The UnTied Kingdom Read Online Free Page A

generally speaking she looked pretty different from how she used to in the Grrl Power days, but that didn’t seem to stop the people who waved and pointed and, most of the time, sniggered at her in public.
    He shrugged, and she realised he really didn’t seem to know who she was. Well, under the circumstances that was a good thing, but …
    … it was also really sad.
    ‘Do you know a Major Harker?’ she asked, trying to spot if he was wearing any insignia that might clue her in to his rank.
    ‘I think I can bring him to mind. Why?’
    ‘Apparently he rescued me. From the river. Which was pretty nice of him.’
    ‘Aye, it was.’
    She frowned. ‘Although what the hell he was doing there in the first place I’ve no idea. Was there, like, a parade or something?’
    He shrugged. ‘Not that I know.’
    ‘Oh. So what was he doing jumping in the river?’
    ‘Rescuing you. Clearly.’
    ‘… oh.’

Chapter Three
    He gave his name as Will.
    She seemed satisfied with that, didn’t ask for his surname or his rank. In fact, the only thing she did ask for was a telephone. A telephone! As if that was a privilege offered to anyone.
    Happily, easily, she gave her name and address, even her date of birth. Eve Carpenter, from Mitcham.
    ‘Mitcham?’ he echoed. A smoking pile of rubble, like everything else south of the river.
    ‘Yes, I know.’ She made a face. ‘Not exactly my choice. Look, is there a phone I can use? I really ought to call the TV company or something.’
    ‘A phone,’ Harker said, and she looked annoyed.
    ‘Yes, a phone. A telephone. You know?’ She mimed it with her hands.
    ‘We, uh, there isn’t one,’ he said, and she stared at him incredulously.
    ‘What do you mean, there isn’t one?’
    ‘Well, there is, but not for civilians.’
    Eve looked astonished. ‘Is that, like, some sort of military rule or something?’
    Harker nodded. ‘Yep. Military.’ A telephone. For a civilian . ‘What did you say you do?’ he asked.
    ‘Temp.’ She shrugged. ‘Office work, mostly. Filling in. Other people’s lives.’
    ‘Right. You ever, er, filled in for a switchboard operator?’
    ‘No. Mostly it’s filing, typing, that sort of thing. I can do audio typing now though,’ she added, as though it was a minor achievement she wasn’t particularly proud of.
    ‘Audio–?’
    ‘You know, typing at dictation speed?’ She made movements with her fingers, like playing a piano. ‘I can pretty much type what someone’s saying, as they say it.’
    He was impressed. He’d seen the typewriters the clerks used, and they were big, heavy behemoths. ‘Don’t the keys get stuck?’
    She gave him an odd look. ‘Er, no.’ Then comprehension dawned. ‘Wait, you mean like on a typewriter? Hah, I used to have one when I was little, actually it was my mum’s, from like the 1960s or something. Nightmare. Used to have to stab at the keys, they got jammed together … man, I was glad when we got a computer.’
    A computer .
    It was possible, just about, that she really was innocent, that she’d been brought up in Flanders or something, where – Harker was a little hazy on the details – ordinary households had telephones and even computers.
    However, she had a damn good English accent for someone born in Flanders.
    ‘You had your own computer?’
    ‘Yeah. Little eighties thing, only used it for playing games and writing essays. One of those nasty dot-matrix printers, used to drive my teachers batty.’ She smiled, her face softening.
    ‘Where was this?’
    ‘Just outside Reading.’
    Barely forty miles from where they were now.
    ‘Where are you from?’ she asked. ‘You sound northern.’
    ‘Leicester,’ he said absently. She really had her own computer? Nah, she was messing with him.
    Maybe all this was a joke. She’d just read about these things in books, or maybe she’d visited abroad or something. Yes: she came from a rich family who took her on holidays to the Continent; maybe rich enough to