The Last of Us

Nine days ago

My eyes get used to seeing Mairi, which makes me remember bits of who she was. She was a flower at the Easter concert: growing big when the teacher fed her sunbeams from a torch. She was fidgety and busy at dancing. I saw her once shouting on her brother.

Now she has this new life; the same life as us. Where it’s being alive that counts, and where nobody makes concerts or holds classes for learning to dance.

And where it’s more normal to have scars on your face than not.

We wait on Elizabeth, to see what she’ll do, but she doesn’t act clever. She tries all types of knowing how a person might be safe: using her books, talking out the problem, asking the sky. Asking us.

It’s Alex who comes up with the idea of asking about her brother, so Elizabeth does that.

Mairi rubs the dirt on the palms of her hands into black strings, then wipes it free. After this she reaches in her pocket and takes out a crumpled drawstring purse.

She empties it on our barrier line of stones.

There’s five shells, some glass beads. Another key fob. Feathers. Plus a picture of her brother.

The colour in it got faded, the picture criss-crossed where she folded it too many times.

‘That’s from before,’ Elizabeth says. ‘Mairi, it’s great you’ve got a picture from before. But we need to know what he looked like after.’

Mairi doesn’t make a sign of hearing: instead just puts the collection back in her purse, all except the feather, which she watches for the way the wind ruffles it.

Me: ‘We could dig her brother out.’

‘Sure. We dig him out, look at the skin on his face. Because it’s easy to spot the scars on the rotten bony skeletons we see in houses. Great idea! The best yet. Well you can be the one to do that.’

Her voice goes hard, much harder than true kindness. I pretend not to notice. But anyway, Elizabeth is looking instead to see if Mairi heard, or got sad by hearing her brother called a skeleton, but she didn’t seem to.

‘The right thing is sometimes the wrong thing,’ Elizabeth says. ‘Like when you wanted to be near someone at the end. That was wrong, even though your heart said right.’

When she says this I wonder: will we be leaving Mairi behind? But then she shows another idea.

She takes out a ball of string from her rucksack and begins to unroll it. Then she walks on so that it trails and dangles behind her.

When it reaches the length of about five kids she beckons Mairi.

‘Stay that far away,’ she says. ‘Until we know better.’

We follow the shore road. We have to be strict with the string – though Elizabeth has now turned slowcoach, she’s walking funny, and Mairi keeps nearly bumping into the back of us.

‘Why are you walking so slow?’ I ask Elizabeth. ‘Is there something wrong?’

‘Forget about it,’ she says.

A long road, the North Bay ahead. One abandoned lorry, one dead sheep stuck in a fence.

Then we see the MacNeil brothers. But they’re not going away – instead they’re running towards us fast, so fast that Elizabeth stands in the road with her body in defence, ready for an argument. Then we hear Calum Ian shout—

‘Our dad’s here!’

We heard him the first time, but still: nobody can truly take this in. His whole body’s shaking and when he says again his voice goes as high as Alex’s, still higher when we make him say once more to be sure.

‘Your dad?’

‘You’ve got to come and see!’

For now the string-length gets forgotten. We follow him: to the church, to the community hall. There’s Our Lady – the statue of Mary – on its island in the bay. Another wind turbine, a broken or switched-off one this time.

The tide sitting slack. There’s a boat stabbed in mud on its keel. Another, on its side, half-broken, fallen onto the pier wall.

I see now that we imagined too much, or he got us ready for too much.

It is his dad’s boat. But just not his dad.

Mr MacNeil’s boat is in the bay, at the furthest end of the pier, roped at the outside of three others.

Duncan is there, shouting at us to come on, come on, shouting so his voice screams and cracks.

‘Remember his green ladder, look!’ Calum Ian says.

‘He bloody got back safe!’ Duncan shouts back at him. ‘We just have to find where he went!’

The boat’s been here a while. We can tell. It’s all dried up in mud. I feel let down – maybe Elizabeth does too – but we don’t say anything because that would spoil their time of getting to be excited.

‘Dad,’ Calum Ian says, his voice gone flatter.

The boat’s made of wood, metal. There’s a small house, which Calum Ian calls the cabin, with windows like a lighthouse, plus a metal frame at the back which he calls the winch. Then on the side, between lines of blue paint, a name, written in wavy black letters: Mary Anne.

