Free The Beneath by S. C. Ransom Page A

terrible.”
    Lily rubs my arm in a way that is weirdly comforting. I try to reach my hand out towards hers, but it feels wrong, so I drop it back in my lap. She doesn’t notice, but carries on talking.
    “I never guessed that. That’s a spectacularly good reason to want to run away. I can’t begin to imagine…”
    She breaks off, looking at the floor. We sit quietly for a moment, and I’m lost in my thoughts. How on earth have I managed to make such a mess of things?
    “Women here don’t usually have their kids until they are well into their twenties or thirties, sometimes even forties,” Lily says.
    “Forties! How is that even possible? How many kids do women up here have?”
    “Most of them? Two, I guess. That’s about average.”
    Two! For two maybe the Assignment would be bearable. I shake my head in disbelief.
    “So how many do you have to have then?” asks Lily. “What’s the average for the Community?”
    I think of the dormitories, the rows and rows of little beds, with too many of them empty. I remember the women, exhausted and despairing, forever pregnant.
    “Fifteen,” I say quietly. “We’re allowed to stop after fifteen.”

CHAPTER 7
    I went to bed still rocked by Aria’s revelations. Fifteen children! And starting so young too. I couldn’t imagine what my life would be like if I was expected to start having children instead of going on to do my A levels. I would have run away too, faced with the same prospect.
    I found myself lying awake late into the night wondering about our different worlds. Aria had settled down in Marjorie’s flat quite happily, and seemed OK about being alone. The Community clearly didn’t set much store on individuality, so learning how to manage in this strange new world without support would have been almost impossible, and yet again it made me wonder about how she would have survived had she not met me. Despite her strangeness I enjoyed having her around, and I already thought of her as a friend. It mademe realise how much I had been missing the girls I used to count as friends, before Jenny turned them all against me.
    It had been such a gift for her. I’d gone from being the popular rich girl to being an outcast almost overnight when my dad was splashed all over the papers, in disgrace because of some banking scandal that I didn’t understand. Our humiliation as a family didn’t take long, and when Dad got offered a job in Shanghai everything left was sold off. I said that I wanted to stay and do my GCSEs, assuming that Mum would stay with me, but instead they moved me in with Nan and left anyway. Jenny loved it.
    Thinking about the girls at school reminded me that the end of term was looming ever closer. It would be great to have Aria around to hang out with all day during the holidays, but with absolutely no money what were we going to do? Everything in London cost such a lot. I’d only really noticed that since my allowance had stopped. I couldn’t even afford to take us both to the cinema, never mind feed her for a week. I spent a lot of the night awake.
    I slept through my alarm, and even for a Sunday it was quite late by the time I finally woke up. I grabbed some breakfast, making a jam sandwich for Aria when Nan wasn’t looking, and told her that I had loads of homework to do so I would be using the flat downstairs.
    The door was unlocked so I let myself in, calling Aria’sname softly. There was no answer. Peeking into the bedroom I could see that the bed had been carefully made. In the kitchen all the cupboard doors were open and a selection of tins were lined up on the little table.
    “Aria?” I called a little more loudly, beginning to panic that something might have happened to her. “Where are you?”
    “In here,” said a small voice from the sitting room.
    I pushed open the door and saw Aria sitting on the floor surrounded by a huge pile of books. Marjorie’s bookcase had been completely emptied. Along with the discarded paperback