The Last of Us

Eight days ago

Alex’s bed is wet next morning. He stays late so he can hide the dampness of it. When Elizabeth finally stands him up he wobbles like he’s still inside a dream.

Alex: ‘It’s only sweat…’

Elizabeth: ‘Look, it doesn’t matter. It was an accident.’

Alex: ‘I said it was sweat.’

Elizabeth: ‘Here’s a flannel, OK? I got you some fresh clothes. Want a drink?’

‘I get sweaty, thirsty if I don’t get my injections.’

‘I know.’

He drinks and drinks, caving in the plastic bottle of red sterilised as he tips it high and finishes it.

The water dribbles down his chin, settling in beads on the mucky front of his T-shirt. He begins to change his clothes and we see that Alex now has three red lumps on his stomach. One is the same size as his hand in a fist.

He tries to scratch this but it hurts, so he presses around the edges of it instead.

Covering up his stomach again he says, ‘Know what my dream told me last night?’

Me: ‘Say it.’

‘It told me I didn’t have any weakness. That I wasn’t scared of zombies, or bad men. Or dogs. And even though I had diabetes, it didn’t count.’

Alex looks at us confident – so confident that we can’t argue back, to say that it does count, that a person can’t just dream away their weaknesses.

Still, he maybe sees that we’re unsure, because he gets the same doubt in his eyes that I feel and says, ‘When you die you have worms up your nose. Sad to say, I haven’t lost my weakness for that.’

As I don’t have an answer he just sags his body and adds, ‘The injections aren’t working.’

‘You should ask Elizabeth. She’s the boss.’

He looks across at Elizabeth, who’s now gone to the window and is peeping out through the blinds.

‘I did. She won’t tell. But I know. I’m not a very stupid boy, I know already.’

‘They’re coming,’ Elizabeth interrupts, coming over to shake Mairi from her nest-bed. ‘Alex, be beside me. I want the two of you out of sight.’

I go to hunker down in the dusty back corner of our bunk beds. Mairi kneels under the table. In a minute we hear voices outside. Then inside. I put a finger to my mouth to warn Mairi to be quiet, in case there’s a war, but Calum Ian doesn’t even come looking for us.

Instead, I hear him talking to Elizabeth. She doesn’t tell about her leg. I think the telling might be about me, yet when I listen at the door I realise it’s about Alex.

Calum Ian: ‘Think we should just give him some, seadh? What else is there? You’re too scared of taking chances, if that’s all—’

Elizabeth: ‘It’s gone bad. It’s giving him sores in his skin. And there was only half a vial, anyway. The stuff inside is worse than useless – we can’t use it.’

‘What about the radio?’

‘I listened all night. I’m fed up listening. We listen and listen and for what!’

Arm by arm I let myself creep out. Mairi stays crouching in her place, watching to see what happens.

Elizabeth is bent down, with Calum Ian standing over her. She’s holding Alex. Her body is shaking.

Something about the look of her – some oldness in her eyes – reminds me of the last time I saw her mum.

‘Is there something wrong with you?’ he’s asking.

‘No. It’s nothing.’

Calum Ian keeps himself close to the door. I can smell him: he stinks of petrol again. His white T-shirt and trousers are grey-smudged from smoke.

‘Now look at her.’ He’s pointing at me. ‘You were the one said we had to stick together. And what did this one do? Back when I got the worst news ever of my life? Pulled a knife on me then ran away.’

‘Leave her alone.’

I look for the knife he tucked in his belt yesterday, but can’t see it. The brothers have on their backpacks. It’s not hard to guess what’s inside his.

‘She’s keeping secrets from the rest of us. Aren’t you? And where’s the other one? Miracle-girl with no scars. How many worlds would that be the chance in? You hiding her back somewhere, she scared?’

‘Leave them both alone.’

‘So she’s not going to die then. Maybe it doesn’t matter for her that she doesn’t have scars. But what about us? What about her making us sick? Did you think about that? Did you not even think she might be a trap?’

Elizabeth holds her ears. Her hair hangs down in long wet threads, falling onto her lap.

‘Stop it. Stop.’

This word she says over and over. She won’t cry, she’ll never cry. But her body is shaking.

