The Island (17 page)

Angela takes a deep breath. ‘Mrs Bailey, we're here because we have some concerns about the welfare of your son, Johnny. We believe…that his safety might be compromised whilst he remains living here…'

Even Cassie's listening now.

‘…and that it is difficult in your current situation for you to meet his care needs. So I'm afraid that we're going to have to take him away, just for a few weeks while we make some assessments –'

‘You're not taking my brother,' I say.

The room is swimming and the light through the window seems to be pounding white-spears into my eyes. Somewhere I think I hear seabirds scream.

‘You can't take Johnny.'

Angela is leaning towards me; she's taking my hands in hers and it's her fault, it's all Miss's fault.

‘Where's he going?' Cassie is saying. ‘Where are they taking my baby?'

A female police officer is holding her.

‘You said you'd help us,' I say.

Her eyes are shiny but I make mine like stone.

‘You're just like all the others,' I say.

She turns away then. ‘Will you come with me to get Johnny?' is all she says.

He's tight asleep in my bed.
The Little Boat
is splayed next to him as he dream-breathes.

‘You're not taking him,' I say.

Angela takes a deep breath. ‘Frances, you knew it was on the cards. Your mum isn't keeping to the terms of the care protection plan. She didn't attend the pre-proceedings meeting. She hasn't answered our letters.'

‘I look after him. I've always looked after him,' I say.

‘I don't doubt it, Frances. You're a very capable girl, and it's obvious that the two of you are incredibly close.'

We both look down at Johnny as he sleeps.

‘I want to go with him.'

Angela closes her eyes for a second. When she speaks, her voice is low and calm. ‘It's your brother I'm concerned about. You know they found bruises, at the hospital. You must know that it's for the best.'

I shake my head; I don't want to hear this. I don't want her to make me think that she's right. She's been trained to do this, I realise. It's all part of her training.

Below me, Johnny sighs in his sleep as Angela's words drift in and around me. I am Other Fran, floating over the scene and looking down.

‘Sixteen years old…it's not fair that you're his carer…take the pressure off you…exam year at school…regular access visits…'

I snap back to myself.

‘What if I don't let you take him?'

Angela sighs. ‘Frances, the police are here to support me in taking Johnny to his foster care. If you protest, you'll make things even more upsetting for him.'

I stare at her. I think that even her voice has changed. It's not rising at the end into questions now; she sounds firm and definite about killing me inside.

I stare till her eyes flicker away, and then I crouch beside my little brother.

‘Monkey?' I say. ‘Monkey, wake up.'

He stirs. I touch his sleep-dampened cheek.

‘You need to wake up now, Monkey. There's people to see you…'

Angela crouches down then.

‘Hi there, Johnny,' she says.

‘Hi, Angela.'

I get his school bag, the one with Spider-Man on it that I got him for Christmas. I empty all his pencils and spelling books and football cards out of it. Look around for some clean socks and pants.

Angela is talking to him quietly. I shut my ears because I'm stone, I'm stone, I'm stone.

Get his inhaler, check there's a refill; his little glasses from the side of his bed. The Doctor Who T-shirt he wears for pyjamas.

I stare at the page we got up to; the little boy with his sun hat and his boat.

Then I close it and put it in his bag with the rest of his books.

‘Noooo,' Johnny wails.

‘Johnny, it's just for a little while,' Angela is saying.

Johnny runs to me and flings himself around my waist. ‘I'm not going away. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not –'

I lift him up and put him on my hip. I can still lift him, even though he's heavy now.

‘Shhh, Monkey,' I say. ‘It's not for long. It's like…it's like a little holiday.'

But he's howling now, and he's still howling when we go back into the lounge.

Cassie starts wailing too when she sees us.

‘You're not taking my kids away, not my kids. Tell them, Frannie, tell them –'

Lee is squatting down in front of her. ‘It's only your son. Just until you're better able to take care of him, Miss Stanton. So that both you and your son can get the support you need.'

