It’s nice that Dad is sharing but I have literally zero idea what he’s going on about. Why would some random DJ start talking over your favourite songs?
‘I used to record my own radio shows,’ says Dad. ‘All my favourite music, with me in the middle saying things like, “The weather today is tremendous!” ’
Then a song comes on the radio that Mum loves. It’s got a man saying mad stuff. Honestly, like bizarre stuff, like ‘You’re twistin’ my melon, man!’ and somehow Mum knows all the ridiculous words, which is just cringe. And now Dad is smiling, and he’s raising his arms, and the two of them now start singing about twisting melons, which is just about the worst thing I have ever been through in my life. Even Teddy looks embarrassed.
But then they look at each other and it’s like it’s just the two of them and this time Dad squeezes Mum’s hand. And the moment is only spoiled about five seconds later.
* * *
‘How hard can it be to change a tyre?’ says Mum, opening up the boot and realizing that she’s going to have to take all our stuff out before she can find the spare one.
We’re in a small lay-by and Dad’s leaning on the bonnet of the car, staring at Uncle Tony’s map. It’s quite a complicated-looking map, full of unusual notes and strange doodles. There were some rules he’d put at the bottom, including: AVOID BIG ROADS, DON’T GO DOWN NOTHING WITH AN ‘A’ IN THE TITLE and THERE’S A CRACKING PORK BREAKFAST AT THIS CAFÉ.
Dad wasn’t exactly sure where we were. We could see the names of places on small road signs, but without anything to check them against we might as well have been in space. Still, the sun was shining, the radio was working, and Mum reckoned changing a tyre was easy. Or it better be because it wasn’t like we could look up a number or call anyone. But Mum said she used to have to do it all the time when she got her first car back in 1890 or whenever it was.
‘Right!’ she says, pulling out the spare from a secret hidden compartment I had no idea was there. That’s like a magic trick in itself.
This is the first time I’ve seen Mum holding a tyre. It’s funny when you find out your parents can do special things, or have hidden skills. Charlie Fennel’s mum calls herself an ‘experimental hairdresser’, but she’s not allowed to do it any more because of a court case.
Mum gets this thing called a jack out, slides it under the car, and starts to crank it. The car immediately gets higher! How does she know how to do this? Is there some Mum School or something?
‘Stand back, Teddy,’ I say, as Mum moves on to part two: undoing the bad wheel.
‘Right, lug wrench,’ she says, holding her hand out and looking at Dad, expectantly.
‘I beg your pardon?’ he says.
‘Do you have the lug wrench? For the wheel nuts? Because it’s not in there.’
‘You think I just walk around with a lug wrench? I don’t even know what a lug wrench is!’ says Dad.
Mum looks at me and Teddy, and we just shrug because why on earth would we have a lug wrench?
‘Right,’ says Mum.
Then I hear something. A slow, growling, engine-like noise.
It gets louder and we all stop what we’re doing.
Teddy takes a step back in case it’s one of Uncle Tony’s dragons or whatever.
And around the corner it comes: a massive, hulking, fuming truck.
A thing like that shouldn’t be on a road like this.
But down the road it squeezes, like a giant rat somehow getting through a drainpipe. Its huge wing mirrors brush against the trees and bushes.
As it gets closer to us, it blocks out the whole sun.
And then it stops.
And a window slides down.
I get the feeling whoever this is will be helpful. Maybe they’ll be able to fix our tyre. Or maybe they’ll be able to tell us the quickest way to Grandma’s!
Then this man leans out and goes, ‘Don’t suppose you know where we are, do you, cos I am proper lost!’
Dad is sharing Uncle Tony’s map with Trucker Terry, and they both look confused.
‘Why does it say there are dragons on the A12?’ he asks, and Dad tells him not to worry about it.
Terry tells us the government have said people are only allowed to do local journeys right now. That sucks for us because we are definitely not local. Terry says they’ve shut the motorways because they’re worried about not spotting accidents on the broken CCTV and to keep people in their homes. Apparently, there were supposed to be big demonstrations in Birmingham and Glasgow today called ‘Scream 4 Screens’, but no one could find out the right information about where to meet and scream so they all went home again. That’s what Terry says anyway.
