Spare

By JM Carr

How do you survive when your only purpose is to give your life to others ...bit by bit?
In the derelict house next door to a building site, Dawn lives with a young woman who says to call her Mum. Dawn loves the hole in the roof, where she can always see blue. She loves her book of birds and she loves Mrs Goring, the old lady who lives on the ground floor.
But when Dawn's medicine runs out and Mrs Goring disappears, Dawn begins see the world as it really is. Next door, the new facility to hold children like her is almost finished. But Dawn wants to live. Can she escape, find Mrs Goring and the truth about her family before the doors to the Sparehouse open?
A dystopian mystery set in a world where one huge corporation sells everything, and in Britain, the NHS is a distant memory. The threat is grim, but hope is alive and well. Is that enough to save a generation of 'spares' like Dawn?

• Language: English
• Publisher: JM Carr
• Release date: Jun 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005855017

JM Carr

J.M. Carr lives in Southampton UK with her partner and technical support, a collie called Cindy a goldfish called Melbourne and whoever needs a place to stay at the time. She has four grown children of whom she's immensely proud. She's been a teacher and a community worker and now writes fiction, usually with younger protagonists. She has won and runnered-up in various competitions for her writing.

Book preview

one

I heard his boots clump up the stairs. I heard him bang on our door and I heard him whisper, ‘Get rid of her,’ in Mum’s ear.

Austen pushed past her at the door to our attic, lowered his head where the ceiling sloped, swept my book off the sofa and sat down. He leaned over me for the remote and switched off the TV too. I smelled engines and bonfires. I held my breath. I didn’t want to breathe him in.

Mum peeked out the window. ‘There’s no one outside. You can wait out there.’ She grabbed my arm and pulled me up.

Austen stretched his legs into the space where I was sitting and drummed his fingers on the arm of the sofa. I wanted my book. It’s got lots of pictures of birds inside, but it was by Austen’s boot and Mum was already pulling me out the door.

In her bare feet, she took me down the two flights of stairs, out of the big green door with a knobbly black handle to the back of the house. ‘Sit here,’ she said, plonking me on an upside down yellow plastic box with bonille.com on the side. They’re the only words I know; they’re on everything.

I think any other mum would have given me my book, but she’s not my mum, it’s just what she told me to call her. Sometimes I try to remember if I have a real one. I scrunch my eyes tight and squeeze my brain to make something pop out, but it just makes my head hurt.

The cranes criss-cross the sky and the yellow box Mum gave me to sit on is where I kicked it. A raindrop from the roof lands like a marble on my toe. I hug my knees and tuck my feet in.

A picture of a man’s face, smooth as plastic under a thick dollop of brown hair, smiles at me from the side of the box. I see this face a lot. One eyebrow sticks up higher than the other like a question and the lips press together like a kiss.  I close my eyes again and try to think of something else.

Just a little way above my head, Mrs Goring’s kitchen window is open. The wall underneath it is cold and hard against my back, but my knees are warm against my chest.

I listen to Mrs Goring singing to herself, songs about blue skies and lovely days to the tinkling of spoons and the whoosh of water in the kettle. She hums when she runs out of words.

When Mum brought me into this place, Mrs Goring was standing at her front door swinging a kettle. ‘When you’ve got that lot in, come and have a cuppa. It always takes me a day or two to find the kettle when I move house.’

Mum said, ‘We know where ours is, thank you. Come on, you’ve got some homework to do for school.’ She took my hand and dragged me up the stairs. I didn’t know what she meant by ‘school’, I’ve hardly been.

‘I expect you’ll be going up to the secondary soon,’ said the old lady. ‘That’s what they used to call it in my day. The name’s Goring, by the way, Mrs, though I ain’t had a mister for a while.’ She laughed and a big dog brushed against her legs. His tail wagged so hard I could feel a breeze.

I glanced down before we turned to go up another lot of stairs. Mrs Goring lifted the kettle and gave it a little shake. ‘Anytime you want a bit of company you know where we are – me and Bill.’ She patted his side and he woofed, agreeing with her. ‘Always got the kettle on. And you can call me Sheila, sweetheart.’ She was practically shouting by then. Mum almost yanked my arm out of its socket.

The first time Austen came and Mum had to put me outside while they talked, she was there again, ready for us with a tea cloth hung over her arm. ‘Sure you don’t want that cup, love?’ I felt Mum’s hand at my back, pushing me on.

I always think of Mrs you can call me Sheila Goring sitting in her flat with her hands in her lap and lots of cups of tea lined up on a little table in front of her, waiting for us. We could call her Sheila, but of course I’m not allowed to call her anything.

She’s making tea now; the kettle’s whistling on the gas. ‘All right, all right,’ she says, ‘I’m coming.’ The spoon drawer rattles when she pulls it out and crashes when she pushes it back in again. A cup lands on her worktop with a thud, water glugs and a spoon chinks against the china. Out here, damp is seeping through my clothes and goose bumps are popping up on my arms but I feel cosy.

