No one was there when I got back. Liam’s flat felt like it had grown in size, or I had shrunk. Something about being a child alone makes aloneness so much bigger. Doubly, triply alone. I could hear my footsteps more than normal, so I sat still.
Ma came back from the Pearl early. I thought she’d say it was okay, but she flicked our switches a million times. She went to the window, then came to where I was on the sofa. I hugged her from the side. She was more normal then, size wise, but I still remember feeling like I couldn’t get enough of her into my hug.
‘Why aren’t you wearing a top?’ she said.
‘It’s my birthday.’
‘So?’ she said. ‘No, I know. It’s shit. Sorry about this. Have you seen your brother?’
I shook my head. She lit a big scented candle Liam had given her, red wax, cinnamon, dusty on top, and I read and reread the posters on his wall, all of them in different fonts. ‘Life is short, lick the bowl.’ ‘Let’s Be-Gin.’ ‘Women to the left, because men are always RIGHT.’ And the one he had above the sink: ‘SAVE WATER. Drink beer instead.’ Liam only had a microwave, so we couldn’t have a hot dinner. We ate crisps instead. We slept on the sofa. I stayed awake until I felt Ma’s whole body go loose, and then I found a way to turn her into my pillow.
There were still no lights in the morning, nor any sign of Liam or JD. I was so hungry that my stomach made the sound of a bath being emptied, and Ma said her headache was like a helmet now. Tight and heavy and she couldn’t get it off.
When Liam did come home, he was out of breath from running up the stairs. He didn’t sit down once, even though Ma tried to get him to. I asked if he had anything to eat, and he said no, then gave me some chewing gum.
‘I don’t get it – was it you guys?’ she asked him. ‘Playing with boxes?’
He looked at us. ‘What do you mean “playing with boxes”?’
‘Messing with the wires,’ she said. ‘Down at the thing.’
‘What, at the Sit In? No, no,’ he said. ‘I was back with them after the party. They were surprised as anyone when the lights went off. Whole place went quiet as a mouse.’
‘Do you think it’s terrorists?’ she said. ‘Some kind of war thing?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘So you just stayed put in the stench?’
‘Had no choice! The roads were fucked. No traffic lights.’ His thumb-knuckle grated at the grey patch on his beard. ‘You’re right though. Something not good’s happening,’ he said. ‘We got word from the guys up north. The whole country’s down.’
On the second day, our water stopped. When I turned the tap, I could hear the sound of the valve opening, but nothing but a drip would come out. The shops were shut. The banks were shut. The ATMs had dead screens. In the dark, people tripped on stairs. A woman Liam knew started to give birth on King Street. The baby was the wrong way round, but when they got her to the hospital they said natural births only, they couldn’t do C-sections – the generator had gone out. They sent her boyfriend to find clean water, anything sterile in a bottle. But the water didn’t help, forceps couldn’t help, nothing could help; the baby died inside her. In other rooms in the hospitals, people on life-support machines stiffened, turned blue.
‘They’ll send the army or something,’ Ma said. ‘They’ll send help or something. They have to. Doesn’t matter if there are fucking “tensions”. It’s a national emergency.’
‘It’s a national disgrace,’ Liam said.
But still – no one came.