The wires from the winches of the other boats are tangled up. With the tide out there’s maybe ten feet to fall onto sand and stone. Even so, Calum Ian wants us all to climb across: all except Mairi, who keeps her own distance this time, waiting for us on a bump of grass beside the pier wall, chin on her knees.

Alex comes as well. He has to stretch hard to reach from one boat to the other. The furthest boat is Mr MacNeil’s. It stinks of mould and dried-out seaweed. At the back of it are lots of slippery green nets, piled in tangles.

In the middle of the boat there’s an open cardboard box, with lots of smaller boxes in cellophane inside.

The smaller boxes have gone damp – especially near the edges where there was no shelter from the cabin.

‘So he did bring back supplies,’ Calum Ian says. ‘He did his job; he did it right. He was a hero! Then all he had to do – it wasn’t a big deal – all he had to do was come and find us. Rescue us.’

He frees one of the small boxes. The paper of it flakes into powder. It only takes a rub with his fingers and the whole side of the box crumbles away.

‘Medicines.’

We knew, already. It’s the same medicine we’ve seen when New Shopping in people’s houses; same as beside the Last Adult. The medicine that Mum delivered.

Boxes and boxes of it.

‘No one got any,’ I say.

‘They argued before he left,’ Calum Ian says. ‘Mum and Dad, all night. Dad said he was going on a mercy trip. Mum said, “Whose mercy? We can keep the fish you get for us.” But see, it wasn’t only fish. It was more important than that. He was trying to save the whole people, not just us.’

We scrape open some more of the boxes, but they’re all the same kind. After this, we search the cabin. Nothing: apart from a dream-catcher hanging from a radio with a curly cord, and one of Duncan’s old drawings, of a man on a motorbike jumping through a ring of fire. Duncan says it was his dad’s favourite.

Calum Ian clicks the radio switch, but it’s not working. After this he puts his hands softly on the boat’s steering wheel.

‘The view he had.’

In the cupboards we find tea, sugar and a cup which says WORLD’S GREATEST CATCH. There’s a pair of blue overalls, very oily, then an orange waterproof suit, which reeks of sea-mould.

Calum Ian starts to look through all the cupboards again: and for a dumb second I think they’re actually looking for their dad inside the cupboards – but then Elizabeth says: ‘I might know where he went.’

Which makes me realise that they’re only opening cupboard doors because they don’t want to start looking properly.

It’s not hard to work out where all the people in this village ended up. Around the Community Centre there’s too many cars. They’re parked in a jam, just like the roadblock we found back on the coast road.

The door of the centre is taped shut with criss-crossed BIOHAZARD tape. At the top of the jam of cars there’s an ambulance, with its back doors open, so that the inside of it got filthy with bird shit and leaves and sand.

Mairi follows us again, but now doesn’t want to come anywhere near the Community Centre. She waits just outside the gates – curled up, but still watching, not looking away for one second.

Calum Ian looks at Mairi, then at me and Elizabeth.

‘You decide to keep her?’

I see that Elizabeth doesn’t want to talk about it – or doesn’t want to tell what she decided. And for once, Calum Ian doesn’t turn it into an argument.

Duncan is sitting on the steps leading to the Centre door. As I get close I hear him whisper, ‘Why didn’t you come for us, Dad?’

Calum Ian goes to stand beside him. He takes out our bottle of red sterilised and drinks, afterwards wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

‘Anyway,’ he offers Duncan some, ‘Dad should’ve kept to his side of the bargain. And now, what: do we have to find him because he didn’t come and find us?’

He stares at the taped-up door. Some birds fly over. We watch them as if there was nothing else to watch.

‘I’ll go inside,’ Elizabeth says.

Calum Ian just keeps on looking up at the birds.

She adds, ‘Mainly because you did it for me. Not because I think you’ve been a good friend, because you haven’t always. But because you did it for me.’

Calum Ian swirls the water until there’s a whirlpool.

‘I’m not going to ask you to do it.’

But Elizabeth doesn’t answer: instead, she just starts to get ready.

She opens up her rucksack, takes out her perfume-hanky, sprays it twice. Then she puts spare plastic bags on her feet and on her hands.

After this Calum Ian stands in front of her, to put his goggles over her head. He sprays her perfume-hanky on the outside – five times for luck – while Elizabeth holds it firmly over her mouth.

‘Did I leave any gaps? I could tape it around twice? Do I look stupid? Or scared?’

‘Never scared.’

