Going Out

by Scarlett Thomas

  ‘I don’t think they’re going to care about that,’ Julie says. ‘Look.’

  Up ahead, it seems like the whole village is flooded.

  ‘Oh, fuck it,’ says David.

  Julie stops the van and one of the police officers walks over. She winds down the window to talk to him.

  ‘You’re not coming through here, love,’ says the officer.

  The other one walks up as well. ‘Where’ve you lot come from?’ he asks.

  ‘Essex,’ Julie says. ‘We’re going to Wales.’

  ‘Essential journey, is it?’ the first one says, and laughs.

  ‘It is, actually,’ Julie says, smiling.

  ‘Yeah, all right, love.’ He laughs again. ‘But you’re still going to have to go via another route, because there’s no way to get through here at all. I don’t know how the hell you got this far anyway. All the roads behind you are very flooded.’

  ‘I know. Are you sure I can’t just drive through this water?’ Julie’s got a taste for driving through water now.

  ‘No, love, sorry. You know how deep that is?’ He gestures at the water beyond the roadblock. ‘You’d need a boat to get through that. You’re going to have to go back, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Back?’

  Vaguely, in the distance, Julie can see a wisp of orange in the sky. Sunrise.

  ‘Come on,’ says David. ‘We’d better go back.’

  Julie turns the van around and drives back to the turning she took ten minutes ago. This is like a riddle. You can choose one of three paths: the one with the water, or the fallen tree, or the police.

  ‘We should have listened to the news on the radio,’ Charlotte says.

  ‘We did listen to it,’ Julie says. ‘It said don’t travel. We are travelling. This was bound to happen.’

  ‘There’s no way out of this,’ David says. ‘That way’s blocked, that way’s flooded – and even though we’ve gone through it once, I don’t like our chances of doing it a second time – and that way’s got a roadblock and Old Bill. We’re trapped.’

  ‘So we’re just going to sit here all night?’ Charlotte says.

  ‘There’s not exactly much night left,’ Julie points out.

  The sky has turned from black to navy blue, and the orange wisp in the distance is now three orange wisps.

  ‘Sunlight,’ says Charlotte. Then: ‘Oh, shit. Luke.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Julie says. ‘It’s a problem. A big one.’ She lights a cigarette. ‘David?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m looking for another route,’ he says. ‘But we’ve tried them all.’ He points at the map. ‘See, up there we had to turn back and come down here, so going back up there isn’t really an option. We can’t go down, either – see, that was the road with the mashed-up tractor in it, and that one was closed and that one had that huge tree . . . All we could do, if we had time, which we haven’t, really, is go back towards London and go higher up, but we’ll probably find exactly the same shit up there.’

  ‘In summary, we’re fucked?’ says Charlotte.

  ‘Yeah,’ David says.

  ‘Will the space-suit keep the sunlight out?’ Charlotte asks.

  ‘Dunno,’ he says. ‘It’s all right for sunlight reflected off the moon, but . . .’

  ‘Huh?’ says Charlotte ‘What do you mean, sunlight reflected off the moon?’

  ‘Moonlight is sunlight reflected off the moon,’ David explains.

  ‘Oh,’ says Charlotte. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to chance it with direct sunlight,’ Julie says.

  ‘We’re going to have to find somewhere to stay, then,’ Charlotte says.

  ‘A hotel?’ David says.

  ‘Have you seen any hotels around here?’ Julie asks David.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Charlotte?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Also, we can’t be sure that a hotel would be able to cater for Luke.’

  ‘All hotels have curtains, don’t they?’ Charlotte says.

  ‘Yeah, but we don’t know how thick they’re going to be. And anyway, we’d have to explain why we’re turning up with a guy dressed in a space-suit in the middle of the night. Well, not that it’s the middle of the night any more, but still. How many people check into hotels at six in the morning?’

  Julie’s voice sounds dead but she’s panicking. She’s cold and it’s wet outside and they haven’t got anywhere to go. The sun’s going to come up soon and then what? Julie’s tired. She wishes someone would just rescue her from this.

  ‘We really are fucked,’ David says. ‘I don’t even know how the fuck we’re going to go anywhere from here anyway, to be honest. We’re going to have to go through that water again, I reckon. Or move that huge branch.’ He rubs his head. ‘Fuck it. I don’t know.’

