The next day was a Wednesday. Wednesday at school began with double geography; the most exciting thing that happened on Wednesday was biology with old Mr Martin, who was liable to fart at unexpected intervals.
This Wednesday, Fred woke to a rainforest thunderstorm, and rain dripping through the roof of the den into his ear.
Lila and Con were already awake, poring over the map, their heads almost touching. Max was snoring in a rain puddle, mud in his fringe and eyebrows. Baca’s fur was soaked, slicked down against his bones. He looked as furious as it is possible for a sloth to look.
Lila laid her thumb on the X on the map. ‘It’s got to be much closer than Manaus,’ she said as she turned and saw Fred was awake. ‘Fred! Do you think the raft could get us there?’
He moved to look, feeling his muscles creak under his skin. Both girls were shivering. It wasn’t cold, but the damp of the day had got into their skin.
‘We’d have to get through all those weeds here,’ he said, ‘and there’s that sign there.’
‘That thing that looks like a snake?’
‘Exactly.’ He looked out towards the river and the filing-cabinet-grey sky. ‘But, yes – I’d say we could.’
‘But you don’t think we should?’ asked Con. It was, very clearly, a question that begged the answer no. ‘We saw from the tree! It was miles!’
‘We can’t stay here forever,’ said Fred. He had never wanted anything as much as he wanted to launch the raft down the river to find the X. He needed to know what it was to be an explorer. There was another kind of hunger in his gut that had nothing to do with food: it was terror and possibility, fused together with hope.
‘You’ve got to be joking?’ Con looked from Lila to Fred.
‘But we have a map,’ said Lila softly. ‘We would actually know where we’re going this time.’
‘But you don’t know what’s at the end of it!’ Con’s skin was white and red in patches.
‘But it’s got to be something, or there wouldn’t be a map,’ said Fred.
‘But what if the X is supposed to mean: never go here because there are things that will come for you in the dark!’
‘But if the other option is to stay here, I thought you’d want to leave?’ said Fred.
‘I do want to leave! I hate it here!’ she spat. ‘I hate the mosquitos and the ants and the bites and the endless, endless hunger all the time! But I don’t want to follow a map to nowhere – I just want to go home.’
Max jerked awake and began to whine, tugging at Lila’s sleeve. She shook him off.
‘I want to go home too!’ said Lila. Her eyebrows were a tight angry line across her forehead. ‘But it’s no worse for you than for anyone else.’
‘Yes it is.’ Con’s face was contorted beyond recognition. ‘You don’t understand. It’s easier for you because you’re used to it! You’re from here!’
Lila’s eyes widened. ‘I live in a city.’ Her voice was thin with shock. ‘We have a dining room! With silver candlesticks! I do not live in the jungle!’
‘But you’re not feeling sick all the time.’ Con’s jaw was clenched. ‘I wake
up every morning feeling like I’m going to vomit!’ She thumped the wet ground, and flecks of mud sprang up around her fist.
‘But so do I! I want –’
‘I hate it so much here I can’t breathe.’ ‘Do you think any of us like it?’
‘But you’re not alone!’ Con burst out. ‘You’ve got Max!’
‘Exactly! Exactly, and he cries all the time, and if he dies it’ll be my fault!’
Max heard and let out a roar. Sobs shook his whole body. Fred caught his wrist and held it, to stop him from running.
‘At least you know if you die there’ll be someone who’s bothered to care!’ Con yelled over the noise.
‘It’s not my fault if nobody cares about you,’ spat Lila. ‘You don’t know –’ ‘Stop it!’ shouted Max. He ran at the two girls and kicked out at both of
them, his shoes smacking mud against their skin. ‘Stop it, right now!’
Lila’s mouth shut with a snap. She turned to her brother and allowed him to climb into her arms. She rubbed his back, her eyes utterly exhausted. ‘Don’t cry. It just makes it worse.’
A tear was running down Con’s cheek. Fred pulled a leaf from the wall of the shelter and handed it to her. She mopped her face with it. It didn’t do much good. ‘I’m just so tired,’ she said. ‘And I’m so hungry. And I ache.’