Mairi, still on the road, now seems to realise what we’re doing. She waves her hands crazily, but doesn’t try and come any closer than she is.

Me and Alex and Duncan say we’re going to try and calm her down, so we begin to walk back. For me it’s really a trick to get further away. I feel mean to be doing it, but I don’t want to stay near that door.

Elizabeth cuts the tape with her big scissors. Then she gives the thumbs-up, and opens it.

We look the other way when the flies start to come.

She’s inside for six minutes. When she comes back out again she kicks the plastic bags off her feet, pulls down her perfume-hanky. She crouches by the door. I think she’s going be sick, then I see that she’s crying.

Calum Ian tries to encourage her. But it isn’t easy because Elizabeth is bent down too much, so in the end he kneels beside her, puts a hand on her neck.

We creep nearer. Elizabeth has stopped crying. I didn’t like the sound of it and I’m glad she’s stopped.

She hands over a yellow bag. Calum Ian rips open the top of it. Inside – his dad’s wallet, keys, phone. There’s also a note, which Elizabeth says was pinned to the outside of a bag which contained his jacket and shoes.

We gather in close to read:

We read the note, then read it again, until the words lose their sense, turn strange.

After this Duncan just goes back to sitting on the step. Calum Ian folds the letter up, smaller and smaller until he can’t fold it any more.

We wait for him to tell us it’s bad, or sad. But he doesn’t. He’s trying to work his mouth to say something: then instead of that he kicks the metal railings leading up to the door: over and over again.

Then he sits down – but not by bending his knees, more by forgetting how to keep the strength in them.

His dad’s phone has a cracked screen. The wallet has fifteen pounds plus plastic cards in it.

Duncan lays out all the cards on the step. There’s one with his dad’s picture. He and Calum Ian look at it – even though it’s just small, even though the colours in it went to grey.

‘This could be your mum and dad’s fault.’

Calum Ian is saying this – to Elizabeth.

He continues: ‘Dad tried – every night, every day to get through to that hospital. Because Flora was sick. She was the first out of our family to get sick. We didn’t know what to do, she wouldn’t wake up that morning. Not even when we put her in the bath. He tried and tried phoning, but nobody ever answered.’

Elizabeth doesn’t look ready to talk. But she does anyway when she says, ‘I never even saw mine.’

‘Flora couldn’t get help when she needed it. You under stand?’

‘And I never saw my parents. Not for the whole of the last week. I never saw them, except for once, when Dad talked to me from the other side of a door. At least you saw your mum. At least you had your mum.’

It sounds like an argument where both people win – or at least, agree not to lose.

Alex shifts along, bit by bit, until he’s sitting between the MacNeil brothers.

He says, ‘Your dad was a hero. He was going to bring us all medicines.’

He rummages inside his backpack and takes out some lemon biscuits. No one wants any, they’re too soft.

‘Everyone has their weakness,’ Alex says. ‘My weakness is bad men. Zombies. Also, having diabetes. Yours is finding your dad not alive. Only it’s not your fault it came true. It’s not your fault, or anybody else’s.’

‘Get lost, Bonus Features.’ Calum Ian points to the hill, to the sea. ‘Go on, get away from me.’

Alex zips up his bag.

‘It was just a thing I thought could help.’

I get uneasy. I want to help Duncan, and Calum Ian, but all the same I don’t. I want to tell Calum Ian to be kinder to Alex, but it isn’t always easy to make someone be a good listener, especially if they’re sad.

He lies on the paving stone, without using his jacket for softness. To be a help I lie facing him and say: ‘Sorry your dad died.’

Calum Ian blinks as if to mean: Heard you.

‘You know how you said about your dad coming to find you? Just before? Well, when my mum stops hiding, she can come and look after all of us. All right?’

Calum Ian doesn’t blink.

‘She’s got lots of sayings. She’s wise for that kind of thing. Here’s one: “Concentrate and the world is yours.” It works for lots of other choices – like Smile, or Laugh. I forgot to ask her how many. She could help us find the other adults. Or help Alex. The whole lot.’

Calum Ian sits up. Tiny stones from the ground have stuck to his cheek. He brushes them off.

‘Gloic. Remember, back in the class, when we talked about facts and opinions?’

‘OK.’

‘So your mum isn’t a fact. She’s dead.’

He turns away from me so I can’t read his eyes. I say, ‘She likes it when—’

‘—she likes nothing. She’s fucking dead, all right?’

