by Fiona Shaw
His fingers searched the ground for more stones. Now he was talking, it all came out in a rush.
–If my grandad hadn’t paid loads of money, they’d have switched the machine off. Efficiency savings. But I wish they had. Switched it off.
–What happened to her? Jake said.
–It’s because of what they did to my father. That’s why she did it. But she shouldn’t have because she still had me. I was still there, I watched her, and she did it anyway.
–But what did she do? Jake said.
–Jumped. Off a bridge over the M5. It’s near us. They told me she was lucky to be alive, but she isn’t lucky, not really. She’s not really alive either.
It was a lot to take in. Jake tried to work out the right question. –What did they do to your dad? he asked.
–They put him in a detention centre.
Jake had heard about the detention centres. His dad had said they mistreated people in them, and his mum had told his dad to be quiet. –Why? he asked.
–He’s Italian, Ollie said again, like that explained everything each time, and maybe it did. –He was all right in there for a bit. My mum got food and stuff in to him. But then they started hurting him. He wouldn’t say how. He got a couple of messages out to us. He was in the centre a few months, then they excluded him. That’s when my mum jumped.
–Excluded him? Jake said. –What does that mean?
Jake watched Ollie’s skinny fingers pile stones up into a pile. –Sent him back to Italy. They won’t let him in again, not even to visit my mother. Unless I can get out of England, I’ll never see him again.
Jake understood. –That’s pretty tough, he said. In the air, the words sounded thin, not enough, but Ollie nodded like he got it. –I’ll never see my dad again ever, either, Jake said. –Or my mum.
They sat quiet then, in the sunshine.
–How did you find the gang? Jake asked after a while.
–Same way as you. They found me, Ollie said. He put another stone on the pile. –What about your parents, then?
–Dead.
–I know that. But recently? A long time ago?
–Six months ago. A car accident. Through a barrier on a bridge, and into the river. It was an electrical fault. They both drowned. Died immediately. That’s what they told me at my tribunal.
–You in the car too? Ollie asked.
Jake shook his head. –They were coming home from work.
Ollie piled on a few more stones. Jake stared at the weeds on the other side of the yard, a mass of green and yellow, and scratches of colour here and there from the flowers. Poppies and other flowers that his mother could’ve named.
When they’d died, he’d been in a maths lesson, writing notes to Liam, waiting for the end of lesson bell. Just about everything else was blurred. The grown-ups talking around him, going in and out of rooms, pressing a hand on his shoulder or his head. He remembered Mrs Jennings, Liam’s mum. She’d cried when she saw him, and said –Poor boy, poor boy; over and over.
There was a spider’s web between two plant stalks, dead flies trussed into it. The spider was tucked in a corner. Jake blew at the web, watched the spider run to the centre.
–Where did they work? Ollie’s voice broke in, made him jump.
–They’re scientists. Jake corrected himself. –Were scientists. They worked for Co-Labs.
Ollie looked blank.
–You know, Jake said. –Coalition Wellbeing Laboratories.
–Top secret stuff?
–They didn’t tell me much about it. Something to do with vaccines. Dad didn’t like it at Co-Labs, though. They’d started arguing about it.
–All parents argue, Ollie said. –Mine did it in Italian, so I couldn’t understand.
–Mine argued in the kitchen when I’d gone to bed. But I’d sit on the stairs and listen, in case it was about me. Mostly it wasn’t and I’d go back to bed. But there was this one night, I dunno how it started. It wasn’t long before the accident, and Dad was shouting, saying they should resign their jobs and leave England, and Mum was saying they couldn’t, he knew they couldn’t.
–They had good jobs, it sounds like, Ollie said. –Important ones.
–I suppose. Anyway, Dad banged the table. And he went on about how they’d been brought in to save lives and now look what they were doing. Wasn’t much to do with vaccines, was it? And how soon it would be too late, and nobody would even know. And then Mum started in. I knew she was upset, cos she said his name, Jonny, like she always did when she was really upset: Hush now, Jonny. You don’t know that for certain, Jonny. Stuff like that. Then they were both talking at once. Him saying he couldn’t shut his eyes to it any longer, and her saying: What else can we do? What else can we do? Then she started crying, and after that I couldn’t hear what they were saying, so I went back to bed.
–A vaccine? For what? For the virus? Ollie said. He’d stopped playing with the stones and he was sitting up straight and staring at Jake.
Jake shrugged. –The accident happened just after that, so I didn’t think about it much.
–If your mum and dad invented a vaccine for the virus, then they were doing good stuff, even if it was for the Coalition, Ollie said. –But your dad said it didn’t have much to do with vaccines.
Jake shrugged. –I can’t work it out. Anyway, that’s why I’m going to Scotland. It’s where my grandparents live. I have to go there. That’s what my mum and dad said to do, if anything happened to them. Me and Jet.
But Ollie was wasn’t listening. –So how come their car went off a bridge? he said, half to himself. –Must’ve been somebody’s doing.
Jake stared at him. –Why?
–Because there are no accidents, not any more, Ollie said. –That’s what my dad told me. He said: if they tell you I’m dead, died in an accident, died of a disease, don’t believe them.
