‘What about petrol?’ Aiden then immediately asks. You get the impression Aiden is the type of boy whose thoughts wriggle around almost as much as his finger does when it’s in its favourite place.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Do you think we should be driving petrol cars still? Only they do loads of damage, don’t they? Especially the big ones.’
‘Erm . . . that’s also a difficult one, Aiden,’ I flap. ‘We need to get around, but we could also do with driving less. And maybe we should have more electric cars. It’s bad that we still use petrol too much. But we need to . . . to get around . . . so . . . you know.’
When I say nothing else of any merit, Aiden looks extremely disappointed, and sits back, his finger starting its inexorable climb back towards its favourite frontal orifice.
‘Jade? How about you? What would you like to ask?’ Sean says, trying to ignore the upward trajectory of the digit.
Jade is the type of girl who will be wearing too much make-up in a couple of years, and constantly asking her friends if they have boobs yet. ‘Yeah, well, what I reckon I want to know is what’s the main reason we’ve got, you know, lots of people who want to come here from other countries? Is it because they’ve, like, lost their homes ’cos it’s got too hot, and they haven’t got enough water and stuff? And that’s ’cos we’ve been burning lots of fossil fuels, and like, messed up their homes?’
Jade there, probably doing a better job of summing up the growing and worrying refugee and migration crisis across the globe than any dissembling politician I’ve heard speak for the past couple of decades.
But again . . . what the hell do I answer? What do I tell her? I’ve become the de-facto expert on climate change and the environment, simply by coming here today, and yet I have formed absolutely no opinion around this kind of question. These kids think I know what I’m talking about. But I don’t. I really, really don’t.
I just wanted to keep my job, damn it.
‘It’s . . . possible, I guess,’ I tell Jade. ‘There are lots of . . . factors to take into consideration, but you might be right. Could be right. Yes.’
Fuck me. What a terrible way to respond. I’m the one sounding like the dissembling politician here – but only because I have no real answers to give.
‘And you, Alex? What’s your question?’ Sean says to another boy with his hand up, near the back of the room.
‘Uh . . . yeah,’ Alex says, and looks at me. ‘Are we all gonna die because of viruses and stuff?’ he asks bluntly.
‘I’m sorry?’ I splutter.
‘Viruses. They happen ’cos of us, don’t they? ’Cos of how bad we treat the animals. We keep destroying their habitats so their diseases spread to us more easily.’
‘Er . . . yes. I suppose that’s right,’ I agree. ‘But are we all going to die? I certainly hope not,’ I tell Alex. ‘I really, really hope not.’
Fuck me, I’m so reassuring. I should be able to say that of course we’re not all going to die of a bloody pandemic – but I can’t, can I?
Alex suddenly looks very sad. ‘Only my nan died, and I don’t want anyone else in my family to.’
Jesus Christ.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that,’ I tell Alex, with genuine sympathy, before I lapse back into a stupid silence when I can think of nothing else to add.
Sean goes on to pick out three more of his class, who all ask me the same kind of questions about climate change – and I am forced to give the same mealy-mouthed answers. Each time I do, I feel a little worse. Children don’t hide their emotions, and their disappointment in me is self-evident.
I’m the adult. I’m the one who came here to talk to them about the environment. I should be able to tell them what they need to know. That’s what the adults are supposed to do. We are the Knowing Things.
They are The Sticky Things, and we are supposed to be The Knowing Things. The ones that have the knowledge. The ones that can guide them and teach them about the world as they grow into it.
And I’m failing at that task, one thousand per cent.
‘I don’t . . . I don’t know, Summer,’ I respond to the Australian girl, after she’s asked me how long it will be until the weather gets better in her country and the koalas come back again. I know nothing about what’s happening out there. I know they have fires, and it’s hot, and the Great Barrier Reef is in bad shape, but . . . that’s it. I have no answers.
I just have no answers.
‘Okay everyone, I think we’ll leave it there for today,’ Sean eventually says, as the clock gets to the hour. ‘Would you all like to thank our guests for coming in today?’
The class do so, but I’m not convinced they mean it.
I wouldn’t want to thank me either. I’ve just spent an hour first patronising them, then fobbing them off.
The bell goes, signalling the end of the lesson, and I watch as they all file past me, out of the door and towards the first break of the day. A few of them look in my direction as they go, but most don’t. Most seem to want to ignore me. It feels horrible.
When the room is at last empty of children, I rub my eyes and look at Sean. ‘Sorry about that. I think I misjudged things.’
Sean nods slowly. ‘Maybe a little.’
‘We did get some good data though, Ellie,’ Nadia points out. ‘We can go back to Nolan and say we’ve done our best to get an idea of what the customers of the future think about the environment!’ She sounds chipper and upbeat, but I can tell she’s trying to persuade herself it was a positive research session. She knows as well as I do what’s actually just happened.
‘They know far too much,’ I say with a sigh. ‘They shouldn’t know some of that stuff. About animals being slaughtered, and refugees . . . They’re kids.’
Sean folds his arms. ‘It’s not like they want to know about it, Ellie. They just have no choice. It’s all around them. They see these things happening, and want to know what the hell we’re doing about it.’
