Shalini Boland - Outside

The woman swung the huge armoured vehicle out through the iron gates and turned left onto the poor excuse for a dirt track that ran parallel to the Perimeter. She remembered when Britain was open and free with real roads, pavements even, before all the trouble started.

As she turned, the full glare of the dying evening sun blinded her and she flicked on the windscreen filter. She heard a muffled thud, looked to her left and saw a dark figure lying by the side of the fence. She didn’t stop, but glanced in her wing mirror and made brief eye contact with him as he lifted his head.

‘A man,’ she breathed out. She’d been holding her breath for quite a time and sucked in another lungful of air. She felt a lip-biting pang of concern, realising she must have hit him. But everybody knew you didn’t stop for anything outside the Perimeter. I’m sure he’ll be okay . She reasoned, convinced and then banished her conscience.

‘Won‘t be long now,’ she said to herself, looking ahead at the vast tract of wilderness.

Pa is a black marketeer. Nobody and everybody knows this. Pa pays people not to rock the boat. He pays the guards, he pays the neighbours and he even pays his friends. He pays off just about everyone – a litre of whisky here and a bag of sugar there, and in return we live a life of ease and comfort. Pa believes in the carrot approach just as much as the punishing stick. As long as he doesn’t draw too much attention to himself from the wrong quarters, we’re safe and free.

Pa can get his hands on just about anything from before. If you’ve got a craving for a pot noodle he can probably magic one up from somewhere. But it’ll cost you all you’ve got and more besides. Pa isn’t swayed by threats or tears. He’ll hold fast and stare you down and if you can’t pay you might get a bullet in your head, or worse.

This morning, my parents are standing together in the doorway of the sitting room. Behind me, the sun floods in through the windows and they edge closer to avoid squinting into the too-bright light.

Both their faces are ghost white and Ma’s nose and eyes look pink and swollen. She shivers and her teeth chatter as though she’s chilled and it isn’t the warm July morning it appears to be.

‘Riley, can you sit down?’ Pa asks.

‘Okay,’ I say. They’re acting weird. It’s freaking me out.

‘Riley…’ Pa says, running his hands through his hair. He comes over and crouches down in front of me. He takes both my hands in his and looks into my eyes. His intense expression is making me uncomfortable. I want to look away.

‘What? What is it?’ I ask, not sure if I want to hear his reply.

‘Something’s happened.’

‘What?’

‘Riley, it’s your sister.’

I shake my head. ‘Where is she? Where’s Skye?’

‘She’s… Oh I’m so sorry, baby, she’s dead.’

‘I look at Pa and then I look up at Ma. They stare at me, a look of horror on their faces. What are they talking about?

I feel my face contort. The sound that comes out of my throat is not a cry or a scream or even a sob. But a laugh. A strangled giggle. A short staccato burst of inappropriateness. I cover my mouth with my hands.

‘Riley! Did you hear what I said?’ Pa stands up, shocked and angry. ‘I just told you your little sister is…’

‘I heard you,’ I whisper.

‘So why the hell are you laughing?’ His anger grows and his voice suddenly booms. ‘What can possibly be funny about…’

‘…I don’t know, I don’t know.’ I try to absorb what he’s telling me. ‘I don’t know why I laughed. I don’t know.’ It’s true. I have no idea where that reaction came from. Why would I do something so awful? No wonder Pa’s mad.

I can’t process the other thing. The thing Pa told me.

‘You don’t know?’ He stands up. ‘She doesn’t know!’ he shouts to no one in particular.

‘Stop it!’ Ma says to him. ‘She’s in shock.’

Pa turns to look at her and then turns back to me. His face suddenly loses its hardness, like melting ice cream.

‘Of course. She’s in shock,’ he murmurs. ‘We’re all in shock.’ And then something really horrible happens. My powerful, strong, wonderful Pa starts crying. Proper messy crying where his face twists and his voice sounds broken. I’m appalled. Pa never cries.

‘Pa…’

I’m not a typical daddy’s girl. I love the bones of him, but I feel easiest around Ma. We always talk make-up, fashion, gossipy stuff and laugh a lot together. Skye belongs to Pa and Pa definitely belongs to Skye. They’re a team. I never feel excluded exactly, but I don’t have the same natural connection they do… did.

I stare down at the patterns on the carpet. I’ve never noticed just how vivid the individual colours are. The over-all effect is of a soft warmth, but I focus on a particular strand of red that seems almost luminous, as if it’s going to jump out of the weave and hit me in the face.

I wake up in my parents’ bed. A moment of peace and then everything rushes towards me in a crash of disbelief and pain… Skye.

Ma lies next to me on top of the quilt, humming in a scary way while she strokes the hair off my face. I must have blacked out, fainted or something after they told me Skye was… And I had laughed. How can that be? Is there something wrong with me?

‘Ma.’ I speak gently, as if talking to a young child, but she carries on humming. ‘Ma!’ I pull away from her and wrench her hands from my hair. ‘What happened to Skye? Where is she? She can’t be…’

‘Sh, sh baby,’ she croons to me and kisses my forehead.

‘Ma, you’re scaring me. Are you okay?’ I can hear the tremor in my voice.

‘Everything will be alright’, she says in a strange new childish way. ‘Just sleep and it will be okay.’

I throw myself out of bed, run out of the bedroom and almost fall down the stairs to find my father. He’s standing in the lounge talking to some of the guards, including Roger Brennan, the Head of Perimeter Security.

Even though we don’t really speak to any of them, we know all the guards by name. They’ve guarded the Talbot Woods Perimeter for the past sixteen- and-a-half years since the fences first went up, just before I was born.

This spring a new guard started – Liam. This thrilled us as we rarely get to see new people. On his first day, his watch stopped and Skye and I sneaked him a new battery out of Pa’s supplies. Since then, we’ve been friends of a sort. We’ve never properly chatted, but he’s about nineteen or twenty and always has a wink and a flirty comment for us which makes us blush and think he’s wonderful.

The only other people we see are those who live in the Perimeter and of course the delivery drivers, trades people and the army. Occasionally we get a glimpse through the wire fence at a rare passer by.

I wait downstairs in a blur of grief and anxiety until the guards finally excuse themselves and leave Pa sitting on the sofa. I desperately need to speak to him to make sense of what he told me. I stupidly start to hope there’s some sort of reasonable explanation and Skye will come running in to ask us what we’re making such a fuss about.

Pa stands up and holds his arms out to me. I stumble into them and breathe in his comforting smell of diesel oil and cologne. We sit next to each other on the sofa, his arm around me. He kisses my hair and strokes my cheek with his fist.

‘You alright?’ he asks gruffly.

‘No,’ I reply.

‘No,’ he echoes.