‘But. But, Maudie!’
She didn’t answer. She pulled down the little silk scarf she’d started wearing the past couple of days.
‘Look,’ she hissed.
So I did and... yeah. All around her neck. Bruises. Deep, deep, dark bruises.
‘Jesus. Who did this?’
She patted the chopper. ‘Phillippe.’
‘This is his bike?’
‘Oh, no, no, no. This is our bike.’ She lifted up her top to show the bruises on her side. Rolled up her sleeves to show the bruises on her arms. Jesus. He’d really done her good. Never where you could see, though.
‘You with me?’ she said.
‘Always,’ I said, and I got on the bike.
‘Ready?’ she said.
‘I thought you were happy,’ I whispered. ‘You had that big smile on your face.’
‘This one?’ she said, turning round and grinning at me.
I had a good look.
‘That’s the one,’ I said. Yeah, and if I’d been paying proper attention, I’d have seen how fake it was.
There was a shout. They were up! One of ’em at least. Maude started the beast up, revved the engine, and off we went! Off the end of the lorry, right in there amongst the tents. Someone was charging us, I couldn’t see who it was, but tents were opening, people were getting out. Maude drove round the guy charging us, gave him the slip.
I could see Phillippe crawling out of his tent, and Maude headed straight for him – actually, she did a curve to get to him, which was entirely unnecessary. She didn’t have the speed. He dodged out of the way, but I put out my fist and whacked him one. Thing is, I didn’t just get him with my own puny Marti-strength. We weren’t going that fast, but even so, I had him with the speed and weight of his own chopper. Bang! He went down like a rock. I almost came off myself, and we swerved and almost stopped. His mates were up, running after us. Maude twisted the bike, hit the edge of his tent and there was a terrifying moment where it nearly got tangled in the wheels. People were waking up all over, coming out of their tents and bivvies to see. Maude was weaving and crisscrossing, but even though she was used to bikes, she was having trouble with those long forks on the chopper. There were obstacles everywhere. Rowan was yelling and screaming at everyone. Torches flashing, people yelling. I looked round behind and Phillippe was right there, and I swear he was about to pluck me off the back, he was running so fast on those long skinny legs. But then out of nowhere Laetitia appeared, and she just threw herself at him, and down he went again. That was it. We were out of there, we were free! Maude weaving as fast as she could round all the people and tents, going so fast already. I had to hang on, but I got one more glimpse of Phillippe back on his feet, holding Laetitia by the throat and roaring into her face, but there was the other woman, Marie, running up behind him with a pole, and others to help her. I like to think Anton was there, but I couldn’t make it out. I saw Marie draw that stick back and she was going to whack him right at the back of his knees. Then Maude hit a pothole and swerved and I had to grab hold of her and snatch at Rowan to stay on.
She put one foot down, got her balance back...
‘For the sisterhood!’ I bawled. Maude put her head down and opened up the throttle. The road was full of people waking up fast and jumping up to see, but we flew past them. She found a clear bit in the gully by the hard shoulder where she could pick up speed, and before you knew it we were on a slip road. Up and away and off onto the country roads, roaring like a lion, flying like the wind, like the devil was behind us. Which, if his name was Phillippe, he very probably was.
And, yes, you can bet I was sad about Anton. So sad! But no one messes with my Maudie, no matter how soft their friend’s brown eyes are, no matter how warm their hands, no matter how well their lips know how to kiss and where and when. Just don’t you dare!
So we got two miles down the road, and the bike failed. It spluttered, it coughed... it died. Maude cursed, tried to restart it. But we were out of fuel. Those boys weren’t that stupid. Well, they were stupid enough to leave some fuel in it, but not stupid enough to leave it full. Either way, we were two miles from the vengeance of Phillippe, with no fuel, on a bright moonlit night.
