How I Saved the World in a Week Read online

  Modern living may be convenient, but it does not help us to prepare for a variety of survival situations.

  But then Steve is thundering up the stairs.

  Thud, thud. Thud, thud. Thud, thud. Thud, thud.

  I imagine each stair bending a little under his weight.

  I flip the book shut, slide it under my bed in a single movement and then he’s there, knocking on my door. Saying my name again and again, like it’s a question.

  ‘Billy? Billy?’

  ‘Come in.’

  ‘Hey,’ he says, peeping around the door. ‘What are you doing up here?’ He looks at me, his head held to one side, his eyes large and trusting. Sometimes I think that Steve looks like the Labrador that belongs to the woman down the road: eager, expectant, and a little bit worried all at the same time.

  I try to think of an answer that won’t sound like I’m lying but before I do, he carries on talking.

  ‘They’ll be here any minute now. Lunch is almost ready. Why don’t you wait downstairs? They’ll be here soon.’ He’s speaking fast. Little droplets of spit fly from his mouth. He runs a hand through his hair and seems almost surprised to find that there’s not more of it.

  Then the doorbell rings sharply and Steve’s eyes widen in panic.

  ‘Do I look okay?’ he asks. ‘Maybe I should change my shirt? Maybe you should change your shirt? Do you have any that are more… more clean?’ He glances over at the teetering pile of washing in the corner.

  He asks me something while he turns his head to look down towards the front door and so I don’t hear him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I asked if you were ready.’

  I don’t answer him.

  I’ll never feel ready.

  * * *

  ‘Billy likes reading. Don’t you, Bill?’

  Steve does not usually call me Bill.

  We are sitting at the table in front of our empty plates, the remnants of lunch smeared across them, with Julie and her daughter Angharad.

  Angharad has long caramel-coloured braids with neon-coloured beads at the ends that cascade down her back. They jangle each time she turns her head.

  She looks at me with a scowl that she makes no effort to hide, as though I am something disgusting she has stepped on. When Steve introduced us, she just said to her mum in a loud voice, ‘When can we go home?’

  Julie laughed, embarrassed and pink. ‘Angharad!’ she hissed, but didn’t really tell her off.

  We never usually sit at the table, Steve and I, and there aren’t enough chairs for all of us: I’m perched on a stool from the sitting room and Steve’s on the office chair from his study.

  ‘Angharad’s always got her nose in a book, haven’t you, love?’ Julie looks over at her daughter encouragingly, her eyebrows raised.

  ‘Muu-uum,’ Angharad complains. She makes the word sound like it has two syllables and shakes her head so the beads rattle and clink.

  Julie ignores her: ‘What was it you were reading last week that you liked so much? Why don’t you tell Billy about it?’

  ‘Don’t go on about it, Mum,’ Angharad says with an exaggerated sigh, raising her eyes up to the ceiling and scowling. ‘It’s no big deal.’

  But Steve has already pounced upon it. ‘Yes! Billy’s got quite the collection now. Maybe he’s read it already. What was the name of that book, Bill, the one you couldn’t put down?’

  I don’t answer but stare hard at my fork on my plate. The sauce from the baked beans has started to congeal around it.

  It’s been like this all lunch: Steve and Julie batting questions at us across the table that we bounce away unanswered.

  It doesn’t seem to matter what Angharad or I say (or in my case, don’t say) because the conversation continues without us. ‘It’s practically a library up there,’ Steve goes on. ‘Billy has a knack for finding books. He’s always bringing them home. He found a big box that was dumped on the street the other day.’

  I let myself glance at Steve; I can’t quite tell if he likes this fact about me or not, whether he thinks it’s a gift or a curse. There’s a suggestion of a frown on his forehead even though he sounds enthusiastic.

  Ever since I found Sylvia’s old book, I see them everywhere: tucked under bushes on top of a wall, discarded in piles with the rubbish, even crammed down the side of a bus seat. I can’t walk past them without having a rummage and picking up at least one to take home.

  Julie is smiling over at me; she pushes the sleeves of her jumper up over her elbows and leans towards me over the table. ‘What was the last book you found that you really liked, Billy?’ she asks.