‘You still there, Dawn, love?’ She pushes the window open wider.

I don’t know how she knows I’m here when I try so hard to hide like I’m supposed to, but she does. I slide my bottom across the grit, so I’m right under the open bit. Bill barks. I’d love to play with him but I’m only allowed out when there’s no one else around, not even the dog. Mum says we don’t know who anyone is nowadays.

I’d love a cup of tea. I can’t remember drinking one so I don’t know what it tastes like but I imagine it’s good. Mum only gives me water. I have to eat this vegetable stuff with hard bits in it like gravel. It tastes like sludge. Mum says it’s got everything I need but I’ve tasted chocolate biscuit and I think if someone gave her one she’d change her mind.

That’s another reason why I like sitting here.

Mrs Goring shakes a box of biscuits for Bill. ‘Sit!’ she says.

I imagine him, sitting up to attention; his tongue hanging out one side of his mouth, taking a bone-shaped biscuit in his teeth while his wolfy tail brushes the kitchen floor.

Now it’s my turn.

‘Dawn love, you there still? I expect you are. Here you go then.’

A little basket under a rainbow-balloon taps my head and dangles low enough for me to feel for the package nestling inside. ‘I know you’re not allowed to say anything,’ says Mrs Goring from inside her kitchen. ‘But I’m here if you ever need a shoulder to cry on.’

I do want to say thanks. I want to look up and see if Mrs Sheila Goring has got over her sink and is leaning out of her window, smiling at me. But I daren’t. Instead I take out the tea towel parcel and unwrap the two chocolate biscuits.

The picture on the towel is a beach with a big white bird flying over it. Not a grey pigeon but a white and squawky seagull. Across the top there are some words. It says ‘a’ then a word beginning with ‘s’ then ‘from’ then a word I know because it’s in my bird book, ‘Swan.’

‘Pop the cloth back in the basket, Dawn love. This one’s my favourite. It’s from Swan Bay. Me and Mr Goring had a nice little business there before they closed us down. If I shut my eyes I can still smell the salt in the air and feel the water rippling through me toes on the beach. Ooh, it was lovely. Always thought that’s where I’d retire...’

I tuck the two biscuits into the pouch on the front of my top, fold the tea towel as nicely as I can and put it back in the bag. It gets sucked back up through the window.

The front door clicks open. I shuffle on my bottom to the edge of the back wall and peep round the corner. The tall metal gate in front of the house hangs on a broken hinge. Austen’s van is parked on the road outside.

Austen comes out of the house first. Mum stands on the step. He turns and tilts her face up with his finger. ‘You’ve done well with the girl, Tamara.’ His voice is stiff and cold. ‘Any day now, this nightmare will soon be over...’ For a moment he lays his hand on her arm.

‘...or only just beginning,’ she says and her head droops like a dead flower.

Austen takes his hand away, turns and looks directly at me, like he knew that’s exactly where I’d be. Behind his beard, his lips part to speak... or shout.

I can’t move. For a few seconds that feel like forever, he locks me here with his eyes.

I shut mine tight but I can still see him in my head. I shuffle back behind the wall and put my hands over my ears. I shouldn’t be spying on them; I should be sitting on my box with the rubbish. I curl up small and wait for the yank on my arm, the drag up the stairs and words like stones hitting my ear.

Beyond the gate an engine growls into life.

A hand brushes my shoulder. ‘Come on,’ says Mum and walks back to the open front door. She doesn’t tell me off for being too close to the house. She doesn’t tell me off at all. I follow her inside. She pads across the boards in the hall and trudges up the first set of stairs.

She ignores the key turning in Mrs Goring’s door and Mrs Goring’s ‘Everything hunky dory?’ Mum doesn’t speed up to avoid her like she usually does. She doesn’t even bother when I turn back and smile at Mrs you can call me Sheila, on her doormat, holding a plate of biscuits with Bill by her side.

I follow Mum slowly up the stairs.

When we reach the top, Mrs Goring’s door bangs shut and my hope sinks.

I smell Austen as soon as I walk in but there’s only the squashed cushion where he sat on the sofa and the space in the air he left behind.

Mum gives me my bird book. ‘Here you are. Take that in with you, while I tidy up.’

She holds back the curtain that hides the way into my room, a round turret.

I crawl inside. It’s like being on the inside of a witch’s hat. A raindrop lands in the bucket with a plop. Mum reaches in and switches on the light. She lets the curtain fall back into place. The light bulb dangling from one of the wooden struts flickers and slowly brightens.

I sit down on the mattress and pull the blanket round my arms. It prickles. I put my book in its special place on the floor. It falls open at my favourite page, the one of the pigeon taking off. It’s mostly grey apart from round its neck, where there’s a flash of bright green and purple. I like the bit of bright amongst the dull stuff. Like this place, almost all dull and grey except for the hole in the roof. Even when it’s raining and the day is as grey as the bird, I can put my eye up to the hole and see blue. There’s always a patch of blue.

