Free Marcher: The Author's Preferred Text by Chris Beckett

said.
    ‘Yes, Mr Burkitt did say she was the child of a rape. And that she’d been abused. And he said he felt that the system had let her down by returning her to her mother when she was small.’
    ‘Yes, it did. Not that it’s possible to make the right decision every time, mind you. None of us can do that. We can’t read the future.’
    ‘Well no,’ Charles said, ‘and there isn’t one future anyway. The future is millions of alternatives.’
    ‘Well of course. That’s why it’s impossible to know in advance.’
    He was surprised by this answer. Not many people accepted so readily the principle of the Great Tree.
    ‘The child of a rape,’ he mused. ‘Imagine. Your very existence the result of a transgression.’
    ‘ Transgression ?’ said Jazamine with a smile. ‘That’s a very old-fashioned word!’
    ‘I think it just means crossing over . Crossing over a boundary.’
    ‘Yes,’ she said, a little tartly. ‘I know what it means.’
    Well done Charles , he thought, you’ve been pompous and patronising already and she’s only been in the room for about a minute.
    ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘you’re right, there is something irresolvable about knowing that your existence is the result of a crime…’
    She told him a bit more of the history. It seemed that Tammy had often made threats to disappear.
    ‘But the thing is,’ Jazamine said, ‘up to now when she’s made these threats, she’s never gone any further than empty garages and places like that. She just holes up for a night or two until she gets picked up by the police, or until she gets fed up and returns of her own accord.’
    ‘I see. So you assumed this was the same kind of thing. Can you tell me what exactly happened this morning?’
    Jazamine told him about picking Tammy up from Sarah Ripping’s, the conversation in the car, the abandoned plan for a burger and Tammy’s parting shot as Jazamine dropped her off outside the Unit.
    ‘The bit I do feel badly about,’ she said, ‘is that Tammy did want to go for a burger with me. She can’t admit to wanting anything from anyone, of course. She can’t really admit that she likes anyone, not even to herself. But really she did want to have a burger with me, whatever she might have said, and I knew it. And I suppose if I hadn’t been so cross with her I would have gone ahead and taken her for one. And then maybe…’
    She made an impatient gesture of dismissal with her hand. Charles remembered how much he liked the way she moved.
    ‘But there’s no point thinking like that, is there?’ she said. ‘There’s always a what-might-have-happened.’
    He nodded.
    ‘What-might-have-happened. I suppose you could say that’s where the shifters come from. And the place they go.’
    She considered this for a moment, frowning, then gave an abrupt little nod.
    ‘What the agency is pissed off with me about, though,’ she went on, ‘is that I dropped her off outside the Unit and didn’t check her in with a member of staff. That’s what you’re supposed to do, you see. And now it’s all got to be looked into and a decision made by my bosses as to whether I get sacked, or a written reprimand on my file, or just a verbal warning. The fact is that it’s an open unit and kids can go out whenever they want. But…’
    Jazamine broke off with a shrug.
    ‘Well, never mind. The worst that can happen is that I lose this lousy job.’
    She pushed a large pile of manila folders across the desk.
    ‘These are Tammy’s files. Val tells me you may need to see them.’
    There were twelve of them at least. Tammy’s fifteen years of life must have taken up an entire drawer of a filing cabinet.
    ‘This is the most recent one,’ she said. ‘There’s some photos of Tammy in it, look. A really beautiful girl, don’t you think? Filmstar beautiful.’
    But right at that moment, Charles was noticing Jazamine. She had a delightful forthrightness about her, and there was none of that cowed, cringing