The Chaos (8 page)

His words hang there in the room, with us. I wonder how many people he’s ever told. I wonder if I’m the only one. 

‘Vinny, I’m sorry.’

‘Not your fault.’

‘No, but …’

‘It’s not your fault, and it’s not my fault. But I miss her. So you’ve got a place to stay as long as you like. And when we’ve got food, you’ve got food, and when I’ve got a bit of spare cash, you can have some, for the baby.’

I’m glad it’s so dark in here. He won’t be able to see the tears welling up.

‘Thanks, that’d be … that’d be great.’

‘I might be able to get some stuff, baby things, anyway. If you’re not fussy where it comes from.’

‘Why? What are you talking about?’

‘Better if you don’t know. But that’s what I’m good at, see. Supplying. I’ll get you some things.’

The baby’s awake inside me, moving around, stretching her arms and legs trying to get more space.

‘Do you want to feel her? The baby? Here …’ 

I take his hand and place it on my stomach. For a couple of seconds there’s nothing and then she kicks. 

‘Oh, man … that is awesome.’

‘I know. When it started it was just a little fluttering feeling, but it’s way more than that now.’

‘Is it a boy or a girl? In your nightmare, you said “her”.’

‘Did I?’ It dawns on me then that he’s right. ‘I suppose I did.’

‘So it’s a girl, is it?’

‘I’ve not had any tests, but, yeah, I do know. I do know – it’s a little girl.’ I hold my stomach with both hands, imagine holding her in my arms.

‘That’s it, then. I’ll get pink stuff.’

‘Vinny, that’s so old. Blue for a boy, pink for a girl.’

‘Oh.’ He sounds disappointed, crushed.

‘It’s all right,’ I say, ‘you can get pink. I don’t mind.’

Chapter 15: Adam

T
here’s no answer in the numbers. They are what they are. The only thing they tell me is a lot of people are going to die in London next January. Something happens on the first that kills people and they keep dying for days afterwards.

I type everything in my book into Dad’s computer when the electricity’s there to let me. The supply in London is shit, seems it’s normal to lose it for a couple of hours and be sitting in the cold and the dark. But all I end up with is a list. It’d take someone a lot cleverer than me to sort this out, a university professor, a teacher. A teacher. Could I go to someone at school? What about a bright kid – there are people who love this stuff, computers, figures, statistics, aren’t there?

The next few days I look round school for someone who could help. But to get them to help, I’d have to tell them what it was all about. I’d have to break the rules:
You mustn’t tell. Not anyone. Not ever.

I print out the database, but only the places and the dates, nothing else.

I decide to go where the nerds hang out. I’ve seen on the noticeboard there’s a Maths club in the lunchbreak, so I head there. When I walk in the classroom, it’s like walking into a saloon in the Wild West. They all stop what they’re doing and look up, even the teacher. She’s quite young. She’s got a shirt on and a long, hippyish skirt.

‘Hello?’ she says. She smiles and I smile back without thinking and catch her eye. She’s a twenty-seven. I start to lose my nerve. I must remember not to look at people. This is going to be hard enough.

‘Hi,’ I say.

‘Are you coming in?’

‘Um … dunno. S’pose.’

‘We’re doing calculus today.’ 

Calcu-what?

‘Right. Um … come to the wrong place, actually. Sorry.’ I back out of the room. Damn, damn, damn. There was enough brain-power in there to fuel the National Grid.

I go back the next day.

‘Yes?’ the teacher says.

‘I need help with a problem.’ Some of them start to snigger. ‘A problem with Maths.’

‘You should talk to your own Maths teacher,’ she says. ‘Who teaches you?’

‘No,’ I say, ‘it’s not schoolwork, it’s something else.’

I put the printout on a desk.

‘I’ve got lots of dates and places and I want to see them, see where they are.’

Everyone starts to gather round. 

‘What are they? The dates.’

I’ve tried to think of a good lie, something they’d believe. ‘It’s birthdays, people’s birthdays. I’ve been collecting them.’

‘Why? Why would you do that?’ a kid with metal-rimmed glasses asks. I’m feeling defensive now, expecting everyone to start doing that thing, you know when you hold a finger up to the side of your head and loop it round. But they don’t. 

‘I’m just interested in them, that’s all.’ 

