Читать книгу The Last of Us - Rob Ewing - Страница 8

This morning I noticed Elizabeth’s rainbow. She put water in a saucer on the windowsill, then a mirror in the water. I didn’t think it’d work, but then saw that it did.

It’s on the wall, beside the cereal boxes we taped over the big skylight. It wobbles a bit like the sea, disappears with the wind, comes back when the air is still. Just now it reminds me of a puddle with petrol spilt on it.

Elizabeth is still in bed. She’s looking towards me with her eyes open. I give her a wave but she looks like right through, like she’s thinking about the way things were before, which she usually is.

I hear a yowling noise from out on the street: one of the cats, or their kittens. They still roam around, for all days mainly, only now the bigger group is broken up into just a few stragglers who feed on rubbish like the gulls.

Saw two of the kittens taken by an eagle. The MacNeil brothers saw the rest go. Saw a crumple of fur and bones on the shore-walk next to the sculpture of the seal. The cats stayed in their house for a while after that, but I guess they got their courage working again.

Elizabeth gets up and begins to ribbon my hair without saying anything. Alex sits forward, rubs sleep from his eyes. His trousers are damp. Elizabeth gets him to stand and strips his sheets, tumbling them into a ball to be put in the garden.

Alex washes himself with a flannel then says, ‘You get up?’ His voice is dry and croaky; Elizabeth recognises the warning signs so plonks a bowl of cereal in his lap and orders him to eat. She pours ten toty cartons of cream in a glass, adds yellow sterilised water, pours the lot on top and hey presto – he’s got a normal breakfast.

Our clothes are already in three piles. Elizabeth puts on a CD – Winnie the Pooh, which we listen to while getting dressed. Then she takes the balled-up sheets and puts them in the garden beside all the others.

Alex: ‘It’s only sweat. I just sweat the bed.’

Me: ‘Don’t worry about it.’

Alex: ‘I just have a weakness for sweating …’

Me: ‘OK, I believe you.’

He’s scared of going to the toilet alone, so I take his hand and go with. The flies on the ceiling do their mad angry dance when the door opens and closes. The porch door’s stiff, not broken like the one to the kitchen.

Outside, there’s the smell of dewy grass and moss in the sun. I jump over the screeching fence, do my daily business. Alex is about to go by the door when I warn him to come away a good bit: ‘Stop being too close,’ I hiss. ‘You’re always too close. Come over by the fence.’

He comes in by the fence, pees. He looks around – to the street, to the bay, to the road going west and to Beinn Tangabhal, our big hill at the far end of town.

Alex: ‘Is it smoke?’

He’s pointing at the hill. It’s only cloud. I tell him.

‘Cloud isn’t smoke then?’

I think about it, then decide I don’t know the answer. I’m pretty sure I used to know the answer. Or maybe he’s half asleep, and it’s a kid’s question.

He’s less bleary when we get back in. By now Elizabeth is doing her routine. She turns the two radios on. One has a dial which she circles all the way, going through the stations. The other has buttons. She takes her time, slowing on the dial at the places we marked with gold stars. Then she gives Alex his injection. He already has his jumper up ready, so it’s done quick.

She holds up his pen and looks in carefully at the glass window on the inside of it.

‘Just half of this one left,’ she says.

After this Elizabeth writes our shopping list: Sheets – for 1 week. Breakfast. Batteries. Bags. Tins. Hearing a noise, she turns down the CD. We all listen. But it’s only coming from the street, a lot of yowling and screeching – it’s from the House of Cats. She turns the CD up again.

We’ve finished the funny milk that doesn’t need a fridge, so I have cartons too, and they’re not bad. There’s apricot jam after this. We dip pink wafer biscuits in, rather than using our spoons and having to wash up. Then there’s digestive biscuits, toasted over the gas-burner flame, then hint-of-mint hot chocolate.

I comb Alex’s hair. He doesn’t like wiping his face, plus he always forgets to wash his hair, so I take him to the mirror to show him how it looks and the damage it does to his appearance.

I get the toothbrushes out, brush mine. ‘Dreamt I had a wobbly tooth last night,’ I say, remembering.

Elizabeth is cleaning our cups in the bowl. ‘You missing any new ones? Or old ones, mean to say?’

I put a finger in to test: ‘All just the same.’

‘Why do we brush our teeth again? Can anybody remember?’

‘Oh not this again …’

Alex wrinkles his face at our talk of teeth. He doesn’t like having his brushed. He had a sore tooth when it was still dark and stormy, and his face went big for a week. After that he lost four of his baby teeth, all at once. He cried a lot, and it took him ages to get better. Now he has a big gap in his top teeth, with no adult ones in yet.

Me: ‘Remember all the good reasons?’