We wasted a bit of time faffing about with the bike, before we realised what was going on. We hadn’t even set off to hide when we heard them coming: the other bikes, on their way. It hadn’t taken them more than a few minutes to change the tyres and refuel and now here they were right after us. By the sounds of it they weren’t far away, already off the motorway. Neither of us said a word. Maude picked up Rowan, I picked up her backpack – I didn’t have one, she hadn’t let me gather anything up from my tent in case Anton woke up, so all I had was my handbag. Yes, girls, you never see me separated from my handbag, even in an emergency like this – and then we ran across the fields until we found our old friend: a nice fat, prickly hedge.
We could hear them clear as anything, driving about the lanes, looking for us. They found the bike after about fifteen minutes – we’d not had time to hide it properly. There must have been some network coverage there because they converged on that spot quickly enough. Then they started walking the fields, trying to find us, which was terrifying.
Phillippe was shouting: ‘I get you, you bitch! I cut your face. I pay you for this! I get you both!’
They had torches, sweeping the hedges and the fields. Rowan was doing his clam-up thing – he sort of went into a trance whenever we were in danger, which was a relief. It was poo-your-pants time again, folks.
I say they, but we weren’t sure how many of them there were. The girls weren’t there, I reckon, and I never heard a squeak out of Anton. So two or maybe three of them were on our case. If there had been six, they’d have got us most likely, but as it was, they didn’t.
Eventually the bikes started off again. They roared around up and down the lanes, being all macho, I guess, to make up for not catching us. Then they headed off.
The noise died down. Were they gone? Were they hiding and sneaking back? We were like, What if they’ve left someone behind to listen out for us? So we had to just sit it out. That was one looooooooooong, loooooooooong night.
In the morning, we were still nervous enough to hide ourselves away. But they never came back. Maybe in the end getting the bike back was enough. Maybe Phillippe wanted to hunt us down, but the others weren’t so keen, even the ones who came out the first time. They obviously knew how he treated his girls.
That’s my Maude – always the one with the plan. She was prepared to put up with anything she had to, if it helped us reach our goal. She knew pretty quick what Phillippe was like, but she put up with that – got the keys, waited for when he’d had a skinful to drink. Every night he liked to hurt her. But she got her own back all right. The only shame about it was that I didn’t have long enough with Anton. And that the bastard got his bike back at all.
23
So there we were again – on foot, in the countryside, not sure where we were, navigating by the sun. Climbing over fences, hiding in ditches and getting cut on barbed wire. I had nothing except my phone, my handbag, make-up, a gun with two bullets in it, a lighter, my gold coins – but not even a change of clothes. And no meds and no razor! I was beginning to look like Benny the Bear. So much hair! I don’t know where it was all coming from.
I had my long blue stretchy dress that I bought in Nottingham, and my daisy DMs. That was it. There were no shops in about a million miles – I’m not even sure they’d invented them this far out in the sticks but Maude lent me some combats and a khaki top from her extensive wardrobe of extremely dull militarist garb. It was too small but I wore it anyway, in light of what Anton had said to me. With that and the stubble, I did look less conspicuous. It’s all relative, innit?
So it was plod, plod, plod, hour after hour. I don’t suppose we got more than a few miles each day, especially with Rowan. At least his tummy was finally better. After the first day
, the hunger kicked in and pretty soon that was slowing us down as well. Try walking on an empty stomach. You won’t believe how tired you’re gonna get.
It was boring. And tiring: plod, plod, plod... plod, plod, plod. After the first day we decided that the Frenchies weren’t coming after us, so we got off the fields and started to walk on the country roads. To be honest it might have been just because we needed the going to be easier. We thought about getting back onto the M1, but the idea of Philippe tearing up and down the motorway and finding us put us off. Anyway, we both preferred the small roads. Quieter. The fewer people, the less trouble, that’s how we thought about it. If the Bloods ever did go for the refugees, it was going to be the crowds they’d want, not the dribs and drabs on the little roads. It did make food harder to find, and it left us all the more at the mercy of the weather. We didn’t dare let Rowan get wet too often. He was only a little thing, a scrap, always bloody ill and a few good cold drenchings... you know? He could actually die on us, out here in the land of no meds. Fortunately it was summer and not too cold. When it rained though, if you got caught out in the open, you had a problem on your hands. Luckily Maude still had the tarp the nice old farmer gave us.
