by Alex Marwood
‘I—’
‘You didn’t make the bus,’ he says.
A little chill runs up my spine. ‘Uri!’ I protest. ‘You left me behind!’
A sardonic chuckle. ‘To be fair, 143, I was pretty sure you weren’t going to make it.’
I’m lost for words. I thought I could handle this. Handle him.
Then he laughs. ‘You’ve shown you’re a survivor, I’ll give you that.’
* * *
* * *
I try to avoid the memories. Most days I am successful, but pleading with Uri brings them crashing back. I hope, baby, that you never know anything like the pain of lying pinned to a bed while over a hundred people die outside your window. Shouts. Then screams. Then howls of pain. You can hear all those things through glass, and wood, and even stone. But no one can hear you calling back. People scrabbling to get up the stairs to where I was, not to find me but to save themselves. They never made it. My mother. I heard her, calling my siblings, her familiar voice ringing out clear above the hubbub. And I heard her stop.
Then silence. Days of silence before anyone found me. The wings of carrion birds as they found the banquet on the courtyard gravel.
‘Please,’ I say. ‘Tell me where you are. Let me come home.’ In my mind’s eye I see him in the courtyard at Plas Golau, though it must be the last place one would find him now. But he must be some place similar. A central core, easily locked and easily defended, and easily locked to keep the people in, with open country all around to afford a view of approaching attack. Mountain country. But I’ve looked at the Cairngorms and they are huge. And, even if I did find them, I won’t make it inside without an invitation.
‘Yes, you have my respect, I’ll give you that,’ he says. ‘But that’s a long way from having my trust. There’s been a lot of water under the bridge here, 143, and you’ve been out of contact for months.’
‘You know what happens when you stop a course of antibiotics halfway through?’ I ask. ‘It’s not good.’
‘And yet, here you are,’ he says.
‘It’s not an excuse, it’s a fact. And they took my box for evidence. You know when I got it back? Yesterday.’
Plus or minus three days. He doesn’t need to know everything. Especially the bits that might suggest that I’m weak.
‘Excuses.’
I backtrack. ‘Okay, ask me,’ I say. ‘Tell me. What do you need from me?’
‘Have you found your siblings?’
‘I’m looking. They’re minors. Apparently I can’t just be told where they are. I need permission from whoever’s in charge of them. I’m not exactly on the list of approved guardians. What with the mental health facility and the mass suicide and everything.’
‘Jesus, 143,’ he says. ‘What have you been doing all this time?’
‘Waiting to get released.’
‘You need to find them,’ he says.
‘I know.’
‘We should have taken that boy with us,’ he says. ‘He was good. Talented. Showed real promise.’
‘They come as a pair,’ I tell him.
‘Well, I suggest you make her safe, then.’
I stay silent. Don’t trust my voice. I haven’t even found her yet. Haven’t looked her in the eyes and remembered that she was once my sister.
‘There are three left,’ he says. ‘Not just her.’
‘Really?’ I’d thought there was one more. Not two. Who’s the second?
‘I need you to find them,’ he says. ‘There’s no certainty for any of us unless we know for a fact that they’re safe.’
I lay a hand on my abdomen and stroke the place where I imagine your head to be with my thumb. It’s okay, baby. Once they’re all safe, you’re safe too. See? We’re already one step closer. I wait, three beats, to make it sound like I’m deciding. ‘Who else?’ I ask.
‘78,’ he says.
We would count off every night before dinner, to make sure no one was lost or sick or AWOL, and I remember, after twenty years of constant repetition, almost everyone’s. I was 143, my mother 142. Eden is 201, Ilo 226. Uri loves to call us all by number. Only his Guards had names. They spoke of us en masse as ‘the Drones’.
78 is Jaivyn Blake. I’d assumed it would be him, as he was already on the Outside when he made his break for it. I didn’t like Jaivyn. He didn’t like any of us, either. Not even his peers, as far as I could see. I still remember the way he manhandled me, the day Eden was born. It will be a pleasure to find him.