‘Noooo,' wails Cassie. She reaches out to me, to Johnny. Her fingers touch me, damp and teary. She tries to pull me into her misery, but I flinch away.

Johnny is gasping into my neck.

Both the police officers' faces are carefully blank.

Angela doesn't make eye contact with me. ‘Frances is sixteen,' she says to Cassie. ‘She's a very capable girl. We try to avoid taking children into the system if at all possible, but we don't feel that the current situation is a suitable environment for Johnny.'

The female officer coughs. ‘Now, if you could just sign here, Mrs Bailey, just to say that you are in agreement that you have handed over responsibility of your child to the care services.'

Beside me, Cassie moans and shakes her head as they try to give her the pen.

I hear Angela's voice; she's crouching down to speak to her, and her voice is low and calm.

I kiss Johnny's head; breathe in the smell of him, like an ache.

‘I'll come to see you soon, promise,' I say. ‘Love you, Monkey.'

This sets him off howling again.

In the end they have to peel him off me, an arm and a leg at a time.

I follow his eyes following me all the way out of the flat, all the way down the stairs, all the way to the police car.

His little hands reaching out like stars.

 

Dead Man's Bay

There are jellyfish in the trees.

They shiver, shiny and surprised.

Me and Dog blink at them as we emerge, stumbling, from the forest, and it is these that are taking our attention, not the dark bundles lying here and there on the beach.

So we don't see the things the sea has spat out. Not at first.

Our shelter is gone.

I swallow as I take in the space where our camp used to be. Our little attempts to make a home, all vanished. The storm has torn up our roof like tissue.

Here and there, shreds of cooking pots, curls of palm roof, scraps of plastic lie twisted.

I look across the beach. One Tree has been torn out of the sand and thrown across the bay. It looks like a bent elbow, broken and pointing.

I touch a jellyfish. Already it has crisped in the sun.

Dog barks and barks from across the beach as I search for our stuff.

I find a few scraps of our kitchen: the giant clam shell we used to serve food; the sharpened twig we'd use for snail kebabs. The
MARINA BAIT
tub is bobbing near the rocks, near our broken fish-trap.

‘Quiet, Dog,' I shout. ‘For frick's sake.'

He won't stop yapping and yapping.

I can't see any sign of the fishing net. Our canopy, which took so long to make: hours and hours of gnawing at the trees with sharp rocks and my safety knife, jumping and swinging off the branches till they finally groaned and gave; hours and hours of dragging tree trunks through the forest, gasping in the pulsing heat. All for nothing.

And then I see the fire. Dead. The sodden log blackened and no embers, no heat, no life.

No matches.

That's when I want to howl and howl, because I really don't think I can take any more of this; don't have it in me to drag myself from this wet sand and get myself standing and start all over again.

Because I can't do it. Not on my own, not even with Dog.

There are things on the beach.

I start to gather them in my sling, not caring, not seeing:

A trainer, half-buried in the sand.

A set of headphones, the kind that lock you in so no one hears or sees you. They have a skull sticker on them, half-scratched away by the sea.

A piece of metal, twisted by a madman. It's white and silver and looks vaguely familiar.

Dog's really going for it now, hopping back and forth, sniffing at one of those dark bundles and then leaping back as if he's been stung.

No matches
, I think.
No fire, no matches, no way to boil water.

I make my way up to Dog slowly 'cause it's difficult to walk when your legs feel like stone. It still doesn't register, not even when I see the pelicans swoop,
whup-whup-whup
-ing across the sea. Not even when I see the sandflies fizzing and jostling like they're at a circus.

Not even when I see what's all over Dog's nose.

He grins at me, tail wagging.

‘What's that, Dog? What have you been –'

And then I see what he's been looking at

and I stop

and drop my sling

and just scream and scream.

