Forgotness: Book 1: 200m

“That’s living alright.”

“Surely they banned Chas’n Dave?” We muttered. It was time to wake up.

We had been rolling around on the van’s double front seat trying to sleep as Jane drove on through the night. The problem was Jane’s tendency to sing, a lot. Maybe singing helped with staying awake but there seemed to be an obvious problem with that: we didn’t get much sleep.

Now, by the sounds of it, we had stopped but, as the engine was still purring away, we reckoned there had to be a problem. Not just Chas’n Dave either.

“They did ban Chas’n Dave. Prince John disapproved. But actually that was the socially acceptable Joe Fagin.”

“Wow, is there a difference?” We asked, sitting up.

“No.”

“Ah, OK, so, what’s the problem? Why have we stopped?”

“Well, I drove all night and now we’re here, the Calderbrook crossing, which is the only way to continue north by road. They’ve built a new bridge, as you can see.”

We peered down the hill. The sun had not risen yet but would soon. There was light enough to see the road running downhill to a heavy concrete bridge that crossed over a narrow valley. A few roofs of farm buildings could be seen in the water.

“So, what’s the problem?” We asked again.

“There’s a checkpoint in the village. The two lorries in front of us were stopped.” Jane paused. “They might be looking for us or maybe they are just looking for you. Or maybe they don’t know about this van yet or anything. But I don’t know what to do. In two minutes time I could be arrested for murder. I don’t know what to do.”

Jane sounded scared.

“So,” we continued her thought process. “They might just let you through or they could search the van and find us.”

Jane nodded.

“On the other hand they could be watching us now thinking that it’s very suspicious that we’ve stopped here and are not driving down the hill.”

Jane shrugged and nodded again.

“So, let’s play it safe. Think of a story about why you’re driving this van. Then get out and have a pee.” Jane looked at us. “It explains why you’ve stopped! Anyway, you pee, or not, and we’ll sneak out and go round, where does this road go? Up there?”

We pointed to a bit of road we could see about a mile to the north on the other side of the valley.

“How the fuck would I know? Sorry, yes probably.”

“It’s OK. We’ll meet there in an hour say. OK?”

Jane nodded again and took a deep breath.

“Right, well, I’d better go have a pee then.”

We crept out the back of the van and, keeping to the shadows where possible, leapt over a wall and ran along behind another stone wall leading away from the road.

We heard Jane slam the door of the van shut just as we reached the water’s edge. We watched as Jane drove the van over the bridge and turn onto the road going through the village.

The van stopped suddenly. Someone in uniform was standing on the road, another was coming out of a house nearby.

Jane wound down the window and talked, then got out of the van and went round to the back doors followed by a soldier. The second soldier climbed in the front. We heard the back of the van being opened and then slammed shut.

Jane reappeared with the soldier and they walked round the front of the van, the other soldier got out and joined them.

We couldn’t hear anything but they seemed to talk for a long time until finally Jane bent over a bit and put an arm on one of the soldier’s shoulders and then turned and got into the van and started it up. With a wave out the window, which the soldiers returned, Jane drove out of the village.

We dived into the sea, quickly swum the hundred metres or so underwater, climbed out the other side and ran up the hill to the road, where the van had already stopped.

Jane sat and waiting with an arm half out the window.

“You’re a quick swimmer aren’t you?”

“What took so long? What did they want?” We asked as we got in.

“Oh they were lovely.” Jane said with a smile. “Worried I might be attacked by some monster Wetter that’s been seen about.”

“Me!” we gasped, suddenly wondering how Cam and the others were doing.

“Not just you. Seems quite a few got in by the sounds of it.”

“Good, that’s good.” We said and was rather surprised to hear Jane then ask:

“Is it? I mean they were saying that it was some sort of attack, that you Wetters were just wanting to kill us all.”

“What? In your sleep? And eat the babies? Like what we’ve done to you?”

“No, but are they all nice like you, and anyway you’ve killed, I’ve seen you. Only last night.”

“OK, sorry. No, we are not all nice, and there are the Mugs and the Priests, and Evangelicals and Scientologists, they’re all evil freaks. But if the ones who have broken in are who we think they are then yeah, they’re like us, they mean no harm, they’re just trying to find out how to save our families.”

“Fine, sorry,” said Jane, “didn’t mean to bring up last night, that was, probably, you know, amazing, what you did.”

“S’Ok,” we replied, “stressful times. So, what else did they say?”

