Not Alone, page 28
‘Oh,’ he says, eyes wide, scratching his scabby forehead in confusion. ‘They went to sleep? In all the houses, like that man?’
I nod. ‘It means they’re not ever going to wake up again.’
He slowly nods, his eyes growing larger. ‘Are we going to die too?’
I push the pages from his lap, and nudge his little face up to meet mine. ‘No, not yet. I won’t let you.’
He picks at the scab on his forehead, rocking on his heels. ‘But . . . will it hurt?’
I wonder – sick – if he glimpsed Ian’s gasping face in the bathroom in Derbyshire . . . or if only I saw enough of his face and its decay and dust to imagine that. I moisten my lips, the saltiness on the cracked skin making me feel sicker. I can’t help it; I can almost smell the stench of all that death, the reek of decaying flesh lingering in stairwells and houses, the metallic odour of blood. The horrifying flurries of greenbottle. How, in the first months, I used to lie awake at night unable to stop thinking about Jack, wondering if he was alive or dead, about how fast or slowly or painfully he might have died or even if he was dying right at that very moment. I imagined him staring at his phone – as I had mine – unable to connect to me. The pain of wishing for that one last chance to say I love you.
It’s better to say goodbye than not, isn’t it? More bearable. I let myself hope too much. That after all, there might be a chance for that.
‘I’m four and more than a half and I’ve been lots of brave since we left the flat. You have to tell me.’ Harry folds his arms. ‘Then it won’t surprise me.’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Sometimes, I think—’ I look at Harry, his insistent, grown-up little face. I don’t want him to know how painful it could be. How I heard people gasping last breaths, hacking up their lungs, screaming, falling from windows. In that first year, all those awful remains on sofas and in bedrooms, or in the street, where they must have just dropped.
Or the recent crunch of metal into ribs.
I imagine all the awful ways we could die here – starved if the floods stay up, poisoned by the water or the food, or suffocated by the fumes of the fire or fresh contaminated rain blowing in. ‘But sometimes life is painful too, isn’t it? Like when you scrape your knee or when you hit your head or when you feel really sad.’
‘I guess.’
My stomach gurgles. Harry’s pops as if in reply.
I glance outside.
‘It’s OK, Mummy, I can keep the fire warm. I did it yesterday,’ he says proudly.
I feel the sharp pricks and painful pulse of my chest squeezing tight; I didn’t even notice. But I smile at his piles of kindling and semi-damp wood sorted into sizes. I fidget, wanting even now to leave him cold until I get back, to be safe. ‘OK, be careful?’
He nods, pulling his own make-do mask up – the smoke often curls into the room, thick and bitter.
‘There’s no more drinking water until I get back. Don’t touch the kettle – it’ll be a while until the fire is hot enough to heat it anyway. You promise to not go outside?’
He nods, a flicker of fear in his eyes. ‘Wholeheart promise.’
He comes in for a gentle hug, knowing by now he has to be careful with me.
‘I love you,’ I say, determined now to say it every time. ‘Wholeheart, Harry.’
Once outside, I slog north, past the ruin of Arisaig and then along the water’s edge on the grassy dunes, too sore for the muddy slopes of the hillside today. I feel buoyed at first because the water has actually gone down by a few metres – piles of dead grass and leaves and decayed birds along the trash line. Maybe we might be able to make it back to Fort William soon.
But I can’t imagine the water not still being high there, so low-lying at the meeting of loch and river. And even if it weren’t flooded, what then? Holiday homes make for poor scavenging.
No way we could turn to Bill’s community now in any case.
At a copse of still-standing ash and birch, I stare at the thick, spongy leaves, bright acid yellow with threads of red veins.
Yet maybe Andy’s right, and everything just grows differently now and this lurid yellow is just as alive as the green once was, even just here, where these trees seem to be fighting hard against the dust and toxins to breathe. Perhaps it’s still worth risking sometimes. I pull my mask clear to spit-clean the grey film off a leaf. It’s bitter and tough in my mouth. Yet we have eaten them before, when desperate.
I get dizzy as I pick handfuls, and I feel myself sway, pain pulsing stronger.