 

Soft as Sugar; Sweet as Meat

Coral's face is half-eaten away and there are sandflies in her eye sockets and in her mouth. She has no tongue. Instead, meaty shreds hang from her jawbone, where gulls have been tugging.

The sand is soft as sugar between my toes.

And there's something crawling out of her mouth: the crab's pale arms wave blindly.

The sweet stench of her rises like fug; then the sun heaps it on, more and more.

She's all chewed up and spat out.

I turn round; make myself look at the others. Because it's better to know, better to see, than to imagine. Even though the sight of Tiny's torn-away arm; of Trish's top, still with its smiling TeamSkill logo; the whitebonegapemouthemptyeyebristlemeatsweetstink makes me sob and splatter-retch on to the sugared sand.

But this is better than the dreams I would have if I didn't see.

I kneel by the water's edge and splash my face. Breathe deep. Stare at the sea ruffling and unruffling.

Then I walk over to the thing that was Coral and gently untie her shoes. They're red canvas pumps and come off easily. A fly lands on my arm and I brush it away; trying not to breathe till I am well away from her.

Hi I'm Trish!
is no longer smiling –

'cause she has nofacenofacenoface
–

but she still has her clothes and still has her badge with her name inside its rainbow logo. She is lying very close to Tiny, and I wonder whether she was with him at the end, when the final wave washed over them and filled their lungs. Then I remember the snapping sound of her ankle. She would've been trapped inside the cabin; maybe Tiny too.

I hope they were together.

Wiping my eyes, I wonder if I can force myself to tug off her sodden jeans. Jeans burn well.

I can't.

And I have no matches.

Chunks of metal that must be plane wreckage are scattered by the far rocks. There's no sign of the pilots or Joker. A glass bottle half full of clear liquid has been flung by Tiny's feet and I pick it up.

I make myself put Coral's shoes on. It's agony at first because my feet are all cut up from the rocks but I take the laces out and that feels better; Coral's feet are a size bigger than mine. The laces go into the bag too.

I take a swig from the bottle and start to giggle.

It's Trish's vodka.

Once I start giggling I can't stop.

 

Seating Plan

I stand up.

‘Frances?'

Pick up my things.

‘What are you doing?'

Place the chair under, ever so carefully.

‘Don't like it here, Miss.'

‘Go back to your seat.'

‘Stinks, Miss.'

‘Frances, there is a seating plan.'

‘Stinks of lies and promises and
crap
, Miss.'

‘Fran–'

‘Think the stink is coming from
you
, Miss. So, if you don't mind, I'll just sit at the back.'

‘Frances Stanton, I need you to move back to your allocated place.'

‘Miss Bright, I need you to move back to your desk, away from me because I'm not being funny or anything but your breath really stinks.'

Titters from the classroom. Everyone's listening; I can feel them drawing all the air out of the room because they're listening so closely.

Sigh. ‘Well, it's your decision, Frances.'

Then she gets down and crouches by me; it's that stupid thing they all do – get down to the level of the kid who's playing up so they're not threatened. I can read her better than all those books she likes to read us.

‘You have a choice, Fran: you can either comply with my reasonable request of moving back to your seat, or, if you insist on continuing to disrupt my lesson, then I'm afraid I'm going to have to reroute you.'

Rerouting is this thing where you have to go and sit at the back of a Year Seven or a Sixth-Form class with a great fat boring textbook and everyone ignores you. It's stupid 'cause they're never going to be able to make me leave this classroom.

Ever.

Miss turns her back to me and prepares to write the date on the board but I'm not having that.

I'm. Not. Having. That.

‘Fuck you,' I say.

My voice could shatter glass.

Miss's back freezes.

And everyone's listening so hard they're going to spontaneously combust.

‘OK, Frances,' she says – and I'll give her credit, her voice is only a little bit shaky. ‘It appears that you have made your choice. Please take this book and make your way to room E6.'

She thrusts a tatty textbook at me. It's open at a page on similes. Happy cartoon bubbles telling me that:

Her face is as white as snow.