I hide one of Mrs Goring’s chocolate biscuits behind a strut and nibble at the other. The crumbs stick to my lips and I lick them up. I don’t want to lose any; they taste delicious.

Through the curtain, I can hear Mum’s feet padding round the flat. She plumps the cushion, rustles papers and every now and then sniffs and catches her breath.

I have to wait until she says I can come out.

The raindrops have stopped. I close the book, and crawl over to my hole. I slide the bucket out of the way, across the boards, carefully so it doesn’t splash. I stand up, get as close as I can without touching the rotten wood and see blue.

On the other side of the curtain, the flat is quiet, apart from the sniffs, but she hasn’t let me out.

A door slams on one of the floors below.

‘Mum!’ Is she still there?

Boots stomp about on the stairs. Bill Barks and a man starts shouting. I can’t hear what he’s saying but it’s hard and angry. The house judders, little lumps of damp plaster fall on my face. A lump of something blocks my hole. There’s a cry, it sounds old, like Mrs Goring. I brush the bits out of my eyes and call again, ‘Mum, can I come out?’ My stomach’s juddering too now.

I peek round the curtain. Mum’s sitting in Austen’s place, with her head in her hands.

‘Mum, can I come out?’ The biscuit churns inside me, the crumbs in my throat make me want to cough.

She nods but doesn’t look up.

The house is alive with boots. Doors slam. The building trembles. Every bit of me wants to get out. I run to the flat door. It’s locked, of course it is. I try the window.

What am I thinking? I’m too high up; the roof is too steep. Way below me, the pile of thrown away stuff has grown. I feel a kick like the solid toe of a boot in my belly.

Bill lays stretched over the rubbish in the middle of the garden. His tail is still and the box is upside down again, streaked with red.

two

I shut my eyes hard as if that would squeeze out the bad thing I thought I saw. It doesn’t. So I open them a little way and force myself to look. There’s blood coming out of Bill’s side. I can’t see Mrs Goring. What’s happened to her?

I run to the door, the handle turns but it won’t open.

Mum sits up and combs her fingers through her hair, the darker patches under her eyes are the same but today with her hair scraped back, she looks younger, more like a girl than a mum. ‘You can’t go out, we have to stay here.’

‘But what about Mrs Sheila, Mrs Goring, you know?’ I don’t care that I’m not meant to know her. ‘Her dog’s down there, he’s hurt.’

‘Somebody’ll deal with him.’

‘I could deal with him,’ I whisper.

Mum gets up and pulls a key on a string from round her neck. ‘I’m going to the loo.’ She pushes me out of the way. ‘You can’t come out yet, you’ve got to wait ‘til they’re all done.’

‘But Bill could die!’

She unlocks the door and slips through so there’s no room for me. She doesn’t care. I hear the key turn on the other side. I try the handle but it won’t open. I run back to the window, rest my fingers against the dirty glass and will him to stay alive.

I whisper through the glass. ‘I’m coming, Bill. As soon as I can I’ll be there.’

Sounds of feet trampling, boards creaking, doors opening and shutting, tools banging, drilling and sawing all rise up from way below. The floorboards vibrate with the machine sounds. I try to think of something else but when I do, it’s Bill and Mrs Goring, like I’ve been given a boulder to carry that I’m never allowed to put down. My eyes sting with tears. I swallow and try to stop them spilling over but it doesn’t work. One dribbles down my cheek, then the other one does too.

I crawl into the turret and flop on the mattress. The light bulb has flickered off. Even if I could, I don’t feel like looking at my book. It stays shut on the floor. I look for the hole of brightness but it’s still blocked with the lump of tile or house, I don’t know.

There’s nothing I want to see here.

My eyes are all gritty. It’s dark and quiet and I’m cold and alone.

I sit up and wrap the blanket round my body. The heaviness of what happened today climbs back on my shoulders. I just want to flop on my bed again, fall asleep and dream of a blue sky world where me and Bill can run through long swishy grass with his long swishy tail to a little house surrounded by flowers where Mrs. Sheila is always making tea.

But I can still see where the hole in the roof should be. Specks of light shine through where the lump doesn’t fit the hole exactly. So in the dark of the turret, I imagine a crane has got me in its grabber and it’s pulling me off the mattress. I poke at the specks of light and dig away with my finger. If I were a pigeon I’d fly out through here. I’d fly down to the garden and I’d stop that blood coming out.

Splinters and lumps of house fall out and bits rain on my face and splash in the bucket. They get in my eyes and I taste dust on my tongue. I wipe it away with my hand but that’s dusty too.

There’s a scraping sound on the outside, a scrape and a slide, then far below, the faraway smash of a tile on the concrete. The hole’s almost big enough for me to stick my hand through now.

A key turns in a lock on the door to the flat. I hope it’s not Austen back.

Only one set of feet pads across the floor.

‘Dawn.’

It’s Mum.

‘Yes.’

‘You can go outside now,’ she says.

I’m coming, Bill! I don’t know what I’m going to do but I’m going to help you. Then I see the hand-sized hole in the