‘If—’

‘You hear? Can you even listen?’

‘It’s bad you’re sad, but you should never get the right to hurt people’s feelings. By telling tales.’

‘It’s not a fucking tale, it’s true! You want to know how I know that?’

‘Stop it, stop right now,’ Elizabeth warns him.

‘—I know it because she’s in the gym. Which I had to go into because of fucking you. I saw her.’

‘She—’

‘Calum—’

‘Know what? I’m fed up not telling her. She needs to bloody learn the truth. So Gloic: I – saw – your – mum. When I went in the school gym to get the keys. She’s in a bag. To the left side of the room. Dead.’

‘If— wh—’

‘Her clothes. She was the postwoman, right? Her jacket, the red and blue one? It’s in an orange bag. I saw it. And her name. On the list of dead. Dead.’

I try to push him away – but he steps back.

‘So she won’t be looking after us. She won’t be looking after anyone. So stop saying she’ll take my dad’s place. Because she won’t!’

My words stop. It takes me ages, ages. Duncan and Alex and Elizabeth are waiting. They look ashamed to see me making such a mess of speaking.

Then I’m back at the gate. I’ve gone right past the jammed-in cars – and not even noticed.

Mairi is beside me; she’s looking at me. I don’t want to be nice to her or talk to her or smile at her.

I pick up Calum Ian’s rucksack.

Then I tip it up, emptying everything from inside onto the dirt.

He starts to come over, so I unroll his knife-wrap, take out the big silver knife – and point it at his neck.

He stops. Duncan comes out from where he was hiding and stands beside his brother.

Calum Ian does the Come on sign with his fingers.

‘Do it.’

‘I bloody fucking will!’

‘Go on, then. Or are you a coward?’

The knife wobbles in my hand. I nearly want to harm him, or harm me, but I can’t.

Instead I go away, keep going, throwing the knife away after I pass the gate, away.

It’s the opposite road of the island, going home. I look back, look back, nobody’s following.

It starts to rain, light then heavy. My feet get wet. All the cuts I have on my knees, my elbows, have started to hurt, because there’s no distraction.

At the end of the village I find a kid’s bike. The pedals don’t move from rust, but the wheels do.

I let the bike take me down to the lowest bit of road, then I leave it.

My jacket gets wet. There are lambs and a ewe on the road. How did the dogs miss them? The lambs jump like they didn’t know they were going to. One of the lambs is black. I remember asking Mum once where the black ones went before they grew into proper sheep. She just laughed, drew a smile across her neck.

I pass the forest of fifteen trees, then the postbox with the spray of black graffiti that Mum used to moan about.

After this, the rain turns to mist. There are some houses getting lost in cloud. My knees get tired, and I remember the snack that Elizabeth gave us for emergencies: custard creams, ginger snaps.

I know where I’m going. But I don’t want to think about where that place is. What that place is.

I stop at someone’s house for water. There’s a white bucket in the garden. The rainwater looks clean, so I drink it, and don’t care if it’s a broken rule.

In the garden, a red plastic ball. It’s gone flat. I imagine that it’s Calum Ian’s face and kick it hard, hard.

‘Don’t be mean,’ says the ball.

I remember years ago I had a thinking book at school. I didn’t know how to draw sad, so I drew a cloud. But the teacher didn’t understand: she thought I was being moany because the weather outside had been sunny for weeks.

I think I see a boat, but it’s only an island.

Someone was building a house. They were living in a caravan beside. There’s a blue ship’s container with a painting on it of flowers, a smiling family.

I open the house door. The windows have labels on them. It looks new, apart from having no carpets: but there’s a bad smell. Which makes sense: if you’d just built your new home you wouldn’t want to leave it.

Mum said the new house would blow down in the next winter gale. But it didn’t: winter’s already been.

They should let me wind back to the moment where I pointed that knife. Where I deleted the pictures of Duncan and Calum Ian’s family.

They should let me do that.

I look up at the sky to ask God.

For an answer he just sends mist-rain in my mouth and eyes.

Mum finds me on the last hill. She starts out by copying my steps, which is odd and very frightening.

‘You’re scaring me,’ I tell her.

‘Don’t mind me, mo luaidh.’

‘He’s a liar. He’s not my friend, Calum Ian.’

‘Sounds like a tall story.’

‘No – honest.’

‘You’re in deep blue water trouble, my girl.’

