Afterlight (26 page)

He stopped bumbling and reached for the tumbler beside her cot, gently tilting her head as she sipped from it. She winced painfully as he let her head back down on to the pillow.

‘Who . . . who told you?’ he asked.

‘I overheard you and Tami talking,’ she replied. ‘Some time ago, I think, not long after you brought me in from the explosion. I’ve known for a while.’

She could have told Walter that some time during the last few feverish weeks her dead husband Andy had come to tell her; sat down on the bucket chair beside her cot, just where Walter was sitting now, and explained to her that Hannah had died in the blast, and her son and daughter had decided to leave. But she knew how that would sound. Fever or not, hallucination or not, she knew all those things and she didn’t need to hear Walter’s fumbling, heavy-handed attempt at breaking the news; she really didn’t need to hear a stream of tear-soaked apologies from him right now. She knew what she needed to know. That’s all.

She grimaced and whimpered as she adjusted position slightly; the tight and raw skin on her shoulder and neck stabbed at her mercilessly.

‘How’s the pain?’

‘It’s manageable,’ she said, ‘when I don’t move.’

‘Dr Gupta’s lowering the dose,’ he said. ‘She’s worried about giving you too much.’

‘A little more,’ she said wincing, ‘a little more than she’s giving me now would be good.’

‘I’ll tell her.’

‘So, how are things?’

Walter’s face instantly darkened. ‘Things are getting messy.’

‘Messy?
What does that mean?’

‘Morale is low. The explosion, the generator not working, no lights. And the schedule is beginning to break down. People aren’t doing their jobs properly. The kids sneaking off after Leona . . . I suppose there’s a feeling amongst people that they’re rats leaving a sinking ship.’ Walter shook his head unhappily. ‘It’s been very difficult trying to run this place whilst you’ve been ill. People haven’t really taken to the idea of me being in charge. I’ve had Alice mouthing off all sorts of things about me . . . about you, too. And then, I think we’ve also got a problem with Mr Latoc.’

For a moment the name meant nothing to her. Vaguely familiar, that’s all.

‘The Belgian man? Valérie Latoc? We might have a problem with him.’

Then it came back to her. She’d forgotten completely about him. ‘He’s still here?’

‘He’s still officially on probation, but it’s been, what? six weeks since he arrived?’

More woolly memories came back to her. She remembered confiding in Martha, having her hair cut, wanting to look good. And she’d looked so much better, so much younger, for all of five minutes. Jenny had caught sight of her reflection yesterday and could have cried. Her hair was gone on the right side of her head, as if someone had taken clippers to her and walked away leaving the job half done. A fine pale fuzz was already growing back, but there was no knowing how it would look; it could end up as patchy, pitiful tufts that she’d forever more feel self-conscious about, cover with scarves or some floppy cap.

Her skin, livid red and as raw as tenderised meat all the way down one side of her face, down her neck and across her shoulder, would always be scarred, criss-crossed with starbursts of pale ribbed flesh.

‘Jenny, Valérie Latoc, it appears, is some sort of faith preacher.’

She looked back at Walter. ‘Preaching
what,
exactly?’

‘Well, from the bits I’ve overheard, it’s a jumble of things; part Christian, part Islamic, mostly mumbo-jumbo. Dr Gupta tells me that he’s started holding prayer meetings in the evenings in the mess.’

‘What?’

‘And his people now hold some sort of blessing before each meal. It’s getting—’

‘His people?
For fuck’s sake, Walter!’ she snapped. Her face and neck stabbed her in retaliation for moving. ‘Walter, what’s going on?’

He shook his head. ‘I couldn’t really stop it, Jenny. There’s so many of them who want to do it now. I can’t just order them to stop it.’

‘How many?’

‘I’d say thirty, maybe forty of them.’

Jenny cursed silently. She guessed she might have had a problem with Alice spreading mischief in her absence. There were quite a number of people who actually bothered to listen to her griping and agreed with her that the community was large enough that it was time to think about whether its leader should be democratically selected. But this bubbling undercurrent of dissent had been, at least before the explosion, something Jenny had been able to keep a lid on. Alice might have been voicing aloud an opinion that was beginning to gain traction, but she was also her own worst enemy, unpopular because all she seemed to do was bitch and moan and make catty asides that seemed to get under everyone’s skin.

But Latoc . . . she hadn’t thought for one moment the softly-spoken man she’d interviewed - what seemed like a lifetime ago now - was going to be a problem. And he certainly hadn’t come across as some sort of firebrand.

‘Mealtime blessings?’ she uttered. ‘You let him start doing that? Did you explain it was one of our rules?’

‘I . . . I spoke to him about it.’

‘And?’

‘He said it was not for us to make those kind of rules. You know, Jenny, do you remember? I thought he was trouble.’

She sighed. She remembered, but then she’d put it down to the old boy being a little jealous. ‘Right,’ she winced as she shifted position again, ‘well, I think I need to have a chat with him, and soon.’

Walter nodded. ‘Be careful.’

Jenny studied him for a moment. ‘Why? What about?’

‘He’s become quite popular. Everyone seems to like him.’ There was a note of bitterness in his voice. ‘We really ought to get rid of him.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with him being
liked,
Walter. I can’t . . . I won’t, send someone off these rigs because they’re popular. That’s just, you know, life. Some people make friends more easily than—’

‘But what if—’ Walter clamped his mouth shut, perhaps realising he sounded churlish and paranoid.

