Teddy looks equally shocked and tries to hide behind my legs, so I say hi to the lady, then quietly drag Teddy to the bit where I can see colourful seats because that must be the kids’ section.
‘Aw, Millions,’ I say, picking up a book. ‘Teddy, this is about two kids who find millions of pounds that’s been thrown off a train and there’s all this mad stuff about saints. And this one – this is called Mutant Zombies Cursed My School Trip. I don’t know what that’s about.’
But Teddy is more interested in trying to get the TV in the corner to work.
I could spend a whole day in here. Mum and Dad would always read to me and rub my back before I went to sleep when I was younger, but then sometimes Dad would be late home from work or Mum was too tired or had to do her designs and they stopped doing it as much. Then when Teddy came along they started letting me watch something until it was time to tuck me in, which was fine by me, at first. Sometimes Dad still comes in late and sits with me. It’s nice to see him there, on the seat in the corner of my room, his face lit gently as he scrolls.
I keep looking through the books and then I spot something I know will get Teddy’s attention. ‘Look,’ I say to him. ‘A book of aeroplanes!’
Now he’s interested, and he comes and sits with me. We flick through all the pictures of aeroplanes.
‘That one’s an Airbus A380,’ I say, like I know and haven’t just read it at the bottom of the picture. ‘And wow – that’s a Russian military jet.’
Teddy takes the book off me and, while he stares at the pictures, I rub his back.
He’s really calm and I feel myself relax too.
The lady in the drifty dress comes over to us and I’m worried it’s because we’ve done something wrong, but then she gives me a big smile.
‘Have you found anything you like?’ she asks.
‘This is my brother – he loves planes,’ I say. ‘We’re on a bit of a car journey and we don’t have any screens, so I thought we’d pop in.’
She smiles, like people popping in is a nice surprise.
‘I haven’t seen you here before,’ she says. ‘Do you have a library card?’
Oh yeah. You have to be a member to borrow a book. I forgot that. In my head it was like having a giant Kindle or something and you could just take stuff. But I guess once you take a book out of a library, you’ve got the only copy they have.
See, that’s another reason I like libraries. Most of the time, you get THE copy of the book. And you get to see its history, and who took it out and when, and you feel lucky because ONLY YOU have it now.
‘Teddy, we’d better put that back,’ I say, and then I smile at the lady. ‘We don’t live here. Sorry.’
And then the doors FLY OPEN and bang against the walls.
‘STELLA! TEDDY?!’
* * *
‘Don’t walk away from us ever again,’ says Dad, and I’m in proper trouble.
It’s not that naughty trouble you get into, like when you won’t eat breakfast or you’ve broken a thing they specifically told you they would prefer you not to break. It’s that trouble when you’ve really panicked someone. It’s love trouble, where they show you just how much they love you by making you feel like a really awful person.
‘I’m sorry, I just got excited when I saw the library.’
‘It’s okay,’ says Mum. ‘But we don’t have phones, and one second you were there and the next you weren’t. Just tell us next time. There’s no built-in app on a child. We can’t press a button marked Find My Kids.’
I should feel really bad.
But just look at Teddy.
As we were leaving, the lady waited for Dad to stop telling us off before quietly sneaking me the aeroplanes book when he wasn’t looking.
So now Teddy has 1000 Planes and isn’t bored any more, and none of us have to listen to him shouting, ‘BORED!’ all the time.
Dad is driving again instead of Mum. He keeps saying we shouldn’t have stopped as all this stopping and starting will affect our fuel efficiency. The village clock shows it’s after three in the afternoon, and I figure Dad is getting ratty because he usually has a Snickers Mini and a cup of coffee around now. At this rate, he says, we’ll be driving ’till midnight.
After about half an hour of silence, Dad starts loudly complaining again that you just can’t get a map any more. It’s obvious that’s all he’s been thinking about.
‘We should have got one at the library cos they had a whole map section!’ I say. I’m just trying to be helpful, so I don’t know why Dad immediately starts screaming and hitting the steering wheel.
I will never understand grown-ups.
Teddy is asleep in minutes, and I pull his jacket over his legs to keep him warm. Mum and Dad are mumbling to one another so that I can’t hear. So I decide to just join in anyway.
‘Can you tell me what’s going on?’ I say. ‘Shouldn’t we be listening to the news or something?’
Usually when there’s a crisis they will have the news on all the time. It gets really boring. Not only do they have the news on, but then they’ll listen to normal people ringing up radio stations, saying what they think about the news. I find that a little obsessive.
‘We just don’t want to put it on,’ says Mum. ‘We don’t want you guys to get all worried.’
‘Teddy’s asleep,’ I say. ‘And I am unusually mature for my age.’
She laughs. Er, rude?
‘Well, what does Dad think?’ she says, and he waits a moment, then shrugs.
So Mum turns the radio on.
Now, I’d always been under the impression that grown-ups thought too much screen time was bad. But it turns out that no screen time whatsoever is not much good either.
