Chapter 1

Don’t believe everything you read. I didn’t scream and cry when my parents were arrested. They didn’t whisper any secrets to me; I didn’t try to obstruct police officers. I remember that day very clearly, for obvious reasons, and I wasn’t even there when they were taken. I was at school having the worst day of my life.

That afternoon was warm. I remember the heat of the pavement coming up through my shoes when I got off the bus, the swelter of my long skirt, gloves and straw hat. I remember counting the seconds until I could take them off. Coming home is my favourite moment of the day because, from then on, nobody’s watching. 

I heard the press mob before I saw it. My heart sped. I wanted to know who was being arrested; it’d never happened in my street before. If I had something to tell everyone at school, an eyewitness account of a high-profile arrest, maybe they’d change their minds about me. I’d disappointed them, I knew that, and good girls did not disappoint.

It was getting louder. Whirring cameras, running feet and sound checks billowed into the warm July afternoon. I’d only ever seen a transportee on telly: arrests at the end of the 7pm news, right before the transportation list and that day’s executions. If they were home, my parents never missed it.

I walked faster, fast enough to draw attention, heart speeding, schoolbag bouncing. Almost home. Our house is on a corner – I hurried round it and slammed head-on into a wall of noise.

‘It’s the daughter! It’s Matilda,’ a man in a grey suit cried through a twist of teeth and camera flashes, and they were on me.

They threw words full-force, searching for a soft place, aiming to draw blood. I heard snatches, questions – how much did I know? Did I support what my parents had done? How did my father break the government’s codes, divert its funds? Was my mother his accomplice or worse, his leader?

They were all men, under me and up against me and I couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. Taking desperate gulps of air between arms, microphones and flying spittle, I threw out my elbows and burst through the throng, sprinted away from them and their lies, because surely it was a mistake. When I got inside, I took one look at my nanny in the hallway and the truth closed over me. On the news it’s always someone, but I never thought it could be us. I never thought it could be me.

Inside our house, I lurched along the hall and into Nanny’s waiting arms. The camera lenses were probing the side-panels of the door, surging against them, making ugly scraping sounds against the glass. Nanny gripped my face and scanned my body, checking for damage. When she found none, she held me tight and bundled me down the stairs to the kitchen.

‘When did you last see them?’ Her voice was flat, urgent. Different.

I floundered, my mind a singing mess of facts and faces and noise and the cold hard stab of terror. What day was it? What day? I couldn’t remember.

‘What day is it?’ I whispered.

Nanny picked up the remote control from the countertop and turned on the TV in the kitchen. It was the same story on every channel, the ticker unfurling again and again across the screen: Senior Party Member and Wife Arrested On Suspicion Of Treason. Their faces on TV belonged to strangers, middle-aged somebody elses in cuffs and buff-coloured jumpsuits. They showed no sign of resistance.

Nanny and I looked at each other and relief, diamond cold, doused the fear a little. The two of them were cooperating, at least. Convicts and detainees who tried to escape before they were sent to Australia were lined up at Tyburn and shot. No exceptions. Through the confusion invading my brain, shutting it down, my one hope was that surely, surely, they wouldn’t be so stupid as to risk that.

On the kitchen table, my phone buzzed and buzzed. I watched it for a while and noticed dully how distant it seemed from me already, how much it looked like an artefact from a past life. I clicked it off and chucked it in my bag. Nanny looked over, confused. I never, ever turned off my phone. My boyfriend, Reggie, didn’t like not being able to reach me and he didn’t like to wait. He told me to reply promptly and I never disobeyed him.

‘What do they say?’

For an instant, I considered not showing her the screen; allowing her to hold onto that previous version of me, the place I’d had in the world before. Not much point in that now.

I turned the phone back on and passed it to her. We have no secrets anyway, Nanny and me. The first messages had started at 10am after the results were posted.

Try-hard.

Lesbian. 

Liar.

Slut.

Reggie’s going to dump you because you’re a know-it-all whore.

What were you thinking? Maths????!!

Then, since about 3pm, when the news about my parents broke:

Everyone knows you cheated. Everyone knows you’re a traitor.

Suicide is too good for you, TRAITOR.

Nanny watched me closely, her forehead creased.

‘These are from your friends?’

I squeezed my eyes shut against the outrageous burn that had started up behind them. If I started crying now, it wouldn’t be the usual kind – the easy tears I shed for earrings lost or ounces gained or something Reggie had said to me that day.

Nanny scrolled down through the texts.