“Well,” said Jane, putting the van in gear and setting off, while we put the fans on to try and dry off a bit. “They wanted to know who I was and where I was going and where I was from and what I did, the usual.”

“And you had a story?”

“Oh, yes,” said Jane proudly, “I said I was the roadie for the Sisters of Mersey and I was on a road trip picking up gear in Haworth and then heading onto New Keighley to catch a ferry to Scotland.”

“But there’s no gear in the back of the van?”

“Ah, I said the band were going industrial and needed this crap to hit and grind and stuff.”

“And they believed you?”

“Well the old one was all: ‘what, who, why’ but the other one was younger and had even heard some of the Sisters’ stuff and knew about the Linux connection, so it was all OK.”

“Freak! Well done.”

“I know!”

We drove on.

We wondered if Cam or Brentford or Stamford were sitting in a van somewhere headed north like us or if, well it wasn’t worth thinking about: trapped, or being torn apart by dogs, cold and dead on a hillside, or dragged though a village on the end of a chain, naked and laughed at. We just had to hope for the best.

“Breakfast,” we said, “can we get any bacon rolls? Have you got any money left?”

“Have you ever had a sausage roll?” Asked Jane laughing.

“No,” we replied, “we’ve had sausage, but any meal that ends in the word roll is new to us remember.”

“Wow! How about pizza?”

“No.”

“Pasta?”

“No.”

“Pretzels?”

“Now you’re just making words up to make us feel bad.”

“No, they’re real, honest, they’re squiggley shaped round things, a bit stale.”

“Sounds delicious.”

“Well they’re a damn sight better than slugs and snails and turnips.”

“We’ve never eaten slugs!” we began, “Recently anyway.”

“Ha!”

“Look, imagine we’ve just made a really long tearful speech about life in the wetlands and babies crying, OK. And it was really effective.” We looked at Jane concentrating on the road. “It’s bad back there and this place seems so easy.”

The van wavered on the narrow road.

“It’s pretty shit here too you know. You don’t know what it’s like here. Sure it looks nice and dry and there’s food. But there are evil wankers here.”

We tried to interrupt.

“I know, you’ve got wankers too,” Jane continued. “They’re everywhere, but here we’re all too scared to do anything about them, too scared to end up like you, outside the wall, so we just let them get away with everything.”

“So, to recap: life is shit, then you die.”

“Yes!” Jane shouted banging the steering wheel. “Exactly. It’s shit. Then you die.

“But,” Jane went on, “but, we have to hope.”

“Yes we do. For bacon rolls. What’re the money levels like?”

“Ah,” said Jane fishing in her jacket pocket looking for something and finally pulling out a leather wallet. “Have a look in that.”

Jane tossed it onto my lap. We had a look inside. There was a picture of an elderly couple.

“Your... grandparents?”

“Get to fuck, that’s not my wallet. I got that off a Priest.”

“You robbed a Priest!” That was astonishing. “Wow. How? What happened? Is this why you said the Priests are looking for you?”

“Sort of. They took a dislike to me and this Priest tried to take me out to the Moors on a boat. I escaped and stole his money, jumped in the back of a lorry and met you.”

“Freak, OK, well done, again.” Jane nodded and kept driving. We had driven past road signs to Walsden and Todmorden, their roads disappearing down into the water.

It was fully morning now as we came to Cornholme and Jane asked us to hide in the back of the van. So we sat in the back making a nest out of the junk and our hammock.

“Ooh,” said Jane as we drove through the village. “A bakers. Bacon rolls coming up. How much money we got?”

“There’s quite a lot of different types in here. What works? There’s dollars, pounds and euros.”

“Gimme the pounds. The dollars and euros are worth more but might raise a few eyebrows coming from my grubby hands.”

“Call that grubby?”

“Oh I’m sure I’m cleany clean clean by your standards, you filthy Wetter. Stay here you minger.” Jane got out the van and shut and locked the door.

We looked through the rest of the wallet. There were a couple of cards with a picture of a bearded person on one side with their heart out on view with ‘we eat his flesh and drink his blood’ underneath on one side and prayers on the back. There was a hard plastic card with the picture of a man, presumably the Priest, the card said: ‘We Love The Lord’, with his date of birth, and a long number. There wasn’t much else. Just a lot of money.

I heard Jane unlock the van door and climb in. Immediately the cab filled with the delicious smell of bacon rolls.