I look at Calum Ian: and begin to see him as the type of person who’s strong when someone is sad, or weak, which I think could be the worst kind.

I’m getting ready to find the best way to throw all my anger back at him when Duncan says: ‘We’ve got a boat.’

This makes Calum Ian stop. This makes him look less like he owns us, owns all of the room.

He looks at Calum Ian and says: ‘You were going to tell, weren’t you? You just lost your temper there. Weren’t you Calum? You never meant it. We – him as well – we came to tell, for helping.’

Right away Calum Ian is furious at Duncan: ‘Come away out,’ he says.

They go out. We watch from the window. We can see them arguing. Duncan seems smaller, much smaller, maybe more scared than we feel here.

When Calum Ian comes back again his voice sounds sent to how it was when we found his dad.

‘You better follow me,’ he says. ‘But I want to say that it was his idea. I want to get that told right now.’

We follow him through the village: to the shops, to the House of Cats, to the church, to the pier.

Elizabeth is slowest of all, so that I wonder if she woke up the wrong way, without her energy.

Two boats got tipped over in winter. Another two stayed the right way. They’re all tied to the big ferry pier. Their nets got snagged, and the mast of one boat fell on top of another. The first one sank, and in the shallow water the bottom of it sticks up like a whale’s back.

Past these turned-over boats, in the sheltered space above the beach, are the boat sheds.

The door of one shed has been broken open. It smells inside of oil, rotted seaweed, mud.

Calum Ian turns on his torch to show us around.

There’s an orange boat: not big-sized, made of rubber. It has boards to sit on, plus two paddles, which look snapped, but are in true fact folded. The engine motor is grey: Duncan calls it an outboard.

‘Uncle Frank’s rib boat,’ he says. ‘Went out loads with him – and Dad – checking the creels. We had to work it, made sure we could – on our own, find the way. It’s ready to go, petrol in as well. Checked it the other week. Isn’t that right, Calum Ian, didn’t we check?’

Calum Ian doesn’t say.

‘So… so we can use it. To leave the island, right? We get medicine for the wee man, we can use it.’ Duncan shows us how to fix the paddles, how to make them straight.

Elizabeth puts a hand down on the rubber rim of the boat. Then says, ‘Why didn’t you tell us? About this?’

It isn’t Duncan she’s asking – but his brother.

Calum Ian scrapes the broken door open: all the way to the edge until the hinge of it groans.

‘Have a closer look then,’ he says. ‘Go on. You’ll see. You get cracking, drag it out and see.’

He doesn’t help us when we take hold of the rope going around the edges and pull. We drag one way, then the other, until the boat sucks, scrapes, comes unstuck.

When we get the boat outside we see that the bottom of it is dirty with mould and grey water. There’s a plastic milk carton cut in half on a piece of thin rope, which Duncan says is for bailing out.

We stand staring for a minute. Then Alex asks, ‘How do we get it bigger?’

It’s a question that sounds small-kid, or wrongly put, until we realise that it’s not.

The boat lost its air. The sides of it get blown up – and they’ve gone halfway to being flat.

When Elizabeth says it needs inflated Calum Ian barks: ‘You think we didn’t know? Anyhow, we tried already. There isn’t a place to blow it up: not on the side, or on the top or underneath.’

‘You use a pump?’

‘No, we used our breath… ’course we used a pump.’

‘Was just wondering—’

‘You find one then, you’re the leader! You’re the doctor’s daughter, who knows everything there is to know.’

Elizabeth holds up her hands for not needing a fight.

‘Let’s float it. Let’s float it and see.’

We clear a path through the rubbish on the shore, then together drag the boat to the water.

It folds with the first wave, but only a little. Otherwise it sits high enough for a person to get in, maybe even two.

Duncan climbs inside. We steady the boat for him, then he warns us away and stands at the back as he tries to turn the engine on.

His third shot makes the propellers roar.

Birds go up. The noise, the smell of engine: it’s like the adults came back, just to this here. It feels like victory: we left the island already, we are the winners!

While we cheer, Duncan turns the engine’s handle, so that the boat spins, makes waves, churns, roars.

Calum Ian runs in to give him orders: ‘Go easy, don’t rev it on the bloody sand! You’ll wreck the propellers, stop ya eejit!’

