. Coming up empty, he continues to stare at her blankly, waiting for an explanation.

"Don't you recognize me, Lukie?" she asks, plainly hurt. The affectionate version of his name triggers a sudden rush of memories and emotion.

"Becca!" He moves to hug his sister, but holds back, uncertain of the proprieties any more. She is clearly moving in circles far above his head, so much so that he wonders at her being in this neighbourhood. Besides, he remembers, they had not parted well when last they met. Becca had been too much a part of the system to meet with approval in the eyes of her brother. He had been less than flattering about both her causes and her actions. It had led to a split that he had always assumed would never be repaired.

Yet here she is, peering up at him with some kind of emotion working in her face and eyes full of tears at the sight of him.

"You've grown so much I hardly know you, Becca," he says by way of apology. It is true, even if it isn't the thought that is uppermost in his mind. The Becca he remembers is still a gangly teenager, not the woman in front of him. She still had braces, was still at school, even. The years have made her mature beyond her years in looks. Looking closer to trace the remains of his sister in the stranger's face, he sees that the glossy exterior masks a fatigue similar to his own. He wonders what has happened since he last saw her but doesn't dare ask. There are some questions that you don't ask anymore, not even to family.

"You haven't changed a bit, though," she tells him with a smile. "I'm glad, Lukie. I don't think I like the idea of not being able to recognize you, even if you are sleepwalking somewhere." There is a light, affected laugh at the end of the observation, but it sounds brittle. He can see that she is as uneasy, as unsettled, by the meeting as he is.

Someone bumps Luke as they head into the building and he comes to his senses a little with a sigh.

"I've got to go to work, Becca. I'll be late." He begins to move towards the door, but turns just as he reaches it. She is still watching him, a bright island in the see of grey he is so used to.

"Becca? Find me again. It's been good to see you." She smiles at him, radiant, a more grown up version of the little girl he remembers.

"You too, Lukie. Take care."

Breaking...

Leaning against a lamp post while he waits for a bus, Luke is lost in thought. Around him, the bustle of morning takes place. People are going to work, their clothes presenting a unifiedfront of conservatism to the world. There are few touches of personality. Nobody acknowledges the passing of anybody else. It suits Luke that way. He is lost in a revery, trying to put his finger on what has changed since his conversation with Josie - Josie's conversation with him, he concedes to himself as the dilapidated bus pulled up and the dark waiting hoard swarm for the doors. Luke pushes in behind the last of them, tilting forward from the heels to make sure the door doesn't close on him. An annoyed passenger glares at him silently until he returns to an upright position. Luke doesn't notice.

It's the little things he misses most, he realises in surprise. Waking up in the dark to the sound of her breathing beside him, slow and steady. The way she'd laugh with her whole body, doubled up, clutching his knee, his shoulder, any part of him she could reach, for support. The millions of unthinking ways they had connected each and every day. He'd never even noticed them until she was gone. And now he misses her. She had been his link with the world, the silence of the bus told him. He hadn't heard a voice since she had told him goodbye. There had been no interaction with the world.

With a jolt, he understands. Without Josie, he doesn't exist. He is invisible, just like everyone around him was invisible. 

He steps off the bus at his stop, walking on broken pavement towards the blank-faced building where he spends his work days. A door at ground level swallows the people walking ahead of him. He stops for a moment, an island in the flow of head-down pedestrians, and tilts his head back to look at the building. The windows are coated in grime making it hard to tell where the wall ends and the glass begins. He doesn't want to go into the half light he knows waits for him at his desk. As murky as it is outside, at least there is a chance of sunlight, he thinks as he lingers. 

With a sigh he walks forward again, head down. If it is hard going into this office, it is ten times easier than the one he goes to for his evening job, he tells himself. He hates having to go on to another office when he leaves here. It is too much work for one person to keep up, he knows, but it's better than starving. All the same, the tiredness is deep within him, settling in his bones. 

Breaking

As she looked across the table, he could see that she had something to tell him. Something in the way her hands were placed flat on the red and white check of the table cloth told him she was nervous, but trying to hide it. Her eyes darted around, looking everywhere but at him. He knew that, whatever it was she was about to say, she thought he was going to react badly to it. Finally, she opened her mouth and spoke.

‘I’m leaving.’

Josie sat back, as if waiting for his reaction. If she was, he disappointed her. Reactions would have to wait while her announcement sank in.

‘Did you hear me, Luke?’ she demanded. He nodded, silent.

‘I’m leaving you,’ she said again, her voice rising. ‘You and your bloody silences.’

