Not Alone, page 13
The headlights pick out a mess of leaves and branches, grey in the darkness, sprouting in the road. Squeezing the stubborn wheel firmly, I turn to move round the obstacles, taking one hand off the wheel to wrap my arm around Harry on my lap, but he leans into the movement this time, balancing himself. His little hands reach to grip the wheel too, inching upwards towards mine near the top.
We’ll stop soon, in a safe spot. Wait until it’s light.
But moving, even the jerky-stiff-rumbling of the Cruiser, feels safer, feels good. Finally moving towards Jack – and I don’t want to stop.
‘What’s inside those cars?’ Harry whispers.
‘Nothing, don’t worry.’
‘But are they men—?’
‘Harry,’ I snap. Nothing slumped inside the growing lines of cars we pass can be seen clearly or dwelt on as the Cruiser chugs past, not if I don’t focus on them.
Pressing the accelerator harder to blur past them faster, I nearly miss the large shapes materializing ahead. I slam the brake pedal, clutching Harry tight. But there’s not quite enough time and the car cracks into the concrete just before we manage to stop, and we bounce to a halt, a great curtain of grey specks falling onto the windscreen and bonnet in one go.
Harry screams – a short, sharp one before he swallows it down – turning to bury his face in my chest.
I wrap my arms around him. It takes a few moments for the blocked-up, dry windscreen wipers to unclog enough scratched-up glass to see out again. Moths flutter in the headlights. Tall concrete blocks – black against the dark sky – stand in formation across the road. Reflective fragments of paint glitter: EMERGENCY ROADBLOCK: TURN BACK.
My hands are sweaty around the wheel. Sim probably knows all the roadblocks – I didn’t even think, it’s been so long since I ventured far enough to encounter one. And now his contorted face back in the car park seems more of a knowing laugh.
With a panicky yank of the wheel, I get us off the road, reversing quickly up onto the sloping verge amongst scratching bushes, coming to a stop in the mud, the wheels whirring unhappily, lights blinking, and then the engine finally cutting out. The darkness swallows us up, cold and quiet.
I wind the windows shut and rock Harry in my lap, removing my mask and feeling better once it’s over his little face, feeling very aware again of the dust that might still be on me from the garage. He cries silently. Luna is tucked right up under his chin, under his jumper for keeping clean and safe, his wooden hooves digging into my chest. I fish for a make-believe story to stop us from dwelling on the darkness and our own bed where we should be right now.
‘Are there more people Outside?’ Harry whispers.
‘Maybe.’
‘How many?’
‘I don’t know.’
He shivers.
‘Are they sleeping in the cars?’
I clutch him tighter, trembling, lapsing into silence.
‘Will they surprise us in the dark?’ Harry whispers urgently, digging tighter into me.
‘No,’ I say firmly. I can feel it again, the weight of all that death, in a way I’ve been able to forget for years.
I stare out into the dark, half-expecting faces to lurch out of it. Sim won’t catch up before it’s light, I keep telling myself – he needs it just as much as we do to figure out our next move.
Harry slips, heavy, into sleep on my lap. I listen to the tapping rain and slowly the bushes, cars and pillars begin to look purple-grey rather than black. All glistening with dew and rain. And I can see now that the barricade of pillars stops amongst the lowest bushes of the sloping verge – ahead of us on the steep slope are just the soft purple-grey outlines of bushes and saplings, the ground glimmering with trickling water.
Opening the door a crack, I slip out into my boots and the dawn gloom, getting into my overalls and gear as quick as possible, stuffing the outdoor gear sack back inside without it touching anything outside. Under the now crumpled bonnet – bull bar bent inwards – the battery is dislodged, the connectors loose. I shove it back into place, tightening the terminals, and attach the jump-starter.
To my relief, the engine roars to life again at the turn of the ignition, the lights no longer flickering, Harry stirring with a jolt and blinking out at me. But once I’ve put everything away and slid back next to him, ready to go, the Cruiser only pulls, like a dog on a leash, the rear end stuck.