  The yellow-paged How to Survive book flashes into my mind but I don’t want to share that with them. I end up mumbling: ‘I can’t really remember the title.’

  ‘Tell me about it!’ Julie says and she laughs with her head tipped back, mouth wide-open. I can see bits of the spinach we had at lunch sitting darkly in her teeth. ‘I can’t remember half of the things that I’ve read either. Sometimes I start something new and don’t realize until I’m halfway through that I’ve read it already!’

  Steve begins to laugh too and then they lock eyes and it’s as though they can read each other’s minds for just a moment, because at exactly the same time they say:

  ‘Billy, why don’t you take Angharad upstairs and show her your books?’ (Steve)

  ‘I’m sure Angharad would like to see your books, Billy.’ (Julie)

  Their words blend into each other’s as though they are one voice.

  Suddenly it’s clear: why Steve mentioned I liked reading, why they’ve been talking in circles. It was just so that they could get rid of us and make me and Angharad go upstairs. He and Julie probably planned this before they came over.

  ‘You’d like to see them, wouldn’t you, love?’ Julie says.

  They are both speaking in the same tone: it sounds pleasant, but it has an edge of something hard to it. Somehow I know they won’t take no for an answer.

  Angharad looks at her mum through narrowed eyes but then stands up so suddenly the table rattles.

  ‘Come on then, Billy,’ she says. ‘Let’s get this over and done with.’

  She stomps up the stairs – she’s almost as loud as Steve – and all I can do is follow.

  HOW (NOT) TO SPEND TIME WITH YOUR DAD’S GIRLFRIEND’S DAUGHTER

  Angharad goes straight over to my books and pulls one off the shelf before I’ve even made it to the top of the stairs.

  ‘I like that one,’ I say, but perhaps I spoke too quietly because she’s already stuffing it back into the gap in the shelf and pulling out another.

  I have the familiar feeling of being far away from the person in front of me, of not saying the right thing, of not saying it in the right way.

  I’m not sure what to do; to go next to her or just to leave the room entirely. I settle for sitting on the edge of the bed and looking out of the window.

  Outside, a child screams out as their scarf is carried off down the street by a gust of wind. It’s a waving flapping rainbow of wool and everyone lunges to catch it.

  Then I see the man I saw earlier when we were waiting for Julie and Angharad to arrive. The one who was climbing the hill, whose every step was a stagger and who looked grey with effort.

  Suddenly, in a flick of a moment, the man falls. He drops to the pavement as though he is not a person at all, but a sack, or a stone, or a ball that rolls down the hill a little.

  There’s a still moment before anyone does anything. I can see everyone’s faces panicked and white as they watch the man fall, not knowing what to do, then there’s a bustle as people rush towards him. A car driving past stops suddenly and its driver gets out, shouting instructions.

  I see people pull out their phones – they’re calling for an ambulance, I think – and the driver of the car, a man wearing the sort of blue raincoat that people wear when they are walking in the mountains, rushes over to the man. I can’t see him now, the person who f
ell, he is so surrounded by others.

  I look back over to Angharad. She hasn’t even noticed that anything has happened outside, she’s still looking at my shelves and has pulled a thin grey hardback out. It’s one of my favourites, titled Ounce Dice Trice. Its cover has almost come away completely and there are tea stains on every page but it lists funny words with black-and-white illustrations that always make me laugh. I found it abandoned in a pile outside someone’s house, left out as rubbish.

  ‘That one’s really good,’ I say.

  Angharad glances up at me and the beads in her hair jingle from the movement. Without taking her eyes off me she opens it up to one of the centre pages. The way she moves makes me think it’s a threat. She reads. Then turns another page, and another.

  ‘It is good,’ she concedes. ‘I like the illustrations.’

  Carefully, she replaces Ounce Dice Trice on the shelf.

  I turn away to the window again. More people have stopped around the person who fell. I can see them explaining what has happened to others. Their mouths open wide as they recount the drama. They look like fish gulping for air.

