How I Saved the World in a Week Read online

  HOW (NOT) TO SAY HELLO

  The blanket feels scratchy around my neck. I keep shrugging it away but each time I do someone comes along and pulls it back around me again. The seat of the ambulance bed feels hard beneath me.

  My voice feels hoarse from asking about Sylvia, although the paramedic says that’s just because of the smoke I inhaled.

  They took me downstairs from our flat back to the ambulance and I don’t know how long I wait there but in the end the ambulance pulls away and drives to a hospital I’ve never been to before. A woman called Talia is there to meet me. She has short, tufty blonde hair and wears large, dusty boots that look like they are a size too big for her.

  When I ask her about Sylvia, she looks at me straight in the eye and tells me that she is being seen by doctors, but not at this hospital. I think someone had told Talia about me running back into the flat because she stays close to me all the time we are in the waiting room, even staying close to the doors of the toilets when I need to go.

  After I see a doctor, Talia takes me into a little room that has a stack of magazines with curling covers and games for children much younger than me.

  ‘Not much for us to do in here, is there, Billy?’ Talia says, looking around. ‘Fancy something to eat?’

  I nod, although I’m not really hungry. I have the oddest sensation that I will never feel hungry again; I just feel completely blank.

  ‘I think I spotted a vending machine back there. Let’s go and choose something,’ Talia says.

  I follow her down the corridor in silence.

  ‘What do you reckon?’ she asks as we stand in front of the glass machine. When I don’t say anything, she fills the quiet. ‘There’s apples and cereal bars or a little box of dried fruit. Does anything take your fancy, or shall I just get a few things?’

  Back in the room, Talia digs through her rucksack and starts placing things out on the low table. She finds a bottle of water and a half-eaten bar of dark chocolate, a notepad and a couple of pens.

  She looks up at me brightly.

  ‘Hangman, Billy,’ she says. ‘We’ve got to pass the time somehow, don’t we?’

  * * *

  ‘Does it have a “d” in it, Billy?’ Talia asks me.

  But I’m not listening. Instead I’m looking up through the narrow window in the door where a man’s face has appeared. There’s a tiny inkling of recognition, but mostly I’m just wondering who it is that’s looking in. It’s something I will have to keep inside of me, something that I will have to carry, but feels too prickly to hold properly. It’s like a spiny horse chestnut, with needle-green thorny spikes – the fact that I didn’t know who he was at first.

  Then the man pushes the door open and rushes towards me. Before he gets to me, though, he stops. It takes me a moment to realize that it is me who has made him stop so suddenly in his tracks. It’s because I am looking at him like he’s a stranger, like I don’t know who he is.

  It’s Steve.

  * * *

  Talia leaps up when she sees Steve and introduces herself noisily, almost as though she knows that I can’t face him right there and then.

  I squirm on the chair, wishing that there is somewhere I could hide in this blank, almost empty room as they try and have a hushed conversation in the corner.

  But I make out snatches of sentences:

  ‘Looks like he’s been through a lot.’ (Steve)

  ‘No permanent damage.’ (Talia)

  ‘Been a while since we’ve seen each other.’ (Steve)

  ‘His mum’s been seen by a psychiatric team.’ (Talia)

  I jerk my head up at that and see Steve nodding away. He exhales noisily. ‘It’s been escalating, I think,’ he says, but then he spots that I’m listening and turns his attention to me.

  ‘Hey, buddy,’ he says. ‘It’s so good to see you.’

  He moves towards me and leans in to try and hug me. But I stay frozen where I am, so he crashes into me with his weight and I almost fall off the chair. He catches hold of my arm so I don’t fall, but as I feel his hand grasping me, I begin to struggle. I don’t know why I do it. It’s like I’m not in control of myself and I’ve been cornered into a tiny space that I cannot escape from.

  ‘Easy, Billy,’ Talia says.

  ‘I was just trying to stop him from falling,’ Steve says to her.

  ‘Maybe it’s best,’ Talia says, ‘if you wait outside for a moment.’