‘I didn’t do anything wrong!’

‘Use a fork! You’re not an animal. Well OK, if you say so. You’re a cat in Chinese Years.’

‘Mum. I don’t need a fork, and I’m not even eating. You’re scaring me. Why can’t you speak normally?’

‘Finish up your plate.’

Then she’s ahead. I think she’s waving. I try not to follow but it’s like the opposite of the story of the hare and the turtle: we’re always in the same place.

It’s now I search for her letter.

Gone.

I even take my jumper off in case it stuck to my skin. But it’s not stuck to my skin. I must’ve dropped it.

The road goes into mist, behind. I try to look up and scream at God, but my voice only works for screaming if I look down at the wet dark road.

There’s another roadblock. More cars. I think I remember these ones. They’re on the top side of the big hill, before our village. I climb over a fence so I don’t go near. There are lots of seagulls on the cars; some of them go up and squawk when the fence does its noise.

I walk around the edges, staying in the field, so I don’t get close enough to see bad things.

Some of the dogs have come to say hello. I tell them about the places we went: to the headmaster’s, to the family house where we stayed, to Alex’s, to the old woman’s house. I tell them about Mairi, the boat.

The dogs don’t notice when I miss out the bit about Calum Ian and the knife. Dogs are good listeners that way.

Sometimes they’re not friendly when you’re alone. There’s a bigger dog: brown, with black spots. It doesn’t wag its tail like the rest, but only watches me.

When the dogs follow me into the village I pick up a clam shell and throw it, to remind them who’s boss.

They run off: then watch me from a distance, apart from the big dog. I have to throw a stone to be rid of him.

My goggles are pink. Even though I’m not a girly-girl. The bag on my left foot is green with gold writing. It says . The other one is for the Co-op.

‘You can’t stop yourself crying if you’re peeling onions. It’s an example of something that’s not optional. We learnt about optional at school.’

This is what Elizabeth said, once. At the same time she gave us another example: ‘Staying alive is not optional.’

Calum Ian said she got it the wrong way around: that it sounded like staying alive was something we couldn’t do. But I knew what she meant.

With a bit of practice you can stop yourself from crying with sadness. That’s because it’s optional. You can turn sadness into other things: like quiet-voice, or cold-alive, or worst-ever anger, just by thinking.

Anger works best. So I’m angry at the side door. Angry at its rubbed-off paint, at the glass with criss-cross wire.

At the school’s not-turning turbine. At the playground with all its lines for basketball, netball.

Elizabeth used to put wet paper up her nose for the smell. I can’t find my nose-clip, so that’s what I’ll use.

At the Sports Stars Fresco in the gallery above the gym, with its reminder of all our superheroes. I rip a corner, then tear the whole thing off the wall.

Mr Mollison of the butcher’s shop used to say, ‘You been behaving yourself, Rona?’ It gave me a guilty sensation. For superstition you had to tell him how good you’d been, otherwise he’d know the truth.

At the piles of dried-out flowers we left, just here.

At the smell. The fly-noise.

On a very stormy day once I heard Mr Mollison tell a fisherman: ‘Sea doesn’t need you today.’

When your fingers shake they become smaller. Or maybe the world gives them more room?

Alex and I used to practise fainting. We’d lie down, stay still. Alex would get a cushion first to be comfortable for his faint.

I never, ever want to faint here.

I’m careful to be angry. If you cry with goggles on they fill up. It’s the opposite of swimming.

Trails of black stuff on the floor. Mouse shit, maybe rat shit? Duncan’s best at telling the difference.

There’s a waiting place. It’s piled with tins, plus cartons of soup, powdered milk. There’s a door which says PRESS BUZZER + WAIT FOR ACCESS.

I don’t wait, or press the buzzer.

The longest I’ve ever held my breath for is thirty-six seconds. You can’t cheat by inhaling quietly, you’re just cheating yourself.

I feel the stink on my face. The world got filled up with stink. Wind flutters in. It’s like a ghost checking things are all right, as if ghosts had their worries as well.

The flies are buzzing. They blast from one side of the room to the other. I’m worried that one of them will touch me, so I pull my jumper up so there’s no spare face.

I have to rub the goggles, they’re steamed. Now I see – tables from the big school. Scrunched blankets, plastic aprons, more dirty stuff on the floor. There’s a table with hand-sprays and an orange bag stuffed with gloves.

