'Uprising' - a book by Arun D Ellis -

Prologue

‘Please note, effective immediately: in order to help the nation heal its wounds after the terrible atrocity of 12/12 it has been decided that senior members of the Civil Service will adopt all 200 resultant orphans’.

Mrs. Mayweather sat at her PC and studied this, a recent email from the Home Office. She stretched her neck and rubbed her forehead, as if she didn’t have enough to contend with already. She re-read the communiqué, the directive, because let’s not kid ourselves, that’s what it was.

She looked at the seven files spread out before her; seven files representing seven children. She’d had her quota, she couldn’t argue that; eight of the 200 had been sent to St. David’s but one of them, Toby, had been adopted by his aunt in Australia. She thought quickly, was it worth making more paperwork by saying she only had 7 left? Would it earn her a black mark?

Truth be told, she was sensing an opportunity to find a good home for one of her other children; the chance of a lifetime, to be lifted out of poverty and placed into the upper echelons of society, public school, city job, a home south of the M4 Corridor …who could resist? She made up her mind; the Government had deposited eight children with her, the Government would expect eight children back and by Jove the Government was going to get what it expected. She needed a boy to replace Toby.

She got up from her desk and went across to the filing cabinet; she knew the staff mocked her behind her back but nothing on this earth would get her to go paper-free.
She pulled out two files; Johnson, Alan; 7 years old, resident for the past 4 years. He needed to get out and into a family. The Richardsons had shown interest in him, they were a decent couple and things were proceeding quite nicely. However, there’s plenty a slip ‘twixt cup and lip as her granny used to say, and you can never be sure. However, they would notice if he suddenly disappeared and could potentially make a fuss. Nothing she couldn’t handle though.

The other child, White, Robert; 8 years old, he’d arrived with the others from the 12/12 atrocity, so he had the background. Not strictly speaking an orphan; mother had sustained serious head wounds in the explosion, leaving her in a coma, no father, live-in boyfriend no longer on the scene having left when the extent of her injuries became known. There was a grandmother but she’d been deemed inappropriate, too old, by Social Services. But, no two ways about it, he was not an orphan, in the strictest sense of the word.

‘So…which one will it be?’ she mused, moving the folders around on her desk.