“Then what’s the problem?”
Her cheeks grew redder, and she looked away. “He wants me to be his concubine.”
Some of the kids at school used to whisper to each other about that in the playground. The toffs, so they said, weren’t happy with just one wife, or sex-bots. They’d find some poor, unmarried girls who no-one wanted, take them home, and use them to raise more kids. When girls misbehaved at school, some of the boys joked about how they might end up as concubines if they weren’t careful.
But his sister?
He grabbed her chin, and turned her face toward him. He could tell from the way she looked into his eyes, and the way her body gently shook on the stairs, that she wasn’t joking. The man in the black car had come for her. As though a toff could have her the same way he could have anything else he wanted in the world.
He held her hand, and squeezed it.
“I won’t let them take you.”
She shook her head and frowned. “No. They’ll hurt you if you try to stop them.”
“I’m not letting them take you away from here if you don’t want to go.”
“You would be well rewarded, Mr McCoy,” Grey-Hair said in the kitchen.
The floorboards thumped as Dad stomped his feet on them.
“I am not selling my daughter.”
Feet thudded down the stairs above Logan and Alice. A face peered around the corner, looking down from the landing. A young face. Male. Scraggly brown hair. Wearing the old, hand-me-down Royal Marines T-shirt that Dad had brought home from work one day when Logan was ten. Once brand new and the darkest black, now faded, stained, and ragged at the seams, from years of the boys climbing trees and playing war games in the park down the street.
“What’s going on? Dad sent us upstairs.”
Malcolm was only nine, what would he understand? How much would he even want to understand?
“Go back to our room, and play with your toy soldiers.”
“I want to know what’s happening.”
Another face peered around the corner below Malcolm’s. Long red pigtails dangled below thick spectacles, above two small hands holding a teddy bear with one button eye hanging loose on a thread. Stacey, their kid sister. She peered down the stairs, toward the kitchen.
“What are they doing?” she whispered.
Alice’s head flicked around toward them.
“Will you two please just go back upstairs. I need to think.”
Grey-Hair picked up his case, and slid it onto his lap. Then pressed his thumbs against the fingerprint readers beside the handle, and clicked it open. He pulled out a wad of papers, and placed them on the table. He turned them around, then slid them toward Dad’s hands.
“There is a job opening at the ammunition factory for a safety manager…”
Dad pushed the papers away. “I don’t care.”
“The pay would be four times your current UBI, and with full Gold coverage on the National Health Service for all your family. You’ll get a nice new house in a new community, with four bedrooms, and security for your protection.” Grey-Hair glanced toward Mum. “Your children will go to the best schools in town, Mrs McCoy, and will have the opportunity to apply to university. They could become engineers, managers, or military officers.”
“I don’t care.”
“You’re not getting any younger, Mr McCoy. Or any more appealing to an employer.” Grey-Hair tapped the papers with his hand. “This would be the best choice for your health, and your wealth.” He leaned closer. “And your children.”
“Is Daddy getting a job?” Stacey said.
Logan peered past Alice, toward the kitchen. The suits were looking away. If they could sneak out quietly, and the damn creaky floorboards didn’t give them away…
“Let’s go,” he whispered. “Get away from here.”
Alice pulled her knees closer to her chest. “Where? He’s a toff. He’ll find us wherever we run.”
“Jason’s dad has a boat. We can cross the Channel…”
“Can I come?” Malcolm said. “You keep saying you’ll take me out on Jason’s boat, and you never do.”
For a split second, Alice laughed, until Muscles glanced their way from the kitchen. Then she frowned, and lowered her voice. “To France? We’d be dead before the day is over.”
“Maybe we could…”
She put her finger on Logan’s lips.
“Don’t you read the news? Even if we didn’t drown on the way… They’d torture us, Logan. Torture us until we wished we were dead. Then execute us as spies.” She ran her finger across her neck. “Cut our heads off. Better bloody Morgan than that.”
She lowered her chin to her knees again, and stared into the kitchen. Muscles watched the kids on the stairs as Grey-Hair continued talking. They’d missed their chance. Muscles wasn’t going to let his attention wander a second time.
Grey-Hair ran his fingers down lines of tightly-spaced text on the papers, too much and small for Logan to read. “Your daughter’s children with Mr Morgan—your grandchildren, Mrs McCoy—will have many opportunities they will never have if she remains here. He will raise them like any other child of his.”
“We should never have gone to that damn party,” Dad said. “If he hadn’t seen her…”
“Your grandsons will qualify for managerial positions. Your granddaughters will marry into the managerial class. Perhaps even higher.”
Dad said nothing.
“Mt Morgan moves in the highest circles in London,” Grey-Hair continued. “And she’s a pretty girl. Your granddaughters might even marry into the nobility, if they take after their mother, and play their cards right.”
Logan put his arm around Alice’s shoulders.
She was shaking, even more than before. How could they talk about his sister like this? Treat her as something to be traded, some machine to make babies for a toff? Didn’t they know she was a person?
Or did they just not care?
Logan’s hand balled up into a fist. He wanted to storm down the stairs, across the floor, and punch Grey-Hair in the face. Then throw both of them out of the apartment.
But Muscles was still staring at them. Logan wouldn’t even get to the kitchen before Muscles was on him. And what chance did he really have against a man like that?
Grey-Hair leaned forward over the table, and stared into Dad’s face.
“Mr McCoy. Anyone else on this street would beg us for such an opportunity. No-one in their right mind would throw it away. Please don’t make a mistake you’ll regret for the rest of your life.”
“No,” Dad said. “You won’t have her. Get out of my house.”
Grey-Hair rubbed his chin, then glanced toward Muscles. “Perhaps we should talk to the girl.”
Dad raised his arm. He held out his finger, and slowly turned his arm until it was pointing toward the apartment door.
“I will not let… that man… have my daughter.”
Grey-Hair tapped his fingers on the table. “Mr McCoy. We would like this to be an amicable arrangement. But perhaps there might be some irregularities in your UBI records. Your payments might be delayed. Or even cancelled.”
Dad held up a fist in front of his face, which was turning red as he spoke. He waved it toward Grey-Hair.
“You bastards. Don’t you threaten me.”
Grey-Hair leaned back, and glanced toward Mum.
“Mr Morgan, you’ve been drinking. You’re not thinking straight. Perhaps your wife…”
The table shook as Dad slammed his fist down on it. “Get out. And don’t come back.”
Grey-Hair sighed, then grabbed the papers and slid them back into his case. He clicked it closed.
“Mr McCoy, we will leave. But we’ll be back. And, next time, the terms on offer will not be as good.”
“If you bastards come back, I’ll kill the both of you.”
“If we have to come back, you won’t get that chance.”