A man sitting on a chair.

I run back to the waiting place. Can’t breathe.

Then I remember: Calum Ian, he spoke about him.

He told us about that man – that man who was sitting, even though he was dead.

Like the old dead lady. She was sitting upright. And she wasn’t too scary, or not the worst anyway. So I warn myself: some people just die on seats. You’d never read about it in books, but it truly happens.

In the waiting area I get my breath back. Then I sing, ‘Made you look, made you stare, even though you weren’t there.’ Even though he was there. I do it over and over until my heart falls back to normal.

If you keep moving it makes the hall less scary.

Plastic, hanging in long walls on metal poles. It makes lots of long narrow tunnels of the hall. More tables in rows, and yuck on the floor. Someone’s slippers.

Curled-up Rona wants to cry. Coward-girl. She has to stop herself crying, cry-baby.

Some of the people are in bags. Some of the people are not in bags. There’s baskets, like washing baskets to put clothes in. One person has no clothes.

The plastic screen has fallen down, here. I have to breathe. The wet paper in my nose stinks, it’s stopped working.

There is a new tunnel. Part of me wants to train my eyes for dark blue. Another part of me doesn’t. But it’s no use, once you’ve had the thought it happens anyway.

Look Mum: your blue jacket. The one with the red lining. Why didn’t you tell me? There’s your work shoes. I never realised how scuffed they were.

Were you trying to tell me something? Your mouth, open wide. Perhaps it was one last yawn.

I’m not angry, not any more, I’m crying. Maybe optional means something else now.

Now I can’t think, can’t believe about it. That there: the person who got me born, brought me up as a baby, cared all the time she could. Who got me presents, made things fun at Christmas. Who laughed so loud it got me embarrassed. Who made jam on toast on Saturdays.

The person who did all of that: is that thing there. Could reach out, touch it. But it’s not her.

How right can it be that she can’t hold back my hand?

I’m in bed, with a knife from our kitchen drawer beside me, when they come home.

I clasp the knife tight – get ready to use it to defend myself – then I see it’s just Alex and Elizabeth.

‘Thank God you’re safe,’ she says.

Mairi comes in behind them. There isn’t the five-kid distance between her and them any more.

Somehow, when I didn’t notice, Elizabeth has taken the knife from me, put it somewhere else.

It takes me a while to pluck up my courage to get up, but in the end I find the MacNeil brothers have not come to our home. The others are sitting on cushions on the floor.

I want to tell them where I’ve been, but it’s too much to think of right now, so I don’t.

Mairi is wearing a pair of Alex’s trousers, plus Elizabeth’s old school jumper. She looks too small for the clothes, even though Alex is still small.

‘You decided she was safe?’ I ask.

Elizabeth fills my blue plastic bowl with rice pudding, then hands it over.

‘Decided we were all in the same struggle,’ she answers. Then she looks across at Mairi. ‘Decided we just had to take the chance. Decided we couldn’t leave her.’

I watch Mairi: with her clear, clean face, scooping rice with her fingers. So she’s the one that breaks Elizabeth’s rules. Maybe that’s what she tells us in the end.

‘Where are the MacNeil brothers?’

‘Gone to their house.’

‘It wasn’t my fault. Calum Ian should’ve used his inner voice, not his outside one.’

Elizabeth doesn’t agree, or disagree. Instead she says, ‘We had another house to check. Remember?’

She and Alex take it in turns to tell me about the last house. How it was at the end of a road going to the ferry terminal. How it had windows with torn curtains, and a boat in the garden filled with orange flowers.

How it didn’t have any smell, not even in the room where they found dead rabbits in a cage.

Then, last of all, she tells me how it had insulin. But not in a fridge: in a plastic box in a bathroom cabinet.

I get up to dance on the bed for them. They smile but don’t want to join in too much.

Elizabeth takes out the insulin for us to look at. It’s called INSULATARD. Then she fetches her books to solve whether or not it’s the right kind.

‘We decided on the way back that there was good news and bad news,’ Alex says.

‘The good news first, please.’

‘The insulin!’

‘OK… so then what’s the bad news?’

He chews his sleeve and looks away, like they left the bad news in another room.

Then he admits: ‘We only got a single glass. Plus: it’s gone cloudy.’

He holds up the glass to show me.

The water inside it looks full of cobwebs.

I look at Elizabeth, but she’s gone back to reading her books.