  ‘We’ve got to do something,’ Julie says.

  ‘Tell me where we’re aiming for ideally,’ Charlotte says. ‘I’ve got an idea.’

  ‘Where we’re aiming for’s the problem, though, isn’t it?’ David says. ‘I just don’t know. There’s nowhere for us to stay, is there? It’s all gone a bit Mary and Joseph, hasn’t it?’

  ‘My mother lives near here,’ Julie says suddenly. ‘I haven’t spoken to her for years but this is an emergency, isn’t it? She knows Luke. She’ll know how to get a room ready for him. Do you think I should ring her?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Charlotte. ‘Quickly.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us about your mum before?’ David says.

  ‘I didn’t really think about it,’ says Julie, getting out her phone. She hesitates. ‘Mind you, even if I do call her, I don’t know how we’re going to get to her place. Maybe I’ll see if we can get there, first, then ring her.’

  ‘Drive back to that roadblock, Jules,’ Charlotte says. ‘Like I said, I’ve got an idea.’

  Fifteen minutes later, they are on their way with a police escort.

  ‘Skin up,’ says Chantel, who’s awake again now.

  ‘You can’t skin up when you’ve got a police escort,’ Julie says.

  ‘They can’t stop us if they’re in front of us,’ David points out.

  ‘How did you get them to escort us, exactly?’ Chantel asks Charlotte.

  ‘I told them about Luke and they were really sweet. They’re going try to move that branch for us and then go by routes they know aren’t too bad. They said they’ll even organise a boat if they have to, to get us to Julie’s mum’s. I don’t think we should do any drugs while they’re escorting us. It would upset them if they knew we were like that. Like we were disrespecting their help, or something.’

  ‘I’m too fucked to smoke any more anyway,’ David says.

  ‘What were they doing out here in the middle of the night?’ Julie says.

  ‘That river back there only burst its banks a few hours ago,’ Charlotte explains. ‘That village flooded then, basically. The police were there doing emergency stuff: helping old people out of bungalows, distributing sandbags and everything.’

  ‘Didn’t look like the sandbags worked,’ David says.

  ‘No,’ says Charlotte. ‘Poor people.’

  ‘You’d better ring your mum,’ Chantel says to Julie.

  Julie’s had her phone on her lap for the last twenty minutes now.

  ‘I can’t use it while I’m driving,’ she says. ‘What about the police?’

  ‘Give it to me,’ Chantel says. ‘I’ll ring her. What’s the number?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Julie says.

  ‘Isn’t it programmed in?’

  ‘No. I’ve got it written down somewhere . . .’

  ‘You don’t know your own mother’s phone number?’

  ‘She hasn’t seen her for ages,’ Charlotte reminds Chantel.

  ‘It’s in my address book, in my bag,’ Julie says.

  Chantel gets the bag and finds it. ‘What’s it under?’

  ‘M,’ Julie says. ‘For Mum.’

  ‘What’s her actual name?’

&nbs
p; ‘Helen.’

  Chantel flicks through the pages. ‘God, you don’t know many people, do you? OK. Got it. All right, here goes . . . She’s going to be very pissed off when we wake her up, isn’t she? Does she get up this early?’

  ‘I don’t know. She probably won’t even answer,’ Julie says.

  ‘Keep trying if she doesn’t,’ Charlotte says. ‘The sun’s going to come up soon.’ She looks at the lump under the blanket. ‘Luke?’ she says. There’s no reply. ‘He must be asleep. Make sure he stays under that blanket if he does wake up.’

  Chantel’s dialling. She puts the phone to her ear, and almost immediately says: ‘Oh, hi. Is that Julie’s mum?’

  Chapter 38

  It’s about six-thirty now and everyone’s sitting in Helen’s front room. Apparently she was woken at about three a.m. by Doug ringing her to ask if she knew where Julie had taken Luke. Since Chantel phoned, Helen has taped bin-bags to all the windows in the cottage and drawn all her curtains. Since everyone arrived, she has lit a fire and made everyone hot drinks. Now the police have gone and everyone’s settled.

  ‘This is very exciting,’ Helen says, smiling at Julie proudly. ‘You’re on the run.’