“Two each,” cried Jane throwing us a steaming paper bag. We got stuck in. It was fantastic, again. Then Jane passed us a cup with a lid on it.

“Try this. It’s tea.” We took the lid of and took a sniff. It was sort of grassy but bitter. We tried it. It was OK.

“This is nice.” We said.

“Don’t like it?”

“We didn’t say that!”

“No but I heard it.”

“Well it’s not exactly nettle tea is it?”

Jane laughed and laughed and tried to eat but couldn’t.

“What?” We kept asking but got no answer.

We carried on eating.

“So,” we began when we had finished the rolls. “What’s tea (without nettles) then that makes it so great?”

“Well, it comes from India for a start.”

“What! Topland has contact with India?” We had a few maps and globes at Treetops so we kind of knew our way around the world.

“Yeah!” Jane replied. “I mean we don’t have much to trade but some stuff: whisky, oil, sheep, wool. Stuff comes in.”

“So who else do you trade with, do all the other countries exist then. Malaysia, Venezuela?”

We tried to think of some others, but that’s education for you: deserts you when you actually need it.

“Well,” said Jane, “to cover it quickly: we’ve got America which is mainly there, missing its east and west coasts and practically cut in half by the Mississippi Flood, the Two Americas now. Crazy World Ending loving Evangelical creeps in the east mainly and crazy Scientologist creeps in the west. Hate each other, always fighting. Both with a lot of money, dollars.” She said nodding at the wallet.

“There’s Fortress Europe which is the bottom half of Europe, top’s underwater. Kind of wants to call itself The New Roman Empire - Priests and Euros.”

“There’s almost no Russia, so they tried to move south into China. That went badly, loads of nukes, not much of anything left that way. Half the ’Stans have gone, half of Australia, half of South America. Most have gone extreme religion one way or another. Afirca is silent, no one’s very sure what’s going on there. The only decent ones are...”

“The Scandies,” we interrupted.

“Yes! Yes, exactly, the Scandies, the only sensible ones in the whole fucking world. But they’ve got bad volcano problems, like Canada, when the ice came off.”

“The ice came off?”

“Oh right, yes, the north pole and south pole were covered in ice. We do our global warming thing, ice melts, less weight on the poles, earth crust cracks, volcanoes pop up, melt the rest of the ice. Water levels rise to whatever they are now - 200 metres last I heard.”

“Freak.”

“Fuck indeed.”

“Some folk back where we come from reckon it’s stopped rising.” We pointed out.

“Na. I reckon we’re all going to be dancing on Rockaway beach before long.”

“What happened to your hope?”

“There’s no hope after two bacon rolls.” Which had us flummoxed. What was Jane meaning by that?

“OK, well, where to now?” We asked.

“Yes,” said Jane, “there’s a garage up ahead. We need to fill up and maybe a map would help.”

“If we could do that and then drive on somewhere I would like a moment or two among some trees, if possible. Kind of urgent actually.” We tried to sound unembarrassed.

“What? Oh, I see, yes me too probably. OK, let’s go.”

Jane started the van and drove the short distance to the garage to fill up with diesel, bought a map and soon we were off again.

“Are we being chased do you think?” I asked sometime later, after we had both spent some time in the bushes. “I mean, the soldiers at the bridge were on the look out for us, but what about the men who attacked us?”

“No, I don’t think they’re going to come after us, not after what you did. But I think they’ll tell the cops that you attacked them and stole the van.”

“Oh. How long have we got before they start looking for the van then?”

“I think they’ll be too frightened by you at first to say much, but with some of them being actually dead they’ll be missed by family. I reckon the story will be coming out now. What are we, eleven or so in the morning? Word will be getting out. Perhaps they’ve already spoken to the soldiers on the bridge. Oh God, I shouldn’t have mentioned the Sisters of Mersey. We might be remembered at the garage. They know where we are and will phone ahead. We’re about to be caught!”

“So we need to get off the road now?” We asked.

“I don’t know! Maybe I’m talking crap. I just made that up. It might not be real at all.” Jane replied sharply.

“Doesn’t matter.” We said, looking at the map. “If you’ve thought of it then someone else will have too.

