That night we slept, the two of us, on the floor by the stove in Mrs Mags’s hut, snug as bugs with the wind roaring through the trees all around us and the old man snoring on the sofa. I asked my mum what she thought of the huts, and weren’t they fantastic and not like huts at all.
Yes, she said, what an adventure I’d been on, staying with such lovely people in such a beautiful spot.
Well, but it wasn’t really like an adventure, not really because everyone thought I was a boy to begin with and not everyone was nice, George for instance. And I didn’t know where she and Mavis were.
Sorry, she said, of course it wasn’t an adventure. Probably very scary really not knowing anyone and not knowing where she, herself, was.
Yes, very scary, because Miss Weatherbeaten had been there.
Miss Weatherbeaten?
Yes, Miss Weatherbeaten, I said. Didn’t she know Miss Weatherbeaten had been with us and had gone now to look after a rest centre and had taken Rosie back to the town hall.
‘Rosie? Who’s Rosie?’ she asked.
‘Rosie was lost,’ I said, ‘and came to Carbeth with us.’
‘Didn’t she like it?’ asked Mum.
‘Yes, she did,’ I replied, ‘but Miss Weatherbeaten thought she’d be better off at the town hall.’
‘She might be right.’
I said I didn’t think so and that I would have looked after Rosie myself, and so would Mr Tait, who was very angry with Miss Weatherbeaten.
She didn’t say very much at all then, for a little while, lying beside me in the darkness. I couldn’t lie close because of her leg. If my own foot had given it even the tiniest little dunt with its tiniest little toe I would have hurt her. I didn’t want to hurt her and I didn’t want to touch the foot, or the leg, or whatever. So I lay close but not right up against her as I would have liked, as we always did at home in our bed in the alcove. It was like the night before when I slept on the floor with Mr Tait and the other family that I didn’t know, keeping a respectable gap between us all.
I asked her if she was comfortable, as comfortable as she could be and whether she needed anything else, a glass of water, or some of my ‘pillow’ (my coat bundled in a roll).
She said she’d barely slept for a week with the pain and with worrying about me, but she felt as heavy as lead and thought she’d sleep fine. We could worry about tomorrow when it came. I stroked the bit of hair that stuck out beneath her turban and tickled her neck. And she sang, ‘Golden slumbers kiss your eyes, Smiles await you when you rise,’ just like she did when I was wee, just like she’s always done for Mavis and me. ‘Sleep pretty Lenny, do not cry, And I will sing a lullaby.’
A drop of her tears hit my palm before I realised my own were soaking the coat. There was no need to ask about Mavis.
Into the long night we journeyed together, drifting on a sea of dreams and nightmares, waking each other with cries or shudders, dodging falling bricks and shooting flames, stepping over things we shouldn’t have seen or shouldn’t have lost, together but apart, apart but together, and always with Mavis crouched somewhere in the shadows.