Meanwhile, Mum has borrowed a lug wrench off Terry and is busily swapping the wheel over while Teddy pretends he’s helping by handing her small pieces of gravel or leaves.
I really want to take a picture of Mum being awesome right now, but of course I can’t. Apparently, before you could take photos on your phone or your tablet or your memory card or whatever, you had to go to an actual shop to have your pictures printed out for you. And you only printed out like twenty of them. And you didn’t even get to see them before you printed them. And the shop would take about a week to get round to it. I think that’s why there aren’t that many pictures of my parents as kids. You had to really decide which moments were worth photographing. I guess people just tried to remember stuff more. So I will just try and remember this moment.
I blink hard, like a camera shutter.
Also, while I’m on the subject, there’s like zero videos of my parents as kids. It’s like they didn’t start to exist until they were about twenty. That’s mad, right? All I have to do is eat a cupcake or kick a ball and it’s like my parents think they’re a TV news crew. Every single Christmas concert at school I’ve ever done is recorded for the full two hours in high resolution, which is great, but also like the last thing anyone wants to watch ever again in their lives. But, if a thing isn’t recorded, how do you know it even took place? I mean, if you can’t remember watching it through a screen, did it ever happen? I think that’s what I took for granted just now, until I blinked at my mum, and made a memory.
It’s hard to imagine my dad as a kid. It’s hard to imagine him not worried, or not in a tie, or not sitting at a desk, staring.
‘Oh, wait!’ says Trucker Terry, suddenly, and then he turns the map on to its side and both him and Dad, ‘Ohhhhh!’ and seem to understand it better now.
‘There!’ says Mum, wiping the sweat off her forehead. ‘All done. So where are you headed, Terry?’
‘Oh,’ says Terry. ‘Well, staying local. Avoiding London and the cities because of all the…’
He looks at me and Teddy.
‘Because of all the obvious reasons,’ he says. ‘You know, they’re saying it’s the tech firms what done this. This screens business.’
‘The tech firms?’ says Dad.
‘Well, they make so many screens, don’t they?’ says Terry. ‘Rumour is they wanted all our screens to break so they could make loads of new ones for everyone to buy. Anyway, I was supposed to be volunteering, delivering a whole load of fruit and veg to the charities and foodbanks and so on. But the supermarkets got their orders all wrong and then there was the panic buying, so in the end there was nothing to pick up or deliver.’
‘Wait,’ I say. ‘So some people can’t get food?’
‘It’s the ones without much money,’ says Terry. ‘People got in a panic and cleared the shelves. Especially in the little villages. Anyone who’s selling any food is realizing they can sell it for more money! Everyone turns into pirates in a crisis, don’t they?’
‘My daddy made us leave a restaurant without paying,’ says Teddy.
‘But you can’t get any food to people?’ I say, and Terry says no. He says normally he’d just go home and watch TV or something, but he can’t even do that.
Mum and Dad start to talk to Terry about how awful it is that we li
ve in a world that could even need foodbanks and that no one should have to rely on one, but I don’t feel like just talking about it is doing anything so I decide to speak up with an idea.
‘Have you heard of Angry Woods Farm?’ I say.
‘No,’ says Terry.
So I take the map and show him where our route began.
‘It’s there,’ I say. ‘Uncle Tony’s got loads of food but he needs help picking it. And he will definitely want it to go to the right places. You could deliver some! But I guess your phone doesn’t work so you can’t call anyone to help?’
* * *
We wave Terry off after about half an hour.
We’d all sat in the cabin of his truck as he put the word out. Terry still had CB radio. It’s sort of the same as a really powerful walkie-talkie. Apparently, Dad had always wanted one as a kid. Terry already had it tuned into Channel 19, he said, so all he had to do was press a button and any other truckers listening could join the conversation. They were all saying things like ‘10-4, understood’ and ‘10–22 Angry Woods Farm’ and so on. Terry said that since the screens went down, lots of minicab drivers and farmers and people on Harley-Davidson motorbikes had also started to use Channel 19. He said he would try and get as many as possible to come along and help get food from Uncle Tony and then make sure it got where it needed to go.