  Luke looks at Julie for a second but she’s not catching his eye. No wonder, he was a complete bastard to her in the van.

  ‘We didn’t think we were on the run,’ Chantel says. ‘We didn’t mean to cause any trouble.’

  ‘I couldn’t believe it when Doug phoned,’ says Helen.

  ‘So how come he phoned you?’ Charlotte says. ‘We didn’t even know we were coming here until about an hour ago.’

  ‘Jean was going bananas, apparently. Doug, Dawn and Michelle just seemed to be phoning everyone they could think of. It sounded like they’d also been interrogating someone called Nicky, who seemed to know more details about where you’d gone. But evidently she became rather pissed off and refused to say anything much except that she thought you’d be a few days at least.’

  ‘Nicky’s my mum,’ Chantel says. ‘I’d better ring her in the morning. Well, it is the morning, but . . . At a more reasonable time. Mind you, I’ll be asleep then, I hope. Maybe I’ll text her.’ She pulls her phone out of her bag and starts pressing keys on it.

  ‘I take it you didn’t leave that note, then?’ Charlotte says to Luke.

  ‘I was going to ring Mum when we got there,’ he says. ‘I didn’t think it would take so long.’

  ‘To get to Wales? In a flood? On B-roads?’ Helen says, laughing. ‘Why were you going on B-roads, by the way?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Julie says.

  ‘And you’re off to see . . .’ She smiles. ‘A healer?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Luke says. ‘He’s going to make me better.’

  Helen looks unconvinced. ‘How?’ she asks.

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ Luke says. ‘But he’s very good, isn’t he, Charlotte?’

  She nods. ‘If Luke can be healed, he’ll do it.’

  ‘Will it cost a lot of money?’ Helen asks.

  ‘It’s on a donation basis,’ Charlotte says. ‘You donate to charity afterwards.’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to let me know how you get on,’ Helen says, yawning.

  ‘Thanks for saying we could stay,’ Julie says suddenly.

  ‘No problem. It’s been much too long, and all this is very exciting. You should ring Jean, though,’ Helen says to Luke. ‘Go on. Do it now.’

  ‘She’ll be asleep, though . . .’

  ‘I don’t think she will. She was very worried.’

  ‘Oh. I thought we’d be there by the time she got home from bingo. I thought I’d call her then . . .’

  Luke knows his voice sounds choked. He’s got a headache from drinking beer – and he’s forgotten something again because of it. Not forgotten, exactly, but if he hadn’t passed out in the van he would have known what time it was, and that his mum would be home from bingo and very, very worried. It was late even before he started drinking, though, and he was depressed by everything he saw at South Mimms. That was why he started drinking. So it wasn’t even the drinking that made him forget. There’s no way he can explain it to himself. He’s hurt his mother, and he doesn’t even have an excuse. What’s wrong with him? Nothing feels right any more. He just wants to go home.

  ‘The phone’s in the hall,’ Helen says. ‘Help yourself.’

  Even the phone’s wrong. It’s not his phone. Luke dials.

  ‘Luke?’ Jean answers immediately.

  ‘Mum? Yeah, it’s me.’

  She starts crying.

  ‘Oh, thank God. Thank God.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to worry you,’ Luke says.

  She cries into the phone for several minutes.

  ‘Mum?’ he says.

  Eventually she speaks. ‘Thank God you’re all right. Where are you?’

  ‘I’m not sure. On the way to Wales.’

  ‘Wales? What the bloody hell . . .?’

  ‘There’s a healer . . . I wanted it to be a surprise.’

  ‘A surprise?’

  ‘Sort of. Well . . .’

  ‘You mean you weren’t going to phone me at all?’

  ‘No, I was, I mean I am. Look, I’m sorry.’

  ‘I almost died when you weren’t there. A healer?’

  ‘I’m sorry. Look, I’ll be OK. I’m in a house now, with no sunlight.’

  ‘What about your allergies?’

  ‘I’m OK, Mum. They seem to be OK. I’ve got my Ventolin and my adrenaline. Julie knows how to do the adrenaline if I accidentally eat a peanut or something.’

  Jean is silent for a few seconds.

  ‘Mum?’ he says. ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘I suppose you’re not coming home, then?’ she says.

