by Terry Tyler
"Doesn't seem too cut up about it."
"Perhaps that's a self-preservation mechanism."
Ozzy laughs. "Dude! What were you in your previous life, a fucking therapist?"
"No, mate, I just know people." I can almost hear him smile. "But, yeah, now you mention it, Jax's mum was in therapy at one point. Some of it must've rubbed off."
"Hmm. Rubbed off. That's something you and I are most certainly not getting right now!"
They both find this hilarious; I remember Dex and Lawrie could do fourteen-year-old-smutty, too. As for the comment about Jax's mum, this is the most information I've ever heard Heath offer about her.
"So what about Vicky, then?" Ozzy's voice.
I freeze.
"What about Vicky?" Heath sounds completely noncommittal.
"She's cute, right? Not as foxy as Kara, but she's got a great arse."
"She has that." Heath.
"Awesome pretty, and doesn't get on your case all the time, not like the other two."
"Uh-huh."
It's terrifying hearing yourself discussed by two other people. Still, I won't pretend I mind being described as 'awesome pretty'. Yeah, yeah, I want to be admired for my mind, but all the same—
"But she's hung up on this guy who's deserted her, right?"
I freeze again.
I can hear Heath lugging pieces of wood about. "They don't know if he's deserted her. They don't know what's happened to him."
"Yeah, but he ain't here."
"No, he's not."
"But if he hasn't come over all dead or gotten himself grabbed like that Scott guy, he'd be here, yeah?"
I'm gripping the bottle of disinfectant so hard the top pops off, and I waste half the precious fluid as it spurts out over the earth.
"Who knows?"
"But she's keeping it zipped in the hope that he'll come back, right? Crazy. I mean, this is one small island. It's not that hard to get from A to B. It's, what, eight hundred miles, top to bottom? He'd be here if he wanted to be."
"These are weird times. People go missing, get stuck God knows where." Keeping it zipped, indeed. I notice that Heath doesn't answer that bit.
I listen to him hammering a nail in, then Ozzy speaks again.
"Not sure if I ought to try 'n' get in there or not."
Oh, please don't.
No answer from Heath.
"Hey, sorry, man, am I, like, invading your territory? You stalking it already?"
Stalking it? I'm so incensed that I miss Heath's mumbled reply. Damn it, where's the rewind button?
"Yeah, but this Dex guy or not, she must be gagging for it by now, right?" Ozzy laughs. Heath laughs, too, damn him. But I can forgive him that. I get the male banter thing.
"It's probably not a good idea to talk about the women in this house in this way, mate," Heath says. Grrr! Why does he always have to be so reasonable? Why doesn't he tell Ozzy off for being a sexist twat?
Because men don't say that sort of thing.
I'm tempted to push back the plastic sheeting and ask Ozzy if he fancies a quick tumble as soon as I've finished disinfecting the loo. Rubber gloves optional.
Trouble is, I think he'd probably say yes.
Later, when Rowan and I are going through the cupboards deciding what to cook, Ozzy comes in and starts going on about how sexist it is that we women are permanently on kitchen duty.
I wonder whose knickers he's trying to get into.
"Well, you can always help," Rowan says. "You can start with the washing up, if you like."
"Hey, no worries, whatever," he says, backing away. Rowan chucks him a cloth; he wipes down the sink in what I believe is called a desultory fashion.
"Yeah, I'm really down on sexism," he carries on, a moment later, as neither of us are taking any notice of him. "It's something that makes me want to say hey, people, it's, like, the twenty-first century! Ever heard of Emily Pankhurst?" He finds this hilarious, for some reason, his wide mouth stretching from ear to ear; he reminds me of one of the Martians in that ancient Cadbury's Smash advert.
"It's Emmeline," Rowan says.
"Huh?"
"Emmeline. Her name was Emmeline. Not Emily."
"Whoa, really? Means I've been making a dick of myself getting it wrong my whole life! Shit!"
I'm sure you were managing just fine without that specific error.
"No one's tying us to the kitchen," I say. "We all have jobs to do, and Rowan and I have chosen this one. Amongst others."