Alex: ‘Elizabeth says gum disease means sickness going in the blood. Plus, if you swallow a tooth then you don’t get a coin.’ He sighs and looks around for his clothes, which I know is just a delaying tactic.

I push down his chin, which doesn’t usually work but does today.

Me: ‘Firstly: chewing surfaces.’

The saying of this makes us stop. We both look at each other. Then we ignore ourselves.

It’s only a short walk to school. The skinny cats follow us, so we scare them off. It rained last night, but it’s sunny now, which makes the road shine.

If I almost close my eyes this brightness joins up with the shine coming from the sea. When I tell Elizabeth about this, that it’s one way of making everything look back to normal, she nods and does her distant look.

We sit down in our usual classroom seats and unpack our bags. Alex is very fussy about how he sets out his pens: he has to get the colours right before it’s good. Elizabeth sits beside Alex, then we wait for the MacNeil brothers.

I wait until the clock shows 9:02 before starting. We do reading first – this is Alex alone. Elizabeth leaves it to me, so I give him plenty of praise and tell him he’s a Good Communicator. I put a star in his reading book, then get him to read it again in his head. Then we do writing – I draw two lines in Alex’s book, ask him to do his best vowels. After this we do words, then sentences.

While he’s doing a story I take myself aside. In my head I think: All right Rona. Read this page to this page. Then do a story where you use plenty of Wow Words, and especially these – Frog, Dainty, Wolf, Tiredly.

Elizabeth is about to start her lesson when Calum Ian comes in, with Duncan following after him.

Duncan is wearing his hood up high today, the way he does when he wants to be invisible.

They take a seat as far from us as possible. Calum Ian takes out his pencil and sharpener. He starts to sharpen his pencil onto the floor in one long unsnapped strand.

‘Martin far,’ says Elizabeth.

I know she can’t help it, but she never gets it right. She says madainn mhath like there’s a Martin who’s far. The first time she said it I nearly went – ‘All right, where?’ I’ve tried to correct her, but there’s no chance she’ll come wise.

‘Pòg mo thòin,’ Calum Ian replies.

This is very rude and should never be said, not even to your worst enemy.

Elizabeth: ‘I know what Poke Ma Hone means.’ She gets the sound of that right at least.

Calum Ian looks like he knew she knew already.

‘What is it, Duncan?’ Elizabeth asks. ‘Why are you hiding yourself away?’

Duncan’s jacket scrunches.

Calum Ian: ‘He’s being quiet. He only wants to sit in peace and quiet. That’s right isn’t it, Duncan?’

Duncan doesn’t answer.

Elizabeth takes the teacher’s seat. There are ten empty places, five filled. She writes our names in the register, then hands around bits of paper.

‘We’ll start with an activity,’ she says. ‘As part of our remembering. It’s the thing where you choose a colour, then a number. All right? Then there’s a message. We can all make one. Who wants to have a go?’

She calls it a fortune-teller for our fingers. It’s like a beak with four spikes, made of paper. My first try ends up wrong. Alex can’t do his and he ends up getting offended. Calum Ian does his but looks grumpy about it, while Duncan’s hands are quick and skilled.

Me: ‘Choose a colour.’

Alex: ‘Blue.’

Me: ‘B – L – U – E. Choose a number.’

Alex: ‘Four.’

Me: ‘One two, three four. Open this up. And the message is – Keep calm and keep playing.’

In the end it’s a good enough project. We laugh at some of the ruder messages, then Alex finds one which says You see a ship! And we stop wanting to play.

We have a break, then Elizabeth says we should change activity: to real remembering.

‘Who wants to go first?’

When nobody volunteers she begins:

‘Dad used to talk about memory. He said there was short-term, and there was long-term. Can anyone tell me what the difference is?’

Nobody wants to say and get it wrong.

‘All right, so short-term’s the thought you just had. It doesn’t last, unless you remember it again. Long-term lasts, but sometimes you need to remember it to keep it strong. Otherwise it can fade, and you forget.’

She waits for us to understand. I try to remember what I had for dinner – no, it’s gone. I should’ve practised.

Elizabeth: ‘Who’ll go first?’

No one answers. Calum Ian looks up at the cracks on the ceiling, then stretches out his arms and collects back like he’s years after being bored.

‘Will you try, Duncan?’

Duncan pretends to be reading his jotter. But then, to surprise us all, he stands. He stands for the longest time, even past the point of my being nervous for him.

‘Dad used to have a game where he pretended he was a robot,’ he says in a hurry. ‘You’d control him, except he might attack.’

He waits for us to say anything. When nobody does he goes on: ‘I remember he was friendly after the pub. If he’d gotten drunk he had a joke about people annoying him to give him a trophy. He didn’t want it. They’d run up the street after him, chasing him. It was sort of stupid …’

He looks out at us, seeing if we’re still listening, looking like he’s sure we’ll be bored.