I try not to think of Aiden’s disappointed expression, or Summer’s look of worry when I couldn’t tell her that the koalas will be okay.
‘Did you know it would be like this?’ I ask my brother.
He shrugs. ‘I thought they had a good idea of what climate change is, but even I was surprised by how much they knew.’
‘And what about me? Did you think I’d know a bit more? That I’d handle it better?’ I sound a little peeved, but I’m feeling guilty and vulnerable after all of that, and he’s my brother. Brothers are there to be peeved at. It’s their job in life.
Sean looks at me with the same knowing expression he had on his face when I was seventeen and came home at eleven thirty at night, having told my parents I’d be back at ten. Sean and I crossed on the landing that evening, and I’ll never forget the way he stared at me. It told me that he knew damn well I’d been out with Lloyd Davis, rather than with his sister Sian.
‘I thought you’d be good at your job, Ellie. You always are. I thought you’d be well prepared, and up to the task of talking to a bunch of Sticky Things.’ The look hardens on his face a little. ‘But I also thought you might struggle with the subject matter. You’ve . . . you’ve never been one to worry about that kind of thing. You know . . . big-picture stuff.’
This is as close as my brother will get to saying I’m self-absorbed. He’s a good man. And not one who likes to point out the faults in others.
But he’s right. Goddamn it, he’s as right as he was when he warned me not to keep seeing Lloyd Davis – even when I told him to fuck off and die, because I loved Lloyd.
Lloyd Davis broke my damn heart that year. He cheated on me with Carlie Owen, and told everyone at college I’d let him play with my boobs in the back of his Toyota Corolla. I did nothing of the fucking sort. I was a good girl, and it took me a long time to restore my reputation – with my big brother’s help. But that’s a story for another time . . .
I suddenly feel very emotional. Partly because I’ve just thor
oughly let down a class of intelligent, engaged and worried children, and partly because I love my big brother and feel like I’ve let him down too.
Sean sees the look on my face, and immediately puts his arm around me. ‘Look, don’t worry about it too much. This whole thing is complicated, and nobody is expecting you to have all the answers.’
‘I work for an environmentally conscious PR agency, Sean. I should have had more answers than I did.’
‘Well, possibly. But like Nadia said, you do have a lot of great information to go back to your boss with. That’s a good thing, right?’
‘Yeah, I suppose so,’ I agree, though a bit half-heartedly.
‘There you go, then. It was a successful session for you guys. I’m very pleased.’
‘Me too,’ Nadia says, nodding her head.
‘Mmmm,’ I respond, in an extremely non-committal fashion. ‘Can we get some of that lovely staffroom coffee now?’ I ask Sean, in an attempt to change the subject.
He smiles. ‘Of course! Though you may want to make sure your wills are up to date before drinking it.’
That’s better. I much prefer Sean making bad jokes – instead of peering into my soul and showing me where my faults lie. I’d rather be drinking his terrible coffee any day of the week.
Actually, the coffee isn’t that bad, and the half an hour we spend with Sean in his staff room is quite pleasant. There’s something that feels ever so naughty and privileged about being in here – despite the fact that it’s been nearly twenty years since I was a schoolchild.
My mood has lifted considerably by the time Nadia and I say goodbye to my brother and walk back to my car. The kids are all milling around us, going to their next classes as we do so.
As I open my car door, I look up to see Aiden staring at me from about thirty feet away. He has his finger up his nose (of course) and a deeply disappointed expression on his face.
For a moment, I can’t work out why he looks like that – and then it hits me.
He can see the car I drive. He knows I have a big old petrol-guzzling Mercedes.
Instantly, I am filled with shame. The same shame I feel every time I get into this car these days, only multiplied beyond all comprehension.
I break eye contact with Aiden, climbing into the Merc as quickly as I can. By the time I work up the courage to look out of the windscreen, I can see that he is gone.
‘You alright, Ellie?’ Nadia asks. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘I’m . . . I’m fine,’ I tell her, flicking the ignition switch. The raw, horrible sound of that big, rattling three-litre engine bursts into life – and every time it does from now on, I will see Aiden’s disappointment, Alex’s sadness and Summer’s worry.
Every single time.
Chapter Eight
THE MANSPREADER COMETH
Oooh . . .
Just look at it.
Gaze upon its magnificence – and know in your heart that yes, the upholstery does smell absolutely fantastic.
It is, if you are interested – and you had better be, otherwise we might not see eye to eye from now on – a Mercedes-AMG C-Class, in Polar White. Just under three years old, and on less than 25,000 miles, it is a thing of such amazementology that I am fully prepared to invent new words just to impress upon you how much I love it.
It’s got more bells and whistles than Bell & Whistle Ltd, the world’s oldest bell and whistle factory. The nice man with the cocaine sniff at the Mercedes dealership assured me that the car will park itself. This is something I never intend to trust it to do, but it’s lovely to have it as some sort of option, if I ever feel daring enough, or just want to impress people.
Including you. You remain impressed, do you not?
Good.
We can proceed without further complication.
