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The Rules

Page 4

by Tracy Darnton


  I think Josh is out when I get back, as the place is silent and in darkness. But when I push open the lounge door, I jump. He’s sitting there, cross-legged on the floor, his fingertips touching in a Zen pose. One of Sue’s scented candles is lit in front of him. He doesn’t open his eyes.

  “Is that you, Amber Warning?”

  “Don’t call me that. What are you doing?”

  “Connecting. Thinking deep thoughts.”

  “Sure… Like, how long can I sponge off Amber?”

  He rests a hand on his chest. “Now that hurts. Why do you feel the need to hit out at those who seek only to help you?”

  “Stop! Stop the pseudo-yoga-guru voice.”

  “You might find meditation helps you too. Sit with me.” He claps his hands together and then places them palm up on his knees. “Om,” he chants.

  “No way. Stop omming. It’s weird.”

  He sighs and opens his eyes. He reaches across and touches my hand. “I get it, Amber. You and me, we’ve got major barriers up. Massive stonking protection barriers. Me because of my stepdad who used to beat the stuffing out of me. You – whatever you had going on with your family. But don’t you get tired of living like that?”

  “Have you taken something?” I ask. “Because when I left you earlier, you were looking for a needle to mend your jumper and now you’re like full-on stage-three hippy.”

  “This helps me, OK. You might think it’s rubbish; I did too at first. Sue got me into it to calm my brain down. I’ve been in some pretty dark places so if this helps me, I’m going to do it. It’s up to you if you want to join in. Plus, what else are you going to do?”

  I sit on the carpet beside him, copy his pose, listen to his voice as he tells me first to focus on the candle then to close my eyes and move through relaxing each part of my body. My mind wanders. I concentrate hard to pull it back. But I prefer a head full of busy noise to the alternative. Now he says we’re off to find the thing we need. Someone in a woodland glade in our heads is going to pass us something.

  “You’re in the wood. You follow the path through the trees. Listen to the rustle of the leaves.”

  It’s getting theatrical. He’s enjoying having an audience. I half open an eye. He hasn’t moved. I close my eyes again, shake out my arms, listen to his voice.

  “Focus on the smell of the wood,” he says. “The leaves, the mushrooms, the first shoots of new life pushing through the earth. Look at the trees, reaching up into the sky. Now follow them all the way back down, imagine the feel of the bark under your fingers, follow it back down to the roots, down, down into the earth.”

  I can’t follow Josh’s path through a carpet of snowdrops. My path is leading me to the woods I knew too well by our home in Wales. It’s taking me to the iron gate. Dad’s behind me.

  All of a sudden my breathing is rapid, my palms sweating.

  Stop, I say in my head, then out loud. “JUST STOP IT.”

  I open my eyes, leap up and blow out the candle. The vanilla scent hits the back of my throat.

  “Amber. What’s the matter?” Josh looks concerned but I know he isn’t. He can’t be. He doesn’t know me.

  I slam the lounge door and retreat to the kitchen. I scrub two baking potatoes and stab them before noisily shoving them into the microwave. I lay out the plates on the table, checking the straight lines of the cutlery. Rule: Everything has its place.

  Josh joins me but says nothing. He opens a can of beans and scrapes it into a pan. He glances at me as he grates the last of the cheese.

  “I just don’t like walking in imaginary woods, OK,” I blurt. “And I don’t need anyone trying to help me. I manage by myself.”

  His mouth twitches into a half-smile and he opens it to say something but stops and shakes his head.

  “What?” I snap back.

  “Why do you think this place is always stocked with food? Why do you think Phil never changes the key code? I thought you were meant to be smart.” He opens one of the cupboards and throws a packet of chicken Cup-a-Soup in my direction. “Phil and Sue don’t eat all this processed stuff – and she’s vegan. It’s for us, Einstein. That’s why they’ve never sold the place, why they hardly ever rent it out. They bring all their foster kids up here for a few days, let them know it’s here. Phil and Sue, secret angels, keep it stocked with everything a drifter like me might need one day. A drifter like you. Food, clean sheets, plenty of toothpaste and shampoo.”

