Delicious.
‘Girls! Wake up.’ Carly was delirious as she unwrapped the rest of food; a sausage, a huge piece of cod, a pie. The twins stumbled over to her, rubbing sleep from their eyes. They didn’t carry their breakfast back over to the mattress. They didn’t talk. Instead, they squatted among the dust and the rubble and the broken glass, and shovelled food into their mouths with both hands, looking fearfully around them as they chewed, half-expecting someone to burst in and take it away.
After eating, Carly dozed again. Waking to the sound of Marie crying.
‘I don’t feel very well.’ She splayed her hands over her stretched stomach.
‘You’ll be okay.’ Carly yawned, soothing her sister’s hot forehead with her fingertips, her tangled fringe damp.
Although her skin was slick she was shivering. Carly covered her with the blanket and wished she had a bottle of water. Suddenly, violently, Marie began to vomit, coating the blanket, the mattress, herself. She retched again and again.
‘It’s okay.’ Carly looked around for something to mop up the mess with but anything absorbent they had already used for their makeshift toilet in the corner. ‘It’s probably the same bug that kept you off school with stomach ache.’
‘I don’t think it’s that.’ Marie shook her head.
‘Well, perhaps you ate your food too quickly. It’ll pass.’
‘Maybe it was poisoned,’ Leah whispered.
‘It wasn’t poisoned,’ Carly said.
‘How do you know? Marie’s the only one who ate sausage.’
‘It definitely wasn’t poisoned.’ Carly tried to keep the doubt and the worry out of her voice. She glanced frantically at the clown. The graffiti on the wall.
You’re going to die.
‘Carly…’ Marie didn’t often cry.
‘Shh. The food was fine. It could be anything making you ill. The shock of eating so much, your tummy isn’t used to it.’ Carly felt her own stomach cramping as they’d eaten. ‘Eating with dirty fingers.’
‘It’s the germs.’ Leah looked around fearfully. ‘You said the germs would make us ill. You said the germs could kill us.’ She frantically wiped her hands over her skirt as though dislodging an army of invisible insects.
‘It’s fine. Marie is fine, just a little sick. Tell Leah a random fact, Marie.’ Marie retained snippets of useless information, recalling them the way she did at home would make her feel better and cheer Leah up, Carly was sure. She waited for Marie to speak.
Kangaroos can’t walk backwards.
You fart on average fourteen times a day.
Hippopotamus milk is pink.
But she didn’t. Carly searched through her memory banks for something she could share.
‘Hey! Did you know that fingernails grow quicker when you’re cold?’ Sometimes Carly painted the twins’ nails a frosted pink.
‘Then I guess our nails will get really, really long here.’ Leah drew her knees up to her chest. ‘If no one finds us our nails might fill the room.’
Carly knew she’d picked the wrong fact. ‘But they’d be good for picking your nose!’ She waited for one of the twins to say something gruesome about accidentally spearing your brain and pulling it out through your nostrils, but they didn’t.
Carly fell into silence, using the blanket to clean up as best she could but the mattress was a mess.
Everything was a mess.
It was difficult to gauge the time. Outside, the rain hammered down. The sky was a dark grey. There was a sense of foreboding in the air.
‘Are you feeling any better?’ Carly pressed the back of her hand against Marie’s forehead, the way her mother did to her when she was ill. She wasn’t quite sure what she was feeling for – how hot was too hot? Mum always said it was as good an indicator for a fever as putting the thin tube of mercury under your tongue. ‘Because Mum is literally in the title, ther-mom-meter,’ she would laugh. Carly wished she were here. She’d know what to do.
‘No. I’m… I’m sorry, Carly.’
Carly dropped her hand. If Marie did have a temperature there was no medicine to give her. ‘It’s not your fault.’
‘It’s all so awful. I…’ Marie closed her eyes.
‘You can’t help it.’
‘Carly, I…’ Marie trailed off as she began to throw up again. Her face was green.
‘Shhh.’ Carly didn’t know what to say to make her feel better. Carly had vomit over her fingers, her own mouth flooding with saliva at the smell. She looked hopelessly around the room for anything that might help her but there was nothing.
She had never felt more helpless.
‘Help!’ she screamed. ‘We need help!’ She needed a grown-up. She needed her mum. Her stepdad.
Marie stopped vomiting.
Stopped crying.
Talking.
Her stillness, her silence was even more terrifying.
The girls huddled together. Help, Carly called again but it was only in her head. Nobody was coming.
Nobody.
All she had was the clown and a wall of scrawled words.
You’re going to die.
Panic shook her hard.
They were all going to die.
A noise?
Again the sound of sliding bolts. This time Carly didn’t stand. There seemed little point. Her energy had gone, her fight too.
‘I’ve brought something that will help you,’ Doc said as soon as he stepped into the room.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Leah
Now
The photocopier repair man… it’s him.
Panic slams into me. My chest so tight I cannot cry.
I am so, so scared.
Calm yourself.
Three things but there’s nothing to see in this toilet cubicle.
My breath comes too quickly. I don’t want to touch anything but dizziness forces me to stretch out my hands and steady myself against the walls.
Calm yourself.
The flush handle.
Cistern.
The PLEASE WASH YOUR HANDS poster on the back of the door Calm.
But calm is a million miles away. I’m trapped here in this small space with him outside the door.
Again.
The contents of my stomach rise, splattering the bowl of the loo. The smell takes me back until I am kneeling in the filth of that dirty room, terrified my twin was going to die. Terror pulses deep in my gut. I’ve touched the toilet seat with my gloved fingers, my sleeves. My skirt has brushed the tile floor. I want to rip off my clothes and burn them. Scrub my skin until it’s pink and raw.
The door swings open. I press my hands over my mouth to suppress my scream before I remember where my hands were resting just seconds before. Revulsion strokes me with its filthy fingers.
I whimper.
‘Leah?’
I can’t answer. I’m frozen.
‘Leah? Please, what’s going on? Jesus, have you chucked up? Christ, the smell is making me gag.’ I hear Tash retch.
Slowly I stand, brushing the germs from my knees, invisible insects from my skin.
Scuttling. Scuttling.
The floor of the cubicle sharply shifts. I stumble.
‘You’d better let me in before I kick this door down and don’t think that I can’t. It’s me or Jim the rep and he needs a new hip.’