After twenty seconds of revving Duncan turns off the engine. Nobody talks: we’re still amazed by the churn, by the petrol smell – which reminds me so much of adults that I want it turned on again right away.

Duncan jumps out and wades over to us, then grabs Calum Ian by the neck and rubs his head, then goes around to shake all our hands, including mine and Mairi’s, even though Mairi tries to hide.

‘It’s going to work,’ he says. ‘It’s bloody well going to work, it is!’

Then Calum Ian comes back from the shed with two orange bundles.

‘Life vests. We’ve only two. Which is all we should use because we tried the boat already. Result: it took me fine. It took Duncan fine. But it took me and Duncan together: not so fine.’

He takes off his backpack, then ties on one of the life vests. ‘’Course we never tried with three or four or five.’ He throws the other life vest at Alex. ‘I bet you any money that it doesn’t work.’

To prove him wrong we begin to try right away.

Duncan gets in first, then Alex. They steady the boat, then Calum Ian gets in as well.

Elizabeth goes to sit inside too: but she’s too much. So we go back to Alex, with just the MacNeil brothers alongside.

The boat sags in the middle, though not very bad. It folds when a wave comes past, but stays high.

Calum Ian pulls the string for the motor. He pushes the boat off with his unfolded paddle, then they go out a short way, just as far as the start of the pier and back.

He shuts off the engine as the boat returns. The fold is there in the boat’s middle.

Alex climbs out as soon as he’s near the shallows.

He looks frightened, relieved to be back on land.

Calum Ian looks around for the eye of everyone like he won the argument.

‘Any more proof? Two’s the most that can go.’

Nobody gets a surprise when he next makes his claim for who the two should be.

‘We’re the only ones who know. Me and Duncan. We’ve got fishing in the family, in the blood, me and my brother. Has anyone else got fishing in the blood? Thought not. So it has to be us.’

‘It isn’t just about fishing,’ Alex says. ‘It’s also that you want to leave on your own – and leave us all behind.’

Calum Ian stands close to him, looking down.

‘Can a-rithist sin? Do any of you know how to sail? No. Did you go out with Uncle Frank? No. Anybody know how to steer or go up over waves? No.’

‘You want to leave. Now that you know your dad isn’t coming. That’s why.’

‘Shut your face, Bonus Features – don’t you ever talk bad on my dad’s name, ever.’

‘You’re forcing. You can’t force. We can be free to make any of our own choices. That’s the rule of freedom.’

‘And I said shut it. Unless you want some of what that one there deserves: keep your trap buttoned.’

He’s pointing at me: like I’m the one deserving.

Elizabeth doesn’t seem to want to use her age or better argument to stand up for us. But instead she just asks, ‘Will you leave from here?’

Calum Ian finds a stick to draw a map on the sand: putting an X for our village, a circle for the nearest island.

‘Except the closest place to leave from our island is Ard Mhor,’ she tells him. ‘And that’s back next to Mairi’s village. Back on the north shore.’

‘So we keep it short. Short as possible. Duncan and me go around the island first with the rib. It’ll take us: an hour? We’ll stick close to shore. Then on the other side we’ll meet you – here.’ He scratches boxes for houses, then another X in the sand. ‘The ferry slip, Ard Mhor. We fill up, do the main journey. Maybe two at a time?’

Elizabeth counts us up.

‘We’d have to go back, come back. It would take how many—? Four, five turns?’

‘Give me a bloody better idea.’

‘I don’t have a better idea. It seems to be you with all the better ideas, all of the time.’

‘That’s because I’ve got the brains. Brains are better than teamwork in any situation you can think of.’

Calum Ian waits for her to disagree with his saying. When she doesn’t, he goes on, ‘So you fed up with me taking the lead? Someone has to. Or is it something to do with that pair – the one who doesn’t talk and the one who pulls knives—’

‘I will need to go in the boat.’

He never expected Elizabeth to say that.

Neither did we.

Elizabeth now points at the fat wrap of bandaging she has put around her ankle.

‘I can’t walk. Or I can: but not very far.’

His mouth drops into an O when she undoes the wrapping to show what’s underneath.

‘How did—’

‘You did it. With the dart.’

