Free Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

pushed past her and as I made my way across the crowded courtyard, I glanced back to the figures of Ruth and the others, still gazing out towards the South Playing Field, unaware of what had just happened between me and Moira. And I noticed I didn’t feel angry at all with them any more; just hugely irritated with Moira.
    Even now, if I’m driving on a long grey road and my thoughts have nowhere special to go, I might find myself turning all of this over. Why was I so hostile to Moira B. that day when she was, really, a natural ally? What it was, I suppose, is that Moira was suggesting she and I cross some line together, and I wasn’t prepared for that yet. I think I sensed how beyond that line, there was something harder and darker and I didn’t want that. Not for me, not for any of us.
    But at other times, I think that’s wrong—that it was just to do with me and Ruth, and the sort of loyalty she inspired in me in those days. And maybe that’s why, even though I really wanted to on several occasions, I never brought it up—about what had happened that day with Moira—the whole time I was caring for Ruth down at the centre in Dover.
     
     
    All of this about Miss Geraldine reminds me of something that happened about three years later, long after the secret guard idea had faded away.
    We were in Room 5 on the ground floor at the back of the house, waiting for a class to start. Room 5 was the smallest room, and especially on a winter morning like that one, when the big radiators came on and steamed up the windows, it would get really stuffy. Maybe I’m exaggerating it, but my memory is that for a whole class to fit into that room, students literally had to pile on top of each other.
    That morning Ruth had got a chair behind a desk, and I was sitting up on its lid, with two or three others of our group perched or leaning in nearby. In fact, I think it was when I was squeezing up to let someone else in beside me that I first noticed the pencil case.
    I can see the thing now like it’s here in front of me. It was shiny, like a polished shoe; a deep tan colour with circled red dots drifting all over it. The zip across the top edge had a furry pom-pom to pull it. I’d almost sat on the pencil case when I’d shifted and Ruth quickly moved it out of my way. But I’d seen it, as she’d intended me to, and I said:
    “Oh! Where did you get that? Was it in the Sale?”
    It was noisy in the room, but the girls nearby had heard, so there were soon four or five of us staring admiringly at the pencil case. Ruth said nothing for a few seconds while she checked carefully the faces around her. Finally she said very deliberately:
    “Let’s just agree. Let’s agree
       I got it in the Sale.” Then she gave us all a knowing smile.
    This might sound a pretty innocuous sort of response, but actually it was like she’d suddenly got up and hit me, and for the next few moments I felt hot and chilly at the same time. I knew exactly what she’d meant by her answer and smile: she was claiming the pencil case was a gift from Miss Geraldine.
    There could be no mistake about this because it had been building up for weeks. There was a certain smile, a certain voice Ruth would use—sometimes accompanied by a finger to the lips or a hand raised stage-whisper style—whenever she wanted to hint about some little mark of favour Miss Geraldine had shown her: Miss Geraldine had allowed Ruth to play a music tape in the billiards room before four o’clock on a weekday; Miss Geraldine had ordered silence on a fields walk, but when Ruth had drawn up beside her, she’d started to talk to her, then let the rest of the group talk. It was always stuff like that, and never explicitly claimed, just implied by her smile and “let’s say no more” expression.
    Of course, officially, guardians weren’t supposed to show favouritism, but there were little displays of affection all the time within certain parameters; and most of what Ruth suggested