‘I thought he was trying to make himself out to be important … I thought he was worried about being too ordinary as a dad. That’s why I always practise my fiddle: so he can see how good I am when he comes back. So I can make him proud.’

He stops. Elizabeth makes a go-on face. We’re meant to be writing it all down for Duncan to keep in his diary, but I mostly prefer just to be listening.

‘Mam, she played I spy. She said it in the Gaelic. Said it with sounds, as well: I hear with my little ear. You could hear the kettle, or the wind. Or the fridge. Once she did it for her stomach rumbling. Then for her baby.’ He stops for a while, picks at some fluff on the edge of his sleeve. I can see all his face now. There’s new scabs on his chin.

‘Dad didn’t play the robot game when everything went bad. There wasn’t much I spy then either.’

After a long time and with a quiet voice he asks: ‘If a baby isn’t born, does it still get up to heaven?’

Calum Ian stops writing. He leans across and raps Duncan hard on the arm.

‘That’s you finished. You’ve done your bit. I don’t want you talking about them, all right? So, you’re done, suidh sìos. Now get your arse in and sit.’

Duncan wants to stay standing – but when Calum Ian gets up and folds his arms, he sits. His big brother looks annoyed, or maybe sad, I can’t tell. He gives Elizabeth a look like she did a stupid thing for encouraging Duncan.

‘Know what I think?’ he says. ‘There’s just as much stuff we need to forget. So get on, Big Brains, answer that: how do we stop ourselves from remembering?’

We wait on Elizabeth.

‘Remembering is all we’ve got,’ she says.

It feels like the right time to change topic. Elizabeth writes down Duncan’s memories then gives them to him.

‘Let’s move on to sums,’ she tells us.

It’s my job to hand out the workbooks. We all know the pages, but I say them anyway because that’s what happens in a class. My lesson is counting money. I have to count picture-bundles of spending money in under a minute. I use the clock on the wall. It takes me two minutes, but only forty seconds if I cheat.

Alex, who’s young, has to read Kipper’s Birthday, which he’s done before but this time with feeling. Duncan’s the same age as me, yet he won’t be encouraged. He mostly lies head-down until it’s time to go. Calum Ian is one year below Elizabeth, so he copies her mostly.

I turn the pages and stare at the sums I know I did last year. The book is very good – giving examples, sums that are worked through, but even so, it’s not enough. I don’t want to tell the boys that I don’t know. The last time I did that they called me Gloic, which means brainless idiot, not even anything to do with the truth.

Then the sun starts to shine on my desk, and now I want to be outside. I think of the gardens we saw on the way here, with flowers I haven’t the name for, either in the Gaelic or English. I recognised some very big daisies, but the rest I didn’t know. Daffodils? Roses, maybe? There might be a book in one of the houses, or the library. For learning there can’t be a better place to start than there.

‘This is dumb,’ Calum Ian says.

I look up at Elizabeth, who pretends not to hear, at least not until he says it for a second time.

‘Why is it dumb?’

Calum Ian scratches his pen across the lid of his desk. ‘It’s the same page, over and over. Plus I never cared about sums in the before. How can they help us now?’

Elizabeth lines up her jotter and pencils. Then says, ‘Sums are needed for lots of things.’

‘Say some.’

She tries to think of examples. In the long run she says, ‘Sums can tell you what the date is.’

‘No they don’t. All you need for that is a calendar. And there’s plenty of those in the post office.’

Me: ‘People used to tell the time by the sun. True. There was a shortest day and a longest. The olden-times people used sums to work it out.’

Calum Ian: ‘We’ve got calendars.’

Elizabeth: ‘Which nobody can agree the date with.’

Calum Ian: ‘Because you got your count wrong.’

He takes out his can opener – twirls the head of it, squinting his eyes at Elizabeth.

‘Why’d you get to be teacher? It could just as easy be me, or Duncan. Or Alex sitting quiet there. Or her. But it’s forever you.’

Elizabeth puts her pencils back in her satchel.

‘It’s not even as if we learn anything. We’ve been at this same page for days. Weeks.’

Elizabeth leaves the teacher’s seat and goes to sit beside Alex. Then she takes out her things and looks patient.

I know Duncan will never get up to replace her: he’s too shy. Alex is both shy and too young: he’s only six.

We hear Calum Ian’s chair screeching. He scrumples his pages then goes to the teacher’s desk.

On the whiteboard he writes his name, then underneath:

I AM A BOY NOT A FUCKING TEACHER

‘There’s no point pretending to be a teacher, because I’m not,’ he says. ‘There’s no point in any of us pretending because none of us are. The – bloody – end.’

After this he draws an arse on the whiteboard, and I have to admit this is kind of funny.

But when we start to laugh he gets furious; he rubs off what he’s written then shouts: ‘Shut your traps! Sguir dheth sin! That means you as well, Ugly-face!’

