By seven o’clock, Luke’s room is covered in pins, bits of fabric and tissue paper but no one actually knows what they’re doing yet. Leanne’s still getting over her shock at being told the plan.
‘I still can’t believe you’re doing this,’ she keeps saying. ‘Jean’s going to go mental.’
‘I wonder how Julie and Charlotte are getting on,’ Chantel says.
Julie and Charlotte are out buying a camper van with some cash Chantel got out of the bank in town. She’s already explained to Luke about Blockbuster, and her shopping trip with Julie afterwards, and how there was no such thing as a sewing pattern for a body-suit (apart from for babies), and about how they had no idea about what fabric to get, or really how much, and how Julie kept worrying about where David was and how much of a nightmare Leanne was going to be. Chantel decided in the end that she’d be better off at Luke’s helping with the space-suit while Julie and Charlotte got the van, and Luke was grateful because he had no idea what had already gone on today. Also, he didn’t really like the idea of being stranded on his own with Leanne.
Since then, David’s turned up with fifty rolls of tin foil, a motorcycle helmet and a strange don’t-ask-what-happened expression, and Leanne’s emerged with her sewing machine and a bit of an attitude that Luke can’t work out, but seems to be something to do with the fact that she was the last person to be told what’s going on, and that she’s only been included because she can sew.
‘I can’t believe you didn’t get any sort of pattern,’ Leanne complains.
‘They only had ones for babies. I told you that,’ Chantel says.
‘You should have got one of those, then. We could have scaled it up.’
‘Yes, I know. You already said that.’
‘Right,’ says David. ‘I reckon Luke should lie on the floor on the fabric, and we can just draw around him. Then we just cut out the pieces and sew them up. Sorted.’
‘What about zippers and stuff?’ Leanne says. ‘You know, a way in and out?’
The others are all sitting on the floor, looking at the fabric with puzzled expressions. Luke’s sitting at his computer, looking up space-suit designs on the Internet. He’s feeling more excited then he’s ever felt before, and this is making him cheerful. The more cheerful he gets, the more pissed off Leanne seems to become.
‘Hey, look at this,’ he says. ‘SpaceProps.com. We could have hired a space-suit from them. Well, if we’d known we were doing this about a month in advance, we could have.’
‘Shut up, Luke,’ Leanne says.
‘I’m only joking,’ he says. ‘They’re replicas. They wouldn’t work, would they?’
‘Let’s have a look,’ says Chantel. She stands up and looks over Luke’s shoulder at the picture on the screen. ‘Wow, that looks well complicated.’
David has a look too. ‘It doesn’t have to look like that, though, does it?’ he says. ‘It just has to perform a function. All we have to do is make a body-suit then stick all the tin foil on it so it reflects the sun.’
‘Just find me a pattern,’ Leanne says.
That’s what Luke’s supposed to be doing on the Internet. He searches again, for the phrase ‘making a space-suit’, and is directed to the NASA site, which has several interesting space-suit-making projects intended for schools, involving balloons, hacksaws, sewer-pipe and gloves. ‘Gloves,’ he says suddenly, looking at the screen. ‘We’ll need gloves, won’t we? You know, to connect to the sleeves. Unless you can make them.’
‘I’m not making gloves as well,’ Leanne says.
‘I’ll ring Julie on the mobile,’ Chantel says. ‘I’ll tell her to pick some up.’
‘Where will she get gloves at this time of night?’ David says.
‘Supermarket? I don’t know.’
‘There’s other stuff on here,’ Luke says. ‘But I don’t know what any of it is.’
David has a look. ‘Oh, I see,’ he says. ‘Look, that tubing stuff is for flexibility. They should get some of that. And Duct tape as well, to join those bits together . . . Shit, where’re they going to get all this stuff? We should have thought about this earlier.’
‘What about one of those DIY shops on the retail park?’ Chantel suggests, dialling Julie’s number. ‘Hi,’ she says into the phone. ‘How’s it going? Oh, cool. Well, we’ve got a bit of a shopping list developing here – yeah, I know.’ She laughs. ‘Yeah, she is, a bit. Anyway, shall I just read this stuff out to you? Sorry? Oh, a DIY shop. One on the retail park? I know, sorry. Oh, OK. Speak to you then.’ She flips her phone shut.
‘Aren’t they getting it?’ David asks.
‘Yeah, they are, but they don’t have any paper or a pen, so they’re going to ring me back when they get to the shop.’
‘Print that out,’ David says to Luke. ‘And we’ll see what else we can find, before they ring back.’
‘Can someone at least measure Luke?’ Leanne says. ‘We’re wasting so much time.’
‘Why don’t you do it?’ David says.
‘I’m not touching him,’ she says. ‘He might get excited.’
