‘Clever’ I said, ‘well done’ I paused, not wanting to ask, ‘Have you seen any of the others?’
‘No,’ said Alex, looking down and hunching his shoulders, we were both silent for a second, then he straightened up, ‘but I could go look, now that you’re here?’ he stared at me, expectantly, waiting to be told what to do.
I looked at him, he didn’t look tired at all, and if there was even a chance that any of the other were in the area then we needed to look for them, but we needed to be organised; leave messages that the other kids would understand and plan a search. And I needed to get to my bungalow and check that it was still secure.
‘Ok, some of the others might find their way up here,’ I said, ‘we need to leave them a message so they can find us’
I looked around; opposite the entrance was a large board with the overground line stations drawn on it. There was a lot of empty white space. I rooted round in my bag until I found my sharpie.
‘Can you draw?’ I asked Alex.
He reached for the pen ‘what do you want me to put?’
‘Draw a bike,’ I said, ‘and then fifteen stick figures,’ he drew a rather good picture of a bike and then 15 stylised stick figures, some big, some small, some in pairs, they were recognisably us. ‘then put large ticks above you and me’ Alex ticked a tall thin stick figure, and a shorter one with a round face and holding something small, perhaps a pen. I took the sharpie and beneath the drawing wrote:
‘I’m going to walk home, it’s just up the road’ I said, ‘I’ll check that everything is as I left it. Can you quickly cycle round the estate and meet me there? I walked around to the back of the board and quickly sketched out the estate, drawing in the locations of the station, school, shops, and bungalows. Then I pointed to my house. ‘I’ll be here.’ I said.
I wanted to tell him to be careful, to explain all the possible dangers and to urge caution, but although Alex often gave the impression of carelessness, he had managed quite well on his own. I didn’t want him to see my worry so I stayed silent as I watched him wheel his bike through the barriers and freewheel down the slope. Then I picked up my backpack and followed him.
I walked past the shops and the pub up towards my house; everything looked exactly how Frank and I had left it six weeks ago. The weeds were a bit taller and some of the trees and hedges were breaking out into leaf, but it was the same, familiar Carpenders Park. A warm feeling of security filled my chest and displaced some of the anxious worry. As I approached my house I pulled my key from my pocket, eager to get inside, but as I entered the drive I stopped in surprise; there, sitting with his back against the door, was Mark. He looked up as I approached and gave a tired smile.
‘You took your time,’ he said, but the tired relief in his voice made the words less confrontational than usual.
‘Mark!’ I said, ‘you made it! Where’s Ruth… and the others?’
He stood up and I could see a long graze running down the side of his face, ‘Freya and Matty are hiding round the corner,’ He gave a sharp whistle as I looked around. I could see movement over the top of the hedge. I walked round and there was Freya, supporting Matty, who had his arm around her shoulder. Matty looked in terrible shape, he was shivering and mumbling, his foot was dragging along the ground wrapped in a bloody bandage and when he got closer, I saw that he was soaking wet.
‘Are you ok? What happened?’ I asked, over my shoulder, as I ran back to the house to unlock it and let them in.
‘I’m fine, Matty was injured in a stupid accident,’ said Freya.
The house was untouched, everything as I had left it. I moved into the kitchen and quickly turned on the heaters and the stove. ‘Sit down and get warm,’ I instructed. I went into my bedroom and removed the bottom drawer on the bedside table. In the space underneath was a shallow plastic box. I walked back to the kitchen, removing the three sets of keys from inside.
‘Mark, apart from that,’ I indicated his face, ‘are you injured at all?’
‘No I’m fine, but we need to do something about Matty; he fell into a swimming pool full of glass and cut his leg.’
I handed him a set of keys, ‘two doors down, across the road, red wooden door, there were a family with teenagers there, you should find some clothes to fit.’
I turned to Freya, ‘Are you ok?’ I asked, she looked uninjured, but I needed to be sure.
‘I’m fine, we were lucky,’ she said.
‘What happened?’ I asked as I took out my lifesaver bottle and began the process of filling it up from the hose that connected to the water butt outside.
‘We jumped over the fence and into the area under the motorway,’ she said, ‘but there wasn’t any cover there, so we ran through and climbed over at the far side. We found ourselves in a small village, just five or six houses, but they were big and empty.’ She paused and I could see the fatigue in her face. ‘We got in to one of the houses at the back where there was a pool in a big glass conservatory. The glass was all broken, that’s how we got in, but when Matty slipped into the pool, none of us realised it was full of glass. It took us a while to realise he was bleeding. Mark bandaged him up, but he lost a fair bit of blood.’
I filled the kettle with the water and moved into the hallway, opening the loft… ‘How did you get here?’ I asked.
‘We found a bike in the shed and a two wheeled trailer in the outbuildings of the small farm over the road. We put Matty in the trailer, hooked it up to the bike, and took turns cycling. Mark knew your address.’
It sounded like they had had a tough time. I started passing down some of my supplies from the loft, blankets and duvets and a couple of the first aid kits I had stashed away. There was a knock on the door; it was Mark, back with clothes, and he had found the freezer with the food stash.
We covered the single bed in the back bedroom with some of the spare blankets and then Mark picked Matty up from where he was resting in the kitchen. ‘I’ll get him changed and see if we can clean his wound.’
Just as he was moving Matty across to the bedroom there was another knock on the door; a jaunty rat-a-tat tat. He froze and Freya looked at me wide eyed. ‘What?…’
‘It’s Alex,’ I said, as I moved towards the door, ‘sorry, I should have mentioned it.’
I opened the door, hoping that Alex had found some of the others; I knew Alisha and Jasmine were caught, but seeing Mark, Freya and Matty had let me hope that some of the others had maybe gotten away also. Alex was standing on the doorstep alone, but then jumping in from either side came Leila and Taz. ‘Look who I found!’ he said happily.
The girls pushed their way past Alex and hugged everyone they could get their hands on. It was chaos for a few moments, but then Mark pushed them away so he could tend to Matty.
I took the four of them into the kitchen and went out into the garden to get some peppermint leaves. The house hadn’t been disturbed at all, there wasn’t even much dust particularly, but the garden was well into spring. The garlic from last year had sprouted and weeds were springing up all around. I picked a double handful of peppermint and returned to the kitchen to make peppermint tea, but the kettle was empty.
‘Mark needed the water,’ said Freya, ‘I’m just getting more,’ I could see she had my lifesaver bottle and was alarmed for a second; if she broke it we would have no way of getting clean water. But she was using it perfectly. She’d obviously been watching carefully earlier.
I re-boiled the kettle and made the tea. It was warming and reviving so I took a cup into Mark and Matty.