He’s talking to his brother, Duncan.

Duncan hides as deep as he can in his jacket, to match the quietness of the rest of us.

Now Calum Ian looks worried to have said what he did. He goes back to his seat, rolls down his sleeves – but they’re clarty, so he rolls them back up again.

‘Duncan could teach us the fiddle,’ Elizabeth says in a quiet voice. ‘We could get them out of the music cupboard?’

‘I’m going home.’

Calum Ian begins to pack his bag. Duncan begins to collect his things, too.

Elizabeth: ‘We could do messages?’

‘Another crap idea. Who’s looking out for them, tell me that? We send and send but we never get any back.’

‘And never will if we don’t keep sending.’

‘Fine, you do it then. See if I care.’

‘But we have to stick together. Remember the saying: “What’s going to work?”’

This is Elizabeth’s saying. She always does it when we’re struggling, or disagreeing, or needing a boost up.

When nobody adds on the next bit, she has to add it herself: ‘Teamwork! That’s what’s going to work, right? We’re all going to be a team. Right?’

‘Do your stupid sums for the team, then.’

After this Calum Ian gets up, scraping his chair, and leaves, with Duncan hurrying behind.

I look across at the drawing Duncan left on his desk.

It’s the same drawing he always does: of a face with black scored-out holes for eyes.

Elizabeth goes into one of her quiet moods. She walks me and Alex to the swing park, then leaves us.

‘See you at home,’ she says, her voice sounding like we’ve not to follow too soon.

Sometimes if I’m not concentrating I still think we’re living in our last house. We’ve moved twice now, usually when the mess gets too much. Elizabeth isn’t sure if this means we live like kings – having a new house when it suits us – or like orphans. I prefer the king choice.

It’s only Calum Ian and Duncan who’ve stayed true to their old home. This gets me the big envy sometimes, when I think of my old home, abandoned.

Alex and I sit on the swings for a bit, eating rice crackers with mango chutney spread on top.

The wind mushes the water in the bay, and the sun makes the mush glittery. The wrecked trawler out on the rocks of Snuasamul looks like the world’s biggest whale. I hold it between finger and thumb. It’s tiny.

Alex: ‘Do you think there’s a ghost on that ship?’

Me: ‘As usual – too much imagination.’

Alex goes back to nibbling his cracker. He frowns at his chutney then says, ‘Don’t want more of this. If you eat the same thing over and over you get a heart attack.’

‘Who says?’

‘No one. I just think it.’

‘Well you shouldn’t think it. It’s crazy! That’s only if you eat too many chips and you get a fat arse and you smoke. If this isn’t you, don’t worry.’

He still looks worried, though, so I decide we need to do something brave, just the two of us.

First of all, I command us in getting an offering. We pick some of the flowers we don’t know the names of, plus dandelions from the grass strip by the History Centre.

Then we go bit by bit closer to the side entrance of the big kids’ school.

No one likes going here. They made it different to the little kids’ school because of who they put in it.

It takes a while to get our confidence up: so we kick the rainbow-painted stones along the pathway, then run up and down the slopey concrete.

After that we go in.

The wind goes in first, fluttering leaves and bits of paper by the door. There’s broken glass outside one room. Dirty black stuff in spots trailing up along the corridor. On both walls are the message boards. Some of the paper displays have come down. I hold one up: there’s a bit at the top called ‘Our Wall of Achievement’, but the bit underneath has fallen away, so there’s nothing. I think this is kind of funny in a dark way, but Alex doesn’t.

He walks ahead of me, trying not to step on the black spots, or the rubbish.

He’s looking at me for braveness, but I don’t feel massively brave without Elizabeth.

Going through double doors, there’s another corridor. Skylights making it go bright, dark, bright. A broken window inside one classroom: maybe a bird hit it, or the MacNeil brothers throwing stones again? Rows of posters about bullying, some about road safety, some about littering. Along the corridor on brightly-coloured card, with a wiggly blue border, are the pictures of all the kids who went to school last year.

I’m there, in P4, alongside Duncan. Elizabeth is in P7. Calum Ian’s in P6. Alex, only in P2. We didn’t really know each other then, but we do now, for sure.

There’s a short bit outdoors between our school and the big school. We get to the playground. It’s marked up and ready for games: basket- and netball. The hill rising away behind, the rocks going silver with sun.

It’s like going underwater. We put on our nose-clips, wait behind the door. Then I count to ten and go in.

Top corridor, heading to the gallery above the gym.

We put our perfume-hankies over our faces.

Going inside we hear a noise like the world’s biggest bee. Millions of the world’s biggest bees.

I run forward, and throw our flowers onto the dried and drying pile of old flowers – then we get out fast.

As the door slams I hear the flies buzzing up into the air. They’re down in the gym. The noise is giant.