  HOW TO (BE FORCED TO) MOVE HOUSE

  ‘How do you feel about going home with your dad today?’ Talia asks me. ‘He would really like you to go and live with him in Bristol.’

  I wait for her to say something more. Something like ‘until your mum’s better’ or ‘for just a little bit’, but she leaves the words as they are, with no promise of anything else.

  ‘He lives in Bristol?’ I didn’t know that he had moved out of London. ‘What about Sylv— my mum? Why can’t I live with her?’

  ‘Your mum needs to concentrate on getting well. So I’m afraid you can’t live with her while she’s getting the help she needs.’

  She leaves the unspoken question hanging – Don’t I want Sylvia to get the help that she needs?

  ‘Okay,’ I say, almost in a whisper but not quite.

  ‘That’s great, Billy,’ Talia says and then she pauses. ‘I know that it’s a huge amount to take in… but I’m glad that you’ve decided to go with your dad today.’

  There’s more that’s unspoken in the air but I know exactly what she’s getting at.

  If I don’t go home with Steve, who else would want me?

  HOW TO SURVIVE

  I lie unmoving on the bed, my eyes wide open and glassy. I’m not sleeping– in fact I find it hard to go to sleep – it’s more like I have been switched off, like some kind of toy with dead batteries.

  This morning is just like all the others before it. Steve brings me breakfast clattering on a tray and talks to me as though there is nothing unusual about the fact that I’m not getting up and that I haven’t lived with him since I was six years old and that we don’t really know each other even though he is my dad and I am his son.

  He pulls open the curtains and though the winter light is feeble and dim, he says, ‘I think it’s going to be a nice day today, Billy.’ He lingers for a few moments more, straightening the corner of my duvet cover unnecessarily, picking up Sylvia’s penknife that lies in the middle of one of the empty bookshelves and putting it down again. Then he says, ‘Well, see you later, then,’ and though I haven’t said anything in reply, he says as if he is answering me: ‘I’ll just be downstairs if you need me.’

  ‘My room’ is a powder-blue room that doesn’t have enough things in it. When I arrived, Steve told me he moved to this house for his job about two years ago, but it looks to me like he hasn’t really done any decorating since he arrived. I think about the timing and realize that he must have come to Bristol around the same time he stopped coming to see me. I’ve been wondering if that was the real reason why he stopped our visits. Sylvia had told me it was because he didn’t believe her about something but maybe it wasn’t that at all. Maybe his life had just got too busy to have me in it. Maybe I was right when I thought it was because he didn’t want to see me any more. It makes me feel like I am so small, as though I am shrinking down to nothing. But then there was the letter asking for custody. Had he changed his mind? And remembering that letter makes me feel so torn up inside when I think back to how it was what made Sylvia start the fire. It’s the reason why I am here and she is far away, it’s why I have not seen her since that day. My mind feels like it’s in a constant swirl of questions and unknowing.

  I wasn’t allowed to get anything from our flat, so there’s nothing of me in this room. Just some clothes that Steve bought me quickly so I had some things when I arrived. He’d put some of his old books on the shelves for me too, and I placed Sylvia’s penknife right in the middle of one of the empty bookshelves.

  As soon as Steve leaves
the room, I take a deep breath in and out. I can smell the porridge on the breakfast tray but I can’t bring myself to eat it although I know it’ll be worse if it’s cold. It will turn jelly-like and slimy and I’ll never be able to stomach it.

  It’s just as I’m bringing the first spoonful to my mouth, that I hear the sharp rapping on the front door.

  Someone’s knocking furiously and hard but as quickly as it starts, it stops.

  The floorboards creak as Steve stomps towards the front door in large strides. He opens it but there is a missing moment when he should have spoken to the person who was there. Instead he just shuts it again and there’s the stamp of each of his footsteps back to the living room.

  All goes back to being quiet again.

  Then, there’s another sharp tap. This time it’s different to someone knocking on the door. It pings against glass. Something is hitting my window, a stone, most probably. First there’s one. Then two in quick succession.