‘And 139,’ he says, and my heart skips a beat. Eilidh.
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘I thought she was ...’ I begin, and then I stop myself.
I didn’t see her die. Not like Zaria or Farial. Didn’t see a body, just assumed that her vanishing meant what I thought it meant. It was me who cleared her box out from the dormitory and gave it to Vita. Surely you wouldn’t leave, and leave your box behind? Just ... one day she was there and the next she wasn’t, and we never spoke of her again.
‘Where is she?’ I ask.
‘Working on that,’ he says. ‘And now you can, too.’
‘I’d thought we—’ I begin.
‘There is no we, 143,’ he snaps. ‘Find them and show me evidence that they’re safe, and we’ll talk.’
‘I don’t know what to do,’ I say. ‘Where to start.’
‘Start with your own,’ he says. ‘And keep this phone on. We’ll be in touch when we know anything. And find me that boy too. If he’s still alive.’
16 | Sarah
As she’s leaving, the case worker takes Sarah out for a ‘chat’ on the brick parking space that her neighbours all refer to as their ‘drive’. Hands her a bulging folder of paper. ‘Sorry,’ she says, ‘it’s a bit chaotic. Had to shove it all together. You’ll need to sort it out before you hand it over to the new case worker.’
‘Um,’ says Sarah, ‘thanks.’
‘No, I mean, there’s other stuff in there that you’ll want to keep here, not hand over. Their birth certificates, for a start. You’ll need those. It took a while but we got that done for them – it was pretty much impossible to do anything else without them. You can’t really have someone in the government systems if they don’t officially exist, can you?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘Anyway. You need the papers. As their legal guardian. You’ll need them for the school, for a start, especially if they’re going in after half-term. And their vaccination certificates. The schools are getting tougher about letting kids in unvaccinated. Herd immunity and that. There’s a few second-doses you’ll need to get sorted once you’ve got them registered with a doctor. I’m afraid we had to take a guess at their actual birth dates. Well, Eden was reasonably easy; she swears she was born on 9/11. Ilo, though ... he seems to have a good idea when he was conceived, so we’ve extrapolated forward from that.’
‘That’s odd.’
‘Winter solstice, apparently,’ she says, and shrugs. ‘They seem to have had a bit of a thing for solstices. Though I don’t think his conception was anything official, as such. Just a party slip-up by the mo— your sister.’
Not the first one, Sarah thinks, and is shocked at her own spitefulness.
‘Anyway, we made it the 14th of September, as that probably isn’t too far off.’
‘Two birthdays in a week,’ she says. ‘Heavens.’
The bright Case Worker Smile flashes at her.
‘I wish I’d known at the time. We could have done something to celebrate,’ Sarah says, and gives the Smile right back to her in return. ‘Thanks for getting this sorted,’ she says. ‘I wouldn’t even have known where to start.’
‘Pah,’ says the social worker, ‘we’re not actually in the business of incubating whooping cough outbreaks in our children’s homes.’
‘Thank you,’ says Sarah.
Th
ey’re standing out on the drive, by the woman’s car, and she’s fiddling with her car keys and her briefcase full of sandwiches and folders, clearly keen to get back on the road. It’s a long drive back to Dolgellau. Sarah’s glad that she at least won’t have to make that again.
‘They’re nice kids,’ the case worker says, optimistically. ‘Polite.’
‘Yes,’ says Sarah. ‘They seem it.’
‘Anyway,’ says the case worker, eyeing Sarah’s generous dwelling and obviously drawing conclusions about her income, ‘I must get on the road. Long trip back. Oh, and—’ She delves in her pocket, produces a piece of folded A4. ‘I meant to give you this.’
Sarah unfolds it. It’s an address, somewhere in the TW postcodes. 136b Bath Road. Where is that? Twickenham? Hampton? Somewhere around Heathrow?
‘It’s the half-sister. I thought you should have it. There are reasons why we can’t give yours to her, as the kids are minors and she’s an adult and we don’t really know all that much about her. And she’s been in rehab until very recently. You’d need to bear that in mind. Maybe assess her a bit before you plunge in. But maybe you could sound them out? See if they’re wanting to be in touch? If they want to be, it would be no bad thing, I’d have thought.’