The last comment was bitter. Josie spat it out in an attempt to provoke him into showing some emotion. But he could not react. Scream, cry, rant – in his head, yes, but none of it came to the surface anymore. He’d been hiding things for too long now, pushing his thoughts and feelings down deep inside where they wouldn’t get him into trouble. He’d always been told that they were dangerous. Now it was their absence that was causing him problems. When emotion was finally expected from him, he found that he had to struggle to let it out. The habit of locking himself away was almost too strong, the walls too high.

‘For god’s sake, doesn’t that mean anything to you? Have these three years been nothing?’

She stood up from the table and, suddenly, the eyes that had been so carefully averted before were focused on them. Now it was a scene, and they were allowed to watch. Luke sank down further and buried his head in his hands, trying to bring what was inside to the surface.

‘Yeah, that’s it,’ she said bitterly. ‘Hang your head, don’t say a word. That’s one way to deal with it. Maybe by the time you look up, it will be gone – but so will I. And you know that won’t be the end of it all. You know it.’

She leaned across the table and pried his hands away from his face, lifting his chin in a curiously gentle way after her harsh words. He felt something beginning to break inside.

‘You used to care,’ she said softly. ‘You cared so much I thought you’d die of a broken heart, one of these days. Now here we are and it’s my heart that’s broken and yours is dead. God, I sound like some trashy novel.’

She backed away from him and started to get her things together. Luke wanted to tell her not to go, but the words wouldn’t come. There was a lump in his throat that was blocking them.

‘Tell me, Luke. Was it all worth it? Is it worth selling your soul for peace of mind?’ She laughed, bitter again. ‘I don’t blame you, really. I can see how it would happen. But is that what you did? I just need to know that, and I’ll go away.’

He opened his eyes. He’d closed them when Josie asked if it was worth it. He’d been thrown by the changing line of attack, see-sawing between bitterness and kindness. It had been enough to shake the emotional wall that he hid himself behind; shaken him enough that he looked back over everything they’d done together, everything they’d said, and the enormity of her leaving came crashing home. She was already halfway to the door.

‘Josie,’ he barely managed to croak. She paused, turned to look over her shoulder. She was surprised by the tears welling in his eyes. She came back to the table for a moment.

‘Josie, don’t go.’

‘Is that all you can manage?’ she asked.

When he didn’t –couldn’t – say any more, she turned once more for the door.

‘Goodbye Luke.’

She was gone. She’d left him. Luke put his hands on the table where hers had been only minutes before. He could almost see the imprints her palms had left as she’d tried to get up the courage to tell him she was leaving. Despair gripped his stomach, and his world seemed that bit colder. Josie wasn’t in it anymore.

The crowd in the restaurant turned back to their meals. Some of them would report what had happened, but most would forget. It was just another argument between yet another couple who couldn’t stand the strain in a city full of others in the same situation.

A Beginning

Here comes the rain again
Falling from the stars
Drenched in my pain again
Becoming who we are
-Green Day, Wake Me Up When September Ends



Luke stayed quiet when old Mr Hussein from next door disappeared, never said a word to the new people who moved into his house about the fact that he had seen them dragging the old man from his home and throwing him into the back of a black van. He pretended not to hear the cries for help that echoed up and down the street. Looking back, he figured he had made it easier for them to erase Mr Hussein’s existence from the world. Luke tried to block from his memory all the times Mr Hussein had given him a glass of fresh lemonade when he went to retrieve a ball from his backyard, all the stories about the wife and daughters who had died before he migrated back in the 90s. It was easier to make out that the man carefully tending his garden had been imagined. Life soon returned to normal and if Luke missed the long winding conversations with the old man, he was the only one to know it. Luke had long before accepted that he was only one voice and could therefore change nothing.

It was harder when the others went. The first he knew about the trouble was Andy shaking him awake one night.

‘Wake up Luke. Come on, wake up.’ Andy grew more energetic in his shaking of Luke’s shoulder. Luke groaned and started to sit up. It was only after rubbing the sleep from his eyes that he noticed it was still dark.

‘What the hell, Andy?’ He glanced at the alarm clock between their beds. ‘It’s 3:30, what do you want?’

‘Keep your voice down,’ hissed Andy. ‘Get up. Come on.’

Without waiting to see if his brother followed, Andy climbed out through the window of their bedroom. By now Luke had realised that something was up, but he wasn’t prepared for what he saw when he followed Andy down the side of the house to get a view of the street. Andy had stopped at the corner, out of sight of the street and Luke had to lean around or over him to see. The sight took his breath away.

