Free In World City by I. F. Godsland Page B

home.
    She and her father sat together at a small, round table – not like the long table in the dining hall back home which, when her mother had been alive, they had sometimes eaten at together as a family. Physically, this was more intimate, but Miranda felt herself to be in an even emptier space. And the time was later than she was used to eating. And her father began talking immediately. She felt hungry and tense.
    â€œThis move hasn’t been easy for you, has it, Miranda?”
    A shake of the head.
    â€œAll the same, I’m impressed by the way you’ve coped – the complete change from the life you were used to, then that criminal attack on the education net, and that stupid incident with Lefevre’s boy. You’ve been very grown up in the way you dealt with it all.”
    Miranda wanted to say what a struggle it had all been. Yes, she had coped. She had coped with this horrid island he had brought her to. She had coped with what came through the screens he had provided her with. But before it broke out into the open, her gathering storm of resentment was deflected by the arrival of the food, and she was able to think more about how she had coped than about how difficult it had been.
    Her most difficult moment – the one in which she had felt closest to letting her guard slip – had been when Lefevre’s boy had appeared like a resurrection of the dead boy on the invaded screen. Then, just for a moment, her concentration had lapsed and she had allowed a part of the wildwood in too close. Lefevre’s boy had got round her defences somehow and it had taken the sudden reappearance of Donnell to bring her back to her senses. Recalling the boy’s shocked look as she denied him, she could still feel the contempt for him curling protectively around herself. The boy’s face had looked the same as the face of the boy on the screen when he first saw the hooded men. At least Lefevre’s boy had not shouted out when she denied him, and he had kept quiet when Donnell started hitting him. All he had done was stand his ground long enough to say, ‘I’m Dion Lefevre and I done nothing wrong,’ then slip Donnell’s grasp and disappear into the trees. That, she could hold in some regard. The boy had coped like she had coped. He might have been okay. But her father was sending the family away to Europe now.
    And would they be following? She gave her father an enquiring look.
    He said, “Anyway, it’s almost over now, Miranda. There’s just one more thing to do, and after that we go back.”
    â€œWhat do you have to do?” Miranda asked – her first words for some time. She was suddenly anxious at this suggestion of a condition on their return. “Are you sure we’re going home?”
    â€œI’m sure – no need for you to worry. But we just have one more thing to get through. There will be three people arriving shortly – and this is important: they are coming to me. I am not going to them – they are coming to me – all the way to this little island. That’s how much of a hold I have over them now. Our being here, Miranda, has been part of the way I have gained that hold over them – I have made them understand how much they need to do what I say.”
    Her father moved his chair back from the table and cradled between his palms a glass he had been drinking from. He said, “Some time before we left, I found myself under a sudden and totally unjustified attack. The circumstances are complicated. I’ll just say that there is a man who works for me who had ideas of his own about how things should be done, and these ideas were simply not part of the work I had in mind for him.”
    Miranda’s father paused and looked at her steadily, backing up his judgement with a damning silence. He was about to continue, but Miranda, interest aroused now she had some food in her, asked, “Which project was that,