Now bits of her skin are broken. Drops of yellow are coming from blisters. Her leg went fat, swollen.

He looks long at what she’s got, like he’s working out what to do, what it changes. What he did.

‘You can stay here.’

‘You bloody well owe me. There was poison put on the dart, wasn’t there? Wasn’t there? Don’t you even try to say there wasn’t.’

He looks for the right saying back in the smoke-dirt on his T-shirt, without finding any.

‘You could wait… Wait here. We take Alex. You could wait here with—’

‘I – need – medicine. I don’t want to die. You’ve made me ill, so now you bloody owe me.’

Her face falls, crumples. It’s the worst ever to see Elizabeth look this way: worse than anything, because I need her to be the one who’s strong.

Calum Ian stands at the edge of the water beside the boat. He presses both hands on it, testing the air inside. Maybe hoping it’ll turn out to be fuller than he thought.

‘It’s tough, but I need to go with my brother,’ he finally says. ‘We’re a team, the both of us. We were brought up to be a team.’ Then he looks again at her leg: and thinking once more says: ‘I could do you a favour.’

‘Don’t talk to me about favours. You owe me.’

‘A deal, then.’

‘The deal is: you take me.’

‘Or the deal is: one of us takes you. Then at the other side it’s me and Duncan. We leave together, and go to the next island to find help, fast as we can, for Alex.’

‘The deal is everyone sticks together.’

‘Then you and Alex get sick. Because we can’t all leave. Somebody has to stay, the boat won’t take everyone. And it needs a strong person to go looking for help – and a strong person to sail it back. Are you strong?’

Elizabeth can’t think of an answer. I notice her hair is damp, with sweat coming off her forehead.

‘Then at the other side we look for medicine.’ Calum Ian holds his hand out. ‘We already know there’s none here. Deal?’

She doesn’t say if it is or not. She just shrugs, which Calum Ian takes for a yes.

‘So Duncan can sail with you.’ Now he turns to us. ‘Which makes it me and the kids. Isn’t that right, kids?’

Now he has surprised us. Nobody shows a sign of agreeing. I look at Elizabeth for guidance, for what she thinks, but she doesn’t seem to want to make any more arguments.

‘Why do you want us?’ Alex asks.

‘It isn’t that I want you, not one bit. It’s that you’ve got me. Duncan gets his shot with the boat first: fine. He goes first. But then it’s me for the main crossing. That’s what you’re getting.’

More on purpose he puts out his hand, and gets Elizabeth to shake it: ‘I take the kids. OK? End of story.’

Then to us: ‘We’ll go as a team. Isn’t that right, kids? Who wants to walk with me? With their Uncle Calum Ian?’

We don’t say: Yes please.

‘Nach thu tna toilichte?’ he does thumbs-up. ‘That’s right! We’ll all get there first, we’ll beat them. All of us the one big friendly team. What’s going to work?’

Nobody says teamwork.

We get our rucksacks, and pack clothes, water, small toys. Calum Ian shouts instructions at everyone: saying we have to try harder because Elizabeth is sick.

She sits on the sand, looking away for trying to forget, until Calum Ian orders Duncan to the swimming pool to look for floats or armbands for the passengers.

When he’s not watching, Elizabeth pulls me close and whispers fierce and quiet: ‘Go after him. Go where Duncan goes.’

‘Why?’

‘You need to get him to walk with you. Instead of his brother. Go after him, go now.’

I don’t need to ask why. And then I can’t ask anyway, or find out if even she’s scared to be in the boat with him, because Calum Ian is there with us, taking out the heavy things he says we shouldn’t’ve packed.

Duncan goes too far ahead. I run to catch him up – and just spy him going through the big school doors.

Inside, there are three ways to go: to the library, to the assembly hall, to the rest of the school.

The swimming pool’s empty. Floats, goggles on the floor from the last time we came. He didn’t come here.

The sign over the assembly hall door says TRIAGE; that one over the school door says QUARANTINE. Only the library door says what it truly is: LIBRARY.

It’s dark in the library, because there’s only skylights, no windows.

‘Hullo? Anybody in?’ The room doesn’t answer, just stays smelling of old stale air.

When I go between the shelves of Space and Explorers I find Duncan.

