by Terry Tyler
"None of us know much about wine," says Phil, "and, to be honest, it's not a priority. We have too much to do every day to welcome hangovers; we keep a small stock, but none of us are huge drinkers, either."
"Echo Falls it is, then," says Rowan. "Bottoms up, chaps." She refills her glass without doing the same for anyone else. I thought well-bred people were supposed to have good manners. Perhaps we aren't worthy of them.
"There's beer in the kitchen, if you'd prefer that," Heath says.
"Organic?" Ozzy asks.
"Sorry, just Stella."
"That's coolio." Ozzy points both forefingers at Heath. "Come ye forth with the ale, stout yeoman!"
Everything he says is silly. I haven't heard him say one normal sentence, yet.
"Yeah, I always ate organic when I could. I'm a committed eco warrior," he offers next, after waiting in vain for someone to comment on his preference for organic beer. Silence falls. Lottie sucks both cheeks in.
"What exactly does that mean?" Rowan asks, her face wrinkling with distaste at her second mouthful of chilli; she glugs down half her glass of wine. "What do you do, aside from sitting up trees and making nuisances of yourselves?"
Ozzy flicks a dreadlock over his shoulder. "We protest about environmental injustices. I've made my feelings heard about the chemical spraying of food, and, yes, I've sat up trees to prevent the cutting down of the forests on our once green and pleasant land!"
"Good for you," Heath says, plonking a bottle of Stella down in front of him, and Phil murmurs his agreement.
Rowan swirls the remains of her wine around in the glass. "Did it work?"
"Huh?"
"Did it stop them cutting down the forests?"
Ozzy does that throwing back his head with laughter thing again, revealing a dirty neck. "Sadly no; 'The Man' is too powerful, but you gotta register your disapproval, right?"
"Couldn't you just write a letter to the Telegraph?"
Ozzy explains that the Telegraph is run by 'The Man', Rowan comes back with the argument that without 'The Man' the whole country would be in a state of chaos, as indeed it is now, and I cast my eyes around the table. None of our group are joining in the conversation; we're all just listening to them, with the exception of Jax, who's put his earbuds in. If these intruders weren't here, amusing though they are (I suppose), we'd be having our usual cosy dinner together. Suddenly I feel great affection towards Kara, Phil, Heath and Jax. I want to be with them, not these strangers.
Out of nowhere, my eyes fill with tears. It's Dex, I know it is. Shit, shit, shit, I'm going to cry.
"Excuse me," I mutter, and dash upstairs. As I do so, I hear Ozzy's voice boom out. "Crapperooney, was it something I said?"
In my bedroom, I sit down and weep. I think of how Dex and I were when we first met. We'd go for a drink after class with the other students, and we'd keep catching each other's eye; it was so exciting. Then, one night, we went on our own. We sat at the bar holding hands, and ended up snogging, then giggling because we could see that the barman was about to tell us to get a room. We couldn't keep our hands off each other. Was Dex like this with Naomi, too? Did they have eye-meets over Jeff's kitchen table? Go for a drink, and ache to touch each other, wondering who was going to make the first move?
I remember the first time we slept together. How he stroked my skin and said, 'this feels wonderful, the best ever'.
I'm hurting so badly.
There's a knock on the door. It's Heath.
"You okay?"
"Yeah," I say, and force a smile. "I always dash out of dinner and sit on my bed crying when I'm okay."
"Sorry. Stupid question." He sits down beside me and puts an arm around me. His jumper smells fusty and I sense vague base notes of sweat, but I don't mind. We're getting used to each other being less than permanently sanitised and lemon-fresh, now that the daily hot shower is not an option, and the washing and drying of clothes is a two day chore.
A memory of Tom in the Cuthbert Centre flashes into my mind and I eject it, quickly.
"I'll be alright in a minute."
"What's the matter?"
I tell him. I feel silly, but I need to talk about it.
"Oh, that's tough," he says. "I mean, you could deal with it if you knew he'd buggered off and left you, but not knowing is a bummer, isn't it?"