  He’s right. I was too busy being cynical to see it. The Haven is Phil and Sue’s version of an escape spot, for the kids like Josh or me who are too scared or too proud to ask when the shit hits.

  There are good people too.

  Every prepper has their Grab-and-Go Bag. A Bug-out Bag or Go Bag that enables you to get through the first seventy-two hours of any emergency. You can debate endlessly about what exactly should be in the perfect Grab-and-Go Bag. A good night out for a prepper would be three hours of debate with another prepper about who has the best kit list. That’s how we roll.

  Some items are down to personal preference – I couldn’t live without my tweezers and lip salve. Other items are standard, like hiking boots and waterproofs that could save your life. You can include a sentimental item like a photo or a toy. This one guy we used to know, with a couple of skull tattoos that peeped over his collar, seemed tough as anything to me but he kept a threadbare penguin at the bottom of his bag. I used to pester him to show me. It held way more appeal back then than first-aid kits or water purification tablets.

  I liked it when others were there, in the early days. When Dad could still hold a rational conversation about prepping, when he could join in normal chats about last night’s TV or the local rugby club. We had visitors; we went to barbecues. It wasn’t all full-on survivalism.

  But Dad changed over time. He hardened. He spent hours online or months away in the US doing ‘research’. Soon he had no room for soft sentimental items. No room for sentiment. Your Grab-and-Go Bag stood between you and disaster. And he increasingly liked to dwell on disaster. What use was a cuddly penguin when looters were clearing the shops of food supplies? How could a soft toy save your life?

  But when you’re just a little kid, you’d rather have the penguin.

  Today’s door on the advent calendar reveals a tiny church with a tall steeple. God has made an appearance two days in a row. Anyone would think Christmas was something to do with Him, when everyone knows it’s not any more. He must be fuming up there beyond the clouds, slowly blocked out of his own birthday celebrations.

  Josh takes a while to get up. I’m still on school timetable but he’s in permanent lounge lizard mode with no concept of time. He only moves when he wants to eat. He arrives rubbing his eyes, moving slowly.

  I check through my Grab-and-Go Bag, adding a couple of instant food sachets I bought at the garage shop. Until this week, I’d not looked at it for ages. I’d gradually kicked the habit of laying out my kit each Sunday and ticking it off. Now, like an addict who’s relapsed, I can’t help myself repeatedly checking its contents.

  “I need a few minutes online,” I say. “What’s it like for internet cafés up here?”

  “You’re joking, right?” Josh crunches through his toast. “If you want somewhere with an actual computer, not just Wi-Fi, there’s nowhere like that round here. I use one at a church project sometimes, if I’m desperate. Don’t you have a smartphone?”

  “No. I don’t want my dad to be able to use it to find me. Have you any idea how many apps use your data and your position?”

  “All right, 007,” he smirks. “The vicar at St Cuthbert’s is probably the best bet then. Fancies himself as trendy. He’s called Neville. I told him he’s blown his chances of ever being made a bishop or a saint with that name. Saint Neville of Nowheresville. But as do-gooders go, he’s not bad.”

  “First stop there, then. Hurry up.” I take the jar of jam as he piles a spoonful on to another slice. He eats way too much sugar.

  �
��I need the calories,” he says. “Stop staring at me. I don’t like people watching me eat.”

  I put the milk and butter back in the fridge and slam it shut. The glass jars in the door rattle.

  “Relax, can’t you,” he says with a note of irritation in his voice. “No one’s doing a room inspection. And stop laying the table like we’re eighty. It’s freaking me out.”

  Josh doesn’t get it. He doesn’t know the Rules.

  “With any luck, there’ll be a pile of donated food and stuff to take away at St Cuthbert’s,” he says. “We can pick up some bits and pieces.”

  “I bought us food,” I say.

  “You obviously didn’t hear me. It’s food and it’s free. You can squirrel it away in your army bag. Stick with me. I’ll show you the ropes. The right degree of grateful. The right degree of truth to share and lies to tell.” He wipes his toast round the plate to scoop up the blobs of jam he’s missed. His mouth full, he adds, “It’s a minefield out there but I’m pretty good at all this crap now.”

  We head for the bus stop before Josh decides we should cut across the fields instead. “Never waste a bus fare if you don’t mind walking. Learn from the master.”

