Free Little Sister by David Hewson Page A

carry everything into the kitchen and put the food in the fridge, telling them what went where.
They’d never done this in years, not since their mother asked for it.
    When the shopping was put away she asked them what they wanted. Then she told the sisters to take the food out again, cook it and serve it out on plates.
    An hour they spent preparing the meal, eating it, washing the dishes afterwards and cleaning up the kitchen.
    ‘Your Auntie Vera wants to help you back into the world,’ the Englishwoman said when they were done.
    ‘You’re not our auntie,’ Kim pointed out. ‘We don’t have an auntie. Only an uncle.’
    ‘Just a way of speaking. You remember your uncle’s name?’
    ‘Stefan,’ Mia told her.
    ‘Never came to see you in that place, did he?’
    ‘No,’ she agreed.
    Lots of other people did though.
    ‘Do you know why that was?’
    Kim raised her hands, waved her fingers like claws, pulled a wicked face and hissed, ‘Because we’re
monsters
.’
    Vera laughed.
    ‘That’s right, girls. Monsters.’ She got up and patted them on the shoulder, one after the other, not noticing they didn’t like this. ‘My monsters now.’
    ‘What do we do next?’ Mia asked.
    ‘You do as you’re told. What your Auntie Vera asks.’
    ‘We want to see things. On our own.’
    The woman reached into the pocket of her denim jacket and pulled out two plastic cards then threw them on the table.
    ‘Know what they are?’
    The sisters didn’t speak.
    ‘They’re your passports to freedom. Anonymous chip cards. Weren’t even around when they locked you two up. I’ve put a bit of money on them. You can use them on buses. On
trams. On trains if you know how.’ The smile grew more cold. ‘But you don’t, do you? Two little songbirds stuck in a cage. Haven’t got a clue what it’s like . .
.’ She nodded at the front door. ‘Out there.’
    ‘We can’t stay here all the time,’ Mia complained, shocked when she heard the whining tone in her own voice. ‘We’ll go mad.’
    Vera laughed and when she did her shoulders shook up and down.
    ‘Go mad? Well we can’t allow that to happen. All hell breaks loose, don’t it? Go mad again and they’ll only lock you up somewhere worse than Marken. For good.
Forever.’ She leaned down and looked into their faces, serious now. ‘Apart probably.’
    ‘Apart?’ Kim whispered.
    ‘You heard me. They’ve spent ten years trying to fix the two of you. If they think it didn’t work . . . you reckon they’ll bother a second time?’
    Mia’s fingers clutched her sister’s underneath the kitchen table.
    ‘Don’t need to happen,’ the woman insisted. ‘Won’t either. Not so long as you do as your Auntie Vera says. Everything. Every last thing.’
    She lit a cigarette, had the briefest of coughing fits, then blew the smoke out of her mouth in a curious way, turning her lips into an awkward O, closing her eyes as fumes rose to the
ceiling.
    ‘You will do that now, won’t you?’
    ‘Yes,’ Mia replied.
    Vera stared at Kim.
    ‘Yes. We will.’
    ‘Good. I’m having a lie-down. All this walking tires me out. After that I’ll show you how to use them cards. I’ll tell you where to go. What to do. We’ll have a
nice time. I’ve got a treat in store.’
    Another drag on the cigarette.
    ‘Don’t ever think your Auntie Vera’s not watching, will you? ’Cos I am.’

16
    Dirk Van der Berg soon got bored with taking statements and listening to Simon Klerk’s wife moaning about nothing getting done. He’d made notes, nodded, tried to
seem sympathetic and interested. But largely failed. She wanted her husband back and he couldn’t deliver that.
    The Marken institution puzzled him too. The place had the antiseptic, dead feel of a half-deserted hospital. A few patients wandered around the garden close to the trees near the shoreline. They
looked like ordinary kids. Cheap clothes. Glum faces. All female. When he returned to Veerman’s office he asked if he