Page 19 of The Two of Us at the End of the World

I’ve got my knife out and I cut the extra rope off the tail of the knot from where I’ve tied it to the tree. I turn back. Terrified Cat won’t be there, but she is still holding on, though I can see she is at the very end of her strength. She stares at me and she can see what I’m going to do as I scramble to the edge and double the rope I’ve cut off around the cable. Her eyes are hot, burning through the falling rain at me, and she’s almost crying.

Cat never cries. Her voice is thick and raw and chokey in a way I haven’t ever heard before.

Mouse! she yells. Mouse! Don’t… Don’t you… Don’t you DARE do that!

And then time goes fast and everything jumbles together because, even though I know she’s right and it won’t work, she’s my only-one and we’ve always been two, so I have to try. And even though looking back on it now, I realise this is of course the irreversible thing that stopped us being two for ever, I do it. Without thinking I’m already jumping off the edge of the quarry, holding the doubled rope wrapped round my wrists and gripping it tight in both hands and even though it feels like my arms are being wrenched out of their sockets as it takes my full weight, I hold on and slide down the cable towards them.

I don’t know if Cat let go or if I knocked her hands loose, but as I crash into them, she falls.

And as she does so, I wrap my legs round her and she grabs onto whatever part of me she can, one hand ripping the front of my jerkin, the other catching my belt. And the pain in my arms doubles with the weight, but we hang there, a tangled mess of people gasping and sobbing in the rain. Cat clings on like a limpet, her head buried in my chest.

What now? she says after a short beat. Mouse, you shouldn’t, now we’re both…

You climb up me and get on the cable, I say. You get yourself safe up there. And then we work this out.

In the end, it’s tough but also easier than it seems. She gets up on top of the cable like I said, and then without her weight to carry I swing my legs up and cross them over the cable too, which makes things much easier. Cat helps me get my hands up onto the top of the cable, and then with the girls hanging on either side, I manage to crawl upwards, bringing them with me slowly.

Cat climbs the last ten feet ahead of me and quickly takes off her now useless safety rope and throws it back to us. I crook one elbow round the cable and use my free hand to catch it and then loop it around the girls’ handcuffs. And while Cat pulls, I do my best to help the injured one by taking her weight. I don’t really remember how we scramble back to the firm land on the edge of the quarry, those last ten yards. But I know we just all lie there for a long time afterwards. Lying on our backs, faces to the rain, panting with exhaustion and pain and relief.

Mouse, says Cat. I thought…

I know, I say. But you didn’t.

And for a long while the only movement is the dog’s tail thumping on the wet ground as he sits and looks at us all spread out around him. I feel like I could lie here for ever, just happy being alive. But the girl with the injured arm starts crying, quiet and low, as if she doesn’t want us to hear her, so I get up and go over to her. Her sister sees me moving and quickly rises in a defensive crouch on the other side of her sister. Everything in how she moves and looks at me makes it clear she doesn’t trust us one bit.

He’s not going to hurt you, says Cat.

That’s when I notice the girl is hefting a sharp looking rock in her free hand.

Hey! Cats voice cracks through the rain like a dry branch snapping. We just saved you. He did. He just saved all of us!

The girl’s expression doesn’t change, or even flicker. Cat snorts in irritation as she gets exhaustedly to her feet and comes to stand next to me looking down at them both.

Look, she says. We’re tired. We don’t have time for this. I’m Cat. This is Mouse. He’s going to look at your sister’s arm. See what we can do to help her. He’s good at that. But if you try to hit him with that rock. I’m going to—

The girl tenses. I put my hand on Cat’s arm, trying to slow her down. She exhales.

Well, she says. I’m going to stop you, and I won’t be nice about it. OK?

They stare at each other. Neither blinks for a long time. Then there’s a small noise as the rock drops to the ground. The girl used her free hand to indicate I can help her sister. There is something in the way she does it that is as if she is in charge and I’m being allowed to do all this as a favour to me. There’s also something about her that reminds me of Cat. I kneel down beside her.

Where does it hurt? I say.

The injured girl just looks up at me. White-faced, skin tight. Mouth clamped shut to keep the crying inside.

I carefully reach for her arm. She winces before I even touch it.

Mouse has read all the books on what to do if you’re hurt, Cat says encouragingly.

Of course, I haven’t read all the books, just that big yellow First Aid and Safety for Dummies that my mother had put in the pack when she made Cat run away, and another one we later found in an old library. When I was little, I liked the drawings. And when I got older and Cat had taught me how to read, I liked the clear instructions and the feeling they gave me that we’d be ready if an accident happened. Cat – when I was small – even let me practise bandages and slings with her and – more than a few times since then, not least down in Stitch Country – knowing what to do has been really helpful. Like when I fell through the roof of a shed, or when Cat lost her footing and slid down an icy slope one winter and grabbed a branch to stop herself with such abruptness that she popped her arm completely out of the shoulder socket. That turns out to be especially useful now because once I’ve made the girl wiggle her fingers and make a fist and then checked her arm for the swollen evidence of a break that I thankfully can’t find, I realise that’s what she’s done too.

It’s not a break, I say to her. Her blank face doesn’t register anything. I might as well be talking to a rock. I look at her sister.

It’s not broken, I say, turning to Cat to explain. She’s dislocated her shoulder.

Ouch, says Cat. Well, at least we know what to do.

Be easier if we could get these cuff things off the wrist, I say quietly. I don’t know why their father put them on.