Florence woke later than usual, and by the time she went downstairs, her father was ready for work. Dressed in his tweed suit, his leather briefcase sitting by the door, he idled away the time until sunrise fiddling with the radio.
“...expecting light rain in the morning which will... heavier in the afternoon with... of two degrees...” The radio presenter’s voice faded in and out.
Her father sighed, folding himself into one of the dining chairs and looking at the curtained window as if he could see through the fabric to the outside, “All this rain must be affecting the reception.”
“They said after they put in the new mast it would be better,” her mother came in from the kitchen holding a stack of toast and looked disapprovingly at the radio. “I don’t know what they expect us to do. Help yourself, Flo.” She squeezed the plate down in the middle of the table between the butter dish and a stack of magazines.
Florence grabbed two slices, spreading them liberally with the marmalade Elliot’s mum had given them before taking a bite. She didn’t know how his mum had made it, but it was delicious.
The pendulum clock on the wall chimed as it hit eight o’clock. Florence lazed in her chair, taking a swig of tea. The winter schedule was really convenient: in the summer it would already be time to leave, but now she didn’t need to rush.
After breakfast she sauntered upstairs to her bedroom and was pulling her school jumper over her head when her mother yelled up the stairs, “Flo! Sun’s up!”
“’Kay!” She leaned over her bed and tugged the curtains open.
A pitiful amount of daylight – not even enough to make her eyes sting – streamed into her room. Faint white outlined the tops of hills that cradled Truthsend Village; closer, the jagged tops of the pine trees clawed into the sky. No matter where you went in Truthsend, you could see them.
“Flo, I’m leaving!” her dad called.
Now that the repressive darkness was beaten back, all the residents of Truthsend could get on with their days – including the teachers at school. Grabbing her bag and stuffing a stray bit of homework in, Florence spun out of the room. Technically, she didn’t need to leave quite so early, but heaven only knew if Elliot would be ready in time if she didn’t.
After giving her mum a quick hug, she skipped over to Elliot’s house where, sure enough, she found him standing in the kitchen chugging a glass of apple juice and doing his shirt up at the same time. There were deep shadows under his eyes and his hair stuck out at odd angles.
“What time did you go to bed last night?”
“The signal was faster than 56k for once, how could I not make the most of it?”
“So, you went to bed at?”
He looked sheepish, smoothing his hair with one hand. “I think it was two?”
“Mr. Ackley’s gonna murder you.” She said with relish. Mr. Ackley, their form tutor, had a great propensity for expounding on the correct way to live a healthy life. Staying up late did not figure in this scheme.
Elliot tugged on his jacket, zipped it all the way up and slung his bag over his shoulder, “Come on. He'll murder both of us if we’re late.”
“You're one to talk,” Florence muttered as she followed him out.
They retraced their steps from last night, but left the estate the normal way – through the gate. At the main road they turned right, the opposite direction to the Abandoned House.
A light drizzle fell. The kind that tricked you into thinking it wasn't too bad, but soaked you thoroughly when you weren't paying attention. Elliot pulled his hood up and Florence condescended to fasten her coat. The puddles on the road that never really dried up expanded and the gutter turned into a rush of brown water.
The shops lining the main street were already open – taking advantage of every minute of daylight – their colourful, striped awnings dulled under the overcast sky; the light spilling from the windows glinting on the slick cobblestones.
“Hey, look there,” Elliot elbowed Florence with a significant glance. “It’s Mr. Fanshawe.”
A middle-aged man, dressed in galoshes and the type of long rain coat associated with suspicious men, stood looking at the potatoes outside the green grocer. The owner, Mrs. Phipson, squinted at him through the glass from behind the till.
They stopped under the awning of the opposite butchers and watched him covertly.
Disgust and suspicion rose in equal measure within Florence, “What’s he doing here?”
Mr. Fanshawe had a living-urban-legend status amongst the teenagers in Truthsend. He was an Outsider. Although Outsiders weren’t a rare sight in Truthsend – the delivery men, the spate of engineers that kept visiting the village, and even some of the teachers were all Outsiders – he lived in the village. When she was a child, her mum had tugged her away whenever they saw him, her mother placing herself between them with wary eyes. Florence hadn’t understood at the time, but now when she thought about it... disgust bubbled up inside her.
That fact that he could work Outside was proof enough.
A fat drip fell down from the awning onto her neck and she shivered.
Mr. Fanshawe selected a couple of potatoes and carried them into the shop.
“I heard that his wife was ill,” Elliot said doubtfully, “Maybe that’s why he isn’t going to work.”
“She brought it on herself, marrying an Outsider,” she sneered, “disrespecting the Truth.”
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Elliot gave her a long look, the emotions in his dark eyes unreadable. “You really think so?”
“You don’t?”
“...He hasn’t hurt anyone.”
Florence snorted in reply. Who was to say? He didn’t follow them in not Lying, so there was no way to know what he had done.
They watched for a while longer, but after paying for his potatoes, Mr. Fanshawe just walked slowly down the road, his black umbrella held aloft.
“Even using an umbrella.” She shook her head in disgust.
“I don’t know what you have against umbrellas,” Elliot said.
They sloshed their way down the street debating the disadvantages of umbrellas, arriving at Truthsend Valley Secondary School to hear the bell echoing from the building.
“It’s only the warning bell,” Elliot said, looking at the clock above the front entrance and quickening his pace up the front path.
The village school occupied a long, narrow building. The limestone walls were pocked and pitted with age and the bowed roof had grown a good amount of moss.
Keeping pace with Elliot, Florence glanced down at her watch: they might really be late. She skipped past him up the stairs, pausing at the entrance to say over her shoulder, “You call that running? Last one to the classroom’s a Lying mongoose!”