They seem to accept it, and I twig I’m in a room where collecting things like facts and figures is okay. They probably all do it.

‘Have you got postcodes for them?’ the glasses kid asks. He’s got this nervous twitch on the side of his mouth, keeps going into a sort of half a smile.

I shake my head and hand him my printout. 

‘You’ve only got street names, and place names. Ideally we need postcodes. I can get them from the online directory if you can give me house numbers and then it’s really easy to map it. I’d say we use different colours for the different dates instead of numbers. That way any patterns will show up.’ 

The others are drifting away, but Glasses-boy seems signed up.

‘Is this where people live? Their home addresses?’

‘No,’ I say, ‘it’s where I … saw them.’

‘On the street? You interviewed them?’

‘Yeah … something like that.’

‘Mm, pity you didn’t ask the postcode …’ 

He’s starting to get on my nerves a bit now. Okay, so I didn’t do it right, so I’m not a market researcher. But I keep a lid on it. I need him, don’t I? 

‘So, will you help me?’

‘I will, but I need better data.’

I can feel my heart sinking at the thought of going out there again, watching people. I don’t know if I can do it any more.

‘I could see what I could do with this,’ he flaps the paper at me, ‘if I can take it home.’

‘Course,’ I say. ‘Thanks … er …’

‘Nelson.’

‘Nelson. Thanks. I’m Adam.’

‘That’s okay. I’ll be interested, too.’ I can’t help it, I look at him then, and my heart sinks. His number. 112027. He’ll be mapping his own death.

I want to snatch the paper back from him, take it away. It’s too close to home, but instead I hear myself asking, ‘Where do you live?’

‘Churchill House.’

I look at him again, and I’m falling, the floor’s disappeared and I’m tumbling down and down in the dark. There’s nothing to hold on to and I’m getting battered from all sides – bricks, ceilings, walls, all mixed up.

‘Adam?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Are you all right? You were … staring at me.’

‘Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry, I do that sometimes. Can’t seem to help it.’

His half-smile blinks on and off. Twitch, twitch, twitch. He puts his hand up to his face.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow, then,’ he says, ‘unless you’re staying. It’s still calculus today.’

‘No, that’s okay. See you tomorrow.’ I swing my bag onto my back and go out of the classroom, but there’s part of me, a big part, that wishes I could stay. If I was bright enough, if I could stay and not feel stupid, it’d be good to be
somewhere where it’s all right to be different. Just for an hour.

Outside, everyone’s in groups and gangs. Twos and threes having a chat, bigger groups playing football, or basketball. Out here being different don’t cut it.

I find a quieter corner, check no one’s looking and get my notebook out. I write Nelson’s details down. I want it to calm me down, but it don’t. I can feel the panic rising inside me – I can’t stop it. He’s a decent guy, the kind of kid that’s never done anyone any harm. Why should he die so young? It’s not fair. It’s not right. He’s got less than three months to live, that’s all. And maybe I have too.

When I look at my book it’s like the deaths in there are crying out to me, shouting out to be heard. The future of this city’s there in my hands – a terrible, terrible, violent future. All those feelings, those voices, those last cries of agony, they’re inside me, in my ears, behind my eyes, in my lungs. It’s too much. I’m going to burst. Still clutching my book, I bring my hands up to my head, gripping hard, eyes tight shut. I try and do that breathing thing –
in through your nose, and out through your mouth –
but my throat’s so tight there’s nothing getting through and the noise in my head is so loud I can’t hear myself think. I can’t hear the words. 

‘What are you doing, weirdo?’

I know that voice. I open my eyes, just a bit. There’s four pairs of feet in front of me, four people close up. I don’t need to look up to know who it is. I don’t need to see his number to feel the violence, smell the blood. Junior and his mates. 

‘What are you doing here, spaz? What’s in your book?’

Chapter 16: Sarah

I
’m living in the past here. This is what it must have been like in the old days, the 1970s, before mobile phones and computers and MP5 players. I’ve still got my phone, and that crappy net-palm thing they give you at school, but I can’t use them because they’re traceable, and I don’t want to be traced.