“OK,” we continued, “we’re on the brilliantly named Pudding Lane, going up to the Long Causeway. Right takes us to Blackshaw, Colden, round to Shakleton and the A6033, a big road straight to Haworth. That’s where they’ll expect us to go if you mentioned Colcar. But if we go left then it’s a long drive to Mereclough, Worsthorne, Lane Bottom, Wycoller and then we swim from somewhere like Laycock or Cononley to somewhere with no name, walk and swim again to Halton East, or a bigger swim from er... the West road near Sough, how do you even pronounce that, to some islands and on to er... beyond Hellifield.”

“Look, I know you can swim but that’s bonkers. Those are swims for miles. I’m not like you. Can’t we steal a boat or something?”

“Yeah, maybe we’ll find a boat, in which case sure we’ll use it, but a boat might be missed and then they would know our route. But if we swim we could go completely unnoticed.”

“Unnoticedly dead,” pointed out Jane.

“We swam carrying a friend for a couple of miles recently. We can carry you, you don’t even have to swim.”

“It’s freezing. I’ll freeze my tits off.”

“Then we’ll keep you warm.” That got a look from Jane. “Not like that but you know, it’ll be fine, and we’ll have escaped. They’ll have no idea where we were.”

“Fine, we’ll do it, we’ll go your way. And Sough is pronounced Sough.”

“We’re really not sure what you said then.”

“Fuck you. Let’s go to Hellifield. Great names up here aren’t there?”

“OK, left at the top of this hill and foot down.” We laughed.

Soon we were on the Long Causeway, though it seemed to change its name every few kilometres: New Road, Kebs Road. There was other traffic, some faster than us and we would pull over to let them past, always frightened that it was the police giving chase, and then lorries and buses coming towards us. These were narrow old roads, sometimes running straight for miles, sometimes curling round a tree or a house or, for no reason at all, just a pointless kink in the road.

Once for instance when we got to Hurstwood, the road disappeared into the sea and we had to travel along a rough track that skirted the water and connected with the old road rising back out of the sea a few hundred metres further along. Sometimes the roads were rough and muddy tracks that barged through centuries old stone walls to avoid the sea and at other times, like at the new bridge at Calderbrook, it would be brand new tarmac.

“Who keeps these roads open?” We asked some time later.

“Dunno,” replied Jane, “local Village Councils? I doubt Prince John does anything, he only likes it ‘quaint and rustic like it should be’.”

“What was that?” We asked.

“That’s how he speaks.” Jane replied.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. They’ve always been like that. I guess it’s the only way he knows: the sound of his own voice. Probably sounds normal to him.”

“OK, we admit it.” We said.

“You admit what?”

“You also live in a very freak’n freaky world.”

“Ha!” Jane cried. “Yes! Quite! We do. It’s a fuck sight cleaner than yours but very very fucking odd all the same. But was it ever normal? Was it ever kind?”

“Well, we think we’re pretty kind.”

“Yes but you are a bit of a lethal weapon aren’t you? Look what you did to those men back there.”

“They were going to hurt us.”

“Yeah well,” Jane went quiet again.

After Hurstwood we had a choice: go on to a big town called Worsthorne, stock up on supplies but maybe be recognised or go up the hill past Hurstwood reservoir and bypass Worsthorne all together.

“How about,” we started, “how about we nip up to the reservoir, you drop us off there and we’ll see about trying to catch some fish. No snails for you today, honest. Then you go into town and get what you want and come back out and pick us up in an hour or so. That way no one will see us and you and the van are last seen driving south out of Worsthorne.”

“Fine Dining then, where?” Jane peered over our shoulder at the map, tracing the roads north past Wycoller and Lothersdale. “West Road, West Road, Cloggers Lane. Fantastic. Evening picnic at Cloggers Lane. How romantic.”

“Cloggers Lane,” we agreed, “looks good. Morning swim. We’ll be right as rain.”

“We’ll see about that.” Jane did not look convinced about the swim.

But we knew it was doable. And it would totally throw our pursuers off the scent, if anyone was actually looking for us.

Before Worsthorne we turned right and went uphill to the reservoir as planned. The afternoon was warm and clear, weather we were not used to at all. So when Jane turned round and drove back down the hill, we found a nice grassy spot by the water’s edge and just lay down.

Obviously, first, we checked out various escape routes and hiding places should anybody show up: into the water, up the hill to a small group of trees, a slight dip in the ground with longer grass we could just disappear into. Really, there were lots of places to hide.

It was like being home at Treetops on a perfect day when the clouds would clear and we would finally see the sun and feel its warmth directly on our skin, let ourselves be hypnotised by the twinkles of light on the water where the grass sank below the wavelets that lapped at our feet. It was quiet in a human-less way, with birds and insects providing a backdrop of natural noise.