The news says that having no screens has been bringing out the worst in people. Because what if it just keeps going? Some people are realizing they’re going to have trouble making money, and others are realizing they’re going to have trouble spending money. Some people can’t do their work already, and other people now have too much work. Everybody wants to know where the internet has gone. Everybody wants to know how they’re supposed to run their business. The newspapers didn’t come out today because no one’s got anything to type on. Doctors can’t find their records. People have started marching outside 10 Downing Street, and there’s even been more crime. In some places, people have started stealing things, just because they know they can’t be caught.
‘Hey, Dad, that’s like you!’ I say, but he just gives me a Look.
People are worried about food shortages because everyone started using whatever cash they could find to spend on food just so they had it, but the supermarket ordering systems all went down and there’s a delay because people have to work out how to use pens again, and the rail network is down, and and and—
Mum switches off the radio and turns to me. Evidently my eyes are the size of a giant squid’s.
‘Stels, it’s important you know what’s going on, but it’s also really important you don’t worry. It’ll be okay. We’ll get to Grandma’s and everything will be okay.’
We zoom past another corner shop. A sign outside says
* * *
A few hours later, it’s that amazing time of day.
You know the time I mean? I think they call it Golden Hour. It’s when the sun is nearly setting and everything looks all dreamy and warm. We get some great ones in Mousehole, where the whole harbour lights up and the boats all cast long shadows across the water. Every little ripple has its own reflection of the sun and blinks it at you; thousands and thousands of them shining, all saying hello at a slightly different moment.
Where we are right now there are mainly hedges. We’ve stopped in a small gravelly car park by some woods and the only thing that’s spoiling Golden Hour is Dad kicking the front of the car.
He’s saying, ‘No,’ a lot to himself.
‘No,’ he’s going, as he kicks. ‘No. No. No no no.’
Mum’s trying to keep thin
gs light.
‘There was a petrol station back that way,’ she almost sings.
‘That was miles away,’ growls Dad. ‘There must be one closer?’
The second the car started to run out of petrol Dad had gone into complete denial.
Even though the car was juddering and choking and jerking and jolting, Dad had just kept acting like everything was absolutely fine.
It was only when it had died completely and slowly rolled to a halt in the middle of the road that Dad had accepted we were stuck.
That was when he took his foot off the accelerator, pulled up the handbrake, and folded his arms.
* * *
I read on a leaflet at the doctor’s once that when you get bad news, you go through all these stages before you come to terms with it.
Denial. Dad had already been through this. That was when he was saying NO a lot out loud.
Anger. That’s where he’d just been. Kicking a car in a car park he’d had to push the car into.
Now it was Bargaining.
‘I think we can make this okay,’ says Dad, nodding to himself madly. ‘If we just push on, we can find a petrol station – we can do this!’
‘Okay!’ says Mum, brightly. ‘I am sure there will be a petrol station just a little further on. And you can find it well before dark. And everything will be great!’
I’ve been telling Dad for ages he should get an electric car. One because it’s better for the planet. And two because all you have to do to charge it is find someone who’s got a toaster or something and then plug in the car instead. But Dad’s work car is petrol, meaning you have to rely on someone on these tiny roads going: ‘You know what this tiny road needs? A massive petrol station in case Stella’s dad inexplicably drives down here one day!’
However, I don’t think now is the time to remind Dad of my wisdom.
‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Only take what you need. From here we walk!’
Poor Dad. He’s only trying to do the right thing. For us. For my grandma. But everything that was normal has changed. Now it’s like the world is playing tricks on him every time he turns round.
And then he actually turns round, and it’s happened again.
He stares at Mum. ‘What do you mean, “You can find it well before dark”?’
It makes sense that Dad went off on his own. We are in the middle of nowhere. I am a ten-year-old child, Teddy is only just four and we should not be forced to walk down random country roads at night in search of petrol. Plus I don’t want to.
Instead, Mum has spread out our sleeping bags on the grass and found some snacks for us. Mum looks so beautiful in the evening sun. She’s lying down on her sleeping bag, smiling up at the sky. Mum always seems a bit happier than Dad, despite her shop not having many customers.
‘Mum, how much longer will it take to get to Grandma’s?’ I ask.
‘Oh, not too long,’ she says, which using my parental translation device means AGES.
I already know it will take ages. That was just a starter question. Sometimes I ask a starter question before I get to my main question, which is the question I’m a bit scared of.
‘Is it all going to be okay?’
Because you wouldn’t think it would be that bad, losing all the screens, would you? You’d think it’d be fine, but then you think about how complicated and big the world is, and how everything is connected to something else, and it makes your head spin, and it can make your tummy feel heavy, and—
‘Let’s play!’ says Mum. ‘Let’s pretend we’re camping in the Wild West. And I’m a cowboy. But you’re a robot sent from the future. And, Teddy, you’re—’
‘A dinosaur!’
‘Perfect!’ says Mum. ‘You’re a dinosaur sent from the past! And we’ve all decided to go camping together. Well, you know what we have to do first?’
‘What?’ I say, forgetting all our worries for a second.
* * *
The fire is still burning when I wake up. I loved making the fire. We’d collected so many sticks and dry leaves and old branches from the small woods around us. And we’d sung songs and even though Dad wasn’t there it had felt normal again. The moon was high up in the sky and perfectly round.