Who’d’ve thought it? Matilda Watson, a swotty little try-hard!

Matilda! How could you!!?

You belong in Australia with them, Watson.

Nobody likes a know-it-all, Watson.

You’re dead to me, Watson.

‘Yeah.’

‘How did you go?’

‘Two A stars, twos A and a B. For Biology.’

Nanny exhaled, closed her eyes briefly. Her shoulders sagged underneath her dark green tracksuit jacket. I’d just received the highest fifth-form exam results at my school, and it’s one of the most exclusive private girls’ schools in the country.

‘Ah, kochanie. Your mother would be so proud of you. So proud.’

I gestured to the journalists outside and wheezed a horrible breath in. Mother’s absence was not unusual, so why was it so painful? Nanny squeezed my arm and patted my cheek. For just an instant the noise and confusion quietened.

‘Even so. Still proud.’

 ‘She doesn’t give a shit,’ I whispered. ‘She’s a liar.’

‘It is not that simple,’ Nanny soothed me.

‘Why is this happening?’ I whispered, my face close to Nanny’s. ‘I want it to stop, can you just…this can’t just be true, can it? What they’re saying on the news?’

Nanny looked at me steadily. I could feel the anger expanding, solidifying, choking me. I looked up at the ceiling and gulped air. I should have known something, suspected something. How could I have lived in the same house as them and not noticed? That’s the first thing I would wonder, if this had happened to someone else.

I hadn’t meant to do well in my exams, that was the thing. I don’t know what came over me. Even my teachers had been worried for me.

‘You must have worked hard,’ my housemistress had said as she pulled me into her office and shut the door. Her broad forehead had furrowed, her eyes were small and sad.

‘But where did this come from, Matilda?’ Her voice was low and urgent. ‘Don’t you want to join a good family? I would’ve done if I could. A job is no life for a woman, Matilda. I’ve had letters. I’ve been spat at in the street.  If it’s not financial necessity, why do you want this?’

It killed me, because I’d had it all there, right there for the taking. I’d had Reggie. We’d been together the best part of a year. I’d been one of the lucky ones. There were certain girls – girls like my housemistress had been once, I suppose – who would have to go to work to attract a man, who didn’t have the looks or the money or the lineage to do it when the rest of us did. They’d have to go into one of the jobs women were allowed to do – teach kids or be secretaries or nurses – and even then, they’d be lucky to marry mid-level bureaucrats.

‘These scores will certainly get you a job, Matilda,’ the vice-principal had murmured, his face sepulchral. And then in a worried whisper, ‘how does Reginald feel about this? Does his father know?’

The final exam results for all the top tier schools had been published online. Now they would follow me around for the rest of my life, a blemish on my record that marked me out as different, non-pliant, a girl who didn’t know her place. Fitting for the daughter of traitors. 

 ‘It’s about connections,’ my best friend Sadie had said. ‘That’s what sets our school apart from other schools, you know? The girls who can’t get in end up married to teachers and engineers and accountants, which is fine, of course.’ Her perfect nose crinkled. ‘Or, worse,’ she whispered, ‘not married at all, no children, stuck with their parents. Can you imagine? Saggy old drains. Pathetic. You want to watch yourself. The Party men don’t like swots, it’s unfeminine.’

I started bringing home Ds and Fs at the start of Year 8. It enraged my mother, but I know it scared her too, even as she was pointing at Father, ginger-haired and benign, tapping away at his laptop in the corner of the living room.

‘Not all men want a stupid wife, Matilda. A good education sets you apart, gives you options. You need to know enough to make your own decisions. Your father won’t be around forever.’

It worked for her 30 years ago when women could still be doctors, engineers and journalists. I looked her right in the eye.

‘I’m trying my best.’

Her face hardened as the heat left it. She knew when I was lying.

‘You’re not.’

How could I not have seen it? Mother didn’t always agree with my school or the state. What was I supposed to do in that situation? The state is irrefutable. The Department of Corrections in Britain tells us what’s right and wrong; we don’t have to think about it. I couldn’t imagine how exhausting it would be, having to make those sorts of judgements on my own every day. I’d never leave the house.

‘What does it matter anyway?’ I hissed. ‘It’s not like there’s a department chair or medical school waiting for me. What’s the point?’

‘Women can still work.’

‘Barely,’ I muttered.

‘They’re still allowed to serve, however small their service. You should want to make something of yourself.’

‘I do want to make something of myself,’ I said furiously.

‘Then you’ll do another three hours of calculus revision this weekend.’