Ozzy holds both hands up. "Sure, sure. My bad. Your own decision, that's cool. And I totally disagree with that phooey about all the best chefs being male!"
Rowan catches my eye. "Talking of us all having jobs to do, what's yours?"
He looks very pleased with himself. "Ask Phil. I'll let him tell you where we were this afternoon!"
Turns out they've got us a generator.
Dex, my burgeoning crush on Heath, annoyances with Ozzy, they're all forgotten when Phil invites us all into the garage to show us this piece of machinery.
We're like a 1950s family, crowding round their first television set.
We will have power. I can't believe it.
"Can I ask something, without sounding like a total retard?" Lottie says. "Does this mean I can charge my iPod?"
Phil beams at her. "It certainly does, sweetheart."
"Oh-oh-oh!" Lottie grabs Jax's arm, trembling with joy.
We're all laughing, smiling, excited, huddling in the garage by lamplight where it's so cold we can see our breath, though we are.
We agree not to waste fuel; we've got used to candle and lamp light. I think of my grandma every time I take a candle up to bed. But the fridge (we've been keeping stuff in a box in the garden), chargers for e-readers, hairdryers; oh my goodness, maybe we can watch films—the washing machine, the tumble dryer—
Phil breaks into my fantasies. "It'll be very limited, and will mean the constant scrounging of fuel; you can forget power gobblers like tumble dryers, for a start."
But I can read books that were published later than twenty years ago; all those on my Kindle to-read list that I thought were gone forever.
I can dry my hair properly. I might even acquire some straighteners.
I have been made whole.
"Essentials only, okay?" says Kara.
I blush, and erase the straighteners fantasy.
After over a decade of mild winters and the assumption that heavy snowfall is a thing of the past, the winter of 2024/5 is a bitch. The finding of fuel and nutritious food takes over from everything else. Many meals are just basic fillers of soup with whatever form of starch we have handy: rice, noodles, pasta. How I long for a nice ham salad with new potatoes.
It's deathly quiet outside.
When we go out on scavenging runs we see no one, but some of our favourite haunts (like ASDA in Boldon) are emptying, so there must be other people, somewhere. No one wants to do Christmas. None of us adhere to formal Christianity, and to make a half-arsed attempt at a retail industry-orientated festival we were all pretty sick of anyway would be pointless.
Heath suggests a Yule festival to mark the winter solstice. I like this idea, until Ozzy gets hold of it, and starts banging on about Wicca and paganism.
"I just thought it would be a good idea to mark the shortest day, have a bit of a blow out, that's all," Heath says. "I don't want to start worshipping trees."
"It's a great idea," Kara says. "Let's do it."
"I'll see what I can bung together," Rowan says, with a yawn. Sometimes I think the world-weariness and boredom is a pose that's become so ingrained she's forgotten how to appear enthusiastic. "I'm starting to enjoy this pauper-esque creativity." She gets up, and stretches. "Well, I've got bugger all else to do, have I?"
Heath, Lottie, Jax and I go to Jarrow and Hebburn libraries to find out if traditional Yule feasts include anything we're likely to be able to get our hands on. It's fun. I like being out, the four of us. It's like we're a famil
y (stop it). Phil and Ozzy choose a suitable Yule log, and Kara finds holly and mistletoe out in the countryside.
In the fading light of the afternoon on the shortest day of the year, Lottie and I are laying the table. It's hardly got light all day, and outside I see December in its bleak glory, without the hustle and bustle, tinsel, alcohol and daft music of the modern day Christmas. I've always been aware of the seasons, but I never noticed what this time of the year was actually like, before; I was always rushing around buying stuff, making lists, wishing I could go into a supermarket without my ears being assaulted by fifty-year-old Christmas songs, and getting sucked in by offers on stollen and cheeses that would still be in the fridge on New Year's Day.
The snow falls, and it's quietly magical.
Kara, Rowan and Heath are preparing the food, Phil and Jax are bringing in the wood for the fire, and Ozzy is sorting out booze and glasses, something he takes a long time over as he likes to sample his choices (smiley face with wink).
I feel happy. I know that, despite our decision not to do Christmas, we're all thinking about those absent, so I'm hoping we don't get maudlin later. I might have a word with Kara about eye-meet signalling so we can dive in with cheery topics of conversation, should anyone go down that road.