I sniff. "That does kind of sum it up, yes."
He pulls me to his chest. Yes, that jumper definitely needs washing. It feels nice, though. More than nice. It's lovely. I look up at him. His hair needs washing, too, but he's got the loveliest, kindest blue eyes.
For a moment I wonder if he's going to kiss me. I want him to. He doesn't, though. He turns his head to stare at the darkness outside. "How long are you going to give it?" he asks.
"What do you mean?"
"Until you give up on him coming back for you."
Is he asking for himself? "I don't know. I haven't thought. Because I don't know if he's not here because he's being held somewhere, or because he's dead. Or hurt, even."
"I get it. So if you, like, move on, and he comes back, having been through hell and this other woman long gone, you're going to feel like you didn't give him a chance." He's frowning, for once, staring at the wall.
"Something like that." What does he imagine that 'moving on' might involve?
"Would you be able to forgive him?"
"I don't know. You think you wouldn't, but when the anger calms down, it's different."
"Yeah, I get it." He strokes my head. I don't want to cry any more.
"Not being able to find stuff out—it's so hard, isn't it?" I sit up. "Not being able to contact people. Or find anything out about anything at all, really."
He laughs. "Yeah. I'm used to it now, though."
"I'm not. I was wondering how to pickle vegetables the other day, but there's no WikiHow to tell me!"
We laugh, and suddenly I'm in his arms again and he's holding the back of my head. It feels right. I'm so confused. I move my head so my lips are close to his cheek and I'm wondering what will happen if I kiss it, but then he lets go of me and stands up, wiping his hands down his jeans (which also need washing).
I get a sense of him wrenching himself away from me just in time.
"Suppose we'd better go back down, if you're up to it. I feel guilty about leaving the others to deal with that pair of clowns downstairs."
I'm disappointed. He's right, though. I'm either waiting for Dex or I'm not.
Even though he would be exactly the right person to move on with. Which doesn't make sense, when I consider how upset I felt about Dex only minutes ago.
I don't really know anything about him. Jax's mother died before Bat Fever, that I know, but he doesn't talk about it.
And I can't let anything happen unless I know Dex has really gone, for good.
Which may be stupid of me, but there it is.
Next day, Rowan reads in her room most of the day, emerging mid-afternoon to nose around our pantry.
"That's another reason I had to leave Surrey," she says. "I'd almost run out of food. How do you manage?"
"We go on scavenging runs," Kara says. She and I are making a stew on the camping stove, out of pulses, tinned vegetables and tinned chicken. "The supermarkets are mostly empty now, but there are plenty of other options if you think outside the box. And then there are the empty houses."
"How ghastly." Rowan looks at what we're doing. "Oh. I was rather hoping to boil some water for tea."
Obligingly, we take our stew off the stove.
I open the window. Phil and Heath are putting finishing touches to the new cookhouse in the garden, complete with brick oven, shelves, and worktops, while Ozzy tells them all about hydroponic growing systems.
"Any sort of organic growing techniques, I'm your man," I hear him say.
I shut the window.
"Hydroponics is growing stuff in water, isn't it?" I ask Heath, later. "Would it be a good idea for us?"
"Water and
other solutions, yes. Minerals, gravel. And yes, it would. Phil and I have already talked about it. I need to see if I can find a book."
"But Ozzy knows?"
"I suspect not." Heath grins. "His experience seemed to be limited to smoking the weed that a mate of his grew hydroponically on his barge, whilst admiring the 'awesome fuck-off big tomatoes' that were grown ditto."
We're interrupted by wildebeest-like sounds coming from down the hall. On investigation, it turns out to be Ozzy, fast asleep on his back, mouth open, on the sofa in the living room. On the floor beside him is an empty bottle of wine.
Lottie and Jax appear behind us, giggling and going 'sssh!' to each other.
"Guess what," Lottie whispers. "We looked in Ozzy's bag, and found his driving licence. His name's not Osric, it's Nigel Osbourne."
"I think we should call him Nige," says Jax.
