“I don’t think we need to discuss—”
“Her right hand,” Bosco says.
“Theft from society,” I say.
“Indeed. And every hand she goes to shake from now on will know just what she is.”
“If she’s found Flawed. Innocent until proved guilty,” Juniper says, like she’s reminding him.
But we all know Angelina Tinder has no chance. Everyone who goes through the Flawed court is found guilty; otherwise, they wouldn’t be taken in the first place. Unlike Juniper, I understand rules. There is a line, a moral one, and Angelina crossed it, but I just can’t believe that I could know someone who is Flawed, that I could sit in her house beside her at her piano, a piano she touched then I touched with my own fingers. I want to wash my hands immediately. I try to think back on our last conversation, all our conversations, to see if she showed any hint of a dent in her character. I wonder about her daughter, Colleen. Can I still talk to her at school? Probably best not to. But that doesn’t feel right, either. I’m conflicted.
“Where is Cutter?” Bosco suddenly says, looking at Mum angrily.
“He’s with B. I’m sure he’ll be back soon,” she says politely.
“That doesn’t look good,” he says. “He should be here.”
“I’m sure he’ll be—”
“I hope she can still play piano,” Juniper interrupts Mum, out of nowhere. “With her hand seared.”
“Do you feel sorry for her?” Bosco asks, his irritation rising.
“Of course she doesn’t,” Art pipes up, mouth full of food, knife and fork squeezed between his huge man hands and pointing up at the ceiling like he’s a caveman. He waves them around as he talks, food spraying off and flying on to the table. “We’re all just shocked, Dad, that’s all. I mean, come on, you could have given us a head’s up that our dinner guests were about to be taken away? When that siren went off, poor Celestine looked like she thought she was about to get carted away to the madhouse, which between me and you is where she belongs, but she doesn’t need to know that.”
He says it so easily, so fresh, so well judged that it seems to remind Bosco of where he is: in his neighbour’s dining room with his son, and not in his courtroom.
“Of course.” Bosco looks confused for a moment, and then he looks at Ewan, who has been remarkably quiet at the table. He reaches out a hand and pats my hand warmly. “Sorry, dear Celestine, I didn’t mean to scare you. Let’s start again, shall we?” He picks up his glass of red wine and holds it in the air with a beaming smile. “Happy Earth Day.”
When I hear that the quiet murmuring has ended in my parents’ bedroom, which lasted decidedly longer tonight than usual after the evening’s events, and the house has settled for the night, I make my way to the summit, where Art and I have been meeting most nights for the past three months.
I have spent more time with the Crevans over the past few months than with my own family, often wishing I could stay with them for good. I feel like I fit in with them more, that everything with them is logical and makes sense. I have always believed in the workings of the Guild. I am one of Bosco’s greatest supporters. I like to hear him regale people with stories of the courthouse over dinner, how he Ousted a charity board member for taking a golden payment pension package, or branded a celebrity who’d made millions from the sale of her fitness DVD but was discovered as having a secret tummy tuck. Every day, he has interesting stories coming through his courtroom, and I love sitting down and hearing about them. I understand what he is doing. He is preventing people from being deceived. I know the difference between right and wrong. I understand the rules. But today I feel that the rules have been blurred, because today they were literally on my front doorstep.
It is eleven pm. The summit overlooks the sleeping capital city. We live in a valley surrounded by mountains. Atop one of those mountains, Highland Castle dominates the city. Lit by powerful red uplighters at night, it watches over us menacingly. There since 1100 AD and once the seat of the High Kings, Highland Castle is a fortress. It stands above us all, the tallest round tower in the world, its powerful eye seeing far and wide. The scene of centuries of invasions and massacres, it now houses state conferences and dinners, guided tours of its architecture, museums of ancient artefacts, and, of course more famously now, the offices of the Guild.
We sit on the summit opposite the castle; to the left of us, the lights of more cities dot the night and stretch on for ever, the castle keeping its watchful eye on them all. To the right are farmland and industry, where my granddad lives. Humming is the largest and capital city of Highland, and it is rich in history and beauty. Tourists flock from all over the world to visit our city, our bridges, our fairytale castle and palace, our cobblestoned pathways and our ornate town square. Most of its buildings have survived the violence and destruction of the twentieth century, and it is a hub for appreciators of our Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance-era architecture. Humming Bridge is one of the most famous bridges in the world. At thirty feet wide and over six hundred yards long and built in the fourteenth century, it crosses the river and leads to Highland Castle. It, too, is a beauty at night, lit up at its six arches, three bridge towers and the statues from our history lining the bridge to protect it.
I like to travel the world on holidays, but I intend to continue to live here after school. Art and I have talked about it. We want to study at the city university: me, mathematics; him, science. We have it all worked out. Juniper wants to leave as soon as she can, become a snowboard instructor in Switzerland by winter, a lifeguard in Portugal by summer, or something like that.
Art says he likes going to the summit because it gives him perspective. He’s had a tough year. His mother passed away, and I think this place helps him rise above the worries on the ground, to look at them from a height, detached from his grief, which is lessening with the months. I, on the other hand, see it as a place where it is Art and me against the rest of the world. While the one million people sleep in the city below us, Art and I are together, and it makes our bond even stronger. It makes me feel invincible, alive. I know how the castle feels watching over everybody: untouchable.
It is only over the past six months that I have felt this way about Art. We have been friends since we were twelve; when we started school together the teacher placed us beside each other on the first day. We hung out together in a group, me with the girls and him with the boys, yet we always found ourselves side by side. We would never have met up alone despite living across the road from each other. It was only a year ago, when his mum passed away, that Art suddenly began to seek me out, not caring about the others’ perception of us. We’d come here together and talk, him grieving and slowly coming to terms with his mum’s death; he watched her slowly die of cancer. And then the grieving gradually flickered out, stopped being the main reason for our meeting… and it became something else.
The rush of butterflies when I saw him, the silly smile that would appear on my face at the very thought of him, the nervous bubbles in my stomach, the jolt of electricity when his skin brushed mine. Suddenly I cared about what I wore, what I said, how I looked. This didn’t go unnoticed, particularly by Juniper, who watched me each day as I obsessed over my reflection before I