‘I’ll do it,’ says Chantel, sighing, and picking up the tape-measure.
Luke gets up. ‘I haven’t been measured for ages,’ he says.
‘Oh, look,’ David says, sitting down at Luke’s computer. ‘They’ve got a list of average measurements here. Well, biggest and smallest. We could use measurements in between those. Luke’s seems like average build.’
‘It has to fit properly,’ Chantel says.
‘Yeah, but there are over a hundred measurements to be taken.’
Chantel looks over his shoulder. ‘Blah, blah . . . Elbow-to-elbow distance, blah, blah . . . Foot width, foot length . . . Shit! What are we going to put on his feet?’
‘Moon boots?’ Leanne suggests sarcastically.
‘Wellies,’ says Chantel. ‘It’ll have to be. We’ll have to attach them to the fabric the same way as the gloves, then wrap them in loads of foil.’
‘You’re pretty good at this,’ David says.
‘Cheers, mate.’
They smile at each other, then go back to looking at the screen.
‘Glue!’ says Chantel suddenly.
Her phone rings. She puts down the tape-measure, which she’s been waving around, and picks up the phone. ‘Oh, hi,’ she says into it. ‘It’s Julie and Charlotte,’ she says to the others. ‘They’re in Homebase.’ She puts her finger in her ear. ‘What? Oh, cool, have you got a pen now? Good. All right. We need a pair of wellies . . . Shut up! You can’t laugh, or we’ll never get this done. A pair of wellies, loads of Duct tape, a ten-foot length of sewer-pipe. No, I don’t know what it is, really. Hang on . . .’ Chantel looks at the computer screen. David scrolls to the picture. ‘Oh, OK. It’s like, um . . .’
‘It’s like the thing you have on vacuum cleaners,’ David says. ‘Those – fuck it, what are they called? – the, fuck it . . . the hose. Yeah, like the hose bit on a vacuum cleaner.’
‘Did you hear that?’ Chantel says to Julie. ‘Like the long hose bit on a vacuum cleaner. But you don’t actually want a vacuum-cleaner hose, you want a sewer-pipe. That’s what it says here, yeah. Like, I dunno, just like a long, bendy pipe with corrugated bits. Yeah? Cool. OK, we also need strong glue. No, not Super Glue, I can see us having an accident with that. Oh – David says they wouldn’t sell it to you anyway because you look like a pair of glue-sniffers and – what?’
David’s laughing too much to say anything else.
‘They do have all the tell-tale signs,’ Leanne says seriously. ‘I used to work in Homebase and we couldn’t sell solvents to anyone who looked dodgy in any way. We had training.’
‘Bloody hell,’ says Chantel. ‘Did you hear that? Hitler-Dorothy used to be Homebase-Hitler and refuse to sell solvents to anyone who looked dodgy. Can you imagine that?’ She’s laughing, but Leanne gives her a look, so she stops. ‘OK, sorry, Leanne. Anyway, gloves. I don’t know. What sort of gloves?’ she asks David.
‘Rubber?’ he suggests. ‘I don’t know what kind of gloves you can get at Homebase.’
‘Gardening gloves,’ says Leanne.
‘I reckon rubber,’ says David. ‘They shouldn’t be breathable in any way.’
‘Did you hear that?’ Chantel says into the phone. ‘Good. Right, we also need . . . Oh, it says here now that we do need vacuum-cleaner hose. David got it wrong.’ She smiles, and David pretends to hit her and she ducks. ‘Turns out the reason it looks so much like vacuum-cleaner hose is because it is sodding vacuum-cleaner hose. Yeah, I know. David, do we need the sewer-pipe as well? Oh, he says we do, but I don’t know why. No, I don’t know what it looks like now; I thought the vacuum-cleaner hose was a sewer-pipe, so . . . Just ask one of the assistants. But the hose is the important thing. We also need hacksaws, sandpaper, scissors. Oh, hang on. No, we’ve got scissors. Oh, but hang on again . . . Leanne says we can only use her scissors for fabric, so you’d better get some others for the tape and stuff. You got all that? Great. I think so. Yeah, I’ll call back if there’s anything else. OK. See ya.’
‘Did they get the van?’ Luke asks.
‘Yeah,’ Chantel says. ‘They got a VW Camper. They’re driving it back here after they finish at Homebase.’
‘Cool,’ says Luke.
‘You’re all a load of nutters,’ Leanne says, shaking her head.
‘Why?’ says David. ‘We’re only going to Wales.’
‘What about the floods?’ she asks.
‘We’ll manage,’ Luke says. ‘We’ll have to.’
‘They’re telling people not to travel, though,’ she says.
‘Except in emergencies,’ Chantel points out.
‘And?’ says Leanne.
‘This is an emergency,’ Luke says. ‘This is pretty much a matter of life and death.’