Page 56 of The Two of Us at the End of the World

OK, what? I repeated, looking at Freya.

She just gave us a crosser version of her usual blank look and turned and ran back towards the clearing at the home end of the wood.

Did she see someone? I said to Cat as we ran after her, squinting as we burst out and hit the sudden brightness of the clearing and the open sky above.

She saw that, whispered Storm, one arm pointing north while she twisted around, eyes searching in all directions, like she was already expecting an ambush.

My eyes adjusted, and despite myself I went cold and still.

There was a dark finger of smoke rising in the far distance, on the last visible ridgeline before the horizon cut the land from the sky. And underneath that long finger of smoke was a tiny bright glint of fire, like the dot under an exclamation mark.

The Russian bastard used to burn signal fires every couple of days to try and find the rest of his friends, said Storm. They looked like that. He used tyres.

It’s probably from the lightning in the night, I said.

Yes, said Cat. Well. Maybe…

Her maybe jolted me. Somehow in the circumstances it felt like a tiny betrayal.

Not lightning, said Freya. Russians.

Cat and I looked at each other.

The good news is we have the dogs tied up, she said. So they won’t give us away like we were worried they might.

That’s when I realised that today and of course, no doubt, the next few days were now closed.

Storm helped Freya back to the Bunker as Cat took the barrow with the babies and followed them at a jog.

I remember the dog hated being pulled along on the end of my belt, tugging and pulling and backing up to try and get free, but I don’t remember much of the rest of the day as we locked ourselves back in our hiding place in the Bunker. In fact the only thing I definitely do remember was Storm shrugging apologetically at me as Cat and I locked the back door.

What? I said.

Freya was right, she said. See? It is a bad day.

Yeah, said Cat, pushing past. Well, tell her tomorrow is likely to be worse. That might cheer her up.

It was, and it didn’t.

Chapter 19

A smile made of bruises

The Boy and the Girl – Year 13 AG

They did have hope. That’s what the Boy had said when the Girl asked him about whether he had an actual method for what she was beginning – perhaps overdramatically – to think of as her escape plan.

It was two nights after he left that she woke up in the night and realised what he really meant. Not hope the feeling, but Hope the boat. She sent him a text: Doh. I just got it. Hope floats, right?

Because he was midday on the other side of the world she received an almost instantaneous thumbs-up, a winking smiley face and an injunction to go back to sleep, which she did, to dream happily of the racing sea beneath a white hull and the fresh wind in her hair. And the next morning as she and GJ sat waiting for their weekly injections in the treatment room, GJ told her she looked a bit more relaxed than normal and then spoiled it by asking if she’d been up all night having phone sex or something. The Girl had told her to bugger off but had quite enjoyed being teased by someone she’d come to like. It was a kind of belonging in the otherwise softly impersonal place they found themselves in.

She and GJ also shared a dislike for the way all the staff seemed to take their cue from the Chief Psych and contorted themselves to put the rosiest spin on everything. Part of the IVF treatment involved many subcutaneous injections in the abdomen, injections that left their mark both physically and emotionally. One of the perkier nurses made the mistake of telling them that morning that she liked to do them in a curve so they made “a smile of bruises” to remind her patients that the small jag of pain now was worth it “because of the happy joy to come”.

“Happy joy?” GJ had said, spearing her with a look that stopped her in her tracks. “You ever had a kid?”

“No,” said the Nurse. “Er. No.”

Something small fractured behind her eyes and put a momentary glitch in her normally cheery smile.