The Chaos (12 page)

‘She’s not chipped, is she?’

‘No, but …’

‘It’s compulsory.’ Her eyes flick up to mine, and I know it’s no use arguing. Even if I wanted to, it’s too late. The needle is in, the plunger is pressed.

‘We can register all her details on the ward.’

‘The ward?’

‘We have to be careful with infection in this part of the body. Occasionally it can lead to tetanus, so we’ll keep her in today, while we see how she responds to treatment.’

Keep her?

‘Can’t you just give her some medicine? We don’t want to stay. We need to be somewhere …’

‘We need to observe her. Tetanus could be extremely dangerous for such a young baby. We can’t take that risk. You look like you could do with a rest. You can both go on the maternity ward for the day – I’ll request a single room if you like.’

It feels like things are spinning out of my control. Now they’ve got her here, they won’t let her go. They’ve got her. They’ve chipped her. The thought of a microchip settling into her body makes me feel sick. I didn’t want that for her. I didn’t want her tagged and labelled and tracked for life.

But if I stick to my story – forgotten ID, false name, false address – we’ll be safe here, won’t we? I look back at Mia’s tummy, at the infected skin taut and shiny, and I know I’ve got no choice.

Chapter 25: Adam

T
hey refuse to discharge me, but I’m going anyway. I can’t stay here no longer. I’ll go mad. Nan brings some clean clothes in and I get dressed while the nurse tells her how to look after my face. Then it’s time to go.

Wesley has his head over a bucket when I go over to say goodbye. He raises a hand up, but he don’t speak.

‘Hang in there, Wes,’ I say. I want to tell him to stop the chemo, enjoy what time he has left. He’s a twenty-seven after all, so he’s only got just over a week to go. But then I start thinking how I’m going to try and change all that, change things for the twenty-sevens, so maybe he will need the chemo – it might buy him some extra time.

I’m choked up as I walk down the ward. I can’t help glancing at the bed where Carl was. There’s someone else there now, and there’ll be someone else in my spot soon. It’s a never-ending production line of the sick and wounded, and some of them will get better and some of them won’t, but a dark cloud settles over me when I think about Carl. It
still feels like my fault. All I had to do was stay awake. And I let him down.

‘What’s eating you? I thought you wanted to leave?’

‘Nothing. Just … this place.’

She’s looking where I’m looking.

‘You tried your best,’ she says, reading my mind, ‘and so did I.’

‘Didn’t try hard enough.’

‘Stop beating yourself up. Let’s get out of here.’

It’s surprisingly difficult to walk. I’ve been in here seventeen days and my legs have switched off. The corridors go on for ever.

‘There’s a bus stop just to the left here. Adam? Adam …’

Her voice fades away until I can’t hear anything at all. There’s a girl getting into a beaten-up old car in the car park. She’s got a coat slung round her shoulders so you can’t see her arms. A tall skinny bloke is helping her. He’s standing my side of her so she’s mostly hidden from view, but all I need is a glimpse to know.

It’s Sarah.

She’s changed her hair, shaved half of it off, but it’s her, oh God, it’s her.

I stand there like an idiot, watching her get settled in the back of the car. The bloke closes the door for her and goes round to the driver’s seat and then it’s like I’m waking up. She’s going! In less than a minute she’ll be out of here. What am I doing?

‘Adam? Where the hell …?’

I start to walk over to the car park, then break into a run. He’s already started the engine, they’re moving. I make to cut them off at the barrier. They’ll have to stop there to be let out. The car moves slowly and I’m there just before it. I wave
at the driver, to flag him down. He looks alarmed, but he has to stop anyway. He pulls to a halt, winds down the passenger window and leans across. 

‘All right, mate?’ he says.

I peer in the back. The headrest of the passenger seat is in the way.

‘I just wanted to … I just wanted … Sarah?’

She moves to one side and I see her face. It’s definitely her, the face I’ve had in my head all this time, the face I’ve gone to sleep thinking about. She gasps, and her mouth falls open, and then I remember my own face, what a shock it must be to see it.

I put my hand up to shield it.

‘It’s not as bad as it looks …’ I start to say, but she’s looking away and screaming.

‘Get out of here, Vinny! Get out of here! Drive! Drive!’

‘Sarah!’