Things were much more relaxed this time, though. With the Bloods occupied back down south, there were no warplanes overhead, not so many drones, less pressure, less danger. It was hard, but it wasn’t as stressed. There were other people like us on the road, people who didn’t want to be part of the main crowd: anything from lone travellers to a mum or dad and a kid or two, right up to big households on the move. We teamed up with them sometimes for a while until one or other of us decided to go another way, or camp up for a few days somewhere or whatever. We passed through little towns and villages. People were often prepared to help us out. Maybe they’d give us a meal, or some spare clothes, or some spuds or pasta or a loaf of bread. Sometimes we’d stop off in a village for a day or two to shop or beg, gather a few resources, then move on. My money was running low. I bought some new underwear in one place, and I got Rowan a toy plane, which he loved to fly as we toddled along – it kept him going for hours, that plane. His only toy. I also got Maude a necklace with green stones to suit her eyes, and she looked at me like I was being an idiot.
‘Just because you’re a soldier, doesn’t mean you can’t look good,’ I told her.
‘Waste of money,’ she said. She wore it, though.
Some places were good, some were dreadful. Some places, the police moved you on, others they directed you to a better spot. Some places you’d wake up and there’d be a bag of food or clothes next to you, some places you got beaten up as you slept. We got peed on once – even Rowan. I ask you: who’d pee on a child?
We had one guy let us sleep in his garage for a couple of nights. We had another family invite us round for a meal. Rowan was actually an asset – like I say, he was light-skinned and cute, and even Black people like light-skinned people. So, we made our way. Yes. We made our way. I’d go so far as to say, we were getting there, the three of us. Sticking together all the way, just like Mum said.
We’d been on the road maybe ten days and we’d made good time – we steered our way around Nottingham, which had fallen by this time, and we were up on the roads east of Sheffield. We were doing OK, keeping up the good pace because Sheffield was obviously going to be next on the Bloods’ list and we needed to keep ahead of them if we could. We teamed up with a white family, the Hamiltons, nice folk. They were on their way up from Leicester because they simply could not bear to live with the Bloods, even though all they’d needed to do was say, ‘Yes sir, no sir,’ and follow the rules. You have to respect that. Their son Steve was sniffing around a bit, and I was flirting with him – I even put on my girlie gear, which drove him crazy. We were miles from anywhere so I figured it couldn’t do any harm. It was fun, but I just didn’t fancy him enough. Maybe I hadn’t got over Anton, I don’t know. I was like, Two in just a few weeks, after not having any for eighteen years? That’s, like, being a slut. Don’t get me wrong, I hadn’t given up on being a slut. I just figured you had to practise a bit before you got there.
We arrived at a little hamlet, right in the middle of nowhere. It was just a few barns, a big farmhouse, a smaller, more modern house and a cottage or two.
That wasn’t unusual, there were plenty of farms about the place, quietly going about their business. The country might be being torn to pieces, people were dying, there was torture, mayhem and cruelty everywhere, but everyone still had to eat, earn a living and get on as best they could. What was unusual about this place was it had been shelled.
It was miles from anywhere, nothing going on. It didn’t look any different from a hundred other farms we’d seen. Who’d want to bomb a farmhouse way out here? But there it was. There was a shell hole in the side of it, a couple of craters in the yard and more in the fields around. Someone had actually sent missiles to get the job done. The roofs were all fallen in and the whole place had been scorched. It must have been an inferno in there, you’d have been able to see it for miles around. Bullet marks on the walls. Whoever it was had done a very thorough job.
We wondered if it was the name on the farmhouse gate: Jerusalem Farm. Christians weren’t always so popular now. Or maybe someone had been making bombs there, or... who knows? Either way, once it had been a place to live. Now, there was only death.
