Lindisfarne (Project Renova Book 2)

by Terry Tyler

  I suppose if someone tells you how marvellous you are all the time, it's only fair to be supportive of them, too.

  People are talking about Christmas, only a week away. Last year we ignored it, and had a winter solstice celebration instead. I couldn't give a stuff about Christmas any more than I could then. What are we going to do, dig up a fir tree and exchange looted Yves St Laurent products? I don't know if anyone here is into the baby-in-a-manger aspect. It seems like a daft fairy tale belonging to a less enlightened age.

  We're all sitting round the fire one night, idly discussing such things, when Heath appears, ostensibly to see Jax. He stays, makes himself comfortable, and gets stuck into the wine.

  It's lovely to see him again. It's the first time he's been in my immediate vicinity since the invasion.

  He looks at me a lot, and I smile back; I wonder if he's thinking about that night, too, when he kissed me.

  Probably not.

  Dex is with Naomi and Phoenix, and I feel guilty about being glad.

  We start talking about those who died; Heath's return seems to have brought good vibes with it, and it's all positive, sharing memories of them. Flora becomes tearful about Adam, as of course she is bound to, and we all try to help, but five minutes later she's in floods, weeping about everyone else she's ever known and lost, shaking and gulping, then moving on to all that she has suffered; the atmosphere of quiet, respectful remembrance is gone.

  Sounds harsh, but I can't help feeling irritated with her for taking over.

  Kara leaps in when Flora begins to wind down, and suggests that we'll all feel better if we move on to something more upbeat. She talks about Christmases past, with particular reference to one she and Phil spent skiing in Colorado.

  "What I wouldn't give to do that again!" she says.

  "I'd prefer something more low key," Phil says. "A log cabin, a snowy Christmas card landscape. Fur rugs, roaring fires and you, my love." He's a bit pissed; we all laugh.

  Heath looks at me. "Sounds like heaven." I feel my cheeks burn.

  "I'd like a barbie on the beach, like they have in Australia," says Jax.

  "What about you, Vick?" Heath, again. "If you could do anything at all this Christmas, what would you do?"

  I shut my eyes. Mum and Dad, Lottie and me, opening our presents under the tree. I speak before thinking. "I'd like to go home."

  Everyone looks at me, a little mystified.

  "Um, home's gone, Vick." Kara looks wary, as if I'm about to bring the mood back down.

  I try to fix the smile back on my face. “You said anything at all. Skiing in Colorado ain’t going to happen any time soon, either.”

  “Sorry. I thought you meant it. The way you said it.”

  "Okay, okay, so it's silly." I'm a bit drunk, too. "I'd just like to see my old house. And Mum and Dad's. Just to go in, and remember."

  "Mu-um," Lottie murmurs, reaching over and taking my hand. "You never know, Granny and Grandad might still be okay, somewhere—"

  "And if they managed to get back to England they would have gone to our house. Left a note." I smile, because I really don't want to get morose; it's always been an unspoken rule of the house that we don't allow ourselves to slide. "I'd like to go and see, that's all."

  "I think it's an indulgence you might have to forego, to be honest," Kara says. "Even if we could spare the petrol, travelling down the country is going to be dangerous; we've got no idea what's out there. Well, we have; gun-toting gangs, army types sticking up barricades all over, all sorts."

  "And don't forget, they were destroying Shipden," Lottie says.

  "I know." And there was me getting irritated with Flora. "You're right. It's a silly idea." I've got to accept this, I know. Mum and Dad are gone, and—

  "I'll take you."

  Heath.

  I look up. "What?" The way he's looking at me makes me tingle all over.

  "I said, I'll take you. On the bike. It won't use anywhere near as much petrol as going by car, and we could look for medical supplies while we're down there. So we're doing something productive, too."

  What a difference a moment makes. I look at Phil, because he's the petrol man. "Can we?"

  He smiles. "I don't see why not."

  Lottie doesn't look so sure. "I don't want you to go, Mum. It'd be seriously upsetting."