Outside once more in my gear, I feel my way to the rear bumper, the smell of paint confusing until I feel a battered tin half-attached there with bungee cords, all now tangled into metal fencing half buried in the mud and weighted down under the Cruiser’s own wheels.
I feel hot and sick again – Sim could be following the trail of paint in the dawn light right this moment, perhaps now speeding up, gleeful at hearing the engine. I yank and pull and untwist, forcing trembling gloved fingers and the crowbar between cord and metal until, sticky with paint and mud, I manage to free the Cruiser. I kick the paint tin clear, harder than I mean to.
Standing shivering in the dark, I strip out of my mucky outdoor things, nails torn and fingers bleeding as I peel off my gloves. I waste a container of water over my hands and face, scrubbing as best I can, frantic to get back in our safe bubble inside, still straining to look for Sim through the trees – splodges of white paint are visible now, down there on the motorway where we hit the barricade.
With my window wound down halfway to keep the condensation from forming too badly, our wheels spin in the mud as we head for the bushes upslope of the last, leaning pillar. I get out twice to rip out foot mats and shove them under the tyres to get grip again in the wet mud. I turn the wheel one way, then the other, mud churning under the Cruiser, as I try to keep a straight line across the slope, giggly reckless energy rising again. We slide past the pillar twisting sideways, driver’s side splashing into mud, splattering us through the half-open window.
‘Did it get your eyes?’ I shout as the rear bumper grazes past the pillar and I lift off the accelerator. ‘Don’t.’ I hold his wrists as the Cruiser slides backwards down the verge on the other side of the roadblock.
Harry shrieks. Bushes snap as we hit them, the Cruiser wobbling and twisting, threatening to roll.
I grip the wheel one-handed, fighting to keep us straight, before we thump down onto the silty tarmac of the road and our rear end crunches to a stop against a rusting van.
Shaking in my damp joggers and shirt, aware of mud running down my cheek, I wet more sterile cloths and daub them over Harry’s face and mine, Harry squirming and hiccuping, half giggling and half sobbing, picking up on my energy. I change our clothes, my blood fizzing from what just happened, and bundle the dirty ones into an emptied holdall so we don’t mistake them.
Setting off again, I am lighter and calmer, with Sim behind that firm barrier and Jack feeling a huge step closer. The Cruiser is moving more smoothly too as we weave between rusted cars and bushes in the dawn dark, the steering wheel heavy but not juddering so much, the dash lights and headlights constant and the rear end no longer scraping.
My blinks become long and heavy despite the cold air coming in to clear the windscreen, the sleepless nights and adrenaline finally catching up with me. I keep checking the air meter, the engagement ring then twinkling on my finger and drawing my eye. The bejewelled dress I picked out that matched it rises in my mind, all soft layers of fabric and glittering beads, like any one of the glacial waterfalls we’d seen in Canada.
It begins to feel like this cold dark road is all that exists. I fight against my heavy eyes and the constant subtle tug of the stiff steering wheel to the left, and the pedal as it pushes and sags, making us surge and slow.
I’m straining so hard to see through the dust and scratches and fogging windscreen in the gloom that my head feels like it’s splitting down the middle; and the clicking of the wheels, rattling of the car, and scrape and clatter as we pass debris and vegetation make the split fracture round my skull. I press my fingers over my temples – tension tingling under my touch. Jack once told me there are pressure points there, that I should try massaging them instead of going straight for painkillers. He didn’t like them in the house.
As we round a bend, I frown ahead at something too bright, like firelight, in the far distance, unable to work it out. Until there’s a little more of it and I realize it must finally be the sun.
15
Up yet another slip road, the midday sun in our eyes. Thick, trembling saplings crowd us, their rich red leaves coming loose to spiral down like phoenix feathers, tapping against the windscreen. Harry’s hands, itching at his face again, cover his eyes as he shrinks from the windows.
‘Harry! Stop touching your face – remember, everything could be dirty now.’
He drops his hands. ‘Why does everything want to get in here, but it didn’t in our flat?’ He looks out with big worried eyes nearly swamped by my too-big mask round his little face. ‘Can we stop yet? My tummy hurts.’
