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‘Thank you,’ said Susan. ‘Normal rules apply, guys. You can use my laptop, after everything is packed away.’
Their luggage was still in the car. They had brought what little had survived the explosion with them, supplemented by new clothes hastily bought from a department store before leaving the city. Everything they owned in the world was contained in just a few bags.
‘You should eat first,’ said Grandma X firmly. ‘Lunch is ready.’
A platter lay on the chrome kitchen table, protected from more than just flies by a Portland Lighthouse tea-towel. The broad-shouldered ginger tom the twins had seen before looked up from its contemplation of the covered food as they entered. Its nose twitched hopefully.
‘Not for you, Ari,’ said Grandma X, shooing the cat away. ‘That’s Aristotle. Watch out for him. He’ll take the food out of your mouth if you let him, particularly if Kleo isn’t around to keep him in check.
‘Where’s she got to, by the way?’ she added, speaking directly to the cat. ‘I thought she’d be here to say hello.’
Ari jumped onto the sink and flicked his tail.
‘Perhaps she will grace us with her presence later,’ said Grandma X as she handed out plates and swept away the tea-towel, revealing a generous spread of bread, cold meat, cheese and salad. ‘Do you like lemonade? I’ll get us all a glass each.’
Jaide and Jack exchanged a glance, remembering the scene they had witnessed in the kitchen earlier, and the letter they had received the day of the explosion. Their grandma talked to cats. Worse, she seemed to think they talked back. That was almost as bad as the house having no television.
They sat at the table, feeling awkward and out of place. The kitchen was probably the most normal room in the house, but here they were subjected to the scrutiny of the cat, Grandma X and their mother, who was watching to make sure they were on their best behaviour. Neither twin felt inclined to cause trouble at that moment. Apart from the faint sound of a clock from elsewhere in the house, it was suddenly very quiet.
Tick-tock went the clock. Tick-tock. Then, out of nowhere, tick-tock-tack, as though it had improvised a whole new beat, just because it could.
‘Help yourself,’ said Grandma X, and the twins realised that she had been waiting for them to start.
Jack made himself a particularly thick sandwich with lettuce, ham and tomato, while Jaide made a much neater and more organised version of the same thing. Susan just had bread with butter, while Grandma X made an open sandwich balancing a bit of everything on top of a generous spread of mustard. Ari stuck out his pink tongue as if he could taste it from a distance, and looked as though he was waiting for the first opportunity to pounce.
‘You said you wanted to talk to me about something, Susan,’ Grandma X said.
‘Well, yes. Hector says – that is, Hector said —’ Again, the twins’ mother glanced at Jaide and Jack, as though wishing they were elsewhere so she could talk to her mother-in-law in private, but simultaneously afraid to let them out of her sight. ‘He doesn’t know how long it will take to fix things, to return everything to normal. I’m hoping it won’t take long, but —’
‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you, either,’ said Grandma X, reaching out to pat her daughter-in-law’s hand. ‘You are welcome to stay here as long as it takes.’
‘I know, I mean – that’s not quite what —’ Susan’s phone buzzed. She picked it up, but it stopped buzzing even as she looked at the caller ID and pulled a face. ‘Oh, blast. That’s work. I’ve been waiting to hear from them about getting something temporary while we’re up here.’
‘That’s a sensible idea.’
She shook the phone. ‘I’d call back, but I don’t seem to be getting any signal now.’
‘You may have to go out to the road,’ said Grandma X. ‘Mobile phones don’t work well in this old house.’
‘Okay, I’ll be back in a moment,’ said Susan. She gave the twins a stern behave look and headed off down the hallway.
There was a minute’s awkward silence, in which Jack’s mouthful of sandwich lost its taste and seemed to swell up like a lump of plaster, so heavy and thick it took three tries to swallow it.
‘What does a house being old have to do with Mum’s phone?’ asked Jaide. ‘It’s new, and radio waves either get through things or they don’t.’
Grandma X beamed at her. ‘You’re a smart girl, Jaidith. I do believe we’re going to get on just fine.’
Both twins were keenly aware that she hadn’t answered Jaide’s question, but before they could ask again, Susan came back, looking unhappy.
‘I have to start work tomorrow,’ she announced.
‘So soon?’ asked Grandma X. ‘You’ve only just got here.’
‘They’re desperate. Someone suddenly took sick, and there’s a shortage of helicopter-trained paramedics nationwide. I’m all they’ve got.’
‘I suppose it is fortunate to have skills that are in demand.’
‘Except this job is out of town, with three day shifts,’ replied Susan, running her fingers through her hair.