Elliot fell behind as Florence raced across the empty foyer and up the stairs to the second floor, carefully skirting the leak in the stairwell. The school had been renovated several times, the latest in the seventies. Thousands of feet had slowly worn away at the linoleum, and water dribbled down the walls where the caulking on the windows had fallen away.
Her foot hit the topmost step when the bell for the start of form room rang. She grimaced; they were officially late. Considerate as she was, Florence waited for Elliot.
“I... hate... stairs...” He wheezed, but he kept pace with her as they rushed along the corridor and barged into the classroom to see Mr. Ackley’s glowing, tanned face.
“Late again,” he said. He was a short man, with wiry grey hair, and whether it was because of his dodgy health regime or his genetics, he exuded an insuppressible energy. The rest of the class looked on from their desks as he bounced on his heels beside the whiteboard at the front of the room. With a long-suffering, rather dramatic sigh, he asked, “Reason?”
“I was waiting for him.” Florence sold Elliot out immediately.
Mr. Ackley nodded, his hands clasped behind his back.
Elliot opened his mouth, but after a five second pause, seemed to decide that silence was the best option.
“Hm,” Mr. Ackley said, “I heard that the internet connection was good last night? Youth! I, too, remember, funnily enough, that time when impulses were hard to contain and self-control was a thing for the boring, but,” - he turned to the class – “youth is when you will lay the foundation upon which your health rests...” He was off.
But they were lucky this time. Mr. Ackley curtailed his speech after five minutes, warned them not to be late again, and asked them to take a seat. Then he cleared his throat, took a sip of kombucha, and said, “There’s a change of plans regarding next week’s assemblies. We’re having a whole school assembly next Monday, so make sure not to be late.” He stared at the Florence and Elliot as if to leave nobody in any doubt who he was talking about. “Okay?”
The class rumbled an acknowledgement.
“Not quite a murder, but a beating,” Florence said to Elliot when the bell to signal the end of form time rang. “If he mentions smoothies one more time...” He’d once convinced her mum to try the recipe; she’d thought they’d end up in the village newsletter the next day with the headline ‘Mysterious Concoction Kills Three.’
The rest of the day was pretty underwhelming. Florence hadn’t done her homework last night and was told to hand it in tomorrow or it’d be detention; school lunch was the dreaded toad in the hole; and fifth period science was replaced with self-study again.
“All the other subjects have at least two teachers, why’s science only got one?” Florence muttered, lying on the table and spinning her pen. Elliot didn’t answer. “We’re the one’s who suffer.” Yawning, she looked up at the clock: two minutes to three.
Almost home time.
She swept her exercise book and pen into her bag as the seconds trickled away.
The bell rang and she frog-marched Elliot out of the classroom.
The rain was coming down harder than ever. Not even the raucous yells of hundreds of excitable students moving into the corridors could drown out the sound of it hammering against the windows. Water streamed down the panes of glass, blurring the outside world into a jumble of greys.
Elliot took one look outside and said, “I’m going to get my waterproofs.”
“Tch, baby. Skin’s waterproof, you know?” Florence teased, but followed him against the crowd to his locker where he kept a full set of waterproofs.
By the time he’d tugged on his overtrousers and zipped his mackintosh over his jacket, the school was deserted. They made their way through the general common room full of the kind of indestructible sofas that seemed to start their life half-dead, to the front entrance. A tall, thin man in a black suit strode across to the double doors, his polished shoes slipping slightly on the wet linoleum.
“What’s the headmaster doing?” Elliot frowned.
The headmaster opened an umbrella, then stepped out into the rain.
Together, Florence and Elliot trotted to the door and peered out.
A sleek black car – an Outsider; few of the villagers had a car, and none of them one like this – was parked in front of the spiky wrought iron gate. The driver’s door opened. A rainbow umbrella emerged, followed by a person. Through the sheets of rain, it was impossible to tell if the figure was male or female.
The headmaster approached the Outsider and after a brief exchange, they turned and walked back towards the school.
“Quick! Go over there by the stairs.” Elliot pulled her over.
“Why? It’s not like we’re doing anything we shouldn’t.” Florence rolled her eyes but hid in the shadow of the staircase.
Time flowed on. Florence was sure she could’ve done two whole laps of the school field before they arrived. Using the slight shelter of the portico, they closed their umbrellas, shaking them off and placing them in the large vase by the door. The headmaster entered first. The man behind him, dressed in an impeccably tailored suit, had deep russet skin that burnt copper despite the anaemic lighting of the school. His black hair, streaked with grey, was slicked back and all in all he gave off the impression of money.
His eyes roamed around the entrance hall, taking in everything from the cracked linoleum, to the peeling paint, to the cracked cornice. “This is quite the job.”
“This way, please,” The headmaster gestured to the right, “We can discuss,” his beard twitched (Florence thought in disapproval) “things in my office.”
“Of course,” the man inclined his head, and the two left.
Florence waited five seconds to make sure they were gone. “What’s an Outsider doing in our school?”
Elliot shrugged, “Maybe they’re here to discuss a donation? That man looked rich enough.”
There was no arguing with that.
Florence clapped him on the back, “Come on, let’s go before the rain gets worse.”
They walked out of the entrance and down the waterlogged path to the gate where the car was parked, raindrops pelting their faces. Up close, the car looked even swankier – an Audi A7. Elliot wasn’t interested, but Florence followed the elegant lines with appreciation. Through the front passenger seat window, the pale leather seats and the fancy centre console gleamed, the four interlocked rings on the steering wheel very obvious. She squinted at the back window.
A pair of dark eyes met hers.
She jumped backwards in shock. Her heart shuddered to a halt, then frantically started pumping again.
A girl sat in the car, staring out at her.