  "I'll be okay." I squeeze her hand. I'm going back to Shipden. With Heath. I turn to him. "Thank you. Thank you."

  "My pleasure, ma'am."

  It's like the past few months have never been.

  Heath in his grotty old green jumper, smiling at me across the kitchen table.

  I wonder what happened to that jumper; maybe Aria threw it away.

  Ah. Aria. His girlfriend. "Will Aria mind?"

  "I'll sort it. Don't worry." He puts his head on one side. "Will Dex?"

  To my surprise, he does.

  "I can't stop you, but you should know that I am not at all happy about you careering across the country with him, of all people."

  "What do you mean, him of all people?" I blush.

  "You know exactly what I mean. I don't like the guy; I wouldn't put anything past him. Look at what he did to Travis. And what about poor Aria?"

  "Since when did you care about Aria?' You hardly know her." I fold my arms. "Okay. You take me. Let's go together. See our old home."

  "I can't just up and leave, there's too much to do here. And the amount of petrol for a car—it'd be out of the question." He shakes his head. "I can't see anything to be gained by it. It's just self-indulgence."

  That makes me angry. "It's not. If Mum and Dad did manage to get back, they'll have gone there first."

  He reaches for my hand then, and looks genuinely sad. "You know they won't have, don't you? Unless they managed to hire a private plane or boat, which I very much doubt! If they're still alive, they're in Portugal." He looks away. "I don't like this, Vicky. All you're going to do is upset yourself."

  Maybe, but I don't care. I'm going.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Heath

  Aria is furious. She flings everything at me. Metaphorically, I mean.

  "Look," I say, when she runs out of steam. "You know how I feel about the group I lived with before. I'd do anything for any of them."

  "And me?" Arms folded. "Would you do anything for me? Would you take me across the country to look for relatives who are bound to be dead?"

  "You tell me where you want to go, and I'll take you. Long as Phil okays the petrol."

  She is quiet for a moment. There is nowhere she wants to go, no one she misses or wants to see. There's just me. Her life revolves around me. "As long as you don't go on Christmas Day."

  We're not planning to, but I can't see what damn difference it makes; neither of us are religiously inclined, so Christmas is but forgotten commercial nonsense, a feature of a world that no longer exists.

  She asks me if we'll be staying somewhere overnight. I don't fancy travelling in the dark, not these days, so yes, we will be.

  She folds her arms. "Cosy."

  I make the point that if you're going to get up to something you shouldn't, you don't need to wait until night falls; she can't argue, given the memory of our illicit afternoons in the Northumbrian countryside.

  What I don't say is that if you're really set on it, nothing anyone says will make you not do it.

  The weather is sharp and cold, perfect, and I can smell that it's going to stay dry. Vicky comes down kitted out in bike leathers that used to belong to Jodie, and I fight my impulse to rip them off her and drag her back upstairs.

  It's just light, with no ominous, pink shepherd's warnings; good.

  The others come out to see us off.

  "Hope you find what you're looking for, sweetheart," Ozzy says to Vicky, and kisses her on the cheek, whilst managing to give me a huge and not particularly surreptitious wink.

  Aria is absent, as is Dex.

  The road is clear and empty. No sign of life, anywhere.
As the sun comes up I enjoy the frosty landscape, and Vicky holds on tight; she's nervous, nowhere near as good a passenger as Aria, and that makes me hesitant, so I keep the pace frustratingly slow.

  I expect to see barricades somewhere along the way, but there's nothing.

  When we stop after the first hundred miles or so, somewhere in Yorkshire, I ask her if she's okay with a bit more speed.

  "Sure!" She undoes the flask that Lottie made for us. "I just want to get there. And it's not like we're going to get pulled over, is it?"

  Standing there in the sunshine on the hard shoulder, drinking proper strong coffee with my Vicky, I experience a wave of complete happiness. I want to get off the anti-depressants. I want the way I'm feeling to be pure and real, not messed up with chemicals. It's so good to be away from that island, and everyone. Free.

  I feel like I'm always running from something. I have this in common with Aria; a jolt of sadness hits me. If only I loved her like she loves me.