‘But what?’

‘What if people here decide they want him to be in charge?’

She tried a smile. The scabs on her cheek crackled and split like brittle parchment. It hurt. ‘Well that’s fine, they can if they want. But he and his fans will have to go somewhere else. This is
our
home, you and me and the others that came here first.’ Jenny felt anger bubbling up inside her.

It would be like having friends to stay in your house only for them to turn round later on and decide they didn’t like the wallpaper and were going to redecorate.

‘I’m not letting someone else take over our home, Walter.’ She reached out and patted his shoulder. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll talk to him about this. If he really wants to start doing missionary work, then he’s going to have to leave and do it somewhere else.’

Walter nodded. ‘I’m sorry, Jenny. I screwed up whilst you were sick. I suppose I’m just . . .’ he shook his head, frustrated and angry with himself. ‘I’m just not a people-person. Not like you. I—’

Jenny squeezed his arm. ‘Don’t worry.’

He sighed. ‘I’m so glad you’re beginning to feel better again.’

She looked at him. She’d have laughed if she could do it without moving. Laughed bitterly.
Feeling better? Better? Oh, yeah, I’m feeling great.

What she wanted to do right now was just go back to sleep; take a triple dose of whatever horse tranquillisers Tami had been administering to her, and just leave . . . check out for good. Let someone else pick up the baton and look after this miserable island of lost souls.

But instead she smiled again, feeling the taut skin across her face wrinkle painfully. ‘Yes, Walter, I’m feeling a lot better.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

R
aymond’s present, as it happened, did make a difference. A huge difference.

She’d forgotten all about it as they got under way, sliding onto the saddles of their bikes and pedalling along the flat road south towards London. Heading through East Anglia, mercifully free of any steep inclines, just a long, straight and empty road, flanked on either side by untamed farmland that had gone to seed; fields of maize and rape that had quite happily propagated in partnership with the bees year on year without the need of any human husbandry or heavy duty machinery.

The trailer rolled obediently behind them on thick rubber tyres that crackled over ten years of wind-borne debris that had blown across the empty road; twigs, leaves, grit and gravel.

They stopped for a rest at midday, sweating from the warmth of the sun diffused by a thin veil of combed-out clouds. All of a sudden she had remembered Raymond’s present and found an HMV carrier bag in the back of the trailer. Inside she found an iPod and - very handy - a wind-up charger to go with it. There was a note with them.

Leona screwed the note up and discreetly tossed it into a pile of rubbish and dried leaves that had pooled against the kerb of the hard shoulder. Glad Jacob hadn’t found the bag and read the note.

On the other side of the trailer the boys were both bitching about their saddle sores, Jacob nagging Nathan to swap because his saddle looked more padded.

She held the iPod in her hand, still smooth and unscratched, box-new in fact. Her thumb remembered how to switch it on. The small screen flickered, glowing weakly in the afternoon light. She stared down at the small screen in the palm of her hand, a menu that, once upon a time, had been so familiar to her. She must have scrolled up and down through it a million times back in the old world . . .

She imagined herself a nineteen-year-old degree student again. If her gaze could just remain within that two-inch backlit display she could pretend the world beyond it was as it once was; that the last ten years had been nothing more than a very lucid and very long dream. That it was an ordinary Monday morning once more, a lecture to get dressed for and hurry along to and not be late for, the bustle of other students around her in a shared kitchen, the hiss of a kettle, the tinkle of teaspoons in mugs, the radio blaring in the corner . . .

She held the iPod right up close to her face until the words blurred.

‘Hey, Lee? What you got there?’

It was Jacob. The fantasy evaporated and she realised her cheeks were wet. She quickly rubbed them dry.

‘What is it, Lee?’

‘A gift from Raymond,’ she replied.

An hour later, back on their bikes coasting effortlessly down a gentle incline that seemed to have been going on for miles, she understood what Raymond had said in his note. Music pumping through the earphones, songs she half-remembered, favourites she’d never forgotten. A bit of rock music played deafeningly loud was as good a tonic as anything else.

On the flat horizon ahead of them she could see the grey outskirts of Cambridge and the late afternoon sun already beginning to make arrangements to settle for the night.

Up ahead of them, off a slip road, was a short row of roadside terraced council houses, the front lawns littered with rotting rubbish and overgrown with grass gone to seed. Out front, a dozen cars, parked half on, half off the kerb were quietly rusting away, several of them blackened and twisted with fire damage from long ago.

A road sign informed them that Cambridge was five miles further up the road. It was as good a place as any to park up for the night. She pulled the earphones out and told the boys to steer up the slip road.

A few moments later, the bicycles braked with a hiss and skittering of dislodged gravel. They dismounted outside the row of houses and their cluttered overgrown front yards. Picking the emptiest garden they set about clearing some space, stamping down the tall grass and weeds and tossing aside enough of the garden toys tangled beneath to set down their tents and build a cooking fire between them. Leona sent Jacob into the nearest house to forage for firewood whilst she helped Nathan assemble the tents. She pulled a tub of their freeze-dried food out from beneath the trailer’s tarpaulin and measured enough out for the three of them, whistling as she did so.