This other family, the Hamiltons, they just wanted to get out of it as fast as they could, but Maude and me were desperate to have a look. We were a bit more battle-hardened than they were. And we were hungry. There might be food hanging around in there somewhere. The trouble was that charred smell in the air. It reminded me of that other village, the one with the burned out church.
‘What if they come back?’ The woman – Jane, her name was – wanted to know. ‘And they’ll have looted it, won’t they?’
‘Not necessarily. Looks like a missile attack,’ said Maude. Yes, we regarded ourselves as experts in this field. In the end, they decided to wait in a little conifer plantation nearby and keep an eye on Rowan for us while Maude and I went ahead to have a look.
Like I say, whoever had done this place over, they’d done a good job. It was in bits. There’d been a good number of hits. Even so, it was one of those really old places with walls about a metre thick, so although most of the roofs were down, most of the walls were still standing unless they’d taken a direct hit.
We snuck around, keeping quiet, just in case. Gradually we began to feel safer – it really felt like there was no one there. You get a feeling for that sort of thing. There was lots of stuff lying around, so it seemed perfectly possible there might be food. We located the kitchen easily enough, even though it was under a tonne of stone roof tiles. We dug around – and yes! Pay dirt. Tins! Yes, yes, yes! Tins of tuna! Tins of peas, tins of beans! And God bless – I remember thanking the Lord who I don’t believe in for this – a box with pot noodles in! Under all those tiles, the fire hadn’t got to them. And they were still dry. It was a miracle! Hallelujah!
And then from nearby a baby cried.
We both froze. We crouched down, because where there’s a baby, there’s people, right? We thought maybe it was the Hamiltons come to help, they had a baby. But this was a different baby. Different voice. And weaker. Perhaps very weak.
We crouched down there in the wreckage, sheltered under a slab of fallen roof. It felt suddenly very still.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ I said.
Maude paused.
‘What if it’s in trouble,’ she said.
‘It is in trouble. So are we. We need to get out of here,’ I said.
‘Right,’ she said. But neither of us moved. We waited a bit. We waited a bit more. We kept very still. The baby stopped.
‘You reckon it belongs to someone?’ I asked.
‘Don’t know.’
‘You reckon it’s sick? You reckon it’s hurt?’
‘I don’t know,’ she sa
id.
We waited a bit longer. The baby began to whine. It coughed once or twice. It cried again, just very briefly, a couple of wheezing croaks. Then it fell silent.
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Maude, because that baby, it broke your heart. It was a baby, for God’s sake! It was hurt. You could hear that it was hurt. There was no one to look after it. It might have been dying, right there and then. You have no idea how terrible and ferocious babies are. They can break your heart at a hundred paces and there’s no weapon on Earth can stop them.
We waited some more. After a bit it wailed again a few times. The sound was so thin and weak. Then it was quiet again.
I was thinking, Just our luck. Another damn baby!
Maude let out a big, long sigh. ‘I better go and have a look,’ she said.
‘You sure?’
‘No.’
‘What if it’s a trap?’
She paused, thought about it. ‘There’s no one here,’ she said. ‘I expect it’s been left, its parents will come back. But...’
I nodded. ‘Yeah, but you just don’t know.’
I had my gun out, both bullets at the top by the firing pin. Maude crept out across the stones while I peered round the section of roof, ready to fire if I had to. The noise was coming from a little outhouse a short distance away. Maude tripped on the rubble, and the baby heard her and started to cry again.
She reached the door to the outhouse. She opened it just a tiny fraction. The baby wailed louder, just like a baby. Inside was dark. Maude opened it a bit more, stepped inside, and then it blew up.
I think I might have screamed. I cowered down and hid my face as stones and stuff rained all around me. When it was over, I peered out and the outhouse was still standing but the roof was down and the door had blown right off its hinges. There was no sign of Maude. I turned and I ran. Goddamn me, I ran. I ran out of the farmyard, out of the field beyond it and across the road to where Rowan and the Hamiltons were. They’d been hiding in a rhododendron thicket in this pine plantation, but when I got there, they’d gone. Rowan was still there, crouching down, whimpering.
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