  I take it up to ninety, and I no longer observe the countryside because I'm concentrating too hard on the road. By mid-morning we're in Norfolk, and I see signs for Shipden; I point up at the first one, and Vicky's body tenses against mine.

  We enter the town via the Norwich Road, I slow right down, and she taps me on the shoulder. I stop, and pull up my visor.

  "Can we go really, really slowly? I need to see everything."

  "Sure. Take off your helmet; we don't need them now. Give me a nudge if you want me to stop."

  I slow to almost walking pace, and look around at the empty, broken buildings. She grips my shoulder, but says nothing. Windows are smashed, the insides of many burned out; we enter the tiny town centre, I look up to my left and see roads of nothing but fire-destroyed houses.

  I feel her draw in her breath as we amble past a churchyard strewn with broken bottles and rubbish. There is nothing here, no one. It's just a shell of a place where there used to be life. Faded bunting is strung across the narrow main street, an echo of some forgotten celebration. It flaps in the mild winter breeze coming off the sea.

  I smell salt in the air.

  Down a narrow road of old Victorian houses I see the sea, bright blue.

  The sun on the buildings is beautiful, but the place is so dead that I almost expect it to fade away in front of my eyes; it's the past, haunted by the ghosts of everyone who once lived here.

  "Oh God." Vicky's voice is a whisper; I expected her to cry, but when I look around she has tears running down her cheeks, but her face is still. I park outside the churchyard and look around, automatically wary about leaving the bike at first, but I have no need to be.

  She walks across the road to a small Tesco and I follow her; we flash our torches around. The place stinks, of all that is ancient and rotten.

  "What are you looking for?"

  "This."

  She shines her torch on the floor; in the darkness, I see an old mop, and a patch of a sticky, reddish-brown substance.

  "Vick—did someone die here?"

  She laughs. "No. It's tomato ketchup. I'll tell you later." She touches my arm. "Come on."

  We wander up and down a few roads, and she stops here and there, leads me into buildings; an indoor market, a café, a pub; sometimes she smiles and tells me things about the people she knew. Other times she cries a little, most of all when we sit for a moment in a café owned by her and Dex's friends. Lawrie and Gemma. I remember their names, because they were important to her.

  We walk down to a narrow lane of long silent amusement arcades, and she points up the coast road. "It's up there. My house."

  I know before we get there that she will be disappointed. The sign says Beach Road, but what was once a lane of cottages is just another burned out nothing. We park at the end and walk down, in silence.

  "My friend Claire lived there," she says, in a flat voice, pointing at one blackened shell; the bright December sunlight glints off shards of broken window.

  I remember. "The one you bought the cupcakes with."

  "Yes." She smiles. "She thought someone was going to come and save us. And that her family would get better because they ate their five-a-day." Then she points to the shell next to Claire's. "That was my house."

  It's nothing. Just a few tumbledown, blackened walls, remnants of broken furniture. I put my arm around her and she nestles her head into me.

  "Do you want to—I don't know, see if you can find anything?" I don't know how she can do this. I couldn't.

  "No. Yes. Well, I suppose I'd better. I mean, to see if there's any evidence that Mum and Dad have been here. They would have left something."

  We trample around in the ash and burnt timber for a few moments, but we both know it's pointless. They haven't been here.

  "Dex was right; I was kidding myself." She turns to me. "You know people say, 'it's only bricks and mortar'? I know what they mean, now. It wasn't this building that was precious to me, it was our life. This doesn't mean anything." She picks up a dusty paperweight, and puts it in her pocket. "The memories are in my head, not here."

  That, I do understand. She points to the cliff, and shows me where she and Lottie escaped; we laugh about that, and I ask her what she wants to do next. Despite the laughter, she still looks so sad. She doesn't need to be here; I want to get her away.

  "Let's go to Suffolk," she says. "Mum and Dad lived in a village called Long Melton; I know they won't be there, but I'd like to see the house again." She smiles. "D'you think I'm being self-indulgent? Dex thinks I am."

  "I don't. I understand." Whatever she wants.