Back outside I smell myself for the stink that stays. It feels like we got away with it, just.

Elizabeth started the offerings. But she doesn’t always like us doing it on our own, in case the dead down there make us sick. Still, I figure as long as we stay up in the gallery, run in and out, we’ll be fine.

Alex doesn’t look too much happier now that we’ve done a brave thing. His hands shake, only this time I don’t think he needs food, or medicine, just fresh air.

Leaving him outside on his own I take a minute to go back to my old real classroom.

Its windows are broken, and the floor’s wet; there’s a shelf swollen from water. Some birds must have come in, because there are new trails of bird shit everywhere.

There’s a rack with books on it. New books on it, neatly placed. ‘Can I have a book for reading practice, miss? And for Alex? He’s just started out.’

When I relax into it the teacher is there. She’s sitting down, reading her own book. She takes off her glasses.

‘Go on,’ she says.

I sit in my old seat. Beside me is Anne-Marie. On the other side is David. In front is Margaret-Anne, and behind, Kieran. We take it in turns to read a bit of story. The teacher says, ‘Very good: now it’s Anne-Marie.’ Then it’s my turn to read, which I do while everyone else listens. I’ve always been a good reader in English, so it’s easy, and I enjoy it and probably read longer than I should because the teacher forgets to ask me to stop.

When I can’t read any more I close my eyes. I put my ear on the desk, ignoring the floor-noise, and try to hear them. I listen hard. Usually someone sniffing, or making a cough, or the sound when they move, a chair grating, a book opening, a pencil-scritch, anything.

But there’s just the wind.

Sometimes the quiet gets on your nerves. You can hear the whistle in your ears. The dogs and sheep are turned to dinosaurs. When it gets bad we turn on the CD player and listen to music. It’s one reason we collect batteries. The MacNeil brothers I’ve heard tooting car horns for the same reason, and once I stood beside the War Memorial above Nasg and screamed just to be rid of it.

I get up, walk around the class. Some of my art is still on the wall from last autumn. Paintings of what our summer holidays were going to be this year. We were going to Glasgow, me and Mum, then on to a big water park in England which had blue and red slides, and a kids’ club and face-painting, and bikes and lakes and all sorts of fun.

So this is what my painting shows: a water park in a forest. Except I never saw it in the end.

Alex looks fed up with me when I get back outside.

Alex: ‘You leaved me alone.’

Me: ‘You look like you’re facing your worst enemy.’

Alex: ‘A dog came and sniffed me. At least the dogs remembered to be my friend.’

Me: ‘Was it in a pack? Was it a collie? Remember Elizabeth told us to stay back from them.’

Alex: ‘Wasn’t.’

We walk along for a bit, but he won’t be encouraged. Soon he wants to just sit and stare at nothing. Knowing the warning signs I take four pink wafer biscuits from my emergency supply and stuff them in his gob.

After ten minutes he’s less grumpy. I take a wet wipe and wipe a window in his dirty face.

He says, ‘Sometimes I don’t know why I get scared. I know I’ve got an illness, but it can’t always be that, right? If I’m scared that’s when I start thinking about zombies.’

Me: ‘Well you shouldn’t, because there aren’t any.’

Alex: ‘Not even new ones?’

Me: ‘Not even.’

Alex: ‘Not even of people?’

Me: ‘Stop asking the same question differently.’

To cheer him up I show him the book I got in the library: it’s called Dr Dog, and it’s about a dog who’s a doctor and who has to cure the Gumboyle family. The book is good, and makes him laugh. Job done.

Elizabeth is nowhere around. But anyway, we don’t want to meet her because she’ll just take us New Shopping, which nobody likes.

Instead we go Old Shopping, normal shopping, this time to the post office. I decide it’s a mission, so we have to take out her list of rules to remind ourselves:

1 Stay together, and do not wander far.

2 Keep warm.

3 Put out something bright.

4 Look bigger.

5 Use the whistle for emergencies.

6 Don’t eat anything you’re suspicious of.

7 Stay away from deep water.

She always has rules, which I don’t mind, though Calum Ian got fed up with it, and anyway said he was too wise for instructions coming from her.

The post office door is blue, with peeling paint. For old time’s sake we knock on it. It’s open anyway, like all the doors around here; even the doctor’s surgery is open, though someone smashed the door for that.

Being in the post office gives me sad memories. Alex, however, likes playing with the ink stamps behind the counter, so I put up with it for him.

I borrow a sheet of first class stamps to take home for when we’re drawing. Meanwhile Alex stamps his hands, his cheeks where I wiped, his knees, his nose. Now he’s covered in POSTAGE PAID and looks chuffed.

Me: ‘You’re a weird kid.’