I concentrate on three careful breaths before I continue moving down the shore. Foods I haven’t thought of in years keep popping into my head: chocolate fingers, Victoria sponge with sharp raspberry jam and smooth cream, chips with tomato ketchup, salted caramel ice cream . . . Harry would love it all; I imagine him stuffing it in his mouth. Giggling. Full of energy and sugar.
I rub my stomach, trying to soothe the aching.
And keep going, up and down the rises and dips of the dunes and fields, following the shoreline, until I can’t see the cottage anymore. The sun inches up overhead. Hauling myself up onto a boulder to rest, I scour the landscape. No cottages on the slopes or other copses to search, just low muddy orange grass and bracken, grassy dunes and rocks.
Yet in the distance, way north of where Arisaig should have been, there’s something. I frown, trying to work out what it is. A brown rectangular shape, half in the shallows, half resting on the rocks.
I chew on another leaf, cringing at its bitterness, but it keeps me from feeling so dizzy and gives my mind something to focus on other than pain. I have to rest four more times before I reach it. Halfway there I understand what it is – a shipping container.
I keep moving, enjoying the leaves itching at those infuriating points down the back of my throat as I swallow. This is the west coast, anything brought in from the sea has to come from the Atlantic Ocean. I start imagining American candy bars, wrapped safe forever in cellophane and sealed plastic boxes, preferably from a time Before when America refused to ban such plastics. Or preserved fruits from Brazil stored in syrup and cans – pineapple, peaches, mango . . . smoked South American jerky, intensely salty. Californian dates, gooey like toffee.
As I near it, a strong salty-metallic tang that even my blocked nose can smell comes off the container. Completely rusted with brown-red flakes, the container glistens where the tide has splashed it, translucent crabs scuttling inside rust holes as I give the door a useless tug. Then hit it with my fist as hard as I can bear to. The rusty bolt rattles but doesn’t come loose.
My hand throbs in time with my heart as I look around. Just rock and mud, and a few miniature orange-red pines and yellow-brown birches.
Trudging all the way back to the cottage, I haul the heavy blunted axe I found in the shed to the container, stopping less frequently than I did before, despite my whole body burning with the weight.
It takes a few swings before I get enough height and momentum to bring the axe down hard enough on the bolt. The jolt runs right up my arms and down into the centre of my chest.
‘Fuck.’ I drop the axe, buckling to hands and knees, sucking in air, red-brown flakes showering me.
I shake myself out. Think of Harry. I swing again – boom – and again – boom. The bolt swivels, flecks of rust flying off. I try to tug and wiggle it open. I keep swinging until part of the bolt sheers off and clatters on the rocks. I have to kneel on the ground clutching my chest, grimacing as my heart throbs.
Yet the doors remain stubbornly closed. I pull and pull, wedging the axe in the small gap I make and trying to lever it open.
Sweating, there’s enough room now to glimpse inside: a mess of boxes and crates and shiny plastic in the gloom. Hope soars. I yank the door again, enough to squeeze my head and shoulders through.
Ziplock plastic bags, vacuum-packed. I tear the nearest one open and a woollen, exotic smell bursts out. It reminds me of holidays, staying in bed and breakfasts with someone else’s laundered sheets. I pull out the coloured fabrics. Staring. Not able to comprehend what I’m looking at.
The material is thick, heavy, and otherworldly with bright pigments. Neon pink and electric blue, shot with bright apple green, all in geometric repeated patterns.
I shove myself further in, my hips stuck at the opening.
I tug open a box and the smell of plastics is overpowering. Flip-flops. All varieties. Violet, covered in flowers. Gold with rhinestones. Green with tropical fruits. I stare. Opening box after box. Flip-flops. Full of fucking flip-flops!
Tears run hot down my cold cheeks. Two pocketfuls of leaves isn’t enough. Nowhere near.
I’m sobbing before I realize it. Hard sobs like a child – my whole body heaving and clenching. Coughing and spluttering. Tugging my mask clear of my face again. Clutching my burning heart as I slump to the ground, still half inside the container. Piles of plastic flip-flops half burying me. When I start laughing I find I can’t stop. Laughing and groaning, bloody phlegm hacking up on my sleeves, a ghostly metallic echo inside the container.