So we stand there as Terry slowly reverses his massive lorry back down the road on his way to Angry Woods Farm, and we jump back in the car. None of us knows what time it is, but from my tummy I guess I’d say it feels about three o’clock.
Wait. Maybe ten past.
I now realize just how scratched, dented and dirty our car really is. And, while Mum did a good job with the wheel, it’s still bumping around and rattling. We’re all thinking about what Terry said about food.
‘Do you think it’ll work?’ says Mum, finding an ancient pack of Ritz crackers in the glove compartment and throwing it towards me and Teddy. We rip it open and start devouring them like cracker-piranhas. Dad sighs and shrugs his shoulders.
‘I mean, it’s a long shot,’ he says. ‘But better than doing nothing.’
I don’t get why they think it’s a long shot. We hatched a plan, we did the plan, now we will see the plan work. That’s my take on it anyway. I’m the sort of person who thinks there’s no point in having a plan if the plan doesn’t work. That doesn’t mean there won’t be surprises. I mean, take this trip, for example. The plan was to drive to Grandma’s. And yes, there have been surprises. For example, Dad still smells and this morning he was chased by a pig. But we are still doing the plan. We are still on our way. We are still doing something.
‘Shall I put some music on again?’ asks Mum, and we all shout, ‘Yeah!’ as Dad turns left on to a bigger road. He’s guessing now because we had to give Uncle Tony’s map to Terry so he could find his way there.
The sky suddenly seems wider and full of clouds and it’s like we’re properly on our way to Grandma’s at long last.
And we all loudly sing along to George Ezra and let the wind whip through the windows.
And we pass big fields.
And we wave at cows.
And we sing loudly.
There’s something about the hum of the road and the smell of the grass that seems to make us all feel much lighter somehow.
And then suddenly Dad says, ‘I don’t believe it!’ and turns the radio off.
He pulls quickly into a lay-by at the side of the road and we all get out of the car.
‘Look,’ says Mum. ‘Stella, look!’
There are trucks coming this way. Lots of trucks. And minicabs. And people on motorbikes and in Land Rovers with little trailers rattling behind them. We know instinctively: this is because of us. Mum grabs my hand and squeezes it. They must be on their way to Angry Woods Farm to collect the food and take it to people who need it!
They whiz past and Dad can’t help himself. He puts his arm in the air and pretends to be pulling an airhorn – like a big kid! – and then the trucks all start honking as they pass!
The people on bikes wave and Teddy is laughing hard now, so hard, and it makes us all so happy. Dad can’t stop doing it.
Hoooonk!
Hoooooooonk!
Dad can’t stop smiling and shaking his head. He’s sitting back in his seat; that’s also what I notice. Yesterday morning, when we started out, it was like he couldn’t get close enough to the steering wheel. I didn’t realize his shoulders could go as low as they are now.
Mum has her window right down and is stretching her arm out to enjoy the sun.
Teddy is holding my hand and smiling. He loved all the trucks. He kept calling them ‘Stella’s Trucks’. He has been beaming at me like I am an absolute god, and it makes me laugh.
Mum looks at Dad and says, ‘How long until we’re there, do you think?’
‘Well, we’re behind by a long way,’ he says. ‘But I think if we just keep going at this sort of speed we’ll be there tonight.’
Mum does half a smile. Do you know the type I mean? It sort of says, ‘That’s good news’ but at the same time it doesn’t.
I noticed one last night too when we did the fire. When we were out of the house. On the open road. Under the stars. Free. It’s like the smile of someone who’s happy, but maybe knows it won’t last.
Some way up ahead, there is someone walking down the side of the road. He or she is wearing a red rain jacket even though it’s not raining, and they’re carrying a sign. When they hear us, they turn round and hold it up.