We leave the post office and go to the butcher’s, which sells butcher’s meat yes but also everything else. I mostly preferred the sweets. Mum likes the papers and rolls.

Each time you look at an empty shelf something new comes out. This is a skill I’ve learned. At first we didn’t see the batteries – but then we did. Next came the tin of stew. Next came the big sausage of dog food (for befriending, not eating, Elizabeth claims). Next came the serviettes and cup-cake papers (spare toilet paper). We used food colouring to mark the water we’d sterilised: that was Elizabeth’s good idea. Drinking red water isn’t so bad when you’re used to drinking juice. But Alex thinks too much colouring makes it look like blood.

Now the shelves are empty. Nearly. There are two farmer’s journals with red scribbled names on them. There’s swim-goggles, knitted jumpers, gloves. There’s a plastic cricket set no one ever wanted.

I tug on the string of the cricket set. It’s jammed. No, snagged at the back. Alex helps me push the shelf. It’s easy to do cos it’s empty and not stuck or nailed.

Dust, cobwebs, lentils. Then lucky kids on a mission: a packet of icing sugar! Squashed, yellow, but still sealed.

Me: ‘The latest gossip is – I got a plan!’

Alex: ‘I know your plan!’

We heave away the rest of the shelves. Some of the metal arms drop clanking. There’s more cobweb-dust – then treasure. A tin of Scotch broth (unbuckled). A tin of hot dogs in brine. A packet of pastry mix. A packet of balloons. A plastic box of paperclips.

The pastry packet is open, mouldy. But the tins are good. Eager beavers, we pull all the shelves. We can’t move the ones around the walls, they’re fixed.

Still, it’s been a good mission, one of our best.

‘We got so lucky,’ Alex says.

Calum Ian and Duncan are on the main street. We hide the things in our schoolbags, then shout on them. They’re on a mission as well: with the cars, sucking petrol for their bonfire. Duncan still has his hood up, zipped up high so it’s hard to see his eyes. From side-on I can only see his mouth: his lips are cracked and red from the petrol.

Calum Ian’s lips are red as well. He wipes his mouth and spits like a granddad. ‘A bheil am pathadh ort?’ he says, to Alex, joking, while holding up the plastic milk bottle he uses to collect. Then says to me: ‘You do it.’

He uses a stick to prise open the nearest petrol cap. When he gets the cap off I feed in the tube and suck, but I don’t have enough suck to get it going. Calum Ian gets it started – but when he hands it over it spills past my mouth and I’m nearly sick with the smell.

‘Gloic!’ Duncan points at me and laughs.

Calum Ian demonstrates perfectly how it should be done: suck, finger on the end, drop the tube down, pour. Once it’s started the petrol pours all by itself, and doesn’t even want to stop. It fills three bottles.

When he’s done Duncan uses gold spray-paint to write an on the windscreen, for mptied.

Seeing my bag he asks, ‘What you got?’

Trying not to sound boastful about it I show them our treasures. Both of them whistle, then look very interested. Calum Ian checks the dates on the hot dogs, then the broth.

‘Share and share?’ he says.

I look for getting something back. But all he does is take the hot dogs, and the broth, and the icing sugar, leaving us just with the balloons and paperclips.

Alex, looking disappointed, asks if he can dip his thumb in the sugar just once.

‘We’ll need it for emergencies,’ Calum Ian says, waving him away. ‘All right then – swap you for petrol?’

‘We don’t want petrol.’

‘All right. So have nothing.’

They pack our treasures away in their bags.

We follow behind, hoping to share back over as they suck more cars. It gets to me that I’m the smaller kid, and thinking of our reinforcement back at home I say, ‘Why’re you mean to Elizabeth at school?’

Calum Ian rubs his red mouth. ‘She’s fucking stuck-up.’

‘No she isn’t.’

‘Aye she is. She’s an incomer. Thinks she knows it all because of who her mam and dad were. But what did they do? Sat on their arses in the end. Never helped anybody. She only pretends being leader, I can tell it.’

‘You aren’t better.’

‘Gloic, you should stick up for the island folk.’

‘Stop calling me Gloic.’

Duncan gets between us. I think he’s trying to get us to stop arguing, but I can’t always feel he’s on my side if Calum Ian is standing near.

‘Just tell us your real nickname,’ Duncan says, ‘the secret one your mam used. What was it again? Then we’ll stop using that one.’

I think it might be a trick, so I don’t tell.

In the end it becomes a big deal. Duncan puts his hands together like he’s praying for me to tell any answer: and I get so annoyed at him for this that I say, ‘Your nickname is Scab Face.’

It makes him pull his jacket up high. He kicks at the wooden post of a fence, rather than me.

Calum Ian doesn’t stand up for him with his sadness, which makes it worse, really.

They put the plastic milk bottles they filled in a shopping trolley, then begin to push it home.