Vinny and his mates don’t bother with technology, except one antique CD player (CDs?) and an old telly. I don’t even bother with the TV. Whenever you switch it on, it’s always freak shows or re-runs of sad sitcoms which weren’t funny the first time, or the news. And who wants to see the news? Wars all over the world, half the world flooded, the other half dying of thirst. I can’t do anything about any of it, so what’s the point of knowing? Last time I watched, they’d closed the Channel Tunnel, trying to stop all the migrants from Africa. Why would they want to come here? We’ve got problems of our own, floods, power cuts, riots … if they want to come here, let them come, I say. They’ll soon find
out it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

Maybe more people should live like us. You’d think I’d miss what I used to have, wouldn’t you? Plush house, home cinema and gym. The only thing I miss is the pool, because my bump’s getting huge now. It drags down on me when I’m walking around and the only time I feel really human again is in the bath. So swimming would be lovely. But everything else here is fine.

There’s two other guys apart from Vinny: Tom and Frank. They’re all smack-heads. You’d think I’d be scared, living here, wouldn’t you? But I’m not. No one’s interested in me, not in screwing me anyway. All they’re looking for is the next fix. And Vinny funds his habit by dealing. He’s got his regulars, like Meg and her thieving mates, and he goes out and about. None of them come here. He keeps them away. There’s a couple of baseball bats in the kitchen downstairs for when there’s trouble, but there hasn’t been any in the few weeks I’ve been living here.

I pay my way by cooking for them. I never knew I could cook, never needed to before. The first day I wander down to the kitchen. It’s a mess. Like, really bad. So I start clearing up. I don’t have anything better to do. That evening I cook everyone pasta and grate some cheese on top. It’s all I can find in the fridge.

The next day, Vinny comes home with an armful of fresh stuff.

‘You need to eat vegetables, and fruit,’ he says. ‘Lots of green things.’

‘Since when were you an expert?’ 

He shrugs.

‘I dunno, you do though, don’t you? Need to eat this stuff when you’re pregnant?’

‘Yes, I s’pose, but I haven’t got a clue what to do with it.’

‘Soup,’ he says. ‘Chop it all up and bung it in a pan.’ 

So I do. And it’s beautiful. Everyone has some. They’re not big eaters, my housemates. Sometimes they don’t eat anything all day. But I am. It’s not just eating for two. When you’ve cooked something yourself, you really appreciate it.

It tickles me as well, pottering around in the kitchen, keeping things straight, cooking for three blokes. I hate all that stuff, women staying at home and looking after men. It’s what my mum’s done all her life. Skivvying for other people. Running round, making everything perfect; clean house, clean clothes, dinner on the table. It makes me sick. Now I’m doing the same, but it’s different. We’re a different sort of family. The sort where half the time everyone else is too wasted to eat. The sort where you don’t ask where the food came from. The sort where people vomit in the yard and don’t even mention it.

But it’s also the sort of family where no one judges you, where no one’s trying to get into your knickers, where, despite it all, you feel safe. I feel safer in this squat in Giles Street than I have for years.

When I’m not cooking, or clearing up, I’m drawing. One day I find some old wallpaper and start doodling. Vinny sees me.

‘These are amazing, man,’ he says, and he brings me some tape, so I can stick them up on my wall. I draw all sorts – things from real life, things I remember. I catch Vinny and the boys all asleep one day, lying about in the lounge downstairs, and I draw them. I think they’ll like it, and they do. They put it up on the wall. But it makes Vinny sad as well. 

‘This is my life, Sarah. You’ve drawn my life.’

‘You look so happy when you’re asleep. Peaceful.’

‘I’m not asleep, I’m high. And I’m not happy, not any more. Just relieved I’ve made it.’

‘Still, I wish I could get that sort of peace.’ 

His face darkens, as if a cloud just went overhead. 

‘You don’t need that. If I thought you’d go down that road one day, I’d kick you out of here, Sarah. It’s not for you. You’re going to have a baby.’

‘I didn’t mean …’ Or did I? When you think about it, reality stinks. There’s not much to recommend it. So if there’s some way – a smoke, a pill, a pinprick – of making things better, why not?

‘The best way to get clean is not to get dirty in the first place. Don’t start. Don’t ever take the first step.’

‘Just say no?’

‘You’re laughing at me – it’s not funny. All my friends, all of them, are on something. Most of us will never get off, get clean. Some of us will die from it. You’re different. You’re the least fucked-up person I know. Don’t change.’