  ‘What are you staring at?’ Angharad says and she flings herself on the bed next to me, so she can look out of the window, too.

  ‘Someone fell outside. Look, an ambulance is coming now.’

  ‘Are they all right?’ Angharad asks.

  ‘I’m not sure. One minute this man was walking and the next he just fell over and rolled down the pavement. It was like he’d suddenly gone rigid or something.’

  ‘Maybe he is epileptic?’ Angharad thinks aloud. ‘Or had a heart attack.’

  We both stare out of the window but when after a while the ambulance is still there and we can’t see anything more, Angharad sits back and looks around my bedroom.

  I try to imagine what it might look like to her. I still don’t have much stuff. Nothing on the walls, although Steve said I could put up anything I liked. It’s not even that messy; it almost looks like no one really lives in here. In the end her eyes settle on my bulging bookshelves.

  ‘You do have a lot of books,’ she says and she smiles over at me. ‘Even more than me. They’re everywhere!’ she exclaims.

  I see her point to the floor beside her foot. There, just peeping out, is the corner of How to Survive, where I shoved it earlier on.

  As though in slow motion, I watch her lean forward. She reaches towards it, the tips of her fingers just millimetres away from it, about to touch the dull sheen of its cover…

  ‘Get out!’ I shout. ‘GET OUT!’

  I am louder than loud.

  I am louder than Steve.

  I am louder than Mr Belvedere from school.

  I am louder than I can believe that I can be.

  ‘Get out! Get out of my room!’

  Angharad jumps. She is unbelieving, but I keep on roaring, as I let my mouth spill out a rage that until that very moment I did not know I had inside me. It’s everything I’ve been feeling, all screwed up together into a tight ball; it’s that I don’t know how Sylvia is, it’s that Steve left us, it’s that I don’t know what’s true any more, it’s that I have to hide all the survival stuff, it’s that I don’t know how I feel about my family. All the confusion and worry and anger that I have been carrying is finally coming out.

  ‘Get out!’ I scream again.

  Angharad stands up, tall, filling the room.

  ‘Don’t you shout at me!’ she screams. ‘Who do you think you are?’

  I hear Steve’s voice from downstairs, streaked through with concern. ‘What’s going on up there?’

  Angharad looks at me, her nostrils flaring and wide as though she is a dragon who has just breathed a fireball. Then she turns away and clatters down the stairs with such heavy footsteps it sounds like she is falling down them.

  Then I hear Julie’s voice, comforting and murmuring, and then Angharad again, as clear as though she is beside me: ‘He just started to shout at me to get out of his room, for no reason. Can we go now, Mum? Can we just leave?’

  I know that in a moment Steve will be in my room. He will be upset. He will be bewildered. But he will also be angry.

  I quickly take the book from under my bed and tuck it out of sight, into the waistband of my trousers, behind my back.

  I can’t let Steve find it.

  I can’t let him see it.

  HOW TO ESCAPE

  The hailstones distract them.

  They begin lightly.

  It’s just as Steve is shouting at me to ‘get down here this minute’ while Angharad is continuing to steam that she never wanted to come here anyway and Julie is talking softly to her in low, soothing tones.

  Thunder drowns them all out. The sky sounds like it’s being ripped in two; a deep barrelling growl that lasts far longer than it should. Then I hear the soft patter as hailstones begin to hit the ground.

  ‘Where’s this come from?’ Steve says and then he answers himself: ‘It’s come from nowhere.’

  ‘They’re hailstones,’ says Julie.

  ‘They’re huge,’ I hear Angharad exclaim. ‘They’re bigger than… than peas!’

  I walk quietly down the stairs and see that they have all turned towards the window, almost entranced, to watch the hailstones fall.

  Angharad’s fists are still clenched into balls. She was shouting only seconds ago but for now her mind is elsewhere, on the ice-white peas thrown down from the sky.

  The patter has turned drumlike now. The hailstones hit the ground with a crack. They grow bigger and bigger and louder and louder. We are surrounded by them, hemmed in; the room feels suddenly smaller and darker than it was before.

