that’s fine, they can if they want. But he and his fans will have to go somewhere else. This is our home, you and me and the others that came here first.’ Jenny felt anger bubbling up inside her.
This is our home. That’s why there weren’t bloody elections here.
It would be like having friends to stay in your house only for them to turn round later on and decide they didn’t like the wallpaper and were going to redecorate.
‘I’m not letting someone else take over our home, Walter.’ She reached out and patted his shoulder. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll talk to him about this. If he really wants to start doing missionary work, then he’s going to have to leave and do it somewhere else.’
Walter nodded. ‘I’m sorry, Jenny. I screwed up whilst you were sick. I suppose I’m just . . .’ he shook his head, frustrated and angry with himself. ‘I’m just not a people-person. Not like you. I—’
Jenny squeezed his arm. ‘Don’t worry.’
He sighed. ‘I’m so glad you’re beginning to feel better again.’
She looked at him. She’d have laughed if she could do it without moving. Laughed bitterly. Feeling better? Better? Oh, yeah, I’m feeling great.
What she wanted to do right now was just go back to sleep; take a triple dose of whatever horse tranquillisers Tami had been administering to her, and just leave . . . check out for good. Let someone else pick up the baton and look after this miserable island of lost souls.
But instead she smiled again, feeling the taut skin across her face wrinkle painfully. ‘Yes, Walter, I’m feeling a lot better.’
Chapter 35
10 years AC
Suffolk
Raymond’s present, as it happened, did make a difference. A huge difference.
She’d forgotten all about it as they got under way, sliding onto the saddles of their bikes and pedalling along the flat road south towards London. Heading through East Anglia, mercifully free of any steep inclines, just a long, straight and empty road, flanked on either side by untamed farmland that had gone to seed; fields of maize and rape that had quite happily propagated in partnership with the bees year on year without the need of any human husbandry or heavy duty machinery.
The trailer rolled obediently behind them on thick rubber tyres that crackled over ten years of wind-borne debris that had blown across the empty road; twigs, leaves, grit and gravel.
They stopped for a rest at midday, sweating from the warmth of the sun diffused by a thin veil of combed-out clouds. All of a sudden she had remembered Raymond’s present and found an HMV carrier bag in the back of the trailer. Inside she found an iPod and - very handy - a wind-up charger to go with it. There was a note with them.
Leona,
I filled it up with a load of stuff from my library. Sixty gigabytes of music. It’s fully charged, and the charger will sort you out thereafter. It’s not the greatest hand charger in the world - ten minutes of winding seems to give you about half a dozen songs’ worth of power.
Music got me through several years of being alone. There were quite a few days when I guess I also thought ‘why bother’ . . . and it was the heavier stuff, like Zeppelin and Metallica, played bloody loud, that got me off my arse.
Seriously, I hope this somehow makes you change your mind. The world will be a poorer place without you in it.
Raymond.
PS: Yes, I will take good care of her.
Leona screwed the note up and discreetly tossed it into a pile of rubbish and dried leaves that had pooled against the kerb of the hard shoulder. Glad Jacob hadn’t found the bag and read the note.
On the other side of the trailer the boys were both bitching about their saddle sores, Jacob nagging Nathan to swap because his saddle looked more padded.
She held the iPod in her hand, still smooth and unscratched, box-new in fact. Her thumb remembered how to switch it on. The small screen flickered, glowing weakly in the afternoon light. She stared down at the small screen in the palm of her hand, a menu that, once upon a time, had been so familiar to her. She must have scrolled up and down through it a million times back in the old world . . .
Music
Photos
Videos
Extras
Settings
Shuffle Songs
She imagined herself a nineteen-year-old degree student again. If her gaze could just remain within that two-inch backlit display she could pretend the world beyond it