Looks like he’s on a month’s tour up and down the country, building on interest in sustainable living and fears about the future. People are buying tickets to see him speak. You can’t cut and paste a talk like he did with the articles, can’t blag it. He really must have got his act together, laying on the charm that he saves for other people. No one would believe me over him.
I copy the dates and places on to the edge of one of the leaflets. At least I’ll know exactly where Dad is – maybe it’ll all be over after the talks. I let a tiny glimmer of hope take hold. Perhaps he’ll go back to the US.
“We could go along to one if you like,” says Josh. “Maybe he’s changed. He looks pretty normal. Could be worth seeing what he’s saying.”
“How much can people really change?” I say. “He’ll be pushing the same doom or SHTF scenarios he always did, just in a smarter outfit.”
I minimize Dad with a click of the mouse.
About the time I started secondary school, we began to live our life in a heightened state of alert. Dad pored over newspapers and we always had the low hum of a radio on in case war was declared when we weren’t paying attention. All that dwelling on doomsday takes a toll on your state of well-being.
I have a counsellor, Dr Meadows, lined up by Julie, who talks me though stuff about Mum. Mostly I sit there, saying nothing, playing through the Rules in my mind or calculating the area of the carpet tiles. But that psychology stuff can get in your head even if you don’t want it to. It pops up in the middle of the night and makes you think about it, even if you squeeze your eyes shut and put on your headphones. Makes you think about what’s normal and not normal. About what you can move on from and what you can’t ever leave behind.
Has Dad changed? Can anyone shed what they were, what they did? Or is it always there, underneath the surface? Waiting for the pretence to crack.
There was a preppers’ collective with a private Facebook group and occasional meet-ups. They figured that by pooling expertise and buying-power, they could act in the common good. One guy worked at a wholesaler and used his staff discount for buying pallets of goods to be shared out. Dad had always been obsessive about using any BOGOF offers for stockpiling. One packet of rice for us, one for the store. But this way, they could scale it up and get a better discount. Our food store grew bigger and bigger. It started in the cupboard under the stairs but as it expanded it was split between the attic and the spare bedroom. Once we moved to the farm, we had a whole outbuilding. I spent hours with Dad cataloguing toilet paper and food supplies. We arranged cans in strict date order, using up any food as it neared use-by dates, restocking and rotating the shelves. Like everything, he had a system that he agonized over and which became crazier over time.
Rule: Everything has its place. Cans and jars should face forwards and be exactly one centimetre apart.
I had to use a ruler – a wooden one that hurt when Dad rapped it across my knuckles if I got it wrong. Soon, I could tell by eye alone.
But the collective grew into more than discussing the price of canned tomatoes. The meetings grew longer. They acted like a war cabinet preparing for a conflict that might never come – but they secretly wished it would.
Dad had a magnetism about him at times. A strange charm. A loser who’d dropped out of college, out of any job he’d ever had, in and out of his relationship with Mum, his own parents, and fatherhood most of the time; suddenly, with the collective, he had people looking up to him. That must have been a whole new experience. The preppers in Wales wanted to know what Dad had to say. What the latest ideas were.
He’d talk about a state-of-the-art bunker complex down in Arizona, or a nature-loving survivalist community in Alaska. He wheedled his way into a Facebook group of part-time preppers who held high-paid jobs in Silicon Valley. They wanted a little insurance-policy real estate in the wilds somewhere for when their own IT creations brought about the AI singularity and the collapse of human civilisation. That’s irony for you.
He’d brag about his contacts at those meetings:
“Jeez, when I was with the folks out in Mill Falls, they were experimenting with…”
“I was discussing water filtration last week with Kurt in Portland…”
“The advice I gave to the group in Boston…”
Looking back, I don’t know how much of what Dad said was true. Did these communities he talked about even exist? If they did, had he ever been more than a casual visitor? He came to bill himself as an expert. And if all those places were so amazing, why wasn’t he living in any of them, instead of here, with us?