The house across the road was Pete’s house. The Li’s had always kept it immaculate, a gingerbread house in pastel colours with pretty lace curtains at the windows. Pete had to mow the lawn every weekend and Kim, his grandmother, spent most of her days tending the flower beds. It was one of those houses where everything was perfect and well-cared for, in stark contrast to Luke’s own house. That may have been part of what made it so disturbing to see men in black jumpsuits, helmets and goggles leaving the house. It was all Luke could do to keep himself from yelling at them to get off the flowerbeds.

Four of them stood guard, rifles at the ready. Another was by the driver’s door of a truck parked two houses down, outside the Ryans’. None of the five seemed to belong in the suburban street, but they looked more at home than the ten who came quietly out of the Li’s house. The moved quickly in pairs, each with a rifle slung over one shoulder. Supported between each pair was a member of the Li family; Pete, Kim, Georgie, Dave and Sue. None of the Li’s carried their own weight; they all seemed at best dazed and Kim’s head lolled on her shoulder like a broken doll’s.

One by one the Li's were tossed roughly into the back of the truck. Andy shuddered as they pushed Georgie in and Luke put a hand on his shoulder in a combination of reassurance and restraint. He pulled his brother back from the corner as the soldiers - because now he knew that that’s what they were - laughed quietly together and followed the Li's into the truck. By the time the boys had made it back to the window the truck had gone and Andy was sobbing.

‘The bastards. The stupid lying cheating bastards.’


The next morning, Luke staggered down to the kitchen still bleary with sleep. He’d left Andy fuming beside the house the night before, too exhausted to sit a vigil. He went to the fridge to get himself the makings of breakfast and poured himself a glass of juice from the carton, oblivious to the looks his parents are exchanging over Becca’s head as they got themselves ready for work.

Finally, his mother spoke.

“Lukie, where's your brother? He's going to be late for work. Hannah's already gone.” Her voice was tight with tension. Luke shrugged, oblivious.

“He's already up.”

“You mean he got up without being poked?” laughed his father. “Write that one down in the diary, then.” Luke shrugged again. His brother’s sleeping patterns were not interesting to him. Not when he was still half asleep himself.

“I don't know what happened, but he's not in bed.” The toast popped out of the toaster and he spread it with a smear of jam, knowing that more would earn him some comments from his parents about the cost of food.

“Go see if he's in the shower, would you, Lukie? I haven't seen him.” Luke looked a little closer at his mother before going from the room. The noises from the kitchen drifted through to Luke as he walked up the drab hallway.

“I've got to go now,” his father was saying, “or I'll be late. I can't wait for him if he hasn't already gone. He'll have to make his own way.”

The bathroom door was open with no sign of Andy. Some of his mother’s tension finally hit home to Luke and he was suddenly awake as he turned back into the room he shared with Andy. He opened Andy’s cupboard and saw the gaps in the clothing were bigger than they should be. The bag that normally rested on top of the cupboard was gone. Luke raced back to the kitchen.

“He's not there. His bag's gone, his clothes. He's gone.”

His mother spun from her place at the stove, a tea bag spraying brown liquid across the worn floor.

“What? How can he be gone?”

“Lukie, come on. This isn't a time to joke,” said his father, a serious expression on his face. Luke remembered again Andy’s words from the nights before.

“The stupid, lying, cheating bastard.”

He sat at the table and dropped his head into his hands, things clicking into place in ways that he doesn’t want them to. He sensed that his mother had come to stand over him and forced himself to speak.

“They took the Li's last night. The black vans. Andy saw.”

After another exchange of glances over the heads of their children before Amy Turner told her daughter, “Becca, go and get your bag for school or you'll be late. Go on now.”

She sat down at the table to wait for Becca to be out of hearing before she spoke again, this time very quietly. Her hands were playing with the string of the tea bag twisting and knotting it as a puddle of tea formed on the table top.

“Luke, tell me everything you know.”

Luke looked up at her, wondering what to say as he studied her careworn face, her crinkled eyes and the grey at her temples.

“He woke me up last night and we went outside. The black vans were there. They took the Li's. Andy was going to sit up for a bit. He was pretty upset.”

Amy looked across to where her husband was standing with his back to them, his hands holding the bench top in a white knuckle grip.

“He wouldn't do anything stupid, would he?” she pleaded.

Luke waited for his father’s response, hoping for some reassurance, some hint that the conclusions he was drawing were wrong. His father would not give him any comfort.

“We don't know what he's done. He might have just gone out to sort his head out. We know nothing for now. Let's not assume anything.”