Then I go and get a huge lump in my throat thinking about helping Mum to lay the table when I was a child.
Mummy. Daddy.
Oh shit. The tears are coming.
Lottie rushes to my side. "What's up?"
I hug her to me. Shit, they're spilling out, a big salty waterfall down my cheeks. "It's nothing. I just miss my mum."
"They might be okay," Lottie says. "One day, things will be back to normal, and if they don't come home we can go and find them."
I allow her words to make me feel better. And you never know, a miracle could happen.
I'm trying hard to get a hold of myself when I hear a knock at the door.
"I'll get it!" I shout, and I'm wiping my sleeve over my damp eyes when Lottie grabs my arm.
"Mum." She looks anxious. "We're all here."
"What?"
"All of us are here. Whoever's at the door, it's a stranger."
Ouch. She's right. Ozzy, Rowan, Kara and Heath are in the kitchen, Phil and Jax are in the garden; I can see them.
Lottie looks as scared as I feel. "It might not be anything bad," she says. "They've knocked, not smashed a window."
But if someone is knocking at the door, it means they've climbed over the wall. If they've climbed over the wall it means anyone can, and our security measures don't work.
"Take this," she says, and grabs a hammer from the bookcase where it lives. I'm so used to Phil's strategically placed weapons that I don't even notice them; I'll probably forget where they are, if I ever need to use them.
I take the hammer. "Stay back."
"Shall I get the others?"
I'm not one of those horror film heroines who insists on going down the dark cellar on her own. "Yes. Just in case." All sorts of scenarios are going through my head.
The men from the Cuthbert Centre.
Joel and his thug father.
Some poor, hungry soul we're going to have to welcome in.
(Dex.)
Lottie lets out a nervous giggle. "Perhaps it's Father Christmas."
Not the right time, Lottie. "Go on. Go get the others."
I creep down the hall to the front door, and I can feel my heart thudding.
"Let me go," I hear Heath's voice behind me.
"No, I'm okay."
"We're here," I hear Kara hiss. "Rolling pins at the ready."
I glance back and I can see, in the dim light, that she's holding her gun.
I look through the spy hole.
It's not Father Christmas. Or a band of marauding thugs/armed invaders.
It's not Dex, either.
It's a young, skinny guy with glasses, and longish, messy, dark hair, wearing jeans, a blue cagoule and a black woolly hat. His hands are in his pockets.
"It's just one guy. He looks harmless."
"Open it, then."
I slide back the deadbolts.
"Hi," says Skinny Guy. He grins; he looks vaguely familiar. "Are you Vicky?"
"Fucking hell!" cries Kara, and she's laughing.
She pushes past me and envelops Skinny Guy in a hug. She's smiling and crying all at once, and he is too.
"Everyone," she says, turning round to us all. "Everyone—this is Scott!"
Chapter Twenty
Scott's Story
"I was sitting at my laptop, drinking a cup of tea, and they just burst in. I tell you what, you know how on TV, you see people make all those slick moves to throw off their assailants, and it looks so easy? But when it happens to you, all you do is struggle like an idiot, panic like hell, scream a lot, and beg. And you realise how weak you are, compared with the sort of men who are employed to do that sort of thing. I was dragged out to a car, I had a hood over my head and yes, I tried really hard to listen for sounds and remember when we stopped at traffic lights, and all that, but it doesn't work. You can't work out the direction when you can't see. Then I realised that the sharp prick I felt when they were manhandling me into a car was a sedative."
"Did you pass out?" Phil asks.
"Yeah. So when I wake up I don't know if we've been travelling for five minutes or five hours. I'm taken out, up some steps, up and down corridors, up stairs, the hood's off and I'm standing in a room. No sooner do I get my bearings than whoever shoved me in there leaves me alone, locking the door behind me." He's hugging himself, shivering.
"Here." Phil gives him a small glass of brandy; he sips at it.
"I think I'd rather have coffee, if you've got any."
"Lottie," I say, and she goes off without complaining that she wants to stay and listen, as I know she must.