He’s crouched down, hiding, like he didn’t want me to find him. My heart goes fast with fright.

‘Thought you were a creature,’ I say.

He’s got books on the floor which he’s covering up. I think he’s going to be angry, just like his brother, so I get ready to defend myself, or run away – but instead he just gathers what he has and goes to sit at one of the tables.

‘Humans are creatures,’ he says.

There’s a gap on the shelf next to where he was crouched.

The name for this shelf is: Seafaring.

He puts the books on his lap and tries to read the topmost one with his arm still covering.

Pretending not to notice I go and look around the shelves. In the Science section, next to Volcanoes, I find a book we looked at before, when it was dark and cold in winter. The title is Electricity: Turn it on!

For a peace offering I show it to Duncan.

‘Sure, that one was useless,’ he says, keeping a watch on me. ‘Loads of crap about how electricity makes your hair stand on end. Nothing about how to get it back.’

We stare at one another. Duncan’s scars look deep in the dark. I suppose mine must do as well.

‘You followed me here.’

‘That’s true.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I wanted to ask if you’d come with us on the walk, instead of…’

He knows why. Right away he knows why I’m asking: and for the look he gives me it feels unloyal.

‘My brother is not as bad as you think.’

‘I wasn’t—’

‘His bark’s worse than his bite. Truly. I should know, I live beside him. That’s what brothers are for.’

‘If Calum Ian would burn a body – like in the headmaster’s house – could that not mean he could do it to other people? If he made a mistake, I mean. Or got a wrong idea in his head.’

‘Like the wrong idea you had – of dirtying our house, of killing the pictures of our family? Are you meaning that sort of mistake?’

But Duncan doesn’t really want to rub in the bad of what I did: because he adds in a kinder voice, ‘I don’t know why he did what he did. I wasn’t expecting it, either. But if you need the truth: he’s on our side. He’s not as bad as you imagine, so you shouldn’t be bothered or even scared. Want to know how I know you shouldn’t worry?’

He unzips the front pocket of his rucksack and takes out an envelope.

I know what this is right away; I try to grab it.

He makes me take it nice.

The letter inside is dirty, and it’s been torn into lots of pieces. I look at Duncan, unsure if this is a trick.

‘You dropped it on the road,’ he says. ‘Beside the fifteen tree forest. It got torn up… by me.’

I put the pieces back inside the envelope. Then I take a book from one of the nearby shelves and unpeel its plastic cover, to keep the envelope safe inside.

‘Go on. Why don’t you put the pieces back together?’

‘It might not go…’

‘You won’t know if you don’t try.’

I hold it: ready to show him that I could: but then I can’t. I’m too scared to find out what Mum wrote.

He doesn’t push to know.

‘Calum Ian saw the letter. Saw your name on it. It was me that tore it up. Because you took the knife out on him. So you know what he did? He picked up the pieces. Made me promise I would give them all back to you. He said: She’s sad… You can cheer her up with it later. Just don’t tell her I said so.’

Duncan gives me a thumbs-up.

‘See? My brother’s not bad, he’s all right. You just have to give him the benefit and not the doubt.’

We both look down at the book he’s hiding.

It’s called More Scottish Fishing Craft.

Duncan frowns at me like he’s worried I’ll say something.

‘I just want to do my best, for the boat trip.’ He reaches for my hand and makes me shake.

‘So don’t tell. Specially not Calum Ian. Because he’s my big brother. He knows I can do it. You never want to let the big ones down. You’ve got to be a winner.’

I promise not to say anything.

‘I made Mairi a bag of clothes plus toys,’ Alex is saying. ‘She had to begin hers from the start.’

When I get back Elizabeth gives me a keen look: asking if I managed to persuade Duncan.

‘It’s all right,’ I tell her. ‘He convinced me it’s all right. You shouldn’t be worrying so much.’

She nods, mouth pressed firm: then holds out her hands for a hug, which I give her, and which she uses to whisper in my ear: ‘Keep your eyes peeled. If anything bad happens: run. Head towards the sea and wave your hands. Get the others to run in different directions if it comes to it. I’ll get Duncan to follow the shore around.’

Then she’s hugging Alex, still looking at me.

