Page 84 of The Two of Us at the End of the World

Something had happened, and even before any words were exchanged it was clear it had not been good. Cat had a black eye. It wasn’t a little one. Her cheekbone and eye socket were alarmingly bruised and puffy, swollen around an eyeball that itself seemed bulging and eggy. The normal white of her eye was red with standing blood. There were also scratch marks across the other side of her face, three of them raked hard enough to have broken the skin.

My instinctive thought was that she’d finally met the wild animal that had prowled around the edges of our imagination ever since we found those claw marks shedding the tree trunks, and the mangled deer carcass. So it was me thinking I shouldn’t have left her alone instead of the other way around as I ran towards her, pleased to see from the way she got to her feet and raised a hand in greeting as she limped towards us that whatever had happened had not injured her worse than what I could see.

What happened? I said.

It’s OK, she said. Where’s the goat?

What happened? I said again.

I’m OK, she said. The babies are OK.

She held her finger to her lips and nodded over her shoulder at the wheelbarrow we used as a movable baby bed, so we could shift them around with us when we went on walks or foraged in the woods.

Freya? said Storm.

She’s OK too, said Cat. She’s asleep.

Storm ran past us and disappeared into the gloom of the bunker door without saying anything else. I looked down at the twins. They were both asleep, though the girl opened one eye, squinted at me like a pirate checking the horizon, and then – evidently satisfied with what she saw – closed it again and returned to whatever voyage she was embarked on across the deep ocean of sleep.

Where’s the goat? Cat said.

Fuck the goat, where’s Freya, said Storm emerging from the Bunker.

I told you, she’s OK said Cat, but she said it in a way that carried an unspoken “now” in it, meaning she definitely hadn’t been OK earlier.

She’s sleeping in the library bunker, she said.

Why? Why is she sleeping there? said Storm over her shoulder, already striding off towards it.

Things got too much for her, Cat said. Don’t wake her up. She needs to sleep.

Storm didn’t break pace and just jogged away into one of the pathways crossing the Tanglewood towards the library bunker.

Cat, I said. What happened?

She didn’t speak until Storm was out of our earshot, then she spoke fast and low.

We need the goat, Mouse, she said.

Well. We lost the goat, I said. But I’ll go back and find it. Just tell me what happened.

I touched her shoulder. She tensed. I didn’t let go. I used my other hand to turn her face to me. I think that was the first time she actually took in the bandage swaddling it.

Mouse! What…? she said.

No, I said. I’m fine. I’ll tell you, but you go first. You’re hurt…

She stared at me and I could see she was about to argue, to say no, that I should go first. But then something happened inside her and she just bent into me, dropping her forehead and resting on my chest, and for a moment she wasn’t itchy-twitchy Cat, she wasn’t bossy Cat, she was just Cat. My only-one. And she was letting me know it by allowing herself to lean on me so I could take some of the weight of whatever had happened and help keep her upright.

She threw the baby, she said. The girl. It was my fault. I should have kept a closer eye, I should have seen she was going to break… I think I was just too angry with her to let myself notice.

Threw the baby? I said. Cat…

She was on the bed. The baby was standing. Holding the sides. Crying. Trying to shuffle towards her. Wanting her. Legs wobbling, tight little fists furiously locked on the railing. I think it was the wanting, not the crying that made her do it. The baby got close enough to reach out a hand and touch her and she recoiled from it, like it was a stinging nettle. And the baby, the girl, she stopped crying and looked at her, you know, really looked at her like that one does, like she’s looking right inside your head but also at things around and behind you? Things you can’t see, Mouse. And she wobbled even closer and didn’t fall, and this time her little scrabbly fingers brushed Freya’s knee where she’d backed herself into the wall at the end of the bed, Freya looks at her with an expression that’s so dry-eyed and empty I started to say something, too little, too late to stop it and she just reaches out and takes the baby by its shoulders and says NO! and then she sort of tosses it away into the pillows at the end of the bed where it came from. More of a shove than a throw. But also a throw. And I think…

And here she pushed herself off my chest took a breath and looked up at me.

I think the pillows were just there by accident. I think if she had been sitting on the concrete she would have done the same thing.