The wheels squeal on the tarmac as Vinny stamps on the accelerator and the car lurches forward a couple of metres. The barrier is taking its sweet time. I put my hands on the car and lean towards the back passenger window. Sarah’s still shouting, but when she sees me, she stops and shrinks away from me.

The moment the barrier starts to rise, Vinny’s out of there. The metal of the car spins away from under my fingers and I’m left standing, shell-shocked. It was like the first time she saw me, only worse. Why is she so scared of me? Who is she really, and who does she think I am?

‘Adam!’

I look behind me. Nan’s standing on the pavement, watching. I walk back slowly to join her.

‘Who the hell was that?’

‘A girl I know.’

‘What’s up with her?’

‘She hates me. She’s scared of me.’

Her face darkens.

‘Scared? What you done to her?’

‘I haven’t done nothing. She knows something about me, or she thinks she does.’

‘People been gossiping? Telling tales?’

‘No, nothing like that. She was like it the very first time we met, on the first day at school.’ And then the penny drops, and when I say it out loud it sounds true. ‘She’s different. Different like you and me. You’ve got your auras, I’ve got the numbers. She’s got something. She knows something.’

Nan don’t laugh. She don’t think I’m nuts.

She reaches into her bag and fishes out a cigarette, then she lights it, inhales deeply and blows a stream of smoke out towards a sign saying, ‘No smoking on hospital grounds. Penalty €200.’

‘You’d better find her then, son,’ she says. ‘You need to find this girl and she needs to tell you what she knows.’

Chapter 26: Sarah

I
t was him.

And his face was the face in my nightmares. Scarred on one side, melted.

How could I possibly have known his perfect face would be burnt? How do I know that I’ll see him again in another fire?

I thought the nightmares might stop when the baby was born. They started when she did, the first ones weeks before I even knew I’d fallen pregnant. She brought them to me somehow, and I thought that they might be hers, that once we were separate she might keep them. But she’s left them with me. The night we get home from the hospital, I have the nightmare again. This time I see the whole city wrecked; buildings crumbled to heaps, cracks in the road too wide to jump over; people dead in the streets; bodies carried out of rubble. And all I can think about is Mia. She’s not with me. I need to get to her.

I make myself wake up. Where is she? Oh my God,
where’s my baby? My hands reach blindly out. They find the top of her head, soft and warm. She’s there, asleep in her drawer.

It was just a dream. It’s not real.

The nightmare is full of lies. I would never let Mia out of my sight. It’s just some cruel trick my mind’s playing on me. Taking my deepest fears, twisting and running with them.

Except. Except … one by one the pieces in the nightmare are fitting into place, like a jigsaw. Mia. Adam. Me. 

There’s something inevitable about it. 

I can’t bear it. It’s too lonely dealing with this on my own in the dark. I reach down again and scoop her up, bringing her into bed with me. I’ve woken her. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before, I’ve always let her find her own rhythm of sleep. But she’s awake now and she doesn’t cry. I prop her up on my legs. I hold her hands gently and she grips on, and we look at each other, eye to eye, silent for a long time.

‘I won’t leave you,’ I say to her eventually. ‘I’ll never leave you.’

I wait for her to say the same thing back to me. Sometimes I think giving birth has sent me over the edge. It’s softened my brain, blurred all the edges. If she spoke to me now,
I’ll never leave you, Mum,
I wouldn’t even be surprised. It would be okay in a world washed through with milk and sleeplessness.

She doesn’t talk to me. She just looks and looks and looks. And gradually her eyelids get too heavy for her. For a few minutes they flutter open and shut, and then finally they stay closed. She’s breathing through her mouth, each breath in is deliciously heavy, almost a snore. I move her onto the mattress next to me.

Whatever’s going to happen, whatever the future holds,
we’ve got now, Mia and I, faces so close we’re breathing air from each other’s lungs, and I’ve the comfort of sharing her sleep. We’ve got now. And for the moment, that’s enough.

I drift off to sleep again and now the baby’s crying and I’m crying too. We’re trapped by a wall of flame. We’ll die here, burnt alive. I don’t care about me, but I can’t bear it for Mia. I fold my body round her, trying to shield her. The flames are getting nearer. It’s so hot my clothes are melting into me.

‘Sarah! Sarah!’