Social media lets people like my dad exist in a bubble of mutual appreciation. And however extreme one person is, there’s always someone else who takes things just that little bit further. A guy in the desert in Nevada with a store of hand grenades to take out the Feds loved my dad. And an army veteran with a long grey beard and tattooed face who hated everyone and everything, really connected with him.
Maybe all the wise and normal preppers were just too busy holding down average jobs to come into our orbit, too busy digging potatoes at their allotments or maintaining a sensible cardboard box of supplies in the garage. We used to know people like that but they dropped away as Dad got more extreme and wore a camo waistcoat. But there were others who still wanted to listen to him, to hang on his every word. He was only too happy to oblige on those evenings back in Wales, telling people how it should be done.
“We have turned our backs on looking after our families properly ourselves.” This was the start of one of his regular trains of thought. Mum bowed her head and picked at the patterned flowers on her skirt. I sat up stiffly beside her.
We were Exhibit A. Again. We were evidence that Dad had a family he looked after. Mum put crisps in bowls as her attempt at being a hostess. She wore a cardigan so no one could see the bruises on her arm.
“It is our responsibility to rebuild when all this modern world fails, when modern medicine fails, when the international systems fail.”
Disaster after disaster. Just like my Show and Tell.
“It may well not be the virus that gets any of us, it’s the person carrying the virus. It’s the person fleeing the virus, right? We all know them – the person who hasn’t seen fit to prepare for their family, as we have done.”
Pause for self-congratulatory murmurings.
“Normal rules, normal law and order will disappear. Your gentle old neighbour who wouldn’t hurt a fly will no longer have the threat of police and the justice system standing between him and looting your home. And as for those who already have criminal records – or the prisoners released from the broken prisons – they’ll be rushing to fill the anarchic gap.”
He lets this sink in. People look around, wondering which of them is the threat, which of them is the bad guy. (*Spoiler alert* It’s Dad).
“We’re gonna need to gather together, like the old wagon trains in the Wild West, able to defend ourselves.” He picked up his glass of water and drank it slowly, the sound of his swallowing loud in the hushed room.
“We should all be prepared to fight for our lives in the chaos that will descend. ‘Kill or be killed’.”
Pause for dramatic effect.
“We have a right to defend ourselves and our families,” he said, looking around the table, making eye contact with each and every member of the group. “An inalienable right to bear arms back where I’m from. How in this little country of yours do we get ourselves some weapons?”
How did he get from canned tomatoes to wanting a shotgun?
Easy. This is how it worked with the Rules: Dad would start off with something that sounded reasonable, sensible. For example, take the Rule: Everything has its place. A sensible way to live. No time wasted looking for anything because everything is where it should be. Keys in the dish by the door, plasters in the first-aid cabinet. Everything where it should be when you need it. Sensible.
But then as he got worse he added sub-clauses. First, it was
about the food storage:
Cans and jars should face forwards and be exactly one centimetre apart. Then it was the place settings. There was a whole unnecessary rule with a diagram of how knives and forks and spoons had to be arranged on the table, like we were working at Downton Abbey rather than having some beans on toast on a second-hand IKEA table. And then it moved into how our clothes should be arranged so that if the SHTF inconsiderately in the middle of the night, boy, were we ready. Other people would be turning their jeans out the right way round and looking for clean underwear but for us: Sets of clothes should be laid out in order, ready to put on in an emergency. Working left to right: underwear, trousers, top, warmer top, socks then shoes.
Mum had to lay his clothes out too, while she was still around, and then it was my job. Because Everything has its place turned out to apply to us too, in an unspoken way. Mum’s place became tending the vegetable patch, cooking his meals, sitting beside him like a quiet mouse or walking three paces behind him.
And Dad’s place?
WHEREVER HE DAMN WELL WANTED.
I close the vicar’s laptop.