We follow them for a bit, and I say they’ll not be wanted if they come to visit later. Calum Ian makes an O with his mouth to show he doesn’t care. Duncan has gone back to being invisible.

‘Why’d you even collect petrol?’ I shout. ‘Your last fire didn’t work.’

Calum Ian: ‘So we’re going to make the next one bigger. Plus I got a better idea for how to start it.’

‘Your ideas never work.’

Now I get annoyed that they won’t share food or plans. So when they’re not looking I throw a stone which whizzes past Calum Ian’s head. He just waves back.

Elizabeth is waiting for us at home. We tell her about the badly shared hot dogs and broth and icing sugar. She doesn’t say much, just tells us how clever we were with our mission in the first place. Turns out, though, she’s been New Shopping – and on her own.

There are new sheets on Alex’s bed, plus tins of fruit and peas and carrots, and packet soups and biscuits. It’s a very, very good result!

We don’t ask where she went shopping, and she doesn’t offer to tell. We look through some of the other things: candles, raisins, ancient treacle, coffee filter papers, even two packets of Jammie Dodgers.

Alex: ‘Were these from a good house? I mean, were they opened already or near to—’

‘All houses are good,’ Elizabeth says quick, holding up her hand for no more questions.

‘Can there be poison that gets—’

‘Shut up, OK?’

For dinner we have to put all the food we might eat in a square for choosing. With the power of three we decide on chicken soup, beans on crackers, then raisins dipped in treacle. I like to spend ages reading the sides of the packets. Ingredients. Contents. Est weight. Best before.

Me: ‘You know why they call them ingredients?’

Elizabeth: ‘What’s your idea again?’

Me: ‘Because it’s the stuff that makes you greedy. In-GREEDY-ents.’

Elizabeth does a half-and-half smile.

I go on reading the packets as she makes our soup. Wheatgerm, rice syrup, flavourings, colourings, E116. This is how clever the world once was! Not just cream with chicken. Your statutory rights. What about statutory wrongs? Customer queries, call this number. I’ve tried to call these numbers before, on our spare charged-up phone, but there’s never any answer.

Just when I think Calum Ian and Duncan aren’t coming because of the stone I threw, they do come.

They smell of bonfire. We don’t ask what they’ve been doing. Their knees are scuffed and dirty and Duncan has black scorches on his shoes. In the shadows made by our torches his skin looks even bumpier.

We’ve all got scars: on our faces, on our backs and necks, from the sickness. I remember a lady on TV saying that the worse your scars, the worse the illness.

Duncan got the worst of all of us. After that it’s Elizabeth, then Calum Ian, then me, then Alex.

Adults and littler kids had the worst scars of all. That’s why they became so sick. That’s why we have two separate places to go and remember them. See them.

We eat dinner, which is great because it’s warm, then Calum Ian takes the best seat on the couch and says, ‘Press play, Bonus Features.’

Alex gets called Bonus Features because that’s what he thought the seventh Star Wars film was called. He’s in charge of our battery-powered DVD player. Tonight he does adverts, by using some recordings we found, and then we get a film: Tin Toy from the Toy Story DVD.

It’s very short though, and awful soon it’s over.

Elizabeth: ‘OK, batteries out.’

Both Duncan and Alex thump their arms and feet on the carpet.

‘No no no!’ shouts Alex.

‘You’re not the ruler of me!’ says Duncan. Alex becomes unmanageable for a bit. We try to ignore him but then Elizabeth remembers: his injection. He’s in a different mood from this morning, though, and he struggles and cries and Calum Ian has to get involved to hold him down, which only makes things worse.

Afterwards Alex rubs his stomach and cries.

‘I forgot not to be angry,’ he says.

For a treat he’s allowed batteries in his DS. For me, I decide to draw, so I tear a stamp from the book of stamps we found, and stick it in my drawing jotter. Beneath it, under the Queen’s head, I draw a fat body with an old woman’s stern hands and knees. Mum once said that the Queen had jewellery dripping off her, so on her wrists I draw pearl bracelets with richness oozing.

Alex: ‘The Queen lived on a farm in London.’

For some reason Calum Ian and Elizabeth find this funny. I find it a bit ignorant.

‘D’you think the Queen died?’ Alex asks.

‘She was old,’ Elizabeth answers. ‘But her doctors would be the best. So maybe she didn’t.’

Alex puts down his DS. ‘I think she did die. I think she got sick. I think there’s no Queen.’

Calum Ian: ‘What about the Prime Minister? I bet they put him underground, miles under where there was no bad stuff could happen. I bet he’s still there, eating apples, drinking milk. And I hope he chokes on some of that milk, and a bit of apple gets lodged and kills him.’

He chucks a rubber ball against the wall. When it comes back he catches it, nifty.

‘Who’s stronger – Santa or God?’ Alex asks Elizabeth.