We knew we should be swimming but this was just a wonderful and rare moment. We reckoned Jane would be two hours at least, chatting probably, so we had an hour, easy, just to lie and do nothing.

What did keep nagging us though was the map Jane had bought. It was a normal map of the area with a thick border for the new shoreline printed on top of it. So it showed all the old towns and cities that now lay underwater. Those cities were very close to where we lay, like Bradford, Leeds, Burnley and Halifax. Cities so much bigger than Worsthorne which itself now looked like a big placeon the map. We got to thinking about everyone who had been nuked by their own government. Just for being too poor to buy their way into Topland.

We knew millions had been taken in by Europe before it had closed its borders, more had been helped by Africa and America but many had stayed, even after the bombing, to be killed by the new diseases that came with the warmer wetter weather: West Nile virus, Dengue fever, Lyme disease and Chikungunya. And then the cancers had started. But here in Topland there were no new towns or settlements it seemed, no huts, containers, shacks, sheds and caravans that we had in the wetlands. It was as if they had made no effort to take in extra people before they bombed us. It made no sense. They could have taken thousands more.

Had they just not cared about anybody else?

We stripped to our underwear and dived into the water. It was so warm! It was almost a bath. Not that we got many baths, but when we were younger we would get dropped into an old tin tub and be scrubbed clean, nice memories.

Anyway, we had our hand line at the ready and found a few good spots that brown trout might hide in and began working those areas.

It took longer than we thought but we did manage one decent sized trout and a smaller perch. We weren’t impressed by that, but we hoped Jane would be.

When we surfaced we saw that Jane was already back and had parked a few hundred metres away. We swam to shore, underwater so she wouldn’t see us and crept up to our clothes and got dressed quickly, still keeping out of sight. Then, when we were ready, we gave a whistle and a wave as Jane turned to look.

Jane’s head shook. We stopped and slowly crouched down. Sure enough a few seconds later an elderly couple walked by the van and stopped for a chat and then walked on past our hiding place and disappeared from view. We gave it a few more minutes before getting up and carefully making our way to Jane.

“What did they want?” We asked as we got close.

“Nothing, the weather, what was I doing out here on such a lovely summer’s day by myself? How I should have a boyfriend. What my parents did. Did I know someone called Deborah who lived in Brackenall? How I should get the tomato ketchup stain on my dress in to soak. I told her it was blood and she said ‘Oh dear have you not been told about tampons’! Oldies are bonkers.”

“And do you?” We asked.

“Course I know about tampons. What do you think? That I looked down and went crazy and started killing my mother. Sorry you’ve probably not seen Carrie.”

“No, we have, with the forks and stuff. Bill and Ben put on films sometimes. Never mind. But no, we meant Deborah.”

“Deborah? Oh Deborah! Course I don’t know Deborah. Fish!” Jane pointed to the trout. “Well done.”

We felt strangely pleased about that. Though not all together clear on the tampon part of the conversation.

“How was Worsthorne then?” We asked as we got back into the van and set off.

“Not as big as it looked on the map. It did have a shop with some vegetables. We got some loo roll. Result! Um, and some other stuff. Some beer too. So we’ve kind of shopped for a really nice picnic. More bread and some bacon for tomorrow morning. Hang on, we don’t have a fucking pan or anything. Oh shit!”

“It’s fine,” we said, “there’s bound to be something useful in the back of the van.”

We hunted round for a bit.

“Look, we can cook on this, if we can knock this weird handle off the back.”

“It’s a hawk.” Said Jane.

“A what?” We looked at the curious flat metal thing with the handle in the middle. The flat side had flakes of some fine grey mud on it.

“A plasterer’s hawk. You use it to hold your plaster while you spread it on a wall. My dad used to do a bit.”

“No idea what you’re saying. Again. Plasters on walls. Fine. Anyway, this will work as a skillet. This bucket for boiling water. We’re good to go.”

“OK, you cook, just give me a nice plate of food. On something that resembles a clean plate. I don’t need to know how it got there. Bit like in a restaurant.”

“Restaurant?”

“Cafe? Bistro? No, I guess not. Bar? Pub?” We nodded. Jane continued. “OK, we’re in. A pub. I used to work in a sort of smart pub called a restaurant. Folk come in and order food, a cook cooks it, I take it to the table.”