I pause, the engine idling. Blackened mature stumps peek out amongst the red and golden-orange foliage, like a forest burning. The car still smells faintly of vomit, Harry’s wiped-clean mask hanging from the rear-view mirror.
‘What do you mean? Do you feel sick again?’ I look behind us, but the motorway disappeared as we turned onto the slip road. I wonder how far Sim followed our paint trail. If he’s gone back, broken into our flat. I don’t know why he would, but I still feel sick at the thought of him touching my things, reading my old journals, or taking Jack’s clothes and shoes. I couldn’t ever bear to move them from where he left them on his side of the wardrobe, which still smelled like him on opening, even now. I feel heavy again at leaving it all behind.
‘I don’t like always moving.’ Harry rubs his head, pulling at the knotted straps of the mask again.
I smile in sympathy, passing him the water flask, and help him lift the mask up for a sip, noticing the red marks the mask has worn over his nose and cheeks. I flick the air meter on, just to check, before reluctantly asking: ‘Would you stop touching your face if you didn’t have that mask on? If you promise to be careful, you can take it off inside the car.’
He nods urgently, and I get that treasured little smile as I put the mask in the glovebox.
I don’t recognize the layout of the roundabout at the top of the slip road, so we rejoin the motorway. Useless peeling road signs, swamped by vegetation, mark the way. Jack’s mum’s house was about a two-hour drive, Before. My arms are tired from fighting with the steering wheel as we’ve driven up and back and retraced roads all morning. I groan and kick the accelerator to push past more fallen leaf litter and branches. Harry yelps.
‘Sorry.’ I rub his knee.
As we plough through the fallen leaves up the next slip road I get a good feeling. It looks familiar – the rise of the road, the angle of the first exit at the roundabout and the long straight road coming off it surrounded by an expanse of dead black trees, young yellow and pink saplings thick around them, that could perhaps be Clumber Park – which Jack and I used to pass as we left the motorway following the signs towards Sheffield, on our way to North Derbyshire and his mum’s house in Rothermere.
Once past the forest, I go one way and then another, past a bridge and an old pub, wondering if they look right. We both jump as the Cruiser groans louder, the vibration from the front wheels rumbling through us. Finally, we reach some familiar residential streets full of the dark grey stone of northern villages and I let the Cruiser roll down a hill, clanking and tugging to the left.
‘Is the Cruiser grumpy, Mummy?’ Harry whispers, clutching his seat. ‘Nearly time to go to bed now for everyone?’
I smile, scrunching tired eyes into a sore blink, resisting the urge to rub them. ‘We’re nearly there now. We need to keep watch, like you did in the garage for Sim, so we’re not surprised.’
‘Sim the man is here?’ He sits up straighter, staring blearily from tree to house to the moving road, flinching every time the wheel on his side groans.
‘No, I hope not.’
As we rumble back uphill, the streets steepening, I scan rusted damaged road names – where they’re not smothered by leaves or dust or algae – for Hilltop Lane, and look for anything familiar. The wheels groan louder, making me pull ever harder to the right to keep us straight.
Harry presses his hands over his face at the spreading hilly views.
I pull them free again.
We push through rust-coloured shrubs into a short, straight cul-de-sac – but this isn’t it, the houses don’t have steep steps up to the doors. The steering wheel wrenches itself too far left, the accelerator suddenly switching back to fuel-engine mode and revving hard, Harry’s side scraping along a garden wall with a metallic screech. I battle to turn us away, but we only scrape closer, the wheels firmly stuck now, nosing us deeper into the overgrown bushes and crumbling wall, until the Cruiser finally stalls.
Still buzzing from the rumble of the engine, the street feels too silent now. I watch for movement along the sprouting cracked tarmac, amongst the rusted skinny hybrids – cables still snaking uselessly under garage doors, and along the rows of houses to either side.
‘I guess the last bit’s on foot,’ I whisper. ‘It’s on this hill, I’m sure.’
I hesitate, liking the safe bubble of the Cruiser, with its lock mechanisms clicked down.
‘I don’t like everything still moving when we’re not.’ Harry rubs his eyes.
