The Last of Us

Back Bay

How does an alone kid keep alive? I think this when I think of Mairi. For starters, she kept her count of days. For second, she knew the idea of having friends: dolls to stand in for real people. She even painted the dogs, maybe because that was like giving them clothes, and clothes equals human.

But still: alone, she forgot how to talk. Which is why I’ve started to say aloud all the adverts and films I could ever remember.

It gave us trouble, in the end, Mairi not talking.

The other question: how does an alone kid keep safe? She was the best at that. Now I want to shake her hand and tell her how well she did.

Today, I made it a theme for the ‘Plans and Activities’ jotter I started—

I can’t find more inspiration. Asking the blank page never works, so I put my jotter away.

There’s only a short memory, today. I get to the bottom of the sleeping bag to find it: deep down, back beside the biscuit crumbs and empty wrappers.

To the time when we definitely began to know that the world would for ever be different.

We’re at the supermarket. And the big strangeness is that everyone’s wearing a mask: all the shoppers, the lady on the till, even the man minding the door, letting one person in at a time, for one going out.

And the lights are off – apart from the light in one bit of the freezer section. There’s the sound and the stink of a generator – set up in the car park, with cables coming in just to keep that one freezer working.

I want to go to the playpark by the store and play with the other kids, but Mum tells me to stick close by her.

When it’s our turn to go in I hear Mum swear: ‘Fuck; they emptied the place.’

There is one long queue of people, going from the fridges, past the freezers, back to us.

The man on the till is only letting shoppers buy ten pounds’ worth. The people keep arguing with him for more, but he won’t allow it.

But it might not matter for us, because the shelves of the store are nearly all empty anyway.

Mum jangles her keys. She keeps looking around at the door, then the people taking food in front of us.

For shopping the rules have changed: you’re only allowed to take when you reach twenty places from the front of the queue. And that’s miles.

It’s strange how dirty shelves are when you see the back of them. I want to go and play there, in behind, but Mum holds my hand tight like I got a row.

Suddenly in front, someone shouts. Another person at the front – an old lady – has tripped over. Or did she fall? She kneels then starts to shake. This part is frightening and strange: but stranger still is what the adults do.

They begin to shout, scream. They hold their masks tight to their faces. And rather than helping, they move away from the woman, leaving her alone on the floor.

‘Out, out of here,’ Mum says.

She pulls me back to the car, even though I saw things we could’ve bought, even though we queued for ages.

We drive around to the other stores, but the queues are just the same, so we head home.

It’s on the west road that we see the ambulance, parked up in a sandy lay-by.

There’s white tape flapping in the wind, tied around spikes to make a square you can’t go into: just like when they found that rare orchid two summers ago.

But there’s no orchid this time.

Just a man lying flat.

Mum drives slow. She goes to roll her window down: but the ambulance-man waves her past, waving like he got furious at us for being nosy.

I come back up for air. So it was no use as a memory. It didn’t help – and now I’m thinking of what happened anyway. Not then, but nine days ago: in the hours after we found Mairi.

‘The Lord giveth; the Lord taketh away.’ Father Boyd, the visiting priest, said that once, when he came to talk to us in the school about the meaning of Easter.

Except I think that the Lord shouldn’t take people when they’re only trying to help: that isn’t fair.

He should give first, then afterwards not be greedy or cruel with what he takes away.