The Fall Read Online Free PDF Page B

ever. ‘Why don’t you go round to the Vanderberges and tell Ana dinner will be ready soon?’
    ‘All right.’ He crossed the kitchen to the back door.
    ‘Put something on,’ his mother said, exasperated.
    ‘I have something on.’
    ‘Not slippers and a dressing gown. They’ll think you’ve only just got up!’
    ‘I have.’
    ‘No, you were napping. That’s not the same at all.’
    Jasper twisted down the silver handle on the back door. In the garden, he passed the sun lounger where he’d seen Ana sunbathing earlier that afternoon. Her book still lay open, face up on the grass. A glass of half-drunk water beside it.
    A two-week old memory skipped through his mind: Ana getting out of the pool and drying herself. He’d been sitting with his feet dangling in the water, watching her. Back and forth, back and forth, like she was training for something.
    ‘How did I react when I found out about your Pure test?’ he’d asked her.
    ‘Your brother died ten days later. I didn’t see you until his funeral.’
    ‘What did I say to you?’
    ‘You were angry.’
    ‘About the test or my brother?’ Her eyes shot up, guarded. It almost hurt to look at her. She felt so beyond him. ‘I must have been crazy about you if I still wanted to go through with the binding. Even though you’re a Big3.’ Silence. ‘Were you crazy about me?’ he asked.
    For a long time she didn’t answer. He thought she wasn’t going to. Then she said, ‘You knew Tom had found out that there was something wrong with the Pure test. That’s why.’ Hanging the towel around her neck, she walked away from him, back to the house.
    There was more to it though, he was sure. Even if she was right that his brother’s death wasn’t a simple accident. Even if he had known Tom had discovered a significant anomaly that undermined the Pure test and her diagnosis.
    I was in love with her, wasn’t I?
    The whispering part of him that seemed to know so much, didn’t answer.

The disc
    Carrying mugs of soup and ceramic bowls of rice, Ana and Cole left the packed tables and benches of the square in search of somewhere quieter. They walked along a passage between longhouses, moving up hill. Ana looked at her map, attempting to orientate herself.
    Cole laughed as she struggled with her food and reading the map at the same time. ‘The hill slopes in a north westerly direction,’ he said. ‘If you’re going downhill, you’re headed roughly south, or south east towards the ponds and the registration building.’
    They joined a path at the edge of the settlement, leaving behind the moss-covered longhouses and a couple of huts dotted on the outskirts.
    ‘You probably came in from here.’ He pointed up ahead where the path split, one side branching left. An animal pen and the corner of a wooden barn appeared through the overgrowth. She nodded. On the map, the path with the barn led all the way to the northern wall where Blaize had found her.
    They took the other path.
    In a clearing with spindly, dispersed trees an elderly couple played backgammon at a picnic table. A stone trough filled with water stood nearby. Cole and Ana took a table set further back in the woods. They sat opposite each other. He held one of her hands, smiling as he forked up a mouthful of shredded chicken and rice.
    ‘Why are electronics forbidden?’ she asked, taking a sip of her soup.
    ‘When the camp was first set up there was no electricity. People get accustomed to a simpler life style. Living without it, you realise how dependent you can become on it all – television, video games, the net, the news. A constant bombardment of information.’
    ‘But it makes the Project so isolated.’
    ‘We hear what’s going on.’ She picked up on the we . A part of him belonged here.
    ‘But it means you’re totally dependent on whoever’s providing that information.’
    He shrugged, dismissing the subject. ‘You look tired,’ he said, stroking his thumb across her jaw, concern in