‘Thank you,’ says Sarah. ‘I don’t suppose there’s a phone number, is there?’
‘Not as far as I know.’
‘Okay.’ Sarah folds up the paper. She’ll put it in her wallet while she thinks, so she doesn’t lose it.
* * *
* * *
Ilo is staring at portraits of his ancestors. They’ve taken themselves as far as the dining room, at least. Some signs of curiosity.
‘Who are these?’ he asks.
‘Your forebears,’ she says, ‘on your mother’s side. They all lived here before us. This one—’ she points to her great-grandfather ‘—built this house.’
‘They don’t look very happy.’
‘Oh, I think they were happy enough. There’s a type of person who finds being miserable more satisfying than just about anything.’
Ilo turns and looks at her. Studies her face for a moment, then nods. ‘I understand,’ he says, and smiles.
* * *
* * *
At the table, Eden has settled into the chair at the head, the one Sarah thinks of as her father’s chair. Sarah feels oddly uncomfortable about it. She’s never sat there herself, even though she has been head of the household for some time. It just doesn’t feel right.
Eden has taken two wooden boxes from the bags and lain them on the surface in front of her. She sits quietly and watches her brother, as though she’s waiting for him to join her before she opens them.
‘What are those?’ asks Sarah.
‘Our boxes,’ says Eden, as though the answer were self-evident. They’re beautiful boxes. Very plain and simple, but sanded to silken smoothness, the grain of the wood – walnut for one, what looks like cherry for the other – fed and polished until they shine.
‘They’re beautiful,’ says Sarah. ‘Did someone make them for you?’
Eden looks surprised. ‘No. We made them.’
‘Yourselves?’ she comes closer and runs her fingers over the polished wood of the cherrywood box, the one into whose lid the name ILO has been painstakingly etched with a childish hand. Brass hinges, a tiny hook and eye holding it closed. Beautiful. Who would have thought a child could make something with such skill and attention to detail?
‘We all have one,’ says Ilo, coming up beside her and taking his box in his hands. He hugs it upright against his chest, as though the very feel of it comforts him. ‘Had,’ he corrects.
She wonders what’s in them, decides it’s probably wrong to ask. Let them have some secrecy, some private places. If they want me to know, they will tell me in time.
‘Cup of tea,’ she says. The solution to all awkwardness.
‘Thank you,’ says Eden. ‘We haven’t really drunk tea before.’
‘In the Home, we did,’ Ilo reminds her. ‘We had it at breakfast.’
‘Oh, yes,’ she says. ‘Would it be possible to have a glass of water instead?’
‘Of course,’ says Sarah, suppressing a smile. ‘I’ll show you where everything lives.’ This is it, she thinks. This is my life now. And it’s theirs, too. She clears her throat. ‘I want you to feel at home here,’ she tells them. ‘This is your home.’
‘Thank you,’ they say, in unison, like little robots.
‘I hope you’ll be happy here,’ she says. ‘I don’t expect it to happen overnight, but I hope you’ll be happy with me.’
Eden smiles. ‘We were happy at Plas Golau.’
‘Oh, yes,’ says Ilo. ‘We were happy there.’
She doesn’t know what to say to that. Plas Golau, from what she’s read of it, seems to her like very hell on earth. But it’s where they’ve come from. I mustn’t sweat it, she thinks. It’s inevitable that they’ll have brought a bit of it with them, the way they’ve brought those boxes.
‘Well, I’ll do my best to make it okay for you here. If there’s anything you need,’ she says, ‘just say. We’ll have to go shopping over the next couple of days. Get you kitted out for school.’
She catches them glancing at each other. ‘Thank you,’ they say again.
‘No, seriously, don’t be shy. It’s a lot to take in all at once, I know. A big change. You’ve had a hell of a lot to adjust to. At least I guess you’ve got a bit of time to settle in before you go to school. I’m sorry we couldn’t get things organised so you could join at the beginning of the year. You need to be ready to be a bit conspicuous, I’m afraid. But if there’s anything you need, if you think of anything ...’
