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or so minutes later, she felt a light tap on her shoulder, she nearly slept through it. But the tapping was insistent and wrenched her from her dreamless sleep back into the cold, dark dormitory. She opened her eyes silently, then sat up, her eyes wide with incredulity. It was Peter, crouched down over her bed.
    She frowned. ‘You . . . How . . . What are you doing here?’ she hissed.
    She was angry, and she didn’t mind him knowing it. It was nearly midnight, and she needed these precious hours of sleep. Peter, sitting in front of her with an anxious look on his face, had broken so many rules coming here that they could both be doing hard labour for weeks, months even. Pending boys never came anywhere near the Pending girls’ dormitories.
    ‘What are you doing here?’ Anna repeated crossly, before he could respond to her first questions, outraged that Peter should willingly break so many rules, as if somehow they didn’t apply to him.
    Peter moved his finger to his mouth as if to tell Anna to stay silent, then looked around the dormitory quickly, his eyes darting from bed to bed. He leant over and took her hand.
    ‘Anna Covey, I have to tell you about your parents,’ he whispered. ‘They wanted me to find you. You’ve got to get away from that evil Mrs Pincent. I’ve come to take you home, Anna.’
    Anna pushed him away and her eyes narrowed. ‘You do not know my parents and I have no home,’ she hissed. ‘My parents are in prison. My name is Anna. Just Anna. I’m a Surplus. And so are you. Get used to it, and leave me alone.’
    Peter frowned slightly, but made no attempt to move.
    ‘You have a birthmark on your stomach,’ he whispered softly. ‘It looks a bit like a butterfly.’
    Anna froze and she felt the hair on the back of her neck stand upright. How did he know that? Who was he? Why was he telling her this?
    ‘I have to get back,’ Peter said, before she could say anything.
    And then he left, silently slinking out of the dormitory and disappearing down the corridor. Like a ghost, Anna thought as she lay back down on her bed, a sudden overwhelming desire to cry washing over her. Slowly, she moved her hand down to her stomach, where she felt for the red birthmark just above her belly button. The birthmark that had caused her nothing but shame, the birthmark that she kept hidden at all costs to avoid the taunting and name calling that inevitably started when anyone saw it.
    How did Peter know about it? Who had told him it was shaped like a butterfly, she wondered. When Mrs Pincent had first seen it, she’d remarked that it looked like a dead moth and had said that it was Mother Nature’s way of branding Anna a pest. Moths ate things that belonged to other people, she’d told her, and abused their hosts. ‘How very apt,’ she’d said.
    And yet, Peter’s description stirred something in Anna, almost a memory but not quite; more a vague feeling that at some point she, too, had thought it resembled a butterfly. Anna almost thought she remembered believing, when she was very little, that it was a sign that one day she’d grow wings and fly away from Grange Hall. But Mrs Pincent had been right – it wasn’t a butterfly, it was a moth. It was red and ugly and she hated it.
    How dare Peter come here and remind her of it? How dare he sneak around the place, confusing her and pretending he knew things that he didn’t, telling her that Mrs Pincent was evil? Maybe it was all part of an elaborate test, she thought to herself. Perhaps right now, he was reporting back to Mrs Pincent and working out new ways to trap her into saying something or doing something wrong. Perhaps she should have told him that Mrs Pincent wasn’t evil, she thought worriedly, little beads of sweat appearing on her forehead in spite of the cold. But she hadn’t had a chance, had she?
    Then she shook herself; it was a stupid idea. Mrs Pincent would never use someone like him as a spy. She didn’t trust Peter one bit; Anna could