When I ask Alex if he’s had any yet, he rolls up the front of his jumper, and points to a swollen red spot just beneath his belly-button.

‘She gave me a test.’

The test has gone sore. When I try to press it Alex pulls back. He tugs his jumper down again.

‘Was only a first test.’

I ask if Elizabeth is planning to give him more, but she won’t tell me or talk about it.

Mairi has been put back on the other side of a divide – a skipping rope on the floor – only this time, she’s just one kid distant. For the illness we had it might work, though nobody really knows for sure.

I ask if she still hasn’t said anything, and Alex says no. He tells me that she followed them home, and would only allow Elizabeth to get close – nobody else – and that sometimes she would start to miss her old house and would try to get them all to turn around.

‘Calum Ian was strange,’ he says.

‘How?’

‘He didn’t want her. Mairi. And he was talking funny. He was—’

Elizabeth holds up her hand for Alex to be quiet.

They both keep looking at the door, like they’re worried someone might come through it.

‘He thought we were too slow,’ Alex says.

Now he goes and sits on the couch beside Elizabeth.

When I think about it, I’m surprised by the look of her – she looks worn, or tired-looking, maybe even sick.

Alex asks her, ‘Did your leg get worse?’

She pulls a face, then takes off her sock and shoe, and rolls up her trouser leg.

Her right leg above the knee went swollen. Just like Duncan’s face did. Just like the spot on Alex’s stomach.

But this redness is much bigger. Much darker.

We stare at it, wondering what it means.

Alex: ‘Is it healing yet?’

Elizabeth laughs but with sarcasm and says, ‘’Course, sure. I only had to walk on it all day to make it better.’ But then she adds, ‘Don’t worry, I’ve been checking it. Drew around the edges. You’re meant to do that, to watch in case it gets bigger.’

‘Sorry.’

‘It isn’t your fault. It was Calum Ian and his stupid dart.’

I remember about it: when he stabbed her leg, back when he was trying to get me.

We watch as she puts on cream, then a brown plaster. This last bit hurts and she has to bite the skin of her arm until the leg is wrapped up again.

‘Better now,’ she says, blinking tears.

She puts her sock back on. It’s crusty and smelly from where the redness has started to make liquid. Maybe she’s going to wash that later?

‘Sometimes I don’t think I can—’ she stops – looks quick at all of us, seeing if we heard her or not.

Nobody asks what she was going to say – because nobody wants to know the things Elizabeth can’t do.

To make her feel better I tell her about my memory of her mum and dad.

It was at the end: after I was put in the Cròileagan.

My window looked out on the school; I tell her I peeled back the plastic cover, and saw them.

‘What were they doing?’ she asks.

‘They were meeting the ambulance, the police. Your dad kept giving out white cards, and the people would go in one way or the other. I remember that.’

‘How did they look?’

It feels like something I have to get right. I try to think of all the names for the ways a person can be.

‘Helpful?’

She smiles at this. I notice how puffy and dirty her hands got.

‘Lastly, I saw your dad. But it was from the side, so I didn’t see if he was happy or sad. He was helping your mum to walk. I thought they were having a hug first, but not in the street, surely? Sorry I saw that.’

Now her lips have gone dry like crinkled paper.

‘Don’t be sorry,’ she says. ‘You’ve given me something to remember. It’s a help.’

She gets up, and tries to walk with her sore leg, holding our beds to turn a circle on the floor.

‘One day this is all going to be better,’ she says. ‘We just need to get through the hard bit first.’

I don’t understand what she means about there being a hard bit. But I don’t want to ask her, either, in case I find out sooner than I want.

Before bed Alex gets one more test.

Elizabeth chooses a faraway part of his stomach from the last, while I distract him with juice.

But again – it hurts.

The redness this time begins almost at once, and gets sore enough to make Alex cry out.

‘Don’t want any more tests.’ He tucks his jumper firmly down inside his trousers. ‘Let’s find some other houses to check instead, all right?’

Elizabeth just packs away his injection kit.

We don’t get to sleep until late. It takes Mairi an age to get satisfied about bed. First she wants our type of bed: then she wants to make a nest for herself, like in her old home: using a box and blankets and last of all pulling a pillow over the door to seal herself in.

Elizabeth stays up. I hear her on our radio: going through the stations, listening for anything but static.

When I ask her again what Alex meant about Calum Ian being strange she tells me to forget it.