someone who used to live here

When I said I hadn't, she did a laugh and continued: "They're probably just having me on. Their idea of a joke. Forget I mentioned it." But I could see she wanted me to drag it out of her, so I kept pressing until in the end she said in a lowered voice: "You remember last week, when Chrissie and Rodney were away? They'd been up to this town called Cromer, up on the north Norfolk coast." "What were they doing there?" "Oh, I think they've got a friend there, someone who used to live here. That's not the point. The point is, they claim they saw this... person. Working there in this open-plan office. And, well, you know. They reckon this person's a possible. For me." Though most of us had first come across the idea of "possibles" back at Hailsham, we'd sensed we weren't supposed to discuss it, and so we hadn't--though for sure, it had both intrigued and disturbed us. And even at the Cottages, it wasn't a topic you could bring up casually. There was definitely more awkwardness around any talk of possibles than there was around, say, sex. At the same time, you could tell people were fascinated--obsessed, in some cases--and so it kept coming up, usually in solemn arguments, a world away from our ones about, say, James Joyce. The basic idea behind the possibles theory was simple, and didn't provoke much dispute. It went something like this. Since each of us was copied at some point from a normal person, there must be, for each of us, somewhere out there, a model getting on with his or her life. This meant, at least in theory, you'd be able to find the person you were modelled from. That's why, when you were out there yourself--in the towns, shopping centres, transport caf閟--you kept an eye out for "possibles"--the people who might have been the models for you and your friends. Beyond these basics, though, there wasn't much consensus. For a start, no one could agree what we were looking for when we looked for possibles. Some students thought you should be looking for a person twenty to thirty years older than yourself--the sort of age a normal parent would be. But others claimed this was sentimental. Why would there be a "natural" generation between us and our models? They could have used babies, old people, what difference would it have made? Others argued back that they'd use for models people at the peak of their health, and that's why they were likely to be "normal parent" age. But around here, we'd all sense we were near territory we didn't want to enter, and the arguments would fizzle out.