Tuesday Falling Read Free Page A

THE NEWS?
    Pause
    YES. WHERE WERE YOU?
    Pause
    AT HOME WITH MY MUM ALL NIGHT WATCHING TV
    Pause
    GOOD. ARE WE DONE?
    Lily turns to look at the raindrops sliding down her window, then back at the words on the screen. They are so simple.
Are we done
? So simple, but impossible for her to fathom. Lily sucks at the cut on her lip and uses her sleeve to drag the tears away from her eyes.
    ARE WE DONE, LILY-ROSE?
    Pause
    YES. WE’RE DONE. THANK YOU.
    OK. FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS, AND THEN HAVE A NICE LIFE. YOUR BODY IS YOURS. MEND IT.
    Lily is given directions for her to manipulate her laptop settings, allowing her computer to be accessed remotely. Once done, she watches the ghost hands systematically remove all traces of their correspondence from her laptop. All references of the Pro-Anna forum where they first made contact. All the conversations they have had in the cyber-basements of the Interworld.
Omecle
.
Whisper
. All of them. The
Facebook
account specially set up for their meetings ceases to exist. Everything. Every connection between Lily-Rose and the person remotely-controlling her keyboard. The last thing written on the screen before the computer shuts itself down is:
    GOODBYE, LILY-ROSE
    Lily-Rose sits in front of her blank laptop, its dead screen, and the
future-girl
stickers with which she’d personalized it in another life, and wonders what is going to happen next. She feels as if there is a door between her and the rest of the world, and the handle has been removed. Even though she has never met the person on the other end of her computer there was a connection: a way of understanding the pain and self-loathing inside. Lily-Rose does not know whether she will ever be able to take the advice and stop being frightened. Whether she’ll be able to take control of her life enough to live it. She wraps her arms around herself and stares past the curtain of rain at the grey world outside, seeing nothing. There is a knock on her bedroom door. She turns round to see her mum standing in the doorway to her bedroom, a mug of Complan in her hand, and her face set in an expression Lily-Rose is unable to read.
    ‘Mum? Are you all right?’
    Lily-Rose sees past her to a tired-looking man in a zero-style suit and a weary-looking woman in an even worse one staring back at her.
    ‘It’s the police,’ her mother says, her voice tight-leashed. ‘They want to ask us some questions.’

10
    It’s not hard to hack a computer. Anyone who says differently is a liar. It’s like lock-picking, or face-reading: all you need is the right teacher, and the correct motivation. All these films showing nerdy kids sitting around watching
Star Trek
, and
Quantum Geek
, and hacking into NASA or whatever, it’s just bollocks. Just another way to bully the weirdies. Box them in. Make them this. Make them that. Make them sit alone in the dark.
    Mind you, I like sitting alone in the dark. It means nobody else is there.
    Most of the tube stations have Wi-Fi now, including Holborn, so all I had to do to get a signal was set up a booster along the running tunnel between there and the British Museum Station. It’s not hard. There are so many redundant cables and junction boxes down here that finding a power source was easy, and disguising it unnecessary. The walls look like something out of
Alien
, all rubber-coated armoured cable and danger signs. No one can tell what belongs to what, down here. That’s why they never remove anything. Pull the wrong thing out and a train stops moving. Or all the lights go out. Something awful might happen, so leave it alone; that’s the thought process.
    Works for me.
    I’ve made my crib in the part of the station that was used as an air-raid shelter, the deepest part of the structure. It’s still got the ‘Dig for Britain’ posters on the walls. I’ve got fairy lights hanging from the ceiling, a camp bed, a laptop with remote speakers, and a rail for my clothes. There’s still a working toilet in the main