Heath and I are laughing so much we almost forget to tell them off for snooping in our guest's private property.
That night, we sit round the fire and swap stories about how it was for each of us when our own corner of the world fell apart. Ozzy drops the surfer dude persona (hurrah) as he tells us what happened in the part of Essex where he lived.
"Once everyone had stopped pretending the disease was under control, the army just took over." He puts his hands out to warm them, staring into the flames. "There were piles of bodies in skips, it was fucking awful. The army would come and take them away, and my mate, Bob, he followed the vans one day—'cause he wanted to know what was going to happen to his mum's body—and he ended up at this big quarry kinda place, only it was full of, like, dead people? They were burning them, and there were ordinary guys, not soldiers, unloading the vans, hurling the bodies into these pits, writing down names on clipboards. Bob hung around a bit, got talking to some of them. They said that there weren't enough soldiers to cope with it all, and they were getting paid in food if they pitched in." He sits back, shaking his head; he looks older, now that he's not talking rubbish. Nicer.
"What happened to Bob?" I ask.
"Oh, he died. Got ill a couple of days after he told me that."
"I heard that some town councils set up emergency boards to restore order," Rowan puts in. "There was one in Guildford, but it fell apart; trouble was, those in charge wanted to be at home taking care of their families, not hundreds of strangers, and as soon as they commandeered supplies from supermarkets and warehouses, the storage building would get broken into. A couple of soldiers who were guarding the one in Guildford actually got their throats cut, can you imagine?" She shakes her head. "Shocking business."
Ozzy flops back in his chair. "I just don't get it. I mean, where the fuck did this thing come from?"
Kara and Phil look at each other, and then at me. The candles flicker as Heath leans forward to poke the fire, and Kara nods. Phil wrings his hands together, and we sit in complete silence while he tells Ozzy and Rowan everything that Unicorn learned from Gia, along with their own suspicions.
"I suppose it makes sense," Rowan says, afterwards. "When Jonathan was alive he was terribly worried about the immigration problem. I've read that in the year 2050—or whatever year it was, I can't bloody remember—the population of this country will be a third as much again, what with immigration. We can't sustain the normal growth, let alone allow more people in, and neither do we want to live in a multicultural society, not really, if we're honest." She fixes her eyes on Kara and Phil, completely unashamed. "No, no, no, I don't mean you. You were born here, I presume?" Neither of them answer. "Well, anyway, you've lived here a long time and were economically productive. Integrated into our society. What I'm talking about is the so-called refugees. Asylum seekers. All they have to do is shout 'persecution', and they get a free pass. And as for those estates full of ne'er-do-wells who pop out another child every time they need a bit more money—" She shakes her head in disgust.
"So targeted depopulation is the answer, you reckon?" says Phil, slowly. His face is expressionless.
"Not like this, of course not. But if I was the one in charge of streamlining the population, it would make sense to save the educated, productive, healthy and law-abiding, rather than ghastly gaggles of mindless breeders. Those who have contributed to the financial and cultural health of the country, and who respect authority, should come first. It's how any society works best."
"Streamlining the population." Kara shakes her head. "That's a new one on me." She holds up a hand. "I have no words."
"Who gets to say who's selected, though?" Heath puts his hands behind his head and leans back. "Who gets to play God?"
Rowan shrugs. "Our government is elected by the people. You can't give certain bodies the responsibility of making decisions, then complain when those decisions don't fall in with what you want." She stretches her arms up and yawns. "Anyway, the PM and his cabinet will be tucked away somewhere safe. As soon as this dreadful shambles quietens down, they'll come back and restore order. Finish the job off. Can't happen soon enough, I don't fancy existing on past-their-sell-by-date lentils for the rest of my life."
Kara gets up and leaves the room, slamming the door.
"The words knife, cut and atmosphere spring to mind," Heath whispers in my ear.
Rowan just shrugs; clearly she's not one to worry about offending anyone, not even if they've offered her their hospitality.
"We don't know what it's like in other countries," Ozzy says. "It might be like this everywhere. In which case it will take years and years for everything to get back to how it was."