‘It’s not really – do you feel sick again?’ I yank his hands free from his face.
Eyes wide, he leans away from the bleached-yellow privet pressing against his window, little flying ants pinging erratically against the glass. ‘Is the blood in my head sloshing about like a flood?’
I frown, beginning to smile. ‘Where did you get that idea?’
‘Is that why flying bugs are so clumsy too?’
I smile at him. ‘I don’t think so. You’ll feel normal again very soon anyway.’
Taking a breath, I push open my door before the delay becomes paralysing. Mask up over my mouth and nose and shielding my eyes from the fluff in the breeze with my hands, I shut the door on Harry as I hurry my still-muddy boots, overalls and gloves on.
Covering the ground, weeds and winding laces of algae run through every crack in the driveways and tarmac. Greyed particles and dirt cover windows and brickwork like flicked paint, and gappy roof tiling and stubborn bits of guttering sprout with fiery strips of wild flowers. It’s eerie the way the ornamental hebes still retain their sculpted globe shapes amongst all this, though they are shabby now, with blonde patches spreading across once deep-green leaves.
Sparrows suddenly chirp sharply from the bushes, making me jump. Then, as I stand still, the throaty peep-peep of a great tit joins in, and the high trill of a wren.
‘Why are there so many?’ Harry clamps his hands over his ears as I turn back and open the door and help him into his shoes.
‘They must have found food and shelter up here.’ The unexpected birdsong feels delicious and familiar – comforting as I stand here all jittery – though it all sounds hoarser and quieter than Before.
Harry is frozen with his feet on the door-sill.
‘It’s just little friends, see?’ I point to the nearest – a robin, its breast a subdued tatty red. It too is paler and blander now, coat tarnished from exposure and poor diet.
I rummage in my pack for our precious bulrush cakes and crumble a corner onto the ground. Harry finally leans forward to look. The robin hops down, instantly flitting off with a morsel in its beak.
Harry meets my gaze, eyes creasing as if I’m getting a small smile under the mask. He peers down again. ‘There’s so many. What if I squash them?’
Little rivulets of water trickle round my boots, full of tiny beetles and water spiders, with banks of dull mustardy algae writhing with their larvae.
‘You won’t, come on.’ I offer him both my hands, resisting telling him to hurry up – he needed a lot of gentle coaxing even when desperate for a toilet stop on the way here.
He carefully steps down and then quickly into his too-big raincoat and gloves I have ready for him, scratching and pulling at his newly dry mask.
‘I know yours still smells. Just make do until we get inside, OK?’
I feel light-headed, a little sick, Harry outside. But we walk up the hill, going several feet into each cul-de-sac, as I try to morph the speckled and algaed unkempt houses into the ones in my memory. I’m conscious the whole time of leaving the Cruiser further behind, street after street.
Harry stumbles beside me, clinging to my hand, shrinking and swaying with each slight breeze as if it’s a dreadful force battering him, and dragging on me as we pass bushes and saplings. He’s happiest when we pause to think next to the bare brick of buildings and garden walls.
The next cul-de-sac cuts across a sharper slope, the houses on the right all with steep steps leading up to the front doors.
‘This is it!’
I squeeze Harry’s hand and walk halfway down, pausing at the bottom of one of those sets of steps – a wind-sanded front door at the top, the corners still that smart burgundy red.
The garage on the right is shut. I have to stop myself from walking towards it. I imagine Jack working on the Subaru in there with his stepdad Ian, both turning to smile at me as I enter, Jack pulling me into a sweaty hug, gleefully explaining all they were doing, always wanting to fix things and create. I wish I’d shown Harry Jack’s guitar, let him try it out – something Harry could impress him with now.
‘Is Daddy here?’ Harry whispers, clinging to my hand, tripping up the steps and wincing at the squish of algae and uneven ground beneath him.
My own legs feel wobbly and weak, head full of what might have happened to Jack and how we missed each other. He will be different, as I am; of course he will be. I feel guilty wishing to find him alone, for him to be mine and Harry’s only – at least for however long my chest holds out for . . .
