Page 118 of The Two of Us at the End of the World

She was just here, I said. Cat. I mean—

I took a deep breath, trying to clear my head, trying to get those fragments back in place so I’d be enough of a person to explain to them the thing I was only really just putting together for myself. It was too big for me to do on my own. I shook my head.

I felt a warm and familiar hand slide into mine. A tough little hand, rough-skinned and strong, made for doing things. Like saving everyone. Three squeezes like always. Like the last time. Three squeezes for three words.

I’m always here, said Cat.

She died, I said.

Trying to smile as I finally said it felt like having to lift the heaviest weight in the world. But I managed to do it. And after that I didn’t have the strength to stand up, but I managed to let them each take a baby because they had Bear Shirt’s kind eyes, and they just sat down beside me on the floor, like we were old friends already, calming the babies and telling me it would be all right, that everything would be all right and we’d just sit there a while and get to know each other.

They had Bear Shirt’s kind eyes. So I let them.

See, little Mouse? said Cat from behind me. You did good, she said.

They couldn’t see her. But I could still feel her hand.

Three squeezes to last me a lifetime.

And of course, I had left Cat’s poor broken body there in the tank. She hadn’t survived the night of the fire. It was always my second favourite place to be, and was now somewhere she’d be safe from the animals, with a great view of the world going by. Hard to be lonely with so much to see once you were finally still enough to notice it. I’d left her body there, but Cat was and is so much more to me than just a body. She was my parent, my big sister, my playmate, my teacher, my friend, my love, and for most of my life, my whole world – my only-one. That’s just too much to fit in one small body. It’d be enough to make anyone itchy-twitchy, feeling like they’re going to burst. So of course it all came with me instead. I carried it all every long step of the way, and I still do, because all that might be too much to fit in one body, but the one true bit of magic I do believe in is that a heart is bigger than a body.

In fact, I don’t think a heart has edges. It can be as large as you let it be.

Once upon a time mine just held Cat, at whose side was always my most favourite place to be, no matter where we were. Then the girls came, then Digger, then the twins, then maybe, perhaps the chance of a whole new family. Other only-ones. A life not looked for, but given as an unexpected kindness from a supposedly indifferent fate. A kindness that opened a new and wider world.

But that’s another story.

And I had to cross the sea to get to it.

Chapter 41

Mingulay

Mouse – Year 202 AG

And so Ferg and Bar brought us here, to their island, to Mingulay, these strangers from the sea who are now not strangers and who didn’t bring death, but the opposite. They stopped their searching and stayed with us for a couple of days and then set the goats and Red free. The last I saw of her she was trotting down the M-way in the direction we had come. She stopped at the bridge and looked back, and then went on. I like to think she was saying goodbye, but then I am sentimental. She moved briskly, like she had somewhere to be. I think she was remembering the wild horses we saw on the moor before we found Motherwell. I hope she was. I hope she found them. The goats just wandered off without a backwards glance. Goats are not sentimental. And they will be fine, with a whole city in which to get in and out of trouble.

And, having spent a lifetime living in fear of it, the terrifying novelty of harnessing the wind and scudding across the unimaginably vast sea should have kept me thrilled and awake, but an hour or so after we’d tacked out of the river mouth and headed north I went below and fell asleep with Digger beside me, keeping me warm.

And Ferg says I slept for more than a day, because I’d spent so long not daring to stop that when I did, I really stopped. They looked after the babies and handled the boat and once I woke, I just sat there wrapped up against the wind, more a parcel than a person, stunned and silent. I seemed to have no energy left inside, and just watched the inner islands slide past until we found their home island out on the very edge of everything, a grassy scoop with a sandy beach on one side rising to a terrifyingly high and sheer cliff face backed on to the open ocean beyond.

And the other thing we found was the part of their family they’d been out looking for was there already, waiting for them. They jumped ashore shouting their names, but not the ones I knew. Which were Scar Girl, Grey Hair and Bear Shirt.

Not Russians. Islanders. And their parents. And then it feels like I did nothing for days except sleep and tell my story around the fire every night, while all the new faces took turns holding the babies and becoming familiar instead of strange, hardy and welcoming like the island itself.

I am still not used to so many people. We are sitting round the fire again and there’s a storm slamming in from the west, the howling wind sending long rollers to crash against the cliff behind us with such force that it sends vibrations through the rock and it feels like you can hear the colossal thump of it through the soles of your feet. It’s a good night to be inside, and I’ve finished my story, and everyone is looking away, politely because I still find it hard to say Cat is dead. I have the girl baby on my knee. Digger is asleep at my feet. The rest are playing with the boy baby or busying themselves with the food on the fire.

All except Grey Hair, whose eyes never leave my face. It should feel uncomfortable, but it doesn’t. I’ve been here long enough to know her directness is just how she is. She leans forwards and nudges my arm, speaking quietly as if no one else crowded into this warm room can hear her.

So, Mouse. Now you have to tell me the Five Things.

I look at her. She smiles encouragingly.

You know. What are the Five Things about Cat?

I don’t know what to say. My hands are thinking for themselves and just make a gesture that says it’s too big, there is too much.

The old woman leans forwards, gently pushing my knee, so the firelight glinted off the strangely kind hardness in her eyes.