  He strides off down the road before taking a stile and a signed footpath. “On the Josh homeless youth tour. Follow me.” He prats about, leading the way with his arm raised above him like a tour guide. “On the left, a stinky pond. And on the right, we have a cowpat, ladies and gentlemen. Typical for the area. Keep up, please, missy at the back.”

  He suddenly stops and puts his finger to his lips. He whispers, “A heron!” and points towards the water. I catch the glint of a fish disappearing down the bird’s throat, which expands to take it.

  “It’s a good omen,” he says.

  “Of what? What’s it mean?”

  “Restless loner, a heron. Like me. Come on.” He runs across the grass, pulling me with him, full into the wind, blowing back my hair and sucking out my breath. We stop at last, panting on the crest of the hill, and the dunes and sea stretch out beneath us.

  “My gran would have called this ‘blowing away the cobwebs’,” he says into the wind. His words are sad and lost on the breeze. It’s the first time he’s mentioned anyone in his family fondly. But he uses the past tense. “You can breathe out here. People leave you alone.” He retreats into the fake-fur-lined hood on his parka.

  The clouds are scudding across the sky in the wind. I close my eyes and feel the cold air on my face.

  Dad lay sprawled across the sofa, a collection of beer cans at his feet. The room smelled bad – of sweat and stale beer. Relief mixed with revulsion. He was dead to the world, meaning I could be myself for a few brief hours before he woke up.

  I liked him being fast asleep. I could pad around the house, unobserved, poking into things I wasn’t meant to see.

  I could be me again for a while.

  I looked at the wall and my heart missed a beat. There was a new Rule scrawled at the top with the ink smudged, the writing erratic. Like it had been written by a madman – which effectively it had. What was the point in pretending otherwise any more?

  I AM THE RULES AND THE RULES ARE ME.

  Childlike in its horrid simplicity. That basically summed up the whole wall. What Dad said went.

  However stupid.

  However loopy.

  However damaging.

  I tiptoed past him and stood outside in the rain, letting it soak into my hair and run down my cheeks. I looked up at the sky through blurry, misty eyes and sought the reassurance of a distant star. I wanted a sense of the size of the universe, to reduce the significance of my tiny corner of it. I thought that my problems would shrink if I saw I was just a small dot standing in a garden in Wales in the UK in the northern hemisphere. But it was too cloudy to see any glimmer of stars.

  And all I felt was cold and shivery and hopeless.

  By the time Josh and I get across the many fields and scrape the mud off our shoes on the tarmac, there’s already a motley-looking crowd assembled outside St Cuthbert’s. A guy with a dog is arguing with a middle-aged lady in a lilac cardigan about whether the dog can go in. It strains at the end of its leash, teeth bared. I hope she says no.

  “I know the back way,” says Josh, steering me round the corner and through the disabled-access door, which opens wide to reveal the makeshift café in the church hall beyond. Bacon sandwiches and carrot soup are being served at a long communal table. At the far side, there’s a desk headed ‘Here to Help station’ where a vicar is tapping away at a keyboard.

  He leaps up when he sees Josh and shakes his hand vigorously. “Josh, good to see you back. Looking well. Read those John Wyndham books yet? Who’s this?”

  “This is Scarlet, a friend of mine. Can we go online for a bit, Vicar?”

  I raise an eyebrow at him – Scarlet?

  “Good to meet a friend of Josh’s,” says the vicar, shaking my hand too and beaming. “Fancy some hot food, Scarlet?”

  I know it’s ungrateful of me, that these types have a vocation or whatever, that they mean well. But I instinctively don’t like him. It’s not his fault. I just don’t like that this stranger in a black shirt and dog collar is doing something to help me. I don’t like needing help. I grunt a reply while he clears a space on the table and picks through leaflets to hand us.

  “Play nice, Scarlet,” whispers Josh.

  I grit my teeth and take his leaflets on not sharing needles and nod sagely at them. I just need his computer not his life advice. At last he’s called away to deal with angry-dog-man out front and we sit down.

  “Why did you pick Scarlet? What’s next, Colonel Mustard?”