  "I just want to be where they were. And if it's all burnt out like this, we'll turn straight round."

  It's not. I enjoy the ride down the quiet rural backroads from Norfolk to Suffolk in the early afternoon sunshine. It's a beautiful part of the country that I've scarcely visited before. Everywhere is so still; the sun shines on the fields, some of them flooded, saturated with icy water; it must rain down here as much as it does up in the north east. We're driving through a forgotten world, but underneath the melancholia I feel strong, exhilarated. So much is gone, but we're still marching on.

  A couple of vehicles pass by; an army truck, one car, but the occupants just wave their hands in recognition of one survivor to another. No gun-toting gangs, no barricades. I see a small farm, a group of people in a yard; people like us, just trying to get by. They smile and wave, we do the same. I feel they would be happy for us to stop, but I don't want to risk it.

  You never know.

  They could be axe-wielding cannibals.

  A cellar filled with bodies for the pot, like in The Road. I wish Jax was here; we would have laughed about that. I don't say anything to Vicky.

  The village of Long Melton is relatively untouched, just empty; it's the sort of affluent-looking place from which occupants might have been evacuated, in the early days. Aria met some people in Leicestershire who told her that the army emptied the 'posh' villages into refugee camps.

  I wonder what happened to everyone. If they all died. I suppose they must have done, if they hadn't had the shot. There aren't many on Lindisfarne who are immune. I can't believe how lucky I am. And Jax. I'd like to think it's for a purpose, but I don't believe in all that; we're just lucky, that's all. A freak of nature.

  Vicky's parents' house is as they left it when they went to Portugal. She doesn't speak as she gets off the bike; she has the key to the front door and lets us in. Inside, it smells musty and unused, but that's all.

  "They would have emptied the fridge and turned the water off before they left," she says. "The freezer is in the garden shed; we won't go in there!" She wanders around, touching her parents' things. She looks happy. "Thank you for bringing me here." She smiles at me, so sweetly; I open my arms and she falls into them. We unzip our jackets and reach beneath them, holding each other for a long time, and I stroke her head, kissing her hair, and then she puts her face up to me and we kiss, properly, at last. We fall onto the sofa, kissin
g, smiling at each other, our cold skin warmed by each other's lips.

  "I love you." I need to say it. "I've loved you for ages, but I've been trying not to let myself feel it. Even back in the old house."

  She doesn't answer in kind, but that's okay. She's still kidding herself she's in love with Dex; I can deal with that.

  She smiles. "I'm very confused about how I feel about practically everything."

  "So what's new?" We both laugh. I feel her shiver, and pull her closer to me; it may not stink in here, but it's bloody freezing. Outside the sun still shines, but the daylight is fading. "Shall we stay here? Tonight, I mean."

  She nods her head, and points at the open fireplace, neatly swept out, unused for two winters. "We could break up some of those chairs. For firewood."

  "Are you sure?"

  She sits up. "I know Mum and Dad are dead. I've always known it, really. If I could ask them, I'm sure they'd want us to be warm."

  As the sun goes down we light the fire, find a couple of packs of those daft little candles that you put in oil burners, and dot them around the room in saucers. We find a wine rack holding several bottles, pasta and Lloyd Grossman sauce in the cupboard. I rig up a stand out of coat hangers to boil a pan above the fire. We have everything we need.

  Everything.

  If Jax and Lottie were here, we wouldn't need to go back.

  We drag the sofa over to the fire, and sit with our backs against it, on cushions. We eat, and drink, and drink some more, and when I put my arms around her she moves against me and cuddles up to me, and we talk about Shipden, and Eyam, and it's just so damn good to be with her again. I've missed her so much, and I tell her. And about how stuck I feel with Aria, too.

  "Why are you with her? You could come back to live in Sandy Lane; she'd get over it, eventually."

  So I tell her what I've never told anyone, because there was no one I trusted enough to tell. All about Sarah, my guilt, and my fear of destroying someone else in the way I did her. Telling her takes a long, long time, and at least a whole bottle of Sainsbury's Merlot.