I kept my voice cold and even. ‘Happy to.’

We’d been going on like that all year.

 

Even so, I’d not meant to top the class. Once I started writing, once the answers started coming, I couldn’t stop. I’d never expected the silence from Reggie – the total, deafening, unmistakeable end.

There was so much hate on all my feeds I was surprised the phone didn’t combust.

‘Ah, here is a good one!’ Nanny gave me a wobbly smile and showed me the screen.

‘Congratulations, Matilda. Incredible results.’

What?

I reached over and grabbed the phone from her as a shivery warmth shot up from my coccyx to my cerebellum.

Josiah. I hadn’t had a text from him in months, not since I’d taken up with Reggie. Somehow, I’d missed this one in the stream of vitriol.

‘You see?’ Nanny whispered. ‘You see? It’s not all bad.’

The screen blurred in front of my eyes and again I felt quick, sharp needles of panic. I hadn’t heard from Reggie since last night. Not one text since 10am, not one call. Nothing. I felt weak, off-balance. I’d misread him. I’d misunderstood everything.

I thought about replying to Josiah. My thumbs hovered over the buttons, but I knew I couldn’t. It was selfish. He was perfect just as he was – his wealth and kindness and the things he’d offered me made him smooth and warm and edgeless. Someone like him couldn't be associated with someone like me, not anymore. Reggie was the son of a mid-level minister and therefore ranked well below Josiah and if I was no longer good enough for Reggie, I had no business contacting Josiah at all.

 

Nanny and I sat in the kitchen all afternoon and into the night, eating crisps from a bag, washed in bluish television light as my parents’ faces and my own were broadcast again and again. School photos, photos from my social feeds and from the press pack that afternoon. The first official charge was announced a little before 9pm.

Treason.

When the newsreader said the word, I actually felt it: the slap of adrenalin. It contracted my lungs, pushing the air out of them so I bent over the table slightly to catch my breath. I looked away and focused on a tiny chip in the corner of the kitchen island until it shivered and grew and the rest of the room dimmed around it.

 

This couldn’t be happening; it couldn't be happening. Since that morning I’d felt flayed, like an essential protective layer had been torn away, but now I was exposed. A face every person in the country would know by the end of the day.

There was nothing to do but wait. Nanny fell asleep. At midnight I turned off the TV and found there was literally nothing to do next. School was gone. When I looked at my phone, friends and Reggie, they were gone. The evening routine, the careful tweezing and smoothing and moisturising, no point in that. No slam of the door as my mother came home, no gentle click of the doorknob when my father checked on me before he went to bed. No words to swallow or fights to have or pages to read. Nothing.

The Department of Corrections officers knocked on our door early the next day. Two men, both wiry and nervy, like pointers. They kept looking through me, avoiding my eyes as though I might cast a spell on them. I’d dressed so carefully, high-necked blouse and long skirt. It didn’t make a difference.

‘They’re just women,’ I overheard the taller one complain when I was coming back from the loo after the interview, trembly and nervous. We hadn’t had time to eat and yet they’d barely asked us anything. The taller one’s tone to his colleague was dismissive, annoyed. ‘They know nothing. Get upstairs, will you?’

They took every networked device and every document in the house. I was almost relieved when they took my phone. The messages had gotten worse and Reggie still hadn’t called me.

But you’re a pariah now, a little voice reminded me. Who cares?

After they left, I stared straight ahead at a scuff mark they left in the wall, trying to keep my brain still and failing. Anger, hot, wrong and bitter, surged in and sucked me under. What was happening to them? How could they be so careless with me? The entire country thought I was a traitor and it was partly because I had done what my mother wanted. I had aced my exams, detonated my future for the sake of her pride, her requirement, her need that I bring home those A stars, because that’s what she had done 30 years ago, when girls still went to university and joined the military and the professions. Now, what I’d done made me look like a rebel.

The irony was, they didn’t even know I’d done it. They were simply gone. They’d been there and then they weren’t and weren’t and still weren’t, their places stubbornly empty like a magic trick gone wrong.

That afternoon, as I hid in the kitchen from the throng outside screaming my name, I found the pen I’d used in the exams, a silver lightweight felt-tip Mother gave me at Christmas. I uncapped it and dug the point into a knot in the kitchen table, Mother’s valuable oak table from the house she grew up in. I scraped and dug and scraped, faster and harder, unable to stop, until the tip broke and the ink bubbled over. I smeared the black stain as far across the wood as it would go, as far into the grain as it would sink.