  ‘Sounds like they’re going to break the roof down,’ Angharad says.

  ‘It’ll all be over soon,’ Julie says.

  But I see her hand reach down to Steve’s and they clasp each other’s fingers fiercely. The drumming grows louder, the hailstones beat at the window as if they want to get in. Their grip only lessens as the hailstones begin to fall a little more lightly.

  This is my chance. While everyone’s gaze is fixed out of the window, I turn away from them all. I run out of the door and into the storm.

  * * *

  The hailstones sting as they hit me. I feel the chill of them as they bury into my hair, burrow down my neckline, but I don’t stop running. I don’t stop until I get to Anwar’s. I am breathless and cold though and so I can’t speak properly through the intercom when I dial the number of his flat.

  I can hear Anwar in the background say, ‘It’s Billy, it’s for me, it’s Billy,’ although I don’t know how he can recognize me from my mumbling.

  The door buzzes. I open it and run through. It slams behind me.

  Finally I feel I can take a breath.

  * * *

  ‘Hey man,’ Anwar says. ‘Perfect timing.’ He shakes a tube of Mentos at me, in explanation.

  I don’t reply.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asks, his head cocked slightly to one side.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say and then a moment later, I feel like I actually want to tell him the truth. I can feel the edges of How to Survive rubbing into my back. It doesn’t hurt as such, in fact I feel comforted that I’m keeping it close. I think again of how Steve might react if he found out that I have it and I make myself stand a little straighter. It digs into my back a little more. ‘Not really. But we can talk about it later. What are you doing?’

  ‘Come in, come in. Let me explain it all.’

  Anwar’s mother and two sisters are perched on a sofa by the window in their living room. They wave hello to me and mumble a greeting as we pass them, but they stay by the window, watching the end of the storm. The ground is covered with white now – almost like there’s been a snowfall.

  ‘This way,’ Anwar says.

  I follow him into the bathroom where he’s placed a large bottle of Diet Coke in the bath.

  ‘Apparently, these,’ he says, pointing at the Mentos, ‘will make a kind o
f fountain when you put them in Diet Coke.’

  ‘Really?’ I look from the Mentos to the Diet Coke bottle again, then to Anwar, and the memory of Angharad’s shaken, shocked face dims just a little.

  ‘Dad’ll be back soon,’ Anwar tells me. ‘We’d better do it before then. He’s said I’m not allowed to do experiments inside any more.’

  I unscrew the cap and Anwar gets out a handful of Mentos.

  ‘Apparently you’re meant to put them all in at the same time,’ Anwar says, ‘so we’ll use this.’ He places a funnel on top of the bottle. ‘Do you want to do it?’

  ‘You do it,’ I say.

  ‘Okay, get ready to run, just in case.’

  He drops the Mentos down the funnel.

  Almost immediately the Coke explodes up out of the bottle in a spurting light-brown foamy fountain. It sails high into the air, hitting the ceiling of the bathroom and spraying us completely before we’re able to escape.

  As we sprint out of the room we collide into Anwar’s dad.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asks crossly. ‘What are you doing in there?’ I’m a little afraid of Anwar’s dad. He’s as stern as Anwar is fun. He drove Anwar and me out to the countryside one weekend when Anwar wanted to test boats he’d made out of different materials in a stream. But he spent almost the whole time telling Anwar that he needed to stop this nonsense, so it wasn’t really that enjoyable.

  ‘Nothing, Dad,’ Anwar says quickly. ‘Nothing, nothing.’

  But it doesn’t stop his dad from opening the bathroom door.

  Everything drips with Diet Coke.

  It is undoubtedly one of Anwar’s more successful experiments.

  * * *

  ‘Let’s go to the park,’ Anwar says as we get downstairs. It hadn’t taken too long to clear up the bathroom but Anwar’s dad had not stopped glaring at us and so we decided to go out.

  ‘But the hailstones,’ I protest, but as we walk outside the sun is out and shining and has already melted most of them away. It roasts the pavement and so a hazy steam rises from it. The sky’s a sunny blue and it’s as if the hailstorm never happened.