“A good job?” We asked. It was getting late in the afternoon now and the sun was going down. We hadn’t seen any traffic on this bit of road at all so we had climbed back into the front seat. The road was more of a track now, called the Pennine Bridleway. Some effort had been spent making it a bit more usable but it was slow going and pretty bumpy.

“It had its moments. I had to serve some right plonkers. I never understand how people can be so full of themselves, especially when they don’t see how the food’s made.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it depends on the scale of their wankerdom. If someone is really rude and bossy, then we would spit in their food. For some folk you had to do extreme measures. I mean I didn’t expect thanks for everything but, you know, it’s nice to be thanked. The thing is, the ruder they are the more you smile back. I once pulled an entire meal out of a bin and served it to a complete shite. I made a mistake while taking the order and read it back wrong and he was all: ‘Oh did I talk too fast for you, DO. YOU. WANT. ME. TO. SPEAK. SLOW. ER. IN. SHORT. WORDS. SO. YOU. CAN. UN. DER. STAND.’, and every time I took something to the table he would congratulate me. Anyway, it was fun watching him eat his food. I gave big smiles.”

“I know the sort. There’s this turd called Trumps. He leads the Mugs. He’s kind of famous for being a vile idiot. But the world’s full of them.”

“Yeah,” said Jane, “crowded.”

Finally we reached a proper road again: the Halifax road. We passed though Hollin Hall village where we ducked down beneath the dashboard, then on past Wycoller and onto the Old Skipton Road, the West Road and then back on the Pennine Way and on to our destination: Clogger Lane.

A bumpy ride later and we were at the water’s edge. There was a farmhouse a couple of kilometres away. We just had to hope they didn’t notice us.

We collected wood while Jane threw stuff out the van.

“What are you doing?” We asked after we had a fire going and the skittle was warming up nicely.

“Well if I’m camping out here tonight then I’m damn well going to sleep in the back of this van and it’s going to have to be a lot cleaner than it currently is.”

We shrugged. We were looking forward to a decent night’s sleep on the ground in my hammock. Especially after a bit of beer.

We pulled out a knife and sliced the fish from bum to chin and with a scoop of a thumb pulled the guts out. We put the gutted fish on the skittle.

“What’s the veg you got there?” Asked Jane pointing to a small pile of plants we had foraged.

“Oh, we’ve got some Hogweed, a bit of Hedge garlic and some Cicely.” We picked up each in turn, though we lifted the Hogweed with the bayonet.

“Hogweed! Isn’t that like dangerous or something?”

“It’s not good to touch, but after it’s cooked it’s pretty amazing actually.” Jane inspected it.

“Oh what the fuck. I’m going to drown tomorrow anyway. Sure why not? What about the carrots I bought?”

“They’re roasting in the ash with the potatoes. It’s all under control. Where’s the beer you were on about?”

“Here it is: Black Isle Brewery: Mad as Fook. Not tried it before, sounded good.”

We popped the lids off with the bayonet handle and clinked bottles together.

“Cheers.”

“Cheers to you,” replied Jane. “Fucking crazy couple of days.”

“Yes. But made a lot easier thanks to you.”

“Why thank you,” said Jane, blushing a bit. “I know I haven’t thanked you for saving me yesterday. Yesterday? Was it? I can’t remember now. It’s...er.”

“Don’t worry about it. We would have done it for anyone.”

“Oh thanks.”

“No, we don’t mean that. Just, it happened and and we’re glad we survived.”

“But people died. You killed people with your bare hands. Maybe that’s something you Wetters do, fighting for survival, survival of the fittest, eat or be eaten but I can’t... I can’t...”

“We’re not animals you know. We’re not fighting all the time. There just happens to be a group of nasty people who don’t understand the idea of working together, helping each other. But last night something happened that you shared the same... spacetime with. It’s gone. Forget it.”

We weren’t sure what else to say so we busied ourself with the fire and the cooking.

Jane sat down opposite and stared into the fire.

When things were looking ready Jane got up and rummaged through everything she had thrown out of the van. She got two lids from some paint tins, washed them in the sea and brought them back to the fire.

“Plates,” she said putting them down beside us.

“Thanks,” we said, starting to dig around in the fire for the potatoes and carrots. “Would you like a knife to eat with?”

“Not your pin please.” Jane said quickly. “You’ve got a third knife?”

“Sure.” We pulled it out of our boot, opened it and put it on the plate. We sliced the potatoes and carrots open and put the biggest fish on too.