We pull the boat down to the water’s edge, until it starts to float. Then Elizabeth and Duncan get in.

They stand at both ends to get the balance right, then we put their bags in – only already there’s a problem. The weight of everything makes the boat sag through its middle so much it’s like it got cut in half.

‘Lighten your bags,’ Calum Ian orders, pulling jumpers and clothes out of Duncan’s. ‘Less weight the better.’

Duncan’s fiddle and family pictures are left on the pier. Elizabeth, still in the boat, begins to ask a lot of questions: about the tides, what if it rains, what if it gets dark, what if the outboard stops working. She even asks about whales or sharks. Duncan tells her not to be so dumb.

‘I’m the son of a sailor, I can do it,’ he says.

For the last packing he takes an extra plastic milk carton of petrol for the engine, plus a spare canister.

Finally, he ties on Elizabeth’s lifejacket, then Calum Ian ties up Duncan’s. We put a packed lunch for both of them under the seat: chocolate mints, baby cans of tonic water.

‘Wave to the captain!’ Duncan shouts.

He turns the engine on, and we cheer loud as it roars.

For a moment the boat moves like a see-saw: but soon they get the balance right, and it flattens out.

‘You lot better get ready to run,’ Calum Ian hisses.

The boat makes smoke. We take it in turns to watch them with binoculars, and it’s still my turn when they go around the headland past Message Rock. For a second the east shore has white waves, then we see an edge of ripples and smoke on the water, then they’ve gone past.

After this he pushes us hard. We shove the prams while he acts as slave-driver. Mairi has a pram as well, though it’s getting most of the way to being her size.

When we get to the steep road going up the big hill she can’t push it: her strength is not enough.

Calum Ian just watches, as she huffs, digs down her head, slides her feet away on the loose stones.

‘Useless. Ach, give it to me.’

He takes some big steps ahead, turning often to check we’re being as strong and going as fast as him.

At about quarter-way up Alex’s legs have gotten sore. I give him some chocolate buttons in case it’s lowness of sugar, but he doesn’t much want them. Instead, he wants juice: as much as he can be allowed of our journey-supply, until he’s had lots more than his fair share.

At halfway up Mairi tries to help him. She takes one side of Alex’s pram and pushes.

Right away me and Alex step back – holding up our hands, drawing back to how far we agreed for safety.

‘Why’re you stopping?’

‘She came too close. It’s for her health.’

‘Just let her bloody help.’

‘But it’s bad for her safety. We don’t want to make her sick.’

Calum Ian drops his rucksack between roadside stones.

He comes back.

Spitting on his hands he wipes them on Mairi’s face: making sure that some of the spit goes on her nose, and in her mouth.

Then he rubs his hands off on her jumper.

‘Now it doesn’t matter how close she gets. So let her do it. Or this’ll take us all day.’

Mairi’s left looking at the spit-smear on her jumper.

I bite my tongue and touch the letter Duncan handed over; try to keep in mind what he said, try to remember the good side he mentioned.

Alex stops again and again to look at boring things: sticks, rusted cans, a bird skeleton. He stops to pee and takes ages to catch us up, even though we’re bored waiting.

He stops by the forest of seven trees, twice. It would seem ridiculous, only Elizabeth already told us that going to the toilet lots is what happens with diabetes – so the only ridiculous thing is how Calum Ian never gives him a proper rest for doing it.

I hold onto my anger. I hold onto my shout. It’s nearly too much, but I manage.

Calum Ian keeps looking with his binoculars, stopping almost as often as Alex does, trying to stay high on the hill for as long as he can for the widest view.

‘Don’t see them yet,’ he says, standing on a fence for a longer look. ‘Seadh, they must’ve got ahead.’

We come to the first forest, then the sheep-wash, then the village called Breivig.

Where Alex stops and says he needs more water.

‘No – you’ve had enough.’ Calum Ian upends an empty bottle. ‘You had all your share, plus half of mine as well. That’s your bloody lot. No more.’

‘But I feel bones when I do this.’ Alex sucks in his stomach. ‘You can’t be not giving me it.’

‘Bonus Features, you’re only showing your ribs, see? It doesn’t mean anything. Doesn’t mean you need more.’

