The Chrysalid Conspiracy Read Online Free

said, even though she didn’t feel it.
    “That’s all right, my love. Forget it,” Lucy replied, and to change the subject added
    “Molly gets so flustered if she runs low on change, not that she’ll need much today.” Amelia, standing by the shop door to keep an eye out for the school bus, relaxed slightly. The mention of Molly brought her back to her own disappointment.
    Molly couldn’t work on the weekends, not that she would. She loved spending time with her six-year-old twins, and why not? Amelia ran the shop with her mother on Saturdays and, as that day was her birthday would it have to be cancelled? Not that there were any great plans. It wasn’t, after all a national holiday, but the fact that it was Halloween didn’t help. She’d accepted her mother’s offer of a day to herself. Get up when she felt like it, do what she wanted, go shopping or slob around the house. Anything she liked, for a whole day.
    She’d had to admit to a feeling of guilt as their lifestyle didn’t lend itself to these luxuries of behaviour. But her mother had insisted, with the added reasoning that, for her, it was a cheap way out. It was when she had been told that Mrs Orugo, the physiotherapist, was coming in to get her mother up that she had felt a genuine stab of jealousy.
    Her devious mother had also added that being fifteen gave her licence to leave her room in a mess legally. She’d given her mum a hug and wondered how she’d known about her room, and was that some kind of threat?
    As the coach came into sight she unlocked the shop door and with a quick wave to her mother she stepped out into the rain. The wind tore at her and she felt for a moment as if she were in some Gothic story, struggling across desolate moorland, calling the name of her lost love. Fat chance! She thought, as a passing lorry soaked her shoes.
    “Is this the happy ending?” she grumbled to herself, as she looked down at her wet feet. “What else can go wrong today?”
    ***
    Stepping onto the bus she found a seat and tried to ignore the smell of wet clothes and stale tobacco breath, and the swearing from the back seats. Nobody spoke to her and she just sat there feeling lonely and miserable as she watched the shop disappear.
    This place was so precious to her. This was her home, her life, and she loved it so much she was quite prepared to put her own hopes and dreams on hold. A straight choice between obligations and ambitions she considered a ‘no contest’.
    At least her resolve released her from the problem of what to be when she grew up, her future was set in stone and it was what she wanted, she mused. College, university and academic success, along with romance, marriage and kids she considered to be no more than social engineering to maintain the status quo; finishing up with the long struggle against debt and doubt wasn’t her idea of a life, working hard for somebody else’s benefit.
    Amelia was well aware that she was light years ahead of the rest of the pupils in her school. She’d smiled at the remarks the sociology teacher Mr Osmond had made to her in her first year at high school. “Don’t get upset Miss Jaxson, he’d said, we’re all basically the same; it’s just that some have differing social values”. But privately Amelia still preferred to call them ‘geeks and plebeians’. The very idea of a life spent jumping through carefully constructed hoops in the struggle to purchase more labour saving devices than there are labours was almost abhorrent to her. And being pleased with the bonus of two for one dog chews as reward for your efforts all seemed so pointless.
    That first year at High School had been a nightmare for her. Launched from primary in a blaze of glory for her achievements both in the classroom and the sports field, great things had been predicted, but she’d soon learned the sad truth. Proud of her abilities she’d forged ahead with her class work, unaware she was making the rest feel inadequate, and not