“Come on, fancy a free bacon butty?” says Josh, nudging my shoulder.
We queue up as Josh lectures me about why he never goes online. I’m beginning to understand why he’s lacking friends.
“You’re in an even worse mood than usual, I can sense these things,” he says. “Screens and social media make everyone feel bad about themselves. The more we get connected, the more disconnected we really are.” He hands me a stewed cup of tea and a bacon sandwich. I pull off the white strip of fat and scrape the thick butter from the bread. “That’s why I had to quit social media totally,” he says. “The monetization of our distraction – I read it somewhere.”
“Online probably,” I say.
“Hilarious. I couldn’t leave it alone – like, I was ‘on’ twenty-four-seven. Gran said I’m wired differently from other people.”
“You’d make a good prepper,” I say. “Preppers don’t like dependence on modern tech that can fail in a matter of hours. Other skills are way more important than being able to google.”
Neville’s hovering to the side, glancing in our direction. “I think the Rev wants to try saving me again,” whispers Josh through the last of his bread roll. “And you’re fresh blood, so don’t think you’re going to get out of here without the lecture either. That’s the price. Everything has a price. The vicar’s one is better than lots of others I’ve been asked to pay.” He slurps down the tea. “A good-looking boy like me has to watch his back, if you know what I mean.”
“Not Neville?” I say.
“No, not him. But you never know. Never let your guard down, Scarlet Woman. Don’t drink. Don’t take drugs. Never ever be alone with these people.”
For all his breezy, cheery nature, Josh has developed his own set of rules. Survival rules. Rules to stop himself being robbed, being abused. Trust no one.
“Luckily I’ve developed an amazing BS detector,” he says, opening and closing his fist on top of his head as he makes a siren noise. “I have a sixth sense for when someone’s trying to put one over on me.”
I notice the time on the big clock on the wall. Right about now, I’d be back in my room at Beechwood, thinking about what’s for dinner and how much homework I’ve got. Instead I’m taking lessons from Josh in how to keep myself safe.
Josh pokes my arm. “Why don’t you post something in those groups along the lines of: Don’t worry, everything’s fine. Don’t look for me. I want to be alone for a while because my dad’s a psycho, et cetera, et cetera.” He picks at the food stuck in his front teeth.
“It’s not that easy. My social worker, all the team behind her – they’re pleased to have found Dad. He’s a manipulator, a control freak. I’ve got no chance against what he’d say.” I pull my coat tighter. Even in the warmth and bustle of this church hall and with a full stomach and surrounded by well-meaning people, Dad can reach me.
Josh mutters something I can’t make out.
“What?” I say, pulling at his arm.
“Nothing. It’s just that it seems to me you’re letting your dad have a fine old time swanning around wherever he likes while you, well, hide. I thought you were more kickass than that. That’s all. Coming to check out the freebies?”
Josh is right. I’m letting Dad win. But how can I possibly end this once and for all when he holds all the cards?
Josh cons the vicar into giving us a lift back by telling a vile story about a sore on his calf and offering to roll up his trousers. He says it’s too bad to carry back all these cans from the food bank. The vicar looks sad. I think he knows Josh is lying about the bad leg. When he puts Josh’s coat in the boot, loose change falls from the pockets. Change he didn’t have when we went in there – money he obviously stole from the now-empty donations plate by the door. The vicar says nothing. He picks up the scattered coins and hands them back to Josh. Maybe we’re a test of his faith. It would be too easy to be kind to good people. I sit on the back seat of his clapped-out Ford Fiesta hugging my plastic bag of free stuff, blocking out his mini-sermon that Jesus loves everybody no matter what they do.
So that the vicar doesn’t find out exactly where we’re staying, I get him to drop us in the village rather than right by The Haven. He’s in a rush for a service.
“God bless,” he says, with a note of sadness, and the car accelerates slowly away.