‘That is a shame,’ said Grandma X, glancing at the twins. ‘But we’ll manage, won’t we?’
Jack thought about being stuck in the big old house with their strange grandma, and his heart seemed to falter inside his chest. He glanced across at Jaide. She was staring down into her lap, a sure sign she was upset. It wasn’t their fault the house had blown up, and they hadn’t chosen to come to Portland. Now they were trapped, without even their mother around for the first few days.
Jack wished their father would appear and sweep them away to wherever he was, even though he was apparently somewhere incredibly remote, because Susan said he couldn’t even call them for a few weeks. So there was no point wishing for something that could never happen, or arguing, either. Their mother had to work, and it was an important job. She saved people’s lives, after all.
Susan’s expression was a mixture of hope and desperation. ‘I’ll make it up to both of you when I get back, I promise,’ she told them. ‘We’ll do something fun.’
‘They’ll be all right,’ Grandma X assured her. ‘I’ll get them settled in. School starts on Monday anyway, so they’ll have plenty to occupy their minds.’
Jaide groaned. She’d forgotten all about school! They’d had the last week off, but now it was Saturday, and that was already half over. The prospect of starting at an entirely new school only made things worse. Temporary it might be, but they wouldn’t know anyone. All their friends were so far away, they might as well not exist.
‘I’m not hungry,’ she said, pushing her half-eaten sandwich to one side.
Jack pushed his aside, too, even though he was hungry. He didn’t put what he was thinking into words, because if he said, ‘My life sucks,’ he could say goodbye to any time on his mother’s laptop.
‘I guess you had those snacks in the car,’ said Susan with strained goodwill. ‘Let’s get the bags out of the car now and then we can try to relax. We could take a walk along the beach. Would you like that, kids?’
The prospect of getting out of the house helped restore some of the twins’ energy, even if it meant they had to unload the car first. There was depressingly little to carry, and they had all their bags inside after just a few trips. While Grandma X went upstairs to get changed, Susan took the twins into her arms and hugged them tightly.
‘It’s only three days,’ she said, sounding more like she was talking to herself than to them. ‘That might be long enough.’
‘Long enough for what?’ asked Jaide.
‘You mean for Dad to come back?’ Jack chimed in.
‘Long enough for something to happen, certainly,’ said Grandma X as she came down the stairs.
The humans’ voices faded into the distance. Ari jumped down from the window where he’d been obse
rving their departure, and then up to the table, via a chair, the stove and the fridge, just for fun. With one sharp claw he snared a slice of ham, which he delicately ate and then chased down with several licks of lemonade from Jack’s cup.
The cat purred to himself as he enjoyed the lemonade. Grandma X was never this distracted – and the children had only just arrived! He could hardly imagine what else might be forthcoming when they settled in and discovered what they were.
The faintest noise came through the open window – the sound of a mouse rustling through the dry grass near the front steps. Ham and lemonade were forgotten in the twitch of a whisker. The chase was on! With a sudden leap, straight through the window, Ari was gone.
High above, the weathervane twirled around thirteen times, anticlockwise, in carefree defiance of the prevailing wind.
SUSAN LEFT VERY EARLY THE next morning and, although she looked in on the twins three times to repeat goodbyes and apologies, Jack was still only half-awake as he watched the car’s tail-lights recede, a mournful red glow bouncing down the lane. So his father was gone, and now, even if it was only for three days, his mother was gone, too.
Jack grimaced and rolled over. His eyes drifted shut, and within moments he was dreaming about rats. Thousands of rats, lifting him up and carrying him on their backs, kind of like how he imagined crowd-surfing at a concert. Only furry. It was quite nice, really, though even in his dream he knew he should be disturbed by this.
Jaide was a deeper sleeper than her brother. She had barely stirred when her mother had said goodbye, but once she was awake, she was wide awake and unable to get back to sleep. The floorboards creaked as she slipped out of bed and put on her father’s old dressing-gown. Surprisingly, it was one of the few things that had survived the explosion. It was brown and the hem had frayed where it dragged behind her, but she wouldn’t wear anything else.
Tiptoeing lightly, she ran to the bathroom, a cramped arrangement of sink, bench and toilet, all in a sickly yellow next to a white enamelled metal claw-foot bath. Flushing the toilet made pipes bang and shudder seemingly miles underground, and Jaide held her breath until the echoes faded away.
She left the bathroom and crossed to the stairs, hesitating on the landing as she thought about going up to see what lay on Grandma X’s floor.
‘What’re you doing?’ asked a voice from behind her.
