Perfect. Cecelia Ahern

flickering in the cold apple tart.

      “Make a wish,” Granddad says.

      I close my eyes and think hard. I have too many wishes and feel that none of them are within my reach. But I also believe that the moment we’re beyond making wishes is either the moment we’re truly happy, or the moment to give up.

      Well, I’m not happy. But I’m not about to give up.

      I don’t believe in magic, yet I see making wishes as a nod to hope, an acknowledgement of the power of will, the recognition of a goal. Maybe saying what you want to yourself makes it real, gives you a target to aim for, can help you make it happen. Channel your positive thoughts: think it, wish it, then make it happen.

      I blow out the flame.

      I’ve barely opened my eyes when we hear footsteps in the hallway.

      Dahy, Granddad’s trusted farm manager, appears in the kitchen.

      “Whistleblowers are here. Move.”

      

      Granddad jumps up from the table so fast his chair falls backwards to the stone floor. Nobody picks it up. We’re not ready for this visit. Just yesterday the Whistleblowers searched the farm from top to bottom; we thought we’d be safe at least for today. Where is the siren that usually calls out in warning? The sound that freezes every soul in every home until the vehicles have passed by, leaving the lucky ones drenched with relief.

      There is no discussion. The three of us hurry from the house. We instinctively know we have run out of luck with hiding me inside. We turn right, away from the drive lined with cherry blossom trees. I don’t know where we’re going, but it’s away, as far from the entrance as possible.

      Dahy talks as we run. “Arlene saw them from the tower. She called me. No sirens. Element of surprise.”

      There’s a ruined Norman tower on the land, which serves Granddad well as a lookout tower for Whistleblowers. Ever since I’ve arrived he’s had somebody on duty day and night, each of the farmworkers taking shifts.

      “And they’re definitely coming here?” Granddad asks, looking around fast, thinking hard. Plotting, planning. And I regret to admit I detect panic in his movements. I’ve never seen it in Granddad before.

      Dahy nods.

      I increase my pace to keep up with them. “Where are we going?”

      They’re silent. Granddad is still looking around as he strides through his land. Dahy watches Granddad, trying to read him. Their expressions make me panic. I feel it in the pit of my stomach, the alarming rate of my heartbeat. We’re moving at top speed to the farthest point of Granddad’s land, not because he has a plan but because he doesn’t. He needs time to think of one.

      We rush through the fields, through the strawberry beds that we were working in only hours ago.

      We hear the Whistleblowers approach. For previous searches there has been only one vehicle, but now I think I hear more. Louder engines than usual, perhaps vans instead of cars. There are usually two Whistleblowers to a car, four to a van. Do I hear three vans? Twelve possible Whistleblowers.

      I start to tremble: this is a full-scale search. They’ve found me; I’m caught. I breathe in the fresh air, feeling my freedom slipping away from me. I don’t know what they will do to me, but under their care last month I received painful brands on my skin, the red letter F seared on six parts of my body. I don’t want to stick around to discover what else they’re capable of.

      Dahy looks at Granddad. “The barn.”

      “They’re on to that.”

      They look far out to the land as if the soil will provide an answer. The soil.

      “The pit,” I say suddenly.

      Dahy looks uncertain. “I don’t think that’s a—”

      “It’ll do,” Granddad says with an air of finality and charges off in the direction of the pit.

      It was my idea, but the thought of it makes me want to cry. I feel dizzy at the prospect of hiding there. Dahy holds out his arm to allow me to walk ahead of him, and I see sympathy and sadness in his eyes.

      I also see ‘Goodbye.’

      We follow Granddad to the clearing near the black forest that meets his land. He and Dahy spent this morning digging a hole in the ground, while I lay on the soil beside them, lazily twirling a dandelion clock between my fingers and watching it slowly dismantle in the breeze.

      “You’re like gravediggers,” I’d said sarcastically.

      Little did I know how true my words would become.

      

      The cooking pit, according to Granddad, is the simplest and most ancient cooking structure. Also called an earth oven, it’s a hole in the ground used to trap heat to bake, smoke, or steam food.

      To bake the food, the fire is allowed to burn to a smoulder. The food is placed in the pit and covered. The earth is filled back over everything – potatoes, pumpkins, meat, anything you want – and the food is left for a full day to cook. Granddad carries out this tradition every year with the workers on his farm, but usually at harvest time, not in May. He’d decided to do it now for “team building”, he called it, at a time when we all needed reinforcement, to come together. All of Granddad’s farmworkers are Flawed, and after facing the relentless searches from Whistleblowers and with each of his workers under the eye of the Guild more than ever, he felt everybody needed a morale boost.

      I never knew Granddad employed Flawed, not until I got here two weeks ago. I don’t remember seeing his farmworkers when we visited the farm and Mum and Dad never mentioned them. Perhaps they’d been asked to stay out of our view; perhaps they were always there and, like most Flawed to me before I became one, seemed invisible.

      I understand now that this helped drive a wedge between Granddad and Mum, her disapproving of his criticism of the Guild, the government-supported tribunal that puts people on trial for their unethical, immoral acts. We thought his rants were nothing but conspiracy theories, bitter about how his taxpayer’s money was being spent. Turns out he was right. I also see now that Granddad was like Mum’s dirty little secret. As a high-profile model, she represented perfection, on the outside at least, and while she was hugely successful around the world, she couldn’t let her reputation in Humming be damaged. Having such an outspoken father who was on the Flawed side was a threat to her image. I understand that now.

      There are some employers who treat Flawed like slaves. Long hours and on the minimum wage, if they’re lucky. Many Flawed are just happy to be employed and work for accommodation and food. The majority of Flawed are educated, upstanding citizens. They aren’t criminals; they haven’t carried out any illegal acts. They made moral or ethical decisions that were frowned upon by society and they were branded for it. An organised public shaming, I suppose. The judges of the Guild like to call themselves the “Purveyors of Perfection”.

      Dahy was a teacher. He was caught on security cameras in school grabbing a child roughly.

      I’ve also learned that reporting people as Flawed to the Guild is a weapon that people use against each other. They wipe out the competition, leaving a space for themselves to step into, or they use it as a form of revenge. People abuse the system. The Guild is one gaping loophole for opportunists and