Something outside on the rocks nudges my boots. I rein in my coughing and tears with a gasp, and try to sit up. A shape moves along the shoreline, tugging at seaweed. A red deer by size, her coat greyed and ghostly, limbs long and delicate. Ethereal.
She’s rooting amongst the seaweed with her snout for tiny, dead washed-up fish and limpets. Maybe the grasses taste too bitter and contaminated and she’s drawn to scavenge instead, like the roe deer down south. The fish seem to disintegrate to grey mush as she bites them – would a few fish be so bad for Harry and me? Better or worse than starving? Seafood was banned years before the storm hit. Microparticles and toxins literally gobbled up the food chain. And the seas too damaged by overfishing.
I don’t move, wishing I still had that rifle. One shot right now and I could have fed Harry a feast, venison broth and steaks, heart and liver pancakes.
And yet . . . she looks ghostly, like a forest spirit who’s lost her woods. Her belly is rounded, too rounded for her not to be pregnant, unless it’s just from eating so much crap. I could have done it, though. I look at the blunt axe on the rocks by my feet. I did it to Bill, didn’t I? Hurt another parent. Another sick, desperate parent. I could do it to her, for Harry.
She flinches as if she senses my thoughts, those eyes turning to stare at mine. Pale and cloudy like Bill’s, lined with flies and caked with dust so that she blinks furiously. They widen, as if she’d thought me nothing but inedible clothy flotsam a moment earlier.
She seems lit up by the soft yellow light, the rising and resettling insects all around her like a halo. I notice her soft pointed ears and the curve of her back, the relative delicateness of her thin but powerful legs as she paws through the wet sand and mud back towards me. Fully sunk to her knees, foreshortening those legs, and her head carried low as she strains in the mud, she looks so like what Jack captured in Luna the reindeer, with his stumpier legs and lower, heavily antlered head. I remember Jack smiling up at me, in the midst of carving.
I love these creatures; they’re like really useful, friendly pals, aren’t they? Can survive anything.
The red deer mouths at my legs, teeth scraping along my shins. I kick, my shouts echoing round the container. She balks, ears pricking and eyes losing their confidence, becoming wider again in fright.
I stare as she bounds up the slopes away from the sea, my thoughts racing.
I know where the reindeer are in Scotland.
Fucksake, Jack.
36
One Year and Eight Months Before the Storm
‘They’re semi-tame,’ the volunteer says, ‘but they can be a bit oblivious, so just be aware of the antlers.’ We’re stood outside the Reindeer Centre at the guide kiosk.
‘Are they actually Scottish?’ Jack says, leaning against the counter.
I bite my lip to hide my smile. It’s early – dew burning off the pine canopies in the morning light – both of us still sleepy from the huge Scottish cooked breakfast we got in our guest house back in Aviemore, just a mile or two away through the dense Cairngorms Forest.
‘Well, no, reindeer went extinct here about eight hundred years ago. These were reintroduced from Sweden to help save the Scottish heathlands – grazing the rank grasses, bracken and shrubs helps keep the heath itself rich.’
‘Increases resilience,’ I add.
‘Climate change?’ Jack asks and I nod. ‘So, you want to feed these Swedes?’ he says, as if this was a swizz to have got up early for.
I roll my eyes, smiling. ‘Yeah, of course.’ I playfully punch his shoulder. ‘The Highland Zoo is different! Reindeer were native to Scotland once.’
‘They roam free too.’ The volunteer grins at Jack. He’s gangly, with dark dishevelled hair, a slightly pink wind-scorched face, and thin fingers that he taps on the price card. ‘Two pounds for a bag of feed.’ He looks up at Jack like I’ve seen many people do – enjoying his easy chatter. Jack’s tall, his blonde hair pulled back in a topknot, eyes bright – always appearing confident and sure of himself.
I hand over the money and Jack smiles at me as we head off. It’s a few miles through forest and over a bridge, before our boots clomp across a boardwalk, lush green heath on the mountainside around us.
‘You love this stuff, don’t you?’
I nod. ‘I like seeing how the Earth can clean itself up if we just find a way to let it.’ This trip has been good – both of us loving exploring wild places. I know we talked about it and planned and dreamed, but I’m glad we’ve been excited by similar things out here on our first proper trip together: the hikes, the forests, that feeling of being on an adventure in the wilds. Having the time to sit and have deep conversations about life.