‘It looks like you’ve already got everything in the world,’ says Ilo.
Sarah looks around her home and feels sad. All those blond-wood, sleek Scandinavian dreams she shared with Liam reduced to a few sticks of Ikea furniture stored in the garage because they looked so out of place in here. She’d intended to have it all cleared out by now.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘It’s grim, I know. It’s hard, deciding what to keep when you’ve inherited it. I promise I’ll get to it. We’ll pick the stuff we want to keep and get other stuff that suits us better.’
They side-eye each other again. ‘No, no,’ says Ilo. ‘That’s not what I meant. We’re just ... not used to so much stuff.’
‘It wasn’t our way, at home,’ says Eden.
‘Well,’ she says, hopefully, ‘I guess communal living is different. You must have been pressed for space.’
Eden shrugs. ‘Yes. And possessions won’t mean much, after the Great Disaster.’
‘They get in the way,’ says Ilo. ‘They weigh you down.’
‘That’s all,’ says Eden. ‘We’re not, you know ... judging you. But presumably you have a plan.’
‘A plan?’
‘For what you’d take if you had to run? And where you’d go?’
‘I ...’
Not even lunchtime, and already she’s flummoxed.
‘Not really,’ she says, ‘but ... maybe we can work on one together.’ Good lord, they still believe all that stuff. Just as my parents believed that Jesus really was a bloke who wanted a nice suburban house to live in, or Momentum members believe in Magic Grandpa. You never totally get it, do you, till it slaps you in the face?
‘Bedrooms,’ she says. ‘Let me show you your bedrooms.’
Their eyes meet. ‘Bedrooms? One each?’ asks Ilo.
‘Yes. Of course.’
‘Oh.’
‘We’ve got plenty.’
‘I suppose so,’ says Ilo, and she’s flummoxed again. Even identical twins long for their own space when they’re teenagers, surely? ‘I just ... it seems so ...’
It’s going to be so tricky, finding ways of
showing them how the normal world lives without seeming to criticise the one they’ve come from. But the overcrowding at Plas Golau must have been practically slumlike. No wonder they never had any belongings.
‘Thing is, I don’t think Social Services like the idea of siblings of different genders sharing rooms,’ she says. ‘So we’re going to have to do what they expect, at least until they’re not watching us any more.’ By which time, hopefully, you’ll have got used to it. ‘Come on,’ she says, and leads them upstairs.
From the landing, four bedrooms. First, her parents’, with her father’s reading glasses and tumbler – water long since evaporated – still in place on his bedside table. Two smaller rooms in the middle, which were once her own and Alison’s, Alison’s stripped and turned into a sewing room within a week of her leaving. And the Bishop’s Room: what in any normal house would be called the spare room. Smaller than her parents’, but twice the size of the little ones. She’s almost embarrassed to admit it, but she herself moved straight back into her childhood bedroom. Doesn’t want to take over her parents’ room and can’t face clearing it out. All those clothes. The shoes unworn for two years, the strange lizardy feel of anything they’ve touched. It wasn’t meant to be forever. But time slips away when you’re lonely. Loneliness saps your energy. You can stare at the same cobweb for years on end, watching it blacken, and still not think to find a duster to remove it.
She opens the door to the spare room. ‘I thought you could be in here,’ she says to Ilo. ‘It’s bigger, but I’m afraid the window just looks out on next door. And this one’s your mother’s old room.’ She throws open the door to Eden’s.
Eden stays in the hallway, says nothing, but her eyes blaze.
‘What’s wrong?’ asks Sarah.
‘Nothing,’ says Eden.
‘It has its own basin, look.’ She points to the pearlised pink pedestal sink on the far wall. ‘It was your mother’s room, when she was your age,’ she repeats, hopefully.
‘It’s okay, Eden,’ says Ilo. ‘I’ll take it. It’s fine.’