But Alex pushes away his pram. His bag was hung over the handle of it, so when he pushes it, it topples backwards.

‘Not going any further.’

Calum Ian throws away the empty bottle. Now Alex is sitting on the ground in protest.

‘Get up.’

‘I need another drink first.’

‘I said you already had your share. A big greedy share. Get up.’

‘My legs are sore and my arms are sore and my—’

Calum Ian grabs him by the neck of his T-shirt, which rips when he tries to haul Alex up.

‘Look what you did! This was the last T-shirt Mum ever put on me!’

‘Quit your fucking whining – it was old anyway. It stank. You wear it too much, that’s why it ripped.’

Alex, wishing to disobey even more, now lies on the road, holding the torn edges of his T-shirt together.

‘Shoot me then,’ he says. ‘If I’m so slow. Go on, I know you’ve got your stupid petrol gun. I saw it sticking up. Burn me with it – you big bully.’

Calum Ian’s mouth is thin-lined for anger.

‘If you could do it to a dead person, then you could do it to an alive person. On you go, you’re the bad man: it’s you. Go and burn me for being slow.’

Calum Ian looks uncertain. But then sure.

He unclips the top of his rucksack, takes out the plastic bag in which he keeps his water gun.

He unwraps and holds the gun up, then goes to stand five feet from Alex, and points it.

‘Final warning.’

Alex trembles and screws up his eyes and doesn’t move.

‘Go on.’

‘Last warning.’

‘Put a flame on me, you big bully!’

He aims the gun.

Presses.

The spray reaches the cracked end of Alex’s shoe.

Now I pull Alex away, away from the edge of the petrol drops. And Calum Ian shivers: seems to wake up to what he’s just done.

He doesn’t spray more – not even when Alex juts out his chin, calls him bully, coward, bad person.

Calum Ian just looks sad: to be him, to be standing here beside us.

I get myself between them. Now I can’t hold onto all the good that Duncan told me about: it’s forgotten.

‘What would your hero dad say, now? Not a lot of good about you. He wouldn’t like you at all. He would not be proud of you. No sir. He wouldn’t, he’d be sick, sick of the sight. You and your bad bullying.’

Calum Ian waves at me to go away.

‘And he’s not coming back. Because he’s all rotten and dead. Like you said to me. Dead, dead, dead.’

Now he moves. Croak-voiced: ‘Gloic, at least I don’t imagine – like a baby – seeing my mum all over the place.’

‘I don’t do that, not any more. Want to know why? Because I went to the gym. After you said. To check, I saw her. Saw where she was. So now I’m no baby. All right? Now I know she did die – all right?’

This makes Calum Ian’s eyes close, as if I’d sprayed some of his own petrol back into them.

‘You went there? On your own?’

To prove it I tell him about the man in the chair. About the screen walls. About the signs and the flies and the shoes and clothes left in piles.

About Mum’s blue jacket.

He looks at Mairi, then me. Then Alex.

Then he passes his last full bottle of yellow sterilised to Alex.

‘Have it all,’ he says.

Then he gets up and starts to push the pram Alex was pushing: only this time slow enough for us to keep alongside.

‘So this wasn’t a trap?’ I shout after him. ‘You weren’t going to burn us? Or harm us like Elizabeth thought?’

He doesn’t even answer this.

Ard Mhor goes in and out of sun. Birds go scattering, the noise of them tells you where the dogs are.

The ferry waiting room is middle-sized, on the rocky point, wood walls with their paint peeling.

The car park, beside, has about ten cars in it. Their tyres got flat, and all the windscreens are streaked.

Calum Ian walks to the nearest, then around the rest. One of them got burnt, so the tarmac is black in a square beneath.

‘Don’t look inside this one,’ he warns us, pointing to a white car on its own. This car has yellow BIOHAZARD tape swirled all around its doors and windows. Alex hurries past to stop himself from looking by mistake.

The land sticks out, meaning the sea is all around. We see oystercatchers on the black rocks. There’s so much rubbish and junk along the shore that the birds have to hop up and down to get past it.

‘We got here first,’ Calum Ian says, checking his watch, then looking out to sea. I notice his voice going up at the end, though I can’t work out if the sound of this is surprise.

‘Guess that means we’re the winners.’