We have to get much closer before I can read it, but it says GOING THAT WAY!
I think it means they’re going the same way we’re going.
‘No,’ says Dad before Mum can say anything. ‘We’re not picking up a hitchhiker.’
But now we can see it’s a kindly and very old lady with a cloud of white hair. She’s wearing shorts and hiking boots and carrying a stick and she looks lost out here.
‘But if we’re going the same way…’ says Mum.
‘Nope!’ says Dad, and we cruise past the lady.
‘Dad!’ I say. ‘We all have to help each other! She might be on her way to see someone, just like we are! And she’s like a million years old!’
‘We can’t,’ says Dad. ‘We’ve been held up enough already. Look, it’s time to just get there now.’
‘But, Dad!’ I say because I really feel strongly about this. ‘What about all the people who’ve helped us?’
‘Eh?’
‘What about the lady in the library with the books? Or the guy who pulled us out of the mud? What about Uncle Tony letting us stay over in his caravan and giving us petrol? What about Terry the Trucker man? Did the people on motorbikes and in minicabs teach us nothing? We are all in this together, Dad!’
Dad shuts his eyes for a split second.
Then he hits the brakes and we squeal to a halt dramatically.
I turn and wave at the lady, who waves her stick back.
Turns out I made a mistake because this is one really annoying hitchhiker.
‘NO, that’s not how you get there. You MISSED the turning, which I was VERY clear about,’ yells Ellie, sitting right between me and Teddy and really squeezing us against the windows. ‘Also, what on earth has happened to your car and WHAT is that smell?’
‘That’s Daddy,’ says Teddy, and Dad blushes.
‘Well, shall I turn round?’ says Dad, in his best, most patient voice. ‘Or is there another way to get there, Ellie? Only we’ve been driving quite a long time and I’m a bit worried because we don’t have a huge amount of petrol.’
We’ve been going AGES.
‘That’s not my fault,’ says Ellie, sharply. ‘This is your car. You missed the turning.’
I think Ellie thinks we must be some kind of taxi company or something. She has that loud confidence that I’ve noticed very posh people have where they think everyone must work for them in some capacity.
Ellie instructed us
to take her to her house, which is apparently called Blackberry Manor and appears to be deep in some woods. She told us that she’d been given a lift into town, but had been late by ‘just a few hours’ for the taxi that was supposed to take her back. So he’d left. The way she told the story was like it was the taxi driver who’d behaved badly.
‘Can’t you go a little faster?’ she says to Dad. ‘You drive like an old lady.’
Dad accelerates by maybe two miles per hour just to shut her up.
‘I miss driving,’ she says. ‘Haven’t driven in years. Eyesight’s gone to pot. Rotten luck! Can’t see the road. Used to love it!’
That’s sad, I think. That’s why it’s lucky we could help her.
‘You know all this civil unrest is *mild rude word!* exciting,’ she says, nudging me hard.
I can’t believe she said that. This car does not usually have rude words in it. Not unless Mum is driving.
‘People fighting all over the place,’ she says. ‘I heard on the news that one man got a broken nose because he wanted the last packet of Coco Pops. Riots left, right and centre. Bank robberies. Petrol-station hold-ups. Anywhere there’s cash.’
‘What’s a hold-up?’ says Teddy.
‘Nothing!’ says Mum, clearly not wanting to worry him, but I’m pretty keen to know more.
‘Yes, the country’s on its knees,’ says Ellie. ‘Whole world is. And all because people can’t watch Netflix or play Candy Crushers or whatever it’s called.’
‘Well, it’s a little more complicated than that, Ellie,’ says Mum. ‘And maybe this is a conversation for another time…’
I don’t know if anything Ellie is saying is true, but it sounds true. Though I also know that sometimes, when people can’t get information, they start to make up their own.
‘Anyway,’ says Mum. ‘Surely we’re nearly at your home?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ asks Ellie. ‘All looks the same to me. And I can barely see a thing.’
The Day the Screens Went Blank Page 7