  It’s the knock. The one that she would do when she got home so I would know it was her.

  I drop my porridge spoon. It’s Sylvia; she has come to get me. It has to have been her at the door, and Steve wouldn’t let her in.

  Quickly I turn to the window and peer down in front of the house. There’s no sign of Sylvia, but that must be because she’s hiding. My eyes scan over every detail of the front garden and the street. I try to absorb everything. Rule number two: Pay attention – keep constant observations of your surroundings.

  That’s when I spot it.

  It’s just the corner poking out from beneath the black bin, but even from that I know immediately what it is. The edge of a book I know so well that I can quote whole passages from it by heart, that I could pick it out in the darkness by its scent alone.

  I pull on my shoes and come clattering down the stairs so loudly that Steve looks up in astonishment.

  ‘Billy – you’re up!’ he says, a huge smile lighting up his whole face. But I turn away from him and run to the front door and out to the wheelie bin.

  I pull the book from under it. I can’t believe she’s left How to Survive for me. That I have her treasured book in my hands. The cover is a tiny bit crumpled, like it’s been stuffed into a bag or something. and it feels ever so slightly damp, but it’s definitely Sylvia’s book.

  ‘Sylvia?’ I call out. ‘Sylvia?’ I look down the street one way and then the other but there is no one there.

  Then Steve is behind me. ‘What’s going on, Billy? Are you all right?’

  I quickly hide the book behind me and tuck it away into the top of my pyjama bottoms. I can feel its pages dig into the small of my back.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Steve asks me again.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I lie. ‘I just wanted some fresh air, all of a sudden.’

  ‘That’s great!’ Steve beams. ‘Why don’t we go for a little walk? We could go to the park? Go and get dressed and we’ll get going.’

  I nod and hope my face isn’t giving anything away.

  When I get back up to my bedroom, I hide the book under my bed, behind a box, but not before I check it all over, looking for a note or anything at all.

  There’s nothing in it – no message to me, no hidden letter – but on the first page, in curly handwriting, written a long time ago, there’s a name: Sylvia Weywood. And on the inside of the back cover, in my handwriting, are the Rules for Survival staring back at me.

  * * *

  I don’t see Sylvia that day. She doesn’t come back to the house. I look for her as I walk around the park with Steve, pretending that everything is normal, but there is no sign of her.

  We loop around the park a couple of times. We stop to look out over the city and Steve points out to me different buildings that we can see in the distance. The tower on a hill. A church spire.

  ‘When will I see Sylvia again?’ I blurt out, in a rush.

  ‘Oh, Billy,’ Steve says. His face falls into a frown and his eyes look down and won’t meet mine. ‘I can’t say for sure. We’ll try to visit her in hospital when she’s ready, we will. But, Billy, your mum’s not well. She’s not been well for a while. All of that – ’ he waves his hands around as if there is something in front of him although there isn’t – ‘all of that… survival stuff she’d been doing. It’s got really… out of hand.’ Steve’s voice keeps tripping up over the words.

  ‘But she’d want to see me, wouldn’t she?’ I ask.

  ‘Of course she does. We just need to make sure it’s when she’s a bit more… steady. Then it will be better for both of you.’

  I swallow hard. I try to imagine Sylvia in hospital and find that I can’t.

  ‘And are they not letting her do the…’ I try to remember how Steve put it, ‘is she not allowed to do the survival stuff any more at all?’

  ‘Well, it’s a… symptom. Of her illness. None of it’s real, Billy, and it’s better that she doesn’t do any of that stuff any more.’

  I speak in a whisper: ‘The skills we learned were real.’

  But Steve shakes his head furiously. ‘No, Billy, it was all in your mum’s head. It was the illness making her believe things. Wrong things,’ he says. ‘But she’s getting help now. It’ll get better – I promise. And then we’ll go and see her.’

  I can feel something binding and coiling around my heart. Sylvia’s urgency to prepare and teach me how to survive had started to scare me and felt out of control, but could it really be true that none of it was real? That she was wrong about us needing to be prepared? It was everything to Sylvia, and so it had been everything to me.