We follow him to where the road goes to the sea – then to the slip, then to the jetty, where he takes out and uncaps his binoculars.

‘The bad news is their boat might be very slow,’ Alex says. ‘But we’ve got lots of time for journeys.’

Nobody agrees. We just keep watching.

Big clouds come, with red and gold edges for getting on to night. Alex says they’re as high as mountains, but I know clouds go higher.

He keeps drinking, going to the toilet, drinking. It gets annoying but I’m not allowed to tell him.

Instead we get out Duncan’s violin from his trove and try to play it, even though we sound rubbish. In fact I am the worst – so bad that it makes a sheep in the field nearby run for the hills, after dropping its shit first.

Calum Ian doesn’t get the fun of this. He looks and looks at the water, then serves us cold beans and pineapple juice in faded cartons. The juice tastes sour and fizzy.

‘Never thought my tastebuds would miss the food of adults,’ Alex says. ‘Now they do.’

To make the beans taste better Calum Ian adds two small packets of sugar: but not to Alex’s, who moans so much that in the end he gives him some after all.

I lose the moment when Calum Ian understands.

We had just started making a den for Mairi out of blankets, and the pram, when he shouts: ‘You don’t get it, do you?’

It’s confusing – because we weren’t even talking to him, not a word, not about anything.

‘I want to go up that hill,’ he says determined, throwing our jackets at us to put on right away. ‘We need to look. No arguments about it – now. Come on.’

Alex grumbles, but the look that Calum Ian gives us tells him that going up the hill is not optional.

Halfway up, Alex lies down, and I think he’s protesting again – but instead he says his legs are too heavy.

Calum Ian lifts him up on his back, which means I’m the winner, I get there first.

Me: ‘I see the orange boat!’

Calum Ian drops Alex at once.

He runs to me, I never knew he was so desperate. He even pushes me back, though there’s lots of room on the hill for hundreds of kids.

His binoculars take a while to find the orange thing on the sea. Then he wants to steady them – so we follow orders and find a forked stick to rest them on.

He stops looking.

The binoculars are not being used: they’re just hanging loose around his neck.

Without thinking of anyone else’s turn he drops down on the grass.

‘Me, give me a shot,’ says Alex.

But Calum Ian isn’t even hearing.

When I get the binoculars I can’t use them. Then I see that the glass windows got dirty, because Calum Ian dropped them on the ground – which was careless of him – so I have to clean them hard with my sleeve first.

When I finally get to see the boat – it looks wrong.

It takes a lot of looking to know why.

At first it seems far away: but the wrongness of that is that the boat is actually quite near. It’s just too small, gone flat in the water. And there’s nobody inside it, not even lying down.

Alex knows the answer. He doesn’t need to take his turn to understand.

‘The boat got filled with water,’ he says.

It gets too cold for us on the hill, so we go back to the ferry waiting room.

Inside, Calum Ian makes up four beds on the wooden benches. There’s a toilet, though it lost its water and smells as bad as a shut fridge.

‘Wait here,’ he says, with a dead voice.

‘But they had lifejackets,’ Alex says, over and over. ‘You can’t hurt yourself if you’re wearing a lifejacket, sure you can’t?’

When he begins to cry I have to turn away, because to cry would make the bad become real.

We lie still while Calum Ian goes out to the car park.

After a long time he comes back with a red mouth and a plastic tub half-full of petrol. Alex asks why he went to suck petrol, but he doesn’t reply.

At first we don’t know what he’s doing: then he begins to tear one of his old vests into strips, and winds the strips around and around a stick.

Finally, he dips the end of the stick into the petrol tub and I realise he’s making a torch.

He goes back outside to walk the shore.

The torch burns big at first, then yellow, then blue.

After this we see him dip it again: and the bigness and the bright colours start over.

For hours we hear him shouting – and shining up and along, up and along, like a lighthouse that hasn’t ever found its boat.

But he does find them. We don’t want to look. He kneels beside what must be Duncan. Pokes him with a stick, shakes his shoulders to see if that will be enough to wake him up.

We don’t see Elizabeth’s body until the sky begins to brighten. It’s on the far away beach, around the point.

The tide has gone out, leaving her face down, sand in her hair and in her mouth.