  ‘What? Of course I’m coming home!’

  ‘You won’t come home. I can feel it.’

  ‘Why are you saying this?’

  ‘I felt it when your father left. You’re just like him.’

  ‘Mum, for God’s sake. I’m not like my father, and I am coming home. I’ve just gone away for a few days to try to get myself better. It’s not a big deal.’

  She sighs. ‘Not a big deal. Luke, I’m so tired. I’ve been up all night.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says again.

  ‘Good luck,’ she says, in a weird voice.

  ‘What with?’

  ‘Everything. Your life.’

  ‘Mum, are you saying I can’t come back?’

  ‘Of course not. This is your home.’ She pauses portentously. ‘But I saw it.’

  ‘Saw what?’

  ‘I had a dream. I saw you walking down a long path and never coming back.’

  Luke can’t handle this right now. ‘For God’s sake. I don’t need this, Mum. I’ve had the most fucking awful night, and Julie’s not speaking to me because I acted like a dick, and I don’t know where I am, and I’ve wanted to come home all this time, but I wouldn’t know how to get home and everyone’s being so nice to me and looking after me and I can’t let them down . . . And this healer, he sounds so genuine and it’s my one chance to get better and I’m so fucking scared, but I’m trying to be brave and I miss you and . . .’

  ‘Please don’t swear at me, Luke. I’m tired.’

  ‘How do you think I feel? I’m tired too.’

  ‘It’s always about you, isn’t it?’ she says.

  ‘No, Mum. Do you know what? I don’t think any of this is about me.’

  Luke puts the phone down.

  He pretends he’s on TV. ‘That went well,’ he says to himself in a low voice, as if there’s an audience. Then he laughs like canned laughter but this isn’t funny. Maybe she’ll be in a better mood tomorrow. She’s always like this when she’s tired. But . . . Why does she have to be so fucking horrible to him? Nevertheless, Luke still wants to go home.

  Helen comes into the hall. ‘Everything OK?’ she asks.

  Luke notices that Helen looks older. The first time he
saw her, when he was nine, she couldn’t have been that much older than Charlotte is now. And when she lived in Windy Close, he didn’t notice her change, particularly since he didn’t see her much. Her hair seems to have more grey in it now, and her eyes have more lines. But what he really notices are her clothes. This is the first time he’s seen Helen wearing anything other than what would count as ‘young people’s’ clothes – jeans, denim jackets, hippy scarves from the market, purple DMs. This morning she’s wearing a cardigan that looks, well, grown-up, and when she held her mug of hot chocolate in the sitting room before, Luke could almost imagine her as an old lady, with greyer hair, a bit smaller and sunken and in some way frail. Will Julie be like that when she gets older? Or do you have to actually live life before you can look like that?

  ‘Fine,’ he says. ‘Well, Mum was weird.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘I don’t know. She . . . She thinks I’m never going home.’

  ‘Oh, ignore her.’

  ‘She makes me really sad, Helen.’

  Helen just smiles sympathetically, but she doesn’t know that’s the first time Luke’s said anything negative about his mother to anyone.

  ‘Shall I show you your room?’ she says.

  ‘Thanks,’ says Luke.

  Everything’s TV again. All he can manage all the way up the stairs are TV responses: Thanks, that would be lovely; don’t go to any trouble; in here? He’s never really had to use any of these phrases before. When Helen shows him the bathroom he can’t listen to what she’s saying because the room smells so different to his bathroom at home, and he can’t identify the smell, because smells – particularly ones that imitate nature – are not something he’s familiar with.

  Helen’s explaining something about how to flush the toilet.

  ‘What’s that smell?’ Luke asks suddenly.

  ‘Smell?’ she says, in an odd voice.

  ‘Have I said something wrong?’

  ‘No, but . . .’ Helen smiles. ‘Is it a nice smell?’

  ‘Yes. It’s . . .’

  ‘What does it smell like?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s amazing. I’ve never . . .’

  ‘Oh, God. You don’t have smells in your house, do you?’

  The way she says this makes Luke think she’s criticising his house in some way. But she’s right, his house doesn’t smell of anything, really, just his house. Nothing. But the smell of Helen’s bathroom is indescribably beautiful.