Jake felt frightened, but he tried to shrug like he wasn’t.
–Doesn’t matter in the end, does it? he said. –They’re still dead.
He closed his eyes. Flies buzzed. He could hear his breathing, and Ollie’s. He didn’t want to think about it any more. He didn’t want to think about it not being an accident. It didn’t make any difference anyway.
In the kitchen, Ollie chopped the thyme and rosemary up fine and mixed them in a bowl with eggs and fried onions and cheese and left-over potatoes and some spinach Poacher had foraged the night before. He was dancing again, his hands swift and his shoulders turning. He took down the largest frying pan.
–Cut us some butter, Jake, and stick it in the pan. About a hundred grams.
–Hundred what?
–Hundred grams. About four ounces. This much. Ollie held up his fingers to show.
Jake cut the butter, tipped it in, and Ollie set the pan on the cooker.
–Ollie? Jake said. –Grams, and metres, and all that. That’s from before the New Wall.
–Yeah. I know.
–It’s against the law to use them, Jake said.
–Yeah, but it’s what my dad taught me, Ollie said. –Kilograms and grams and metres and centimetres. It’s what they use in Europe. Scotland too. It’s how my dad taught me to cook.
–Dangerous, Jake said. –What if you’d said the wrong kind of measurement at school? They’d have reported it to the hub police.
–Well, I didn’t. I was careful. And it was important for my dad. So back off, and melt that butter.
–The whole hundred grams? Jake said with a grin.
–The whole hundred. And tip it about so it covers the base.
The pan didn’t have a handle, so Jake did his best to hold the hot edge with a bit of towel. The pan was an old pedal bin lid – it had an upright edge and holes on one side where lid hinges used to be. When the butter was hot, Ollie tipped in the egg mixture. It smelled like home.
–Frittata, Ollie said. –One day I’ll cook it for you properly. In Italy, maybe.
Twelve
On the seventh morning, Martha w
ashed his hair again, then combed it and cut it even shorter with her nail scissors. When she stared at him, she had a furrow in her brow. His mum had had a furrow in her brow and she used to tell Jake he’d put it there: all the worry of a son. He wondered what had given Martha hers.
They chopped your hair short in the Home Academy, but Martha seemed to be cutting plenty more off; he could feel it.
–Go easy, he said.
–It’ll be good for the birds, she said. –Their nests.
–I don’t care about the birds, Jake said.
Davie was watching them, and laughing. –Be a number one soon, he said. –Could work in the fracking fields with that haircut. Might end up there, you get caught. Fracky boy, fracky boy.
Jake hated Davie’s niggly voice. It made his skin itch, like some snitty insect bite. –Shove off, he said, kicking out at him.
–Don’t jerk around, or I’ll jab you with the scissors, Martha said, which just made Davie laugh harder.
–You’ve cut too much, Jake said, and he could feel Martha shake her head.
–The shorter the better. Makes you look obedient. Not like a boy who’d steal things.
Jake had emptied his rucksack out and scrubbed the mud off it, ready for the expedition. Martha gave him a second bag.
–You’re a boy doing errands for your granny. It’s her bag.
–It’s got flowers on it, he said. –I’d never carry a bag like this.
–Stuff it inside the rucksack, get it out if you need it.
–Can I bring Jet? Jake said. –He’s very obedient.
Martha shook her head. –We might have to make a run for it. I had to hide out in some toilets once. They’d have caught me if I’d had a dog.
Jake read his way down the Needs list:
Cass had put the wellies on the list. Swift had printed the words out in separate letters, and Cass had copied them out underneath in green felt-tip pen, tongue between her teeth. It took her ages and Jake had felt nearly sick with memory, watching her: he used to do that with his dad when he was little. They’d had a game about who could write best, and a line of M&Ms along the kitchen table. He didn’t exactly remember how it went, but he always used to get most of the M&Ms.
–Remember, we only steal what’s on the list, Martha said. –Nothing else.
Martha had sat over Poacher’s map for an hour with Swift the night before, and then they’d shown him the route.
–Learn it off. Get it in your head, Swift said.
–Why can’t we draw it on a piece of paper? Take it with us? Jake said.
–Too risky. You get caught, that would take them straight to us.
In the morning, Jake put on his spares. He washed his hands and cleaned his fingernails as best he could. Martha wore a skirt and an old-fashioned blouse with a bow at the neck, and she did something to her hair, Jake wasn’t sure what exactly, but it fell around her shoulders in a pretty way. The sky was a dirty grey colour and she had a raincoat over her arm. They stood in the kitchen and Poacher and Swift inspected them.
–Sister and brother. What do you think? Martha said.
–Not bad. You got the same hair, Poacher said. He did up Jake’s top button and pulled his tie knot tight to his throat. –It’s your disguise. You gotta do it properly.
–Martha’s the best, Swift said. –You do what she says, you’ll come back safe.
Poacher gave them both mobiles. –For your cover. Look the business well enough.
And soon as Jake held it, he understood what Poacher meant, because it wasn’t a real mobile, it was just pretend, a toy for a toddler, made of that soft plastic they could chew on.