Lila looked down at her hands. ‘I didn’t mean it, what I just said.’
There was a silence. The rain thumped against the leaves over their heads.
‘I have nightmares, about my mama,’ said Lila. ‘I dream that she’s looking for me, and I’m caught in a tree and I can’t shout and I can’t make her look up and see me.’ She hesitated. ‘Do you dream about your parents?’ Fred dreamt of nothing else; his father just out of earshot, just out of reach, while he struggled in the dark to touch him with his fingertips. He
half-nodded, carefully non-committal.
Con’s mouth shaped a word, then fell still. ‘It’s not like that for me,’ she said at last. ‘I live with my great-aunt.’
‘What happened to your parents?’ asked Lila.
‘They’re dead.’ Con’s mouth hardened again and she set her jaw, as if daring them to sympathise. ‘My mother died when I was three, and my father was killed in the war. And then a family fostered me.’
‘But you just said –’
‘They had a baby of their own, and they threw me out. So I was sent to live with my great-aunt.’ Con gave a carefully nonchalant shrug. ‘She didn’t really want me, but there were no other options.’
‘They kicked you out?’
‘They said I bullied the baby. I didn’t. But once … once it was crying, and it wouldn’t stop, and I gave it a tiny slap.’
‘Oh,’ said Lila. Her face was stricken.
‘And – I don’t know.’ She paused, swallowed, bit a slither off her thumbnail and went on. ‘They said I shouted things at the baby. It was only once, truly. And it didn’t understand, so why would it matter?’
Fred nodded.
‘My great-aunt – she sends me to spend summers with the nuns.’ ‘Nuns?’
‘Convent school. That’s why I’m in Brazil. The year before that I was in India. She says the travel will improve my character. I hated it.’
‘Do you want to be improved?’ Lila seemed to be trying not to sound too sceptical.
Con tried to smile. ‘Not really. But she likes girls to be quiet and proper; she says I’m rude. I don’t mean to be. But then, when I try to be good – what I think is good – she doesn’t notice. Or maybe she doesn’t care. So mostly I just … I don’t know. Don’t bother.’
She wiped her nose with her finger and thumb. ‘And I don’t think … I don’t think she’ll have sent people to look for me. There isn’t much money. The convent school paid for my boat fare over here. They have a fund for war orphans.’ She grimaced, a deep, bitter wince away from her own words. ‘Charity case.’
‘So when you said –’ ‘I lied.’
‘Your aunt sounds absolutely awful,’ said Lila.
‘Really, she does,’ Fred said. He wondered if he should punch Con on the arm, the way the other boys did at school. He decided it might not be a punching occasion.
‘She’s just old, really.’ Con breathed in a deep, shuddering breath, as if she had expelled something weighty. She scrubbed at her eyes with a handful of her hair. ‘I’ve never told anyone. About my foster family. Please don’t tell anyone.’
‘Who would we tell?’ said Fred, looking at the green wall of the jungle around them.
Lila unhooked Baca’s claws from her neck and settled him on Con’s shoulder. ‘Here. He might try to eat your ears. But he means it in a nice way.’
A tear ran down Con’s cheek. Baca licked it away.
Fred looked at Con. Fred never hugged anybody. His father didn’t believe in hugging; he said it was presumptuous and unhygienic. But Con looked so suddenly bony, and defeated. He made a fist and pushed it softly against Con’s shoulder, rocking her sideways.
Con waited longer than Fred had expected before she tensed up and, with a half-laugh, shook him off.
‘OK,’ she said. Her breath was shaky. ‘Fine. You win. We’ll follow the map.’
Fred felt something fierce and hot ignite in his stomach. ‘If we gather grubs and berries today,’ he said, ‘we could be ready to go by tomorrow.’
Lila looked at Con’s tense face. ‘Tomorrow,’ she said.
Con hunched her shoulders and bent her head. It was almost a nod.
| Chalk