Someone’s shaking my shoulder. It’s him. Adam. He’s trying to tell me something, but the place is falling down round our ears. I can’t hear.

‘Sarah, wake up! Wake up!’

I open my eyes. I’m screaming and the baby’s screaming, but the air’s cool against my hot face. I’m in my room at the squat, and it’s not Adam waking me up, it’s Vinny.

‘You woke the baby,’ he says. I pick her up. My little girl. I frightened her. I get out of bed and walk up and down, rocking her, but it’s no good, so we get back into bed and I try a feed. She clamps on, her hands holding on for dear life, digging in. I wipe the tears from the eye that I can see, and gradually she calms down, and her steady suckling calms me too.

‘You need to do something. Talk to someone.’

‘A shrink?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Tell them about my childhood, talk it out?’

‘Why not? It might help.’

‘It’s not my past in my nightmares. It’s the future.’

‘What?’

‘It’s what’s going to happen, to Mia and me. Not just us, it’s bigger than that. Something big.’

‘Can I see the pictures? You drew it, didn’t you?’

I’d drawn it on the wallpaper I found, but I’d rolled it up again, couldn’t stand to sit and look at it.

‘Over there,’ I say, nodding towards the roll of paper leaning in the corner of the room. Vinny starts to uncurl it, holding it up in front of him, then realises how big it is and puts it down on the floor, weighting down the ends with my shoes.

‘Jesus,’ he says. ‘Jesus Christ al-fucking-mighty. That’s the guy, the kid in the car park. And the buildings and the fire. Jesus, Sarah, you know what you’ve drawn?’

I shake my head and when I look back at him, he’s scared.

‘The date, there, 1
^st
January 2027. That’s it, is it?’

‘That’s the date in my nightmare.’

‘Jesus.’

He rubs his hands over his face and when he looks up again there’s that same haunted look.

‘You can’t keep this to yourself, girl. Not if it’s real. Is it real?’

‘I don’t know, Vin. It feels real to me. The boy, Adam, I saw him in my nightmare before I met him. He never had that scar either, but I saw it, I knew it was going to happen to him.’

‘Shit. This is some weird stuff. This is heavy. You gotta tell people. I know just the place. Come on, I’ll show you.’

‘It’s five in the morning, Vin. I’m feeding the baby.’

He’s never worked on the same clock as everyone else.

‘When she’s stopped feeding. We’ll go then. I’ll show you. And I’ll get you some spray cans – I know someone who’ll have some. You need to show the world.’

‘Vinny, do you mean paint it on a wall?’

‘Yeah, man.’

‘No. No way.’

He turns serious then.

‘You’ve got to. You haven’t got a choice. You’ve got to tell people.’

‘Shut up, I don’t have to …’

‘Yes, yes, you do, ‘cause you know what this is, don’t you?’

I shake my head.

He looks back at the picture.

‘It’s Judgement Day, Sarah. You’ve drawn fucking Judgement Day.’

Chapter 27: Adam

I
don’t want to go out. I don’t want to see nobody. Nan leaves her perch ten times a day to check on me but all I want is to be left alone.

One day she comes in holding something behind her back.

‘I’ve got something for you,’ she says. She produces a little square package, a parcel wrapped up in paper with robins on it.

‘What’s this?’

‘It’s nothing really. Just something for Christmas. It’s Christmas Day.’

Is it? 25122026? One week to go.

‘You going to open it then?’ she says, nodding encouragingly.

My fingers fumble with the tape, but I get there in the end. It’s a chocolate orange.

‘Thanks,’ I manage. ‘I didn’t get …’

‘Don’t matter. Don’t s’pose you know what day it is, do
you? I’m doing a dinner, roast and everything, if you want to come downstairs.’

‘Nah, it’s okay. I’ll stay here.’

‘I’ll bring it up then, shall I? It’s a nice one, bit of everything on it, turkey and sausage and that, roast potatoes, stuffing … I never knew you could microwave all that. Amazing really …’

‘No, it’s okay. I’m not hungry.’

‘You should eat something, Adam. Have a go. Just today.’

‘I said I’m okay.’

‘Just today, Adam. It is Christmas …’

‘Nan, if I want something, I’ll come and get it.’

It’s like I’ve slapped her in the face.

‘I just want you to be all right,’ she says.