The list of features my new car has is extensive, but by far and away the best thing about it, and the main reason I bought the car, is that it is a hybrid. An environmentally friendly, gorgeous, Polar White hybrid, with climate control I can set remotely.
It does more than double the miles my stupid old car did. Its emissions are incredibly low. If I don’t drive it like a complete wally, I will reduce my carbon footprint exponentially.
And I can’t tell you how good that feels.
Because Aiden’s expression has stuck with me. As has Summer’s. And Jade’s. And Alex’s. And my brother Sean’s. And mine, when I looked in the mirror that evening.
For two days I walked around in an absolute slump. A melancholic guilt hung around my shoulders like an unwanted embrace. Not just because I’d spent the last few weeks and months of my life pursuing and undertaking a job I didn’t understand one little bit, thanks to my purely selfish desires – but also because my entire lifestyle up to this point hasn’t been environmentally friendly in the slightest.
I’ve now managed to get rid of the car, but I can barely look in my wardrobe. The amount of fast, cheap fashion stuck in there that I’ve never even worn makes me sick to think about. And don’t get me started on the pile of bags-for-life in the cupboard under the stairs, or the fact that I still don’t own a proper recycling bin.
Being the type of person who will wallow in self-recrimination if I get even one-millionth of a chance, I spent yesterday evening on the internet for three hours, really delving into the issue of the climate crisis for the first time. Can you believe that? I’ve been working for a green PR firm for a while now, and hadn’t even bothered to do much of my own research.
But when I did, I really wished I hadn’t.
It’s a bloody disaster zone. Not just the facts about climate change, but the attitudes of a worryingly large number of people in the world, who clearly don’t think it’s actually going on. I have never been environmentally conscious, but at least I didn’t deny that it was happening. I was just lazy – and happy to wallow in ignorance. These folks seem to be wilfully ignoring all the evidence put in front of them, in what I can only assume is in a similar fashion to a man who ignores the blood in his urine every morning.
The baffling thing is, it’s not hard to find real, hard evidence of climate change online. I did it in a matter of mere minutes. To be able to just dismiss it all takes a heroic amount of denial that I would have trouble mustering even if I took classes in it for three years, and graduated with a first-class honours degree in sticking my head in the sand.
No wonder Summer looked so fucking worried.
Those three hours I spent on websites like NASA, the Royal Society and the WWF scared me silly. Because of both the extent of the damage we’re doing, and the complete lack of a decent response from our governments.
I deliberately avoided any organisations I couldn’t verify the status and independence of, thinking that the information I got would be accurate and therefore wouldn’t end up being too scary – but nope, it’s carnage out there.
Oh, not necessarily for humanity. Not the rich bit of it anyway – that’ll go on just fine in whatever small pockets of niceness it can create with all its money. But everything else, and everyone else, is more or less down the toilet if nothing changes. It’s horrifying.
I almost feel like some of this stuff should be kept from the children, because it can’t be doing their mental health any good – but then how do you hide it from them when it’s outside their window? Summer watched it coming towards her in a sheet of angry orange flames when she was back in Australia. Alex lost a grandparent because of it.
I eventually had to shut the laptop off, and go and drink the rest of the bottle of white I had in the fridge. By the time I got to the end of it, I was just about able to sleep okay, and by the time I woke up this morning, I had a plan in my head. A plan to show the bloody world – and myself – that something fundamental had altered in my entire approach to this job.
Nolan was happy to give me the morning off, so I could drive to the nearest Mercedes forecourt and trade my 2004 clobberdy-bang piece of crap in for something new, cle
an, economic and better for the environment. In fact, he sounded pleased that I was going to be out of the office for the first few hours of the day. Told me to take all the time I needed to get my new car. God bless him, he’s wonderful.
And here she sits – gleaming in the midday sun.
It is, of course, just a start. Just a symbolic representation of how my thought process has been changed and updated by all the soul-searching – and Google-searching – I’ve done over the past couple of days. But it is a start.
Which, incidentally, is keyless on this car. Did I tell you that?
I want to show my new Merc off. Not just because it is my new car, and looks absolutely gorgeous, but because it’s a hybrid. I want to show off my green credentials properly for the first time, without feeling like I’m being a bit of a fraud. And there’s one person above all others I want to show it off to.
I may have been pretending that I’m an environmentally conscious person to Nolan all of this time, but no more. After the session with Sean’s class, I have turned one hell of a corner, and really do want to make sure Nolan knows it.
I’m going to get him to come for a drive with me, so I can show the car off, and while I’m doing that I’m going to have an honest and frank conversation with him about everything. I’m going to pour my heart out, and tell him just how much I’ve changed. And he’ll have proof of that change, in the shape of the greenest, most efficient car I could buy on my current wages.
Yes. That sounds like a marvellous plan to me. It’s bound to do the trick.
I proudly park the new hybrid Mercedes right next to Nolan’s Tesla, and hurry towards the main entrance to our building, a bubble of excitement rising in my chest as I do so.
This is all going to work out fine.
Ellie Cooke no longer has to keep anything hidden from her boyfriend and boss. She can’t wait to tell him all about the new car, and all about the new way she sees the world!
I hurry into our offices, and walk straight past everyone without giving them a look.
Going Green Page 17