The ground is hard and dry beneath the boardwalk, the summer sun warm on my face, even if the mountain breeze feels cool. Jack slips his hand into mine – our fingers interlacing tight – as we follow the other visitors and guide ahead. I feel good in my faux-fur-trimmed jacket and tight black jeans, make-up done with cute winged eyeliner. I definitely overpacked, wanting to look nice every day. Jack smiles at me, head leaning to one side, his eyes bright in a way that makes me feel it was worth it.
Our first few months in the flat together have sped by. I start my Wildlife Trust internship when we get back and a new part-time job at the garden centre. Not quite landed where I want to be yet, but it’s been a novelty these past ten months since graduating to have some money for once in my life. I feel like I’m a bit more grown up, an equal in Jack’s world, not just the younger, broke, long-distance student girlfriend anymore . . . and I like that feeling.
As we go uphill, the reindeer join us, slotting in amongst the convoy of people. There’s one right behind us. Her antlers brush the nylon of my backpack as she bends her head to follow the path. The velveteen covering is coming off now at the end of the season, leaving bloody stains on the antler bone.
‘What is that?’ Jack says.
‘That clicking?’
‘Yeah.’ He makes a face. ‘Sounds like time ticking away too fast or bones cracking . . .’
‘He just said, Jack, it’s their ankles. It’s how they stay in contact if they wander into snow or fog.’
‘Kind of sweet, I guess,’ he says, with a grimacing smile, and it makes me laugh.
‘They eat vegetation and mosses in summer, and lichen and fungi in winter,’ the guide is saying, signalling that we can offer them our pellet feed now. ‘They can survive thick snowstorms and fluctuating temperatures: their hairy noses warm and filter the air they breathe in, and their thick oily fur repels snow and rain . . .’
I don’t hear the rest. The compressed pellets of animal feed are barely in my hands a few seconds before she hoovers them up, warm breath and warm tongue on my cold fingers.
Jack takes endless photos, framing me between heath and mountains and a clear blue sky.
The reindeer mill about amongst the visitors, nosing in the heather for fallen pellets. Someone gets close enough to touch a reindeer flank, unable to contain a squeal at the soft fur. I edge forwards, wondering if we’re allowed.
‘I could live here,’ Jack says, breathing in the view. ‘Peaceful. Majestic. Makes you feel so fucking free!’
And it does. I feel as if my soul has been recharged up here with Jack. I feel alive in a way that only endorphins and fresh air seem to make you.
‘Could we handle the isolation, though?’ I say, chuckling. ‘I’d miss our little flat and town and life down south.’
He rolls his eyes. ‘Katie—’
‘You know I’m right.’ I laugh, leaning into his warm chest.
He presses a kiss onto my forehead. ‘Well, if we ever wanted to start over, leave it all behind.’
It’s a moment before I realize we’re alone. Everyone else has drifted off back down the slopes, out of sight.
‘Maybe one day we’ll do a year out of travelling instead?’ Jack whispers. ‘Get away? Two weeks is over so fast. And I don’t want to wait until we’re retired to have bigger adventures, what if we’re dead before then?’ He laughs. ‘Somewhere like Scandinavia maybe – like Scotland on steroids!’
‘Maybe.’ I smile. ‘But I’ve got so much I want to do first.’ The breeze ruffles my T-shirt, bringing with it the rich scent of pine from down the valley. I think about the rugged Norwegian mountains and fjords, Jack’s Subaru, perfect freedom, and all that time together. ‘One day, though. I think I’m catching the travelling bug.’
And just then it starts to rain – thick, heavy, warm summer droplets – like it hasn’t in months. We both lift our faces and arms into it, laughing, getting soaked. I can taste it on my tongue – soft and fresh, reminding me of sudden summer showers and garden parties where everyone makes a dash, laughing, indoors – and down the slope I can hear the squeals of delight from the rest of our group just out of sight. The warm heath seems to steam with rising moisture, even as it rains. We catch each other’s eye and everything seems to pause and I know I’m going to remember this moment, this feeling, always.