  “Traffic lights. Red, amber, green. Scarlet seemed the natural choice. I’ll go for green next time. Jade?” He laughs. “Or maybe Olive. Olive, definitely. Going to tell me what you’re looking for?” He’s using the corner of a leaflet on STDs to hook out the dirt from under his fingernails.

  “I want to see what my dad is up to. To see where he is. That’s all.”

  I take a deep breath. Until this week, I’ve been shutting him out, pretending he didn’t exist. That what happened to me, to him, was all a terrible dark fairy tale. I haven’t wanted to search him out, to see how he’s doing, or where he ended up. A defence mechanism to pretend that something hasn’t happened.

  “The real bastards mess with your head wherever they are.” Josh squeezes my shoulder. “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “Over two years ago,” I say quietly. “I wasn’t planning on ever having to see him again.”

  I wait for Josh to start talking to someone else and then I begin checking forums on prepping and survivalism. I feel clammy and sick when I find the first picture of Dad – Ellis Fitzpatrick resurrected. He’s posted plenty in the last couple of months, sharing his muddled thoughts. Looks like he’s embraced social media again after his previous paranoia about surveillance. His posts have many likes, many comments.

  I scroll through blogs on possible bug-out places, the merits of off-the-peg bunkers over buried shipping containers or disused missile silos. He runs through the advantages of taking over existing buildings versus rural bug-out places that can be self-sufficient. I click on an article about fortification which praises a prison as the best place to live after the SHTF. It’s coherent, well argued. I can’t believe he wrote it. I assume he cut and pasted it from someone else.

  Yes, seems like my dad has been a busy little prepper. Snapshots of kit, of artistic interpretations of some of the Rules. Putting something in a curly font doesn’t make it intrinsically nicer. He hasn’t laid out all the Rules – even he must see that would be extreme. He’s picked the ones like Leave no trace that sound more sensible, greener – as though he’s thinking about the planet rather than himself. It seems to be working. For him.

  Dad’s shared his wisdom on bushcraft, foraging and survival skills. I enlarge a photo of him – he’s older but he looks surprisingly well; tanned and he
althy. I study it for some clue to what he’s really like now. But our family was always good at putting on a mask.

  Josh startles me by leaning over my shoulder and angles the screen towards him to have a better look. “You’re so like him,” he says. “Minus the stubble and the Adam’s apple.”

  “I’m nothing like him.” Being like him, ending up anything like him, scares me. Blood is thicker than water. I can’t escape it.

  “Jeez, you weren’t joking,” he says, scrolling down the screen. “He really is preparing for Armageddon. Cool.”

  Not cool.

  “There are closed groups,” I say. “I need to log in as me to access them. If I do, am I traceable?”

  Josh shrugs. “Do I look like I’d know? Even if he could trace it, it gets him to the vicar’s laptop in St Cuthbert’s.”

  My fingers hesitate, hovering above the keys. I log in. I go straight to the closed survivalist groups I know he set up. And there he is – repeat posting about me. Asking for help looking for me, his beloved daughter, Amber; flashing an out-of-date picture. Me in a pair of denim dungarees, in the woods, his arm loosely round my shoulders in a gesture that looks like affection or pride but wasn’t. Like the game Happy Families. Mr Fitzpatrick the Prepper. Miss Fitzpatrick the Prepper’s daughter. As though we’re living some off-grid dream. What the snapshot doesn’t show is the moments before Mum took the photo and the moments after it. It doesn’t show her broken collarbone and black eye because she did something wrong when taking it. Mrs Fitzpatrick the Prepper’s unhappy wife.

  I click through to Events. Dad smiles out of the screen with a big timbered hall behind him. The post is from Devon a few days ago. A shiver runs through me. He’s here. In the UK. Not Florida. I was right to leave Beechwood.

  And I can’t go back.

  He’s giving talks called ‘Prepping: Sustainable ways of living in the future’. One’s near a place we went camping when I was about ten – after he’d come back from another long stay in the States. He’d fixed up a rope swing and I jumped in the river again and again until dusk. He wrapped me in a towel and blanket and cooked our supper on a campfire while we watched for kingfishers in the half-light. I loved it – the freedom of it.

 

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