Rob Ewing - The Last of Us

‘ Come on – it can’t be Alex staying. He’s the reason we need to go in the first place. He goes – that’s final.’

Mairi sits up. She starts to cry. Then she runs to the kayak and gets in – right in deep.

She looks back at us, shaking her head. She beckons Calum Ian forward. She looks stern, or scared.

Calum Ian holds his head like he got the worst headache ever. He doesn’t want to look at me.

To begin with I don’t understand what his not-looking means. And then I do. And it makes me embarrassed, because I want to cry just like Mairi did.

‘Can’t be left alone,’ I say.

‘Alex can’t stay,’ Calum Ian says, then in a shout: ‘Look. He’ll die, Rona. And Mairi won’t stay. Look at her. Look.’

Mairi has disappeared in the boat.

My eyes give up. I wipe them on my sleeve.

‘Can’t be alone.’

‘You won’t. We’ll come back. Soon as we find help. I don’t know why people haven’t come looking. Only we can’t stay, Rona, we can’t. It might be another six months: and then what? Alex needs his medicine. But just as soon as we can I’ll send help. I promise.’

‘First you said you’d come – now you say you’ll send help – it’s not the same!’

‘OK, OK. I’ll come. I promise.’

‘Cross your heart and hope to die?’

‘On my mum and dad and Duncan and Flora and Elizabeth’s souls. I promise.’

The waves flap, splash.

‘Can we do One Potato? What about a competition to see who can go without blinking the longest? Or we could pick straws, like Elizabeth did when—’

‘ Stop it. ’

He turns around, showing his back to me, not looking. Maybe that makes it easier.

I go back to the boat and empty out my remaining things. My treasure trove, my best drawings. They got wet. My book of understandings of the world. My one clock that keeps true time. My oldest teddy.

When it’s done, nobody looks at me. Calum Ian coaxes Alex back into the main hull, beside Mairi. But it’s still too much of a jam, especially when they’ve got their lifejackets on. I hear Calum Ian swearing for a better idea.

In the end, one person has to go back in a hatch. Because Mairi’s smallest, and was the quickest to fall out, she has to go in the backwards one.

When she eventually gets seated inside, her lifejacket goes so high it nearly covers her face.

I try to climb into the main hull. But there isn’t any room for me beside Calum Ian and Alex.

So I get back out, and I go back to the sleeping bag, and I wear it, and I get ready to push them off.

The boat looks fine. It’s not too sunken. I nearly didn’t want it to float, but it floats OK.

Alex and Mairi hold up their arms when Calum Ian tells them to, to show that they understand.

They push off, not wobbling.

Calum Ian turns the boat so I can see him. He stays in the shelter-water beside the pier.

‘What’s going to work?’ he says.

I should say teamwork, but I don’t want to.

He hides his eyes, then he paddles nearer to the edge and talks up close: quick, firm.

‘Get some other dry clothes. Remember Elizabeth’s safety rules. Top of the list: keep warm. Always keep warm. Keep your jacket zipped up. Three layers for insulation. Eat from tins – but remember, never ever eat anything that smells bad. Remember the adult leaflet saying: smell a lot, taste a little, wait, eat. And always, always keep your radio turned on. OK?’

I give him my affirmative.

‘We can start some new rules when you bring the adults back. Today, right? Tomorrow?’

I didn’t mean it to sound like a question – especially not a truly desperate one.

‘Maybe tomorrow,’ he says. Then his eyes screw up and he adds, ‘In case we do take longer – you need to be thinking about water. Elizabeth showed you how to sterilise, right? If you count up more than two days, and we’re not back, go back to your house. It’s the safest place. There’s water in the bath. Only one drop of bleach, OK? And remember to mark with food colouring.’

I tell him over and over that it won’t even get to two days. In the end he just says ‘OK, OK,’ then paddles backwards a bit so Alex can see me.

‘Never thought much of boys,’ I say. ‘I’ve got to think a lot more of them since I met you.’

Alex gives me the double thumbs-up.

‘For bravery you get to the top,’ he says. ‘I’ll tell everybody. You’ll get a medal for it.’

Mairi is in the boat facing backwards. As it goes she’s facing me.

She’s a face getting small; smaller.

She waves to me, then has to concentrate on keeping her balance in the right place.

I hear Calum Ian calling out instructions, checking everyone’s all right, not tipping the boat.

Past the pier there’s more waves. He gets pushed about a bit, but then he gets it under control.

They stick to the shore, and I run alongside, tripping a few times because I’m not watching where I’m going.

Sometimes there’s rocks and I can’t get close, and it makes me sad; other times they’re right beside.

Then they’re pulling away, far away.

I see the tinsel on the sides of the boat shining as the boat bobs when he paddles.

Then it’s just me and my belongings.

I collect them up. I wave until my arms are sore, until all I can see is a paddle, going up and down like a swimmer’s arm on the water. Then nothing.

Calum Ian did not come back that night, or the next, or the next. I made a hundred bargains with the sea to bring them home, but the sea never listened.

The first night a shiver went through the air, and it began to rain. The water got moving shapes on it, which I thought were rescuers, but they were only waves.

I stared at the sea until I saw boats, whales, faces. When the rain came I walked to the ferry slip to save Elizabeth and Duncan’s bags. Duncan’s fiddle had got wet, and the strings sounded wrong.

I ate the packed lunch that Elizabeth made for us: oatcakes, pineapple juice, jelly vitamins.

Stuffed beside Duncan’s lunch were other things. The fiddle book he was learning last year: Fiddle Time Christmas. Also clothes, pencils, chalks, a packet of cards, a conjuror’s set, jotters, felt-tip pens.

I made a cairn out of stones to remember them by. I threw flowers in the water and begged the sea to change its mind, to be kind to my other friends.

When a plastic bag flew past I thought it was a person, but then I saw it was just rubbish blown from the lines of junk along the shore.

There were big birds – flying, circling over the next beach along. I didn’t want to look too close at them in case they told me where Elizabeth and Duncan were.

At night I went on lookout, for lights on the sea or maybe from the next island. I looked for Calum Ian flashing his torch. He might have a flare: he could shoot it up to tell me they were safe. But I saw no lights.

I sat on a rock to watch. I imagined a genie, giving me three wishes. I could use all three wishes to make the sea go away, like Moses. Then run to the next island to join them. But each time I imagined the sea bottom it was full of mud, or wrecks, or the bones of whales, and then the water came back anyway too quick, and I didn’t have a raft or armbands to stop me from drowning.

I slept in the ferry waiting room. The sleeping bags they left behind had the smell of them. When I closed my eyes I imagined that everything was back to normal.

‘Why was six scared of seven?’ I asked a bird outside. ‘Because seven eight nine.’ The bird flew off.

Behind the metal screen was the waiting-room café. I tried the door and it was open, so I went in and opened up all the cupboards: but the only thing I found was a giant tin of coffee, plus a stack of plastic cups.