"If it ever does," says Phil. "We have to accept that it may not, and that this might be as good as it gets, at least for our lifetime. And, right now, we're all equal. Whatever wealth anyone used to have is irrelevant. An experienced builder is of more use than an academic. Doesn't matter whether you were on the dole or a lord, now you're just a person trying to stay alive and look after those you care about. In fact, a homeless person is more likely to have the skills to survive. Class hierarchy became thing of the past in August. End of."
I almost clap.
"That's poppycock," Rowan says. "No society is equal. Breeding will out, every time. Strength, intelligence, the ability to organise and delegate."
"True." Phil nods. "But if we're starting from scratch, if we're right back to where we were hundreds of years ago, the leaders who arise won't be those with privilege and money, or fathers who've got them to the top of the list in the right clubs. They'll be the ones with qualities of natural leadership. Men and women who inspire respect."
"Or fear," Ozzy says. The booming pitch of his voice means that we all look at him when he says this. I feel a cold shiver up my spine.
"You're right there," says Heath.
"Well, fuck that." Rowan's voice is harsh, shrill. "If any latter day Genghis Khan starts storming all over northern England, throwing his weight about and laying down the law, he's going to get a jolly nasty shock when he comes face to face with me."
Ozzy grins, and clinks his empty wine glass against hers. "You go, girl! You give 'em hell!"
"And failing that," says Heath, leaning forward with the wine, "you can always write a letter to the Telegraph."
I find Kara upstairs, lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling; she looks over at me as I open the door, and shakes her head.
"If she mouths off any of that crap again, I'll tell her that if she doesn't want to live in a multicultural household, she can fuck off and fend for herself."
Chapter Seventeen
Sisterhood
Rowan and Ozzy stay; no decision is made but they begin to make themselves comfortable, and after the third day they stop talking about their journey northwards. We realise they're not going anywhere when Rowan suddenly decides that her friends on Arran are probably dead, as they hadn't had the vaccination last time she spoke to them, and Ozzy mentions a few times how cold it must be in the Scottish Highlands at this time of year, grinning around at us, in the hope that we'll say 'you'd better st
ay here, then'.
Looks like we're stuck with them for the time being. No one wants to tell them to go. Phil tells them that if they stay they've got to pull their weight: take part in the chores, go out on supply runs, etc.
The weather gets colder, and Lottie and I finally get our coats and boots, from New Look in Jarrow.
"Admit it, Mum, it's fun being able to just take stuff, isn't it?" Lottie says, and she's right, it kind of is. It's dark in the shop, of course, but we position our torches and have a laugh trying stuff on.
Outside it's cold, grey and dismal, but everywhere seems dismal up here, compared with Norfolk. It's all a bit bleak; I can't imagine it was much better before the virus. The shopping centre is outdoor, and most of the shops have been ransacked. I see filled shopping trolleys, knocked over, with goods strewn all over the pavement, and this worries me. Did people run away, leaving them in a hurry? If so, why?
Kara and Rowan are going through B&M Bargains a few shops down, when we emerge from New Look in our new parkas and boots.
"I can't believe the tack in these discount shops; everything's such poor quality," I hear Rowan saying, as we shine our torches around and find them in the household cleaner aisle. "I don't think they exist where I live. Well, if they do, I've never visited one."
"Lived," Kara corrects her. "You don't live there now. Welcome to the impoverished North East."
"Jax wants some headphones," Lottie says, and skips off to another part of the shop. I find backpacks, and Kara and I fill them with bleach, disinfectant, washing powder, toilet rolls, cloths, soap, hand sanitising gel and pedal bin liners, then cram holdalls with as much tinned food as we can. Rowan, meanwhile, fills hers with moisturiser, cleanser, shampoo, conditioner, body lotion.
"What's your problem?" she says, when Kara rifles through. "We need all this as well as cleaning materials, don't we?"
Kara, crouching on the floor by the bag, holds up a tube and shines her torch on it. "Exfoliator? Seriously?"