It’s a lot colder now though. So cold I can see my breath in the air. I look over and see Teddy asleep next to Mum who has her arm round him and she’s sleeping too.
And then I hear a noise.
Suddenly I’m very aware of every inch of my skin. My tummy tightens and I hold my breath.
The noise had been a kind of clunk-CLICK somewhere out near the car.
I sit up and stare out into the darkness.
Wait. Where was Dad? Dad wasn’t back.
‘Mum,’ I whisper. ‘MUM.’
I hear slow footsteps on gravel and the snap of twigs. And now – someone was clearing their throat.
‘MUM,’ I whisper again. She stirs and blinks a few times, then she sees…
There’s an old man walking towards us. He has a big beard, a weird old hat and a long coat. His eyes flicker in the light of the fire.
Mum draws us both close, as the man gets nearer, stops, and says…
‘You must be Mrs Bobcroft, is it?’
Mum screams! And I scream! And then Teddy pipes up and says, ‘Are we nearly there yet?’
WHO IS HE?
‘Don’t worry!’ says Dad, running over from the car and carrying an old petrol can. ‘This is Uncle Tony!’
* * *
Uncle Tony is not our uncle.
Dad met him at the petrol station about five billion miles away. Tony had been dropping off some potatoes to his friend who manages the petrol station.
‘So isn’t that nice? Uncle Tony’s going to help us,’ says Dad, and Mum is all like pretending to be totally cool with it.
‘Oh yes, that’s nice,’ she says, collecting our things up incredibly quickly but keeping me and Teddy well away from him because – you know – stranger danger.
‘I only had the change from the Chinese meal to buy petrol with, and of course the screens on the pump weren’t working, but Uncle Tony convinced his friend to give me a little anyway. Plus Uncle Tony said if we give him a lift back to his farm we can stay in his caravan and in the morning he’ll give us a map.’
Dad looks slightly deranged. He seems so happy to have found some petrol, like things are finally going his way.
Tony doesn’t seem bothered either way. He is maybe seventy years old. His coat has loads of holes in it. He smells slightly of diesel. There’s a bit of straw in his straggly beard. He’s got a big red nose and steely blue eyes.
‘Um, or we could just use the petrol and get as far as we can?’ goes Mum.
But Dad says he’s promised Uncle Tony a lift.
* * *
Mum said it might be best if she sat in the back with me and Teddy because it would be much more comfortable for Uncle Tony if he sat up front all alone with Dad and she was right at the back where she could be with her kids.
She seemed wide awake now.
‘So, I don’t think we need to stay in Uncle Tony’s caravan,’ she says, all lightly and politely. ‘Probably best if we just drop you off, Tony, and then carry on.’
‘You won’t get far,’ says Tony, quietly, and Mum does this gulp like from a cartoon.
‘I could only buy a few pounds’ worth of petrol,’ says Dad. ‘Uncle Tony says we can borrow some of his, from his farm.’
Teddy gives me a Look. I know what this Look means. It means: ‘Why does Dad keep calling this man Uncle Tony and why are we going to his farm?’
‘And I’ve got eggs,’ says Tony. ‘And the lil’uns might like to ride the bull in the morning.’
I don’t want to ride a bull.
But Dad seems really into this Uncle Tony dude.
‘Uncle Tony was stuck at the petrol station,’ says Dad. ‘I found him reading the farming magazines and eating a sausage. He’d usually have texted someone to come and pick him up, isn’t
that right, Tony? But you say you hadn’t really heard about the global international worldwide screen failure.’
‘No signal on the farm anyway,’ says Uncle Tony, and Mum gulps again.
‘Why are you called Uncle Tony?’ I ask.
‘Because I’m an uncle,’ he says.
He doesn’t say anything further but I guess he doesn’t have to. He’s got a nice accent. I think it might be Irish. Or German. I’m not 100 per cent great with accents.
‘So how far is it from here?’ says Mum, sounding a bit nervous. I think she might be worried we are suddenly in a horror movie. She’s always so worried about baddies that it’s made me and Teddy worry everyone is a baddie too. Mind you, I don’t blame her. It is so dark out here. There are no streetlights, and I can’t see any signs. Just a single lane, and bushes that get higher and higher and higher.
‘Not far now,’ says Uncle Tony.
* * *
‘So this is the caravan, is it?’ says Dad, trying to sound happy, as Uncle Tony shines a weak torch at it. I think Dad’s just relieved there’s a plan.
The farm is called Angry Woods and it’s extremely muddy. Every time I move my feet it’s like the world is trying to suck my shoe.
The caravan has a sign on it which says Bad Bertha’s Resting Place. I don’t know if this is good or not but it doesn’t seem good. The caravan is extremely small and very dirty on the outside. The only window has been boarded up with an old road sign and some nails. The door doesn’t look like it locks properly and I can hear a cow or something shifting around nearby. I want to go inside, but at the same time I really don’t want to go inside.
‘There’s no mod cons,’ mutters Tony. ‘No wi-fi. No TV. But then there isn’t anywhere now, is there? The world is quiet for once. None of that relentless babble. Life at last is silent.’
The Day the Screens Went Blank Page 5