Page 66 of The Two of Us at the End of the World

But? she said.

This time she said it like a shared joke, with a slow grin that lifted one side of her mouth to balance the raised eyebrow on the other side. It was a goofy, lopsided face, and it’s the one I remember most when I think of her now, all this time later. It was a glimpse of the other lighter, funnier Storm that might have been before the Russians came and tore their lives apart.

But she said she’d know it when we got there, I said.

Whyever Cat was always in a hurry, whatever we were either hurtling towards or she was preparing for, it wasn’t what happened.

We couldn’t have known that.

After all, we thought we’d buried the Russian.

We thought he’d been quietly rotting back into the wet earth we’d covered him with, tucked into the conveniently deep-enough hole where the ripped-out root-plate of the fallen pine had waited for him in the rain. I had sometimes thought of him at night when I woke, wondering if the worms were twining through the bones and mush that used to be a person. It was a grim thought, but I often had it. I used to wonder if bodies rotted away quicker underground with only worms and wet mud to speed the process, decomposing quicker than the animal corpses we came across out on the surface, the random carcases of birds or rabbits or deer. Seemed like the ones on the ground rotted away pretty fast, picked away by carrion crows and other birds, plucked apart by foxes and wolves maybe. Certainly, a body left in the open quickly diminished into pretty much nothing, even the bigger ones gone in less than a year, feathers winnowed away in the winds or bristly hides dried and twisted back into the grass and the brambles beneath, gnawed at by rats and smaller creatures. I decided being dug into the earth kept the body together for longer, and I’d thought about it enough to wonder if the reason that humans buried each other was to keep the departed whole and closer, to stop it departing too quickly. Like I’ve said, thoughts that happen in the dark early hours of the morning can be strange and disturbing.

The one thing I didn’t think, even at my lowest ebb, was that we’d ever see anything of the Russian again.

Freya – out with one of the babies slung to her hip, trying to think sunnier thoughts and get better through being in the fresh air and moving around in it – Freya didn’t think that either.

But then she just walked right into him.

His ribcage, to be exact. It was well hidden in the long grass until her boot crunched through it and got tangled up in it like a trap. An animal, or perhaps a conspiracy of animals and carrion birds had got at the body, pulled some of it out of the deep-enough grave that clearly wasn’t. They’d then just littered him around the grass and scrub that surrounded the fallen root plate. Cat and I went back and tried to gather the gruesome bits of him later. He was just stripped bone and scrags of material by that stage, and nature had done too good a job of breaking him down and scattering the parts for us ever to get him all back together and into a better made grave. We never found his skull, which I couldn’t help but feel was some sign of bad luck.

We heard Freya scream and though we were all in different places we came running, converging on the sight of this girl frozen in the scrubby grass, baby clutched to one side, her face turned to the sky, her body twisted away as if shielding it from her foot and whatever was trapping it. She saw Storm crashing through the scutch grass towards her and yelled:

It’s him! It’s him! Get him off me!

The Russian’s ribcage was stuck like an old bear-trap around her ankle. Not tight, but just snarled enough to need more than just stamping her foot to get free. Later Freya explained she couldn’t put the baby down and use her hands because she would likely be putting it down in another part of his body, and she didn’t want to touch it anyway.

Cat bounded past Storm who had stopped dead and was staring at Freya in horror. She skidded to a halt on her knees and reached down to free the ankle without hesitation. Freya kept shouting at her sister that it was him, it was him.

How can you know? Storm said. Freya, stop, it’s just a thing, a horrible thing, let her help you—

Freya stumbled free with a sob of relief, and then bent over, holding the baby clear and to the side as she convulsed into a series of retching heaves. Storm had the presence of mind to take the baby from her. Freya stumbled back, still bent over and wiped her arm across her mouth, then she looked at us from under the curtain of damp hair, her face hot, white with shock around the eyes, a thin ribbon of drool looping from her nose. Her finger jabbed towards the mangled ribcage and the one arm still attached to it.

It’s him, she said.

It’s just bones, Storm said. Freya, it doesn’t have a head, it could be—

It’s his necklace isn’t it? You dumb fucking moron! Freya shouted, her finger shaking with fury. Of course it’s him!

There it was, hooked among the bent-fingered grasp of the broken ribcage: the long necklace made from tiny steel beads and the clutch of silvery indented rods that Cat had said were keys to doors that must have meant something to him, maybe Russian doors, but definitely doors we would never find or see. The keys I had been in two minds about when we put him in the ground and had thought about taking. Now, staring at them I thought that maybe it wasn’t that I’d been in two minds about burying them at all: it was that somewhere I’d known I’d be seeing them again even if we did bury them, that they were somehow important, but not for the doors they might open. It was an odd thought to be having at that chaotic moment, with all the screaming and shouting and accusations flying between the sisters. It was strong enough for Cat to look up and notice the look on my face as she wiped her hands on the grass.

What, Mouse? she said.

Nothing, I said. I just, I don’t know, I didn’t know he’d been… I thought we—

Not deep enough, said Cat, holding her hands wide as she stood up, as if she didn’t want them touching her clothes until she gave them a really good wash.

Something dug him up, I said.

Or someone, spat Freya. We all turned and looked at her.

Your stranger. Bear Shirt, she said. You said they were looking for something? Maybe they found it. Found him. Their friend. I told you they were dangerous. I said we should move. They’ve probably gone to get more of their friends to come back and find out who tried to hide this one. You should have killed them too. You’re so stupid, Mouse! You should have killed them and made us safe! Otherwise what’s the fucking point of you?

She was really screaming now, her words punching out into the day with accompanying gobbets of spittle and snot.

Calm down, said Cat. Freya? They wouldn’t have known where to dig, and they certainly wouldn’t have left the bits and bones lie scattered all over the place like this. Not if they cared enough to revenge him. They’d have taken more care. You see that, don’t you?

You don’t know that! Freya shouted, taking a step back. You don’t know everything!