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me, and all I do is make him worry and cause problems. None of this could have been easy to arrange, and I didn’t even say a proper thank-you.
    But like he can see what is inside me, Aiden nods his head. It’s okay. Go on , he mouths.
    I turn, square my shoulders and walk away from his van, to the front of the station. As I approach, the barriers open: Aiden’s file said they detect tickets and ID anywhere on your person, and operate automatically; they also scan for weapons. Guards in a booth glance my way and then back at their security screens. I’m through. An arrow coded to my ticket lights up at my feet, shows which way to go. I start to walk away from the barriers to the designated lift, still thinking of all the things I should have said…
    DJ! What with first me being upset about my so-called funeral, then Aiden being angry I went to see Mum, I forgot all about the IMET doctor’s message. That he wants to see Aiden. I turn to look through the glass barriers, but Aiden’s van is already disappearing from sight.
    Too late. I hope it wasn’t important.

CHAPTER SIX
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    The lift drops swiftly, and opens onto an underground platform. The train is already there; once again an arrow at my feet is coded to my ticket and points the way to the right car of the train, and then my seat. Other passengers move about me, following arrows of their own.
    Have I ever been on a train before? If I have, I don’t remember.
    I put my bag into the overhead, then second thoughts have me pull it back down to retrieve my ID and put it in my pocket with my ticket before shoving it back up again. I can’t lose my ID. Unlike most people’s, mine would be quite a bother to replace.
    The train is about half full; no one sits next to me. I have a window seat, and when the train leaves moments later, a vid runs in the window: glorious countryside, or Antarctic glaciers, or a steamy jungle. All at the flick of a switch, and I can’t stop myself from trying them all. I’m glad Aiden’s file had explained this, or I would have been both alarmed and baffled. After a while I notice almost no one else uses the window vid, and I turn it off. I study fellow passengers, instead.
    A few are younger and in jeans like me, perhaps students or off on apprenticeships, but most look like business people. Both men and women in suits, much like my assigned dad wore when he was off supposedly installing and maintaining government computer systems. Though who knows what he really did for the Lorders? He travelled all over the country, or so he said: a nervous thought makes me check every passenger I can see to make sure he isn’t here. He did travel by car to some places, and there were buses also for short journeys, like to London, but most long distance vehicular travel is banned now: all must travel by environment-friendly high speed train.
    The minutes tick to an hour; the train stops several times at other underground stations. At one, a harassed-looking mother with a boy about four years old get on, his small hand clenched tight in hers. They sit a few rows in front of me. Before long his head peeks over the seat, dark eyes staring at mine. I smile and he dips down. Seconds later his head bobs up again, giggling and flashing a crooked grin this time, until his mother makes him sit down. He squirms into her lap and her arms go around him.
    A mother holding her child close. Was that how things were with me and my mother? I blink hard, then stare at the window vid screen, as blank and dead as my memories of her. I close my eyes. Maybe when we see each other, it’ll all come back, like I am ten years old again. Maybe we’ll run to each other and she’ll hold me, and I’ll be home . I’ll know who I was, who I am.
    Maybe, I won’t.
    There is a panic inside, one that says run . That not knowing may be better than knowing; that things will change, and change isn’t always good. I’d been desperate before to know who I was, where I came from, why