“A very successful trip,” says Josh, holding up his bag. “Internet, lunch, tea. Free stuff. You can have my sanitary products if I can have your mushroom soup.”
“You didn’t have to steal the money,” I say.
“If they leave loose change lying around, someone is going to take it. May as well be us. Some of those other guys would transform it straight into a can of Special Brew.” He sets off down the street. I’m still cross with him. Why should it matter to me if he’s stealing a few quid from that vicar’s church?
But it does matter. It draws attention. It creates risk.
The ginger-haired guy from the shop slows alongside us on his bike, his brakes squeaking. “All right?” he says. Josh nods in greeting. He looks at our bags. “Hope you’ve not been shopping with the opposition.”
Josh laughs. “Course not. No money was exchanged, was it, Amber?”
I shrink into my coat.
“See you around, Josh. Amber.” He looks me in the eyes, and I know he’s working out I was lying about my nan owning a cottage. He cycles off, glancing back at us.
Josh, the friendly idiot who can’t keep his mouth shut, has told him my name.
I don’t join in Josh’s hippy meditation tonight. He closes the lounge door and I do my own thinking in the kitchen. Josh will realize I haven’t quite told the truth about how I left Beechwood if I tell him I’m off because he let slip my name. Or he’ll think that I’m a paranoid weirdo. Or both. But I didn’t like the way the guy from the shop was looking at me. He’s now made a connection between Josh, The Haven and me. And he knows my first name. What if there’s something in the news tomorrow or the next day? Dad used to say that we should rely on our survival instinct. We’re animals like any other. I should trust my instincts. I’ve stayed in one spot for too long. It’s too risky.
I stretch my map across the table. I need to get away from here. Back inland. Somewhere that’s not full of CCTV and police, where me and a rucksack can go unremarked. I scan through the place names, look at areas of countryside and footpaths. Hadrian’s Wall, maybe. I realize I’m not too far from a prepping community that Dad linked up with to share info on emergency resources. We came up to visit them years ago. The idea was that our group could use their bug-out house if our own was blocked by floods, aliens, hungry mobs, etc. We would do the same for them in return. It could be useful now to access an empty bug-out property – if I could find it.
I look at the place names, waiting for something to spark a memory. Mum and I didn’t go to the house but I know
it’ll be somewhere off the beaten track.
Josh surfaces, wafting a sickly aroma of joss sticks. “Changed your mind yet about going to see one of your dad’s shows?”
“First, it’s not a show. He’s not a magician. Second, what don’t you understand about trying to avoid someone?”
“Aren’t you a tiny bit curious?”
“No. I know exactly what he’s like. Isn’t there a saying about putting lipstick on a pig? He’s still a pig. I’m not going near him or his talks.”
“Whatever. Message received.” He flips the map to see what I’m looking at. “If you want to travel over to Hadrian’s Wall, I know all the dodges. Best doorways, bus shelters en route. A few mates scattered about where I can sofa surf.” He beams and whispers, “I could make sure you never have to resort to the poo shovel.”
“I’m fine, thanks.” I fold the map and pack it in the top flap of my rucksack.
“Or if you’ve got cash, there are B&Bs, pubs – all geared up to people walking the wall. Have you got any cash?” He looks directly at me but I say nothing. There’s no way I’m telling him about the rolled-up notes I sleep with in my pillowcase. Not after the donations plate. Trust no one.
“I could be your muscle,” he adds, flexing his scrawny biceps.
“That would require you to have more muscle than me in the first place.”
“Ouch. Maybe not the muscle, but safety in numbers? Witty repartee? Encyclopedic knowledge of bus routes?” He fiddles around with the magnetic letters on the fridge door. “Spooky – if I add an L to the letters in your name, it spells Ramble. See. We have to go walking together – it’s written in ye olde runes.”
I chew my lip. Could I bear to have him along? Or should I stomach it because a couple travelling makes more sense than a teenager on her own in December?
The Rules Page 5