Elevation 1: The Thousand Steps. Helen Brain

and set deep into the thick walls. I kick off my sandals and stretch my feet on the wooden floors, savouring the warmth as I walk across to the basin. It feels good after walking on rock all my life.

      There’s a long mirror, so I take off my robe and look at my reflection. My skin is so white it almost glows. I’m like a grub that has never seen daylight. A dirty grub, covered in a layer of dust from travelling. I step into the shower quickly and wash myself. Someone has left a half-used bottle of shampoo on the window sill. I wish I knew more about the mysterious great-aunt who has left me a fortune, and a bottle of shampoo that smells of lavender.

      I find a red dressing gown behind the bathroom door and pull it on. When I come out, Leonid has lit the lamp, and there is a tray on the bedside table with a pot of tea, and what I recognise from Letti’s book as a tomato-and-cheese sandwich. Letti’s parents put a family recipe book in her memory box, and one of our favourite things was to page through it, drooling over the recipes. I can’t wait to tell her I’ve tasted it at last. But then I realise I’ll never see her again. I have no one to tell. I try to enjoy my meal but it feels strange to be eating all alone on a huge bed big enough for four people. I finish my meal, and lie back against the soft pillows. It’s quiet in here, and the room is full of shadows. No one is breathing near me.

      My dream has come true – I’ve come home. But there’s no one here who loves me. No parents, no sisters and brothers or grandparents. I’m completely alone.

      I swallow down my tears and climb under the duvet, pulling the curtains closed around the bed. That’s better. It’s more like the bunker.

      I fall asleep. When I wake up a while later and peer out through the curtains, the room is dark and the wind is blowing the trees outside my window. I hope it doesn’t blow a tree onto the house. What if something crawls up out of the floor and bites me? It’s a scary world out there – full of dangers I don’t know anything about.

      The house creaks and there’s a strange noise, like someone scratching on my door. I creep out of bed and tiptoe across the room to lock my door. As I turn the key, I hear a soft whine. Opening the door a crack, I peep out. The dog is standing there, looking at me with big melting eyes.

      She doesn’t look vicious. She looks sad. She wants to come in. “Are you lonely?” I ask. “Did your family all die too?” She licks my hand.

      “Come on then,” I say, opening the door wider. She runs across the room and jumps onto the bed. “Now don’t go biting me,” I say as I gingerly climb back onto my side. “Your job is to look for baddies.”

      She gives a big sigh and rests her head on my leg. I tentatively touch her. She’s pretty – white all over, except for three big black spots on her back. Her tail gives two thumps. “Good dog,” I say, stroking her head. “Pretty Isi.”

      I lie there trying to process everything that has happened. In just twelve hours I’ve gone from thinking I’m about to die to discovering I’m an heiress; from being crowded in a bunker with two thousand kids to being totally alone in a strange house.

      I wish I could get a message to Jasmine and the twins. If only they could be here with me.

      Suddenly a ray of light shines into my room. It reminds me of an old sci-fi kinetika we saw years ago, about aliens landing on earth. Micah and the older boys thought it was hilarious, but I didn’t sleep for weeks, imagining them walking around on top of the mountain, looking for a way into the bunker so they could destroy us.

      I lie under the duvet, just my nose sticking out, watching the ray move across the room. Is it searching for something? For me? I’m about to run into the passage screaming for Leonid when I realise it’s just the moon.

      I go to the window and peer out into the star-splattered sky. The silver moon is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Not an alien in sight.

      DURING THE NIGHT I dream my old recurring dream. I’m walking in a forest. The trunks are thick and twisted and tower over me. I’m looking for my mother, desperate to find her. I see a woman walking in the distance but before I can catch up with her, she disappears.

      I feel the familiar sense of sadness. She’s left me. She wouldn’t wait.

      I hear a rooster crowing and I wonder why I’m sleeping in the poultry gallery. There’s a strange clopping sound I can’t place, and I sit up, rubbing my eyes. Where am I? Why hasn’t the waking siren gone off yet?

      Then I realise there’s a ray of real sunlight streaming through the window and a dog yawning at my feet, and the sound is of horses walking on the road that runs around the house. I’m in my new bed, in my own house, in my new life. I get up and open the wooden lockers. They’re packed with clothes – robes like Mr Frye’s, and pretty clothes like the ones people used to wear long ago. I don’t know what I’m supposed to wear here. I’ll have to wait for someone to tell me what my uniform is. So I pull on my white shift and pants again and stand at the window. Horses are eating grass in a field. Chickens are scratching in the plants, running around freely in the open. The sky, the trees, the vibrant green … They take my breath away.

      I go out into the hallway. Twenty people could sit at the table that runs the length of it. I imagine my family sitting at this table, filling all the seats. And now they’re all dead. It makes me miserable, so I cheer myself up by imagining Fez and Letti and Jasmine and me enjoying a feast, like in the old kinetikas, and servants bringing in all the food from Letti’s recipe book.

      I investigate each room – there are three more bedrooms. One for each of us. There’s a really big sitting room filled with paintings, and a study. But it’s the kitchen I’m heading towards. I’m dying to see what other food I can find, and Leonid’s not here right now to make me feel stupid.

      Just as I hoped, the kitchen is big and homely, with a kettle on the hob and pretty china on a dresser. I take a blue-and-white striped bowl and go into the pantry. I’m not sure what everything is, but I dip my fingers in and taste everything, like a naughty child. “This all belongs to me,” I tell myself. “I can eat it all if I want,” but after sixteen years in the colony, where everything was shared, I still feel like I’m stealing.

      I recognise the yoghurt from my ninth birthday meal. I can’t believe there’s a whole bottle of it here, and it’s all mine. I serve myself a bowl, add a teaspoon of sweet sticky golden liquid I think may be honey and sit down at the table to eat it. It’s so good I lick the plate. Leonid almost catches me when he comes in, stamping the dust from his boots on the doorstep.

      “Oh. It’s you,” he says. “Mr Frye’ll be here soon.” He grins. “You’ve got something on your nose.”

      I wipe off a smudge of yoghurt. Oh, great. More things to despise me for.

      I begin to wash my bowl but he stops me. “Not your job. Leave it.”

      “What is my job?” I ask. “When does the work siren go off?”

      He snorts. “Your job, miss? You’re a citizen. Your job’s sitting around all day ordering the servants around.” And he turns on his heel and marches off. Isi runs after him.

      I sit down, and wonder what to do next.

      We worked in the colony. Twelve hours a day. I was Ebba, “the girl who could grow anything”, part of sabenzi group 4.7, Year Five. I got up when a siren went, ate breakfast when the siren told me to, started work. Each moment in each day was allocated and all I had to do was be obedient and work my hardest. For the common good, so we could all survive.

      But up here, who am I?

      I’m just a girl with a big house and nothing to do.

      I go out of the front door, and follow the driveway around the side of the house. I pass rows of rain tanks, chicken coops, go through a half-open door in a wall, and I’m in a kitchen garden. So many food plants, all growing in the ground. Just the sun, the soil, and rows and rows of vegetables.

      I fall onto my knees, hands in the earth,