They set off at ten. It would take them forty minutes to walk to the shops and Martha wanted to arrive mid-morning.
–More people out and about. Makes us less conspicuous.
Forty minutes wasn’t so long, but five minutes in, it felt like for ever. They were walking down ordinary streets, in ordinary daytime. Jake hadn’t been out like this since the day he’d rescued Jet.
They walked back across the common and past the church, then down the hill, and towards the house he’d taken the clothes from. What if someone came out and they recognized the trousers and sweater? What if the other boy saw him? What then? He could feel his heart banging in his chest and his hands were sweating. He looked away as they passed the house, stared down at the road, up at the far trees, anywhere except the house with the other boy and the Santa Cruz. But nobody came out of the house, and then they were past it.
When they got to the river, Martha stopped on the bridge and leaned over the edge, so Jake did too. It was a really old stone bridge with moss and ferns growing up the sides. He looked down at the water. It was clear and he could see to the stones on the bottom, and the bits of weed swaying in the current. He watched a fish nose its way through the weeds. This river had been his escape plan a week ago, before he became an Outwalker.
Martha threw a pebble into the water. –Do you know why you got chosen for this? she said.
–No.
–I’ll tell you. It’s because you’re a watcher. You notice things. And a good thief is watching all the time, reading people’s body language. Is the shopkeeper watching you? Does she trust you? Or is she about to call the hub police? What about the other customers? If you have to make a run for it, can you get out easily? Did you notice a back way? What about alleys, car parks, churches, markets? Places where you can lose people easily. I’m a good thief because I’m a good watcher, and a fast runner.
–Even in a skirt? Jake said, because it was funny to think of Martha legging it.
She grinned too. –Absolutely.
They crossed the river and walked down Frenchay Road. There were more houses now, and there were other people walking on the pavement, and cars going past. Ordinary, hubbed people, bona fides doing ordinary things, like going to work or shopping and visiting each other.
The back of Jake’s head felt cold in the fresh air with all his hair chopped, and he had to stop himself putting his hand to it too often. He felt like he had a big sign on his head with OUTWALKER written on it in red capital letters. Surely people would take one look at him and know? The scar on his neck itched and he rubbed at it, pulling at his collar to get a finger beneath. His hair, his foraged clothes: none of it felt right. He hunched down as far as he could and kept to the inside of the pavement, running his fingers along brick walls and pebbledash, wanting to touch something fixed and solid.
Wish Jet was here, he thought, because Jet would be trotting along like he owned the place, sniffing at corners, lifting his leg on the lampposts, and then Jake could have pretended better too.
They’d been walking for fifteen minutes now and Jake’s heart was still pounding. Two boys in school uniforms walked past and they looked at him, and they noticed something, he could see they did. He rubbed at his neck again.
–Stop doing that, Martha said.
–Those boys stared at me.
–You keep scratching at your scar, then someone really will notice something.
–It’s itching, Jake said.
–I don’t care. You’ve done it five times in the last five minutes. Don’t do it again. And stop walking like an Outwalker. You’re nearly hugging the walls and you’re slouching. Behave normally.
–I don’t know what normal is.
–Then pretend. Copy me. Else you’ll get us both caught. One of the most important rules of good stealing: never show your panic. Doesn’t matter how scared you are, how much you think you stand out, how much you want to make a run for it. If you show it, people will think you’re suspicious. If you look calm, people won’t.
It crossed Jake’s mind that he’d had Martha completely wrong. He’d thought she was this mousey, scared girl. But she had nerves of steel.
–You should be in films, he said.
–What?
–Cos you can act so well. I had no idea. I thought …
–What did you think?
> He hadn’t noticed before, but she was a real looker. That’s what his dad used to say and his mum used to clock him round the head for it.
–Doesn’t matter, he said, and he could feel he was blushing.
–Come on, Jake. Spit it out.
–I thought you were timid. Quiet.
She laughed and ruffled his hair, and he didn’t know if it was Martha the Outwalker doing it, or the other one, Martha the thief.
The road got busier. More people, more cars. They passed a scan hub and a bus stop, a line of people waiting, talking to tablets, checking mobiles, doing ordinary stuff. A smiling pixelated woman on the bus stop’s screen held out a plate of cupcakes. Eat English, she said, and she pushed the plate towards him before the picture morphed into a giant cockroach. ‘Use Zeet to keep the Virus at bay’, the headline read.
On another screen, a crowd of young men in green coveralls marched past. In the background there were bright green hills. ‘Your Country, Your Future’ this one said, and underneath:
Invest in your country’s future.
Good benefits package.
[email protected]
–Same old, same old, Martha said. I swear, they haven’t changed the screens since I joined the gang.
They passed a corner shop. A couple of men outside it looked Martha up and down, the way his dad used to look at girls sometimes, and she did that normal thing girls do, which is pretend not to see them. But Jake didn’t think anyone was noticing them especially, or not him anyway, and he began to feel more normal. He got his toy mobile out and pretended to check it for something.
–That’s better, Martha said. –The mobile’s a good prop. Don’t forget to use it in a shop, like you’re checking your cash.
They were walking side by side now, and she got her list out.