The Memory Keepers Read Free Page A

strenuous for decades, and technology had become increasingly insular, people more used to screens than nature. The ability to explore the world from the comfort of a memory-machine fitted into that backdrop perfectly. It wasn’t a cheap exercise, however. In London, with the divide between North and South, a culture of memory-surfing was cultivated in the North, while for Southers it was a luxury; often one they never got to experience.
    But those were just the basics of what had happened. Alba knew little of the details, such as when the Memory-Surfing and Trading Practices Summit had been held.
    She snuck a hopeful glance at Rosemary Dalton’s book on the table next to hers, which (what a surprise) was positively smothered in notes, but Rosemary – a big blonde girl with a piggy face constantly trapped in a sneer – caught her looking and stamped her arm across the pages. Alba sighed. Twirling a loose curl of her thick red hair round one finger, she tried to look thoughtful.
    ‘I – I think it was something like the twenty-third of March, 2138, Professor? Or was it 2137  … ’ She drifted off, cheeks reddening.
    Professor Nightingale’s sigh was so long and slow it almost sent Alba nodding off again. ‘No, Mistress White,’ he said, breaths whistling through his nose, ‘it was neither of those dates. It was, of course, the second of May, 2138.’
    ‘Of course it was,’ muttered Alba beneath her breath.
    Dolly was waiting for her outside the school gates when classes finished. Even though Knightsbridge Academy was only twenty minutes from her house, Alba wasn’t allowed to walk home alone. Before Dolly had persuaded them to let Alba walk – with Dolly as a chaperone, of course – Alba’s parents used to send her to school in one of their chauffeur-driven Bentleys with the family crest rising up in silver metal from the end of its hood. She had hated it, because it meant that every single person they passed on the street knew exactly who was inside.
    Well, not that it was
Alba
, but that it was her family, and that was the problem.
    Dolly was squinting in the late-afternoon sunshine, half-turned towards the road. She wore her servant’s uniform of white silk pinafore, blouse and stockings, the White family’s crest embroidered in black thread on her apron pocket. Her long purple hair was tied sleekly in two buns on top of her head.
    Alba hurried across the schoolyard. In the playground, young children were shouting and laughing, their cries cutting through the thick, heat-choked air. The street beyond the gates was busy with traffic. The vibration of cars skimming down the road, smooth from their electric engines, rolled against Alba’s skin like rippling waves in the air.
    Dolly turned before Alba could sneak up on her and tickle her waist.
    ‘Not this time,’ she said in her bright, warm voice. Her youthful face crinkled into a smile. She brushed a loose hair back from Alba’s face and they started down the street. ‘How was your day? I hope you learnt a lot.’
    Alba snorted. ‘Oh,
tons
,’ she said, lacing an arm round Dolly’s waist.
    Alba loved how slim Dolly was. Dolly had the sort of body her mother called boyish but Alba thought was beautiful; tall and slender, soft muscles sliding over sharp bones. Alba wished she looked like Dolly. Instead, she was plump and short for her sixteen years. She was glad they at least had some similarities in their faces. Both of them had strong cheekbones, curved chins, and large, wide-set eyes, though Dolly’s were blue and Alba’s green.
    Alba liked to imagine sometimes that Dolly was her sister. She didn’t know any other of the Knightsbridge Academy girls who were as close to their handmaids (though she didn’t really
know
any of the other Knightsbridge Academy girls in the first place. It was hard to make friends when she was only known for being Alastair White’s daughter, and her parents never let her spend much time away from the house outside