  ‘But it can’t be,’ I hear myself say. Sylvia’s face flashes through my mind. I can almost feel her steady hazel eyes holding me in her gaze as I’d try to learn whatever skill it was that we were practising. ‘Everything she taught me, she said that we were getting ready for something, that it was all so that she could keep me safe.’

  Steve doesn’t answer, he looks away from me, to the ground, embarrassed.

  I feel a surge of anger rise up in me. He doesn’t believe me, he doesn’t believe Sylvia, just like she said. But what does he know?

  ‘You don’t get it,’ I spit out. ‘You weren’t even there. You can’t just say all this stuff about Sylvia if you weren’t even there.’

  ‘Billy, I—’

  But I’m shouting now. I can’t stop the anger coursing through me, red, hot and liquid. All of the weariness that had sunk into my bones since the fire, the dead feeling of heaviness of being separated from Sylvia, was gone. ‘She said you wouldn’t understand, that you didn’t want to know. She was right.’

  ‘I… I…’ Steve splutters.

  ‘You haven’t seen me for over two years!’ I scream. ‘You don’t know Sylvia. And you don’t know me!’

  ‘Calm down, Billy. I know this is a huge amount to take in. And you’re right – we haven’t seen each other for a long time. Although that was not how I wanted it, believe me. Your mum kept moving you around, she didn’t want me to see you.’

  ‘That was only because she knew that you’d act like this. And she was right, she was right to keep me away from you. To keep me safe.’

  Steve flinches, as though he’s been slapped. Then he takes a deep breath and swallows hard. ‘I’m sorry you think that, but the reason you’re here, living with me, is because I’m not the only one who believes that your mum needs help. There are professionals, doctors, who understand that your mum needs to recover before she can look after you again. There’s nothing either of us can do to change that. When she gets better, I hope we can find a way where we can both take care of you. But I don’t want it to go back to me not seeing you like before, I never wanted that. It doesn’t have to be just your mum, or just me. But she needs to get better before we can think about any of that. And, I’m sorry, Billy, but I don’t believe that she was keeping you safe because well… Billy, you had to be thrown out of the window of a burning flat because of a fire she started. That wasn’t keeping you safe,
was it?’

  I don’t answer. The anger I was feeling has drained from me and I feel depleted and raw.

  I can’t argue with the fire. I still dream about the smoke filling the living room, almost engulfing us. Sometimes I’m sure that I can still feel it in my lungs, in my next breath.

  But he was wrong. I wouldn’t, couldn’t, believe that everything Sylvia had taught me was all for nothing.

  When I had found the book, part of me knew that I wouldn’t find a message from her. The book itself was the message. It said, don’t give up, don’t stop learning, keep yourself prepared. Don’t forget to follow the Rules.

  And now, to be prepared I had to make sure I hid the book from Steve. He couldn’t ever find it.

  I couldn’t let him know that I was thinking about any of ‘that survival stuff’. He’d think that I was ill too if he thought I believed in it.

  And I didn’t want to find out what he would do then.

  HOW TO GET IN TROUBLE (ON YOUR FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL)

  ‘Hey, you want to see something awesome?’

  I don’t look up at first. The boy can’t possibly be talking to me because I’ve just been staring at the ground for the whole break time.

  I’ve learned from moving schools so often that the best way to get through it is to keep myself to myself. I keep my head down; stay out of trouble, do as I’m told. But I also mean I will actually keep my head down; I won’t look up, I won’t meet anyone’s gaze. I’ve spent the last five minutes just studying the many greys of the playground tarmac.

  But then he says: ‘You’ll want to see this, seriously!’

  I look around, but there’s no one but the two of us. ‘What, me?’ I ask. When you’re the new kid you get used to no one talking to you at break. In class, it can be different because the teacher makes us talk to each other for paired work or table talk but when we’re all set loose in the playground it’s a different story. I’m used to being ignored and mostly I prefer it that way. Well, at least that’s what I tell myself.