‘That’s a hard one …’

‘Do you think Santa died?’

‘No, of course he didn’t. Santa can’t die.’

‘So then why didn’t he come last Christmas?’

Elizabeth sits forward, sighs. ‘I suppose I could say … well he’s a supernatural being, like a god really, so he can’t truly die. He’s protected by force fields. He’ll come this year, just you wait.’

Duncan makes a sound of spit in his throat which is disrespectful to Santa. Elizabeth does her frown at him to tell him not to give the game away.

Alex goes back to his DS for a bit. We hear swooshes and a beep-countdown then the game-over theme.

‘I absolutely hate Santa,’ he says.

Elizabeth: ‘No you don’t.’

‘Yes I do. I hate him and I hate God. And I hate baby Jesus and I hate the tooth fairy.’

‘You forgot the Easter bunny,’ Duncan says, doing his sound of spit again.

Alex says nothing.

‘Who wants a bedtime snack?’ Elizabeth asks.

By bedtime snack she means supper. By dinner she usually means tea. And when she says lunch, really that means dinner. It’s her own habit. I learnt that Elizabeth is in a separate country, and time, when it comes to food, because she’s from England.

Now Calum Ian calls her an incomer – which is kind of true, but not truly kind.

‘Incomers like their own name for food,’ he says.

Elizabeth looks away sadly, so I decide to stand up for her at once: ‘When Elizabeth’s mum and dad came to the island, they decided it was too risky for babies to be born here,’ I remind Calum Ian. ‘This meant that I got born in Glasgow. Same with all the other kids at school. So we are all incomers. Which makes you the odd-one-out.’

Alex claps; Elizabeth smiles. Calum Ian gives me the rude two-finger sign.

We turn on the gas fire. It dances blue when I blow on it. I almost prefer it to the real fire. Elizabeth gets out the sleeping bags, and we gather in to toast biscuits.

In the fire-dark her skin looks bumpy like Duncan’s. You can’t tell where the black or the blue of her eyes are, which is kind of scary, so I try not to look.

‘Do you think your mum and dad are dead?’ I ask her, without even knowing I was going to.

This is against the rules. Nobody says so.

Elizabeth burns and burns her biscuit. The smoke of it gets up my nose. She could be waxwork.

‘They are dead,’ she says.

The ask was my fault: my bad idea. So it’s my job right away to make her feel better. I say, ‘When my mum comes back from the mainland, the worst thing will be telling her about Granny, and the cousins. And my aunts and uncles. It’s going to be terrible. I’ll be glad to see her, but it’ll be terrible all the same.’

Elizabeth says nothing. So I try again: ‘My school book last year said three new babies are born for every two people dying. So at the gates of heaven it’s: hullo, hullo, hullo. Goodbye, goodbye. That’s the rule.’

Elizabeth just stares at her singed biscuit.

‘Don’t know where my mum and dad are,’ Alex says, licking his biscuit. ‘The last time I saw Mum, she was just away for a minute. Wish they’d come home.’

‘Our dad’s away on his boat,’ Duncan says, before Calum Ian can stop him. ‘He was gone away to bring food back from the mainland. That’s why we can’t be staying with you lot. We were told to wait at home. Sorry, but he ordered us there.’

‘Always do as we’re told,’ Calum Ian says.

This makes the MacNeil brothers remember about leaving. They want to get back before it’s dark. I ask Elizabeth if I should follow them and get back our food, but she tells me just to forget about it.

Our house is the shape of a loaf tin. It’s good because it doesn’t have any wrong smell. Also, there are three beds in one room, so we can sleep together. Also, it has a gas stove (Calum Ian changes the cylinders) and thick walls and a roof with flat bits for collecting rainwater.

Also, it’s not any of our old homes. This helps us to become a fresh family. Which is especially good for Elizabeth, who has no family of her own.

Before bed it’s tick-check time, then we do the routine with the radios.

Same static-noise as always.

We unpick the cereal boxes from the skylight, and lie heads together under the window. I forgot that in the summer stars don’t exist. In wintertime you can even see them going to school in the morning.

Now Elizabeth tries to remember all the things her dad said about the stars, and the sky. It doesn’t last very long. Usually if I’ve run out of memories I make stuff up, but she has a rule for herself against that.

‘The past is precious,’ she says. ‘It has to be correct.’

It’s when she starts remembering about planets going around the sun, and moons going around the planets, that I remember – the riddle that Mum told me. And because it’s a true memory, I want to tell it.

It must be a good one, a good riddle, because it gets them quiet. I know the answer but I won’t tell them.

‘You could give us a clue,’ grumbles Alex.

‘OK, here.’

For one clue only, I hold up my drawing of the Queen.

When Elizabeth puts on the night light I promise to tell them the next day if they still haven’t guessed.