and Syria, Palestine.’
‘Yeah, we heard about those too,’ said Jacob.
‘I heard a Cuban radio station about three years ago talking about the way things are in America. They had it almost as bad as us here; pretty rough first few years. Federal authority disappeared overnight almost. It collapsed down to state authorities. Some fared a lot better than others. East coast: New York, New Jersey, Delaware, those ones, all ended up like Europe did, totally screwed. But further south, the gulf states like Florida and Texas seemed to do better - they had some oil reserves to play with. Apparently they’ve teamed up and there’s some sort of order there. I think they said something about the President being based there.’
‘Do you think they’ll come over here?’ asked Helen. ‘And you know, help us?’
‘I doubt it. Not for a while. They’ve got their own country to fix.’
‘You not heard any more?’ asked Leona.
Raymond shrugged. ‘The station switched from English to Cuban. You can still pick it up, several Cuban stations actually. I think that country coped a lot better than just about anyone else.
‘Funny though,’ he continued, shaking his head, ‘I never thought that just stopping the oil would fuck the world up quite so much. I understand now, of course. I understand why so many died, in this country at least. Perhaps if we’d all been given six months’ warning, maybe even just a week’s warning - enough time to learn how to grow some kind of a basic survival crop, buy the seeds and stick ’em in the ground . . . you know? But by the time the Prime Minister—what was his name?’ Raymond looked around at the teenagers at the picnic table.
None of them could actually remember.
‘Well, by the time that idiot blew his whistle it was already too late to do anything.’
He fell silent and the evening was filled with the creaking and chirruping of foreign-sounding insects, and the soft rustle of running water.
‘Was Tanya your girlfriend?’ asked Helen.
Raymond stirred. ‘God, no. We were just colleagues, workmates, that’s all.’
‘What happened to her?’ asked Jacob.
‘She vanished.’
‘Vanished?’
‘A while back. One day we drove the truck into Thetford to forage for essentials. We thought it was safe to split up, we hadn’t seen any drifters for a while.’ He looked down at his hands, twisting the corner of his yellow T-shirt. ‘She never came back to the truck. I called for her, for hours. Looked for her around the town. I returned to the Oasis, then went back the next day and tried again. I never found her. She just vanished.’
‘Oh, God, that’s awful,’ offered Helen.
‘Yeah . . . yes, it was. I figure she was taken by someone. Or perhaps an accident, fallen somewhere, injured or killed.’ He shook his head silently. ‘It nearly pushed me over the edge really. I didn’t realise how close we’d got over the years.’
Leona stirred. ‘How long ago was this?’
He shook his head. ‘Happened, I guess, four years ago?’
Leona looked at him with pity. ‘My God, you’ve been all alone since?’
‘Uh-huh. Minding the trees and the bugs, keeping this place going, keeping myself busy.’
‘Do you miss her?’ asked Helen. Leona detected something in her young voice and the way that Raymond addressed her questions so attentively; there was a little chemistry going on there in the dark. The thought made her grimace ever so slightly. Helen was only fifteen and although Raymond seemed quite boyish, he had to be in his mid-thirties; old enough to be her father.
‘It was just the two of us for six years,’ replied Raymond, ‘just the two of us. So, yeah, of course I miss her.’
Helen began gently quizzing Raymond about Tanya, about his past life. He talked about that, about Disneyland, and the other three listened intently. Helen cooed dotingly, giggled too readily at his anecdotes.
Leona sighed at Helen’s obviousness. She wondered whether her instinctive distaste at the thought of Raymond and Helen as an item was a hangover from the past, from the world before. She remembered curling her lip in disgust at a story in the newspapers: an aging rock star in his sixties bedding a sixteen-year-old Russian bar girl. An old tabloid story from a different world where such a relationship was a horrendous notion. She wondered though, how much those sorts of moral values had changed in this new world.
A different story now, perhaps, she figured. In this new world, a man a decade or more older would have a wider