"Are you alright with this?" Phil asks, stretching his hand across the table to cover Scott's white, clenched fist. "We can do it just you and me if you want. Or whenever you're ready, or not at all."
"No. It's okay. I'm fine; I'm just cold and tired. Let me gather my thoughts." He shuts his eyes, and we sit in silence for a minute; the only sound is Lottie, clattering around in the kitchen. Then he breathes in deeply, and exhales through his mouth, patting his chest, like I remember Claire used to do when she was trying to stop herself feeling anxious.
He's ready to continue.
"I won't bore you with the amount of time I spent hammering on the door, yelling, wondering if I was going to be killed; I don't want to think about it, and it's all a bit of a blur, anyway. I wasn't in a cell. It was a nice room, with a proper little bed, and a bathroom. There were books on a shelf; kids' picture books, battered old romance and action adventure paperbacks, mostly, and I read every one of them. I was two storeys up, bars on the windows and a lock on the door." He grins. "But at least there were incontinence pads in the bathroom cabinet."
We laugh; it lightens the atmosphere.
"The warders didn't talk to me, at first. I'd ask them questions when they brought in my meals, but they'd ignore me. When I said I needed clean clothes they gave me stuff like they wore, loose cotton trousers and a top with short sleeves. Like nursing or care home staff, you know the sort of thing I mean? I washed my own in the bath, with soap. Then, after three days of being ignored, a new guy shows up, another warder in the same gear, and he tells me I'm in Westgate Hospital, near Kirkwhelpton in Northumbria." He laughs, and looks up, biting his lip and shaking his head, remembering. "It's a high security mental hospital. Criminally insane, and all that. This guy, he says, "You're the hacker, aren't you? Someone was supposed to be coming up to talk to you, but they perhaps won't now everything's gone tits up." Of course, I didn't know what he meant. But then, from about the fifth day, I started to see military activity in the sky, choppers and small planes, must have come from RAF Boulmer, I s'pose—I didn't know, of course, that the virus had spread, and everything was going to shit."
> "Christ," says Kara. "You didn't know what was happening. Bloody hell."
Scott takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. "How would I? I was locked in a room, in a building surrounded by countryside."
Lottie appears with coffee; he takes it, gives her a look of gratitude.
"At first I kept track of the days, but then I didn't. I was sleepy, a lot of the time; maybe there were sedatives in my drinks, I don't know. Felt like it. All I know is that I was very, very bored, terrified I was going to be locked up there forever, and scared I might go out of my mind. You can bear anything if you know there's going to be an end to it; if someone had said, right, just stick this out for a few months and we'll let you out, I could have dealt with it, but as it was I had no idea." He shudders. "I think I did go a bit crazy."
"What did you do all day?" Lottie asks, and I touch her arm; I don't want her to ask anything he might find upsetting. He seems alert, fairly together, but he looks shaky and undernourished.
"I read, I exercised. Developed a routine for that, an hour in the morning and another at night. I made fucking origami models with the pages of the books, once I got fed up with reading them. I'm sorry, I don't really want to talk about it. It's not a part of my life I ever want to think about again."
"Did you, like, try to escape?" asks Ozzy. Dickhead. I'm not the only one who gives him a 'look'.
Scott laughs. "Look at me! I'm five foot seven and I weigh ten and a half stone, with all the physical strength of someone who spends his life in front of a screen. These guys, my warders, they were twice the size of me. I'm no hero."
"Go on," says Phil.
He takes off his glasses and wipes the lenses on his jumper. "Okay. I began to suss out that all was not right when the food started to deteriorate. I'd get pasta and tinned tomatoes twice a day, stale flapjacks, that sort of thing. I asked for toilet paper, and I got half a kitchen roll. The warders came less often, and it was the same two every time. Then just one. The guy who talked to me, big fella. Name was Mick. I liked him." He smiles to himself. "Well, he was the only one who talked to me for more than ten seconds. I got to rely on him. So, one day I asked him why I was being kept prisoner, and if it was something to do with Unicorn. When I said that, he frowned. Said he'd heard that name before, but he couldn't remember where, he was just there to keep the residents fed and clean. Ha! Residents. Don't you just love that?"