“Don’t do that!” Jane said seeing the size of the fish. “You’re swimming tomorrow.”

“It’s OK. We had a small one earlier while we waited for you at the reservoir.” We lied.

“Raw!” Jane half laughed, half sounded disgusted.

“Raw like sushi.” We laughed back. It was something the oldies would say at Treetops. Jane laughed again.

“How do you know stuff, some stuff and not others?” Jane asked.

“Oh, parents, when we were younger, and other oldies would tell us things too. And we would find all sorts in the water and ask about it.”

“So you had parents? Sorry, of course you had parents. But are they about? You have a family?”

“Yeah, no, we had parents. They died. A lot of people died. Mainly cancer, they got tumours. But others live and we look after each other as a group.”

“I’m sorry,” said Jane, “that’s shit.”

“Yeah, not great,” we agreed, “but we have a library!”

“Really!” said Jane, “how?”

“Books were saved. We brought up a lot of books. If you brought them up from a tightly packed shelf they could be dried out, sometimes. Though they also made good fuel. So it was always a bit tempting to read them and then burn them.”

“You can read then? Course you can I’ve seen you, sorry.”

“Yeah we had schools, sort of, taught us the basics: reading, writing, maths, you know.”

“This is good,” said Jane tasting the trout.

“Not going to use your fingers are you?”

“Sorry, I know I should. I’ll eat a bacon roll. But it’s just so... moist. And the head with its eyes.”

“Ah, the cheek muscle’s the best bit.”

“Ee-oo. That’s horrible.” But Jane was laughing, which felt nice.

“Any more beer?”

“Loads. I bought a dozen! Sorry I know I should have bought sensible stuff but tomorrow I’m going to drown so I thought I would get pissed tonight.”

“You’re not going to drown,” we pleaded. “Honestly. We carried a friend for miles, been bitten by a giant eel.”

“Stop with the giant fucking eels. Oh for fuck’s sake. Give me another beer.” We popped another one and handed it over.

“OK,” she went on, putting her plate down and shifting round the fire closer to me. “Tell me about the giant eel then.”

So we did, missing out the stuff about the magic parawing. But that did make us sound more heroic: swimming that far carrying Leicester.

“So is Leicester your lover then?” She asked, we giggled at that.

“No! We’ve known Leicester since we were kids. Maybe our best friend? We’ve done a lot together, but no not that. What about you?”

“Me? No, not really. Not met the right one yet.”

“Oh aye,” we said, “same here, maybe.”

“Kissed?” Jane asked.

“Yeah! And other stuff, but no one special.”

“Yeah, I’m the same,” said Jane, “’nother beer?”

“Oh yes,” we said, taking one. “Thanks.”

We were quiet for a bit.

“What do you think happened to everyone? Did they really all just die? There were millions?” We asked.

“I know. I asked my parents once. But they got cross. They just won’t talk about it. Miserable fucks.”

“Really? You don’t get on?”

“It’s not that. It’s just that they always want to make out that their life is so bad. But, you know, they’ve got a nice house, they’re alive for fuck’s sake. They’ve got telly and food. But they’re just miserable. I don’t know what’s up with them.”

“Sorry about that. That can’t be nice.”

“’S’not your fault.” Jane punched us on the arm. “But thanks. I think they’re just sad, but I’m not sure what about, they won’t tell me. But I think everybody is, really. Miserable about something.”

“Well, they’ve probably had it harder than you think.”

“God you’re kind aren’t you! You’ve had a shitty life but you worry about my parents! They do fuck all. They’ve done nothing. I mean my dad was an engineer, he owned a building company, but he’s retired now. Just watches old TV.”

“Oh,” we said, seeing the mists coming in at last. We had had an unbelievably clear evening, despite being practically on the water, we just weren’t used to this weather. Maybe it was being this far north?

We took out some grass and pipe from our waterproof pouch and had another beer.

“This is nice,” Said Jane later. “Shame, there’s no music.”

She leapt up.

“Fuck!” And ran over to the van. There was some screeching noises and then we heard music.

“What’s that?” We asked.

“It’s a Scandie radio station. On good nights it reaches over here. They play some great stuff.”

And they did. We didn’t recognise it all, but it washed over the evening in a glorious blur of sound.

We ended up staring up at the stars, sharing the last bottle of beer with a lot of giggling, wrapped up in our hammock until we fell asleep together.