Isaac and Mariam’s cuts had a lot of glass in them, so the paramedics decided to take them down to A&E to look at them properly. The other three had been lucky- barely a scratch on them. Natalie in particular had lucked out, because by falling on top of her like he had, Isaac had ended up as a kind of accidental human shield.
“From what we can tell, it was a rather hastily put-together bomb,” said one of the policemen who’d come to the hospital with them, “If it hadn’t been so close to the big window, the only damage it would have caused would have been a few burn marks on the furniture.”
“It was probably meant to go off a lot earlier than it did,” added the other policeman (they’d told them their names, but for the life of her Natalie couldn’t remember what they were), “Most likely, while the club was in session.” They were sitting opposite Natalie, Alex and Rosalyn in the hospital waiting room. There had been no word from Isaac or Mariam yet, but the paramedics had assured them that they’d probably just need stitches. Even so, Natalie wished they’d come out. She wanted to know for certain that Isaac’s face wasn’t as bad as it had looked.
One of the policemen cleared his throat. “Now, we’re going to need official statements from all five of you in the next few days, but you don’t need to worry about that right now. Is there anything you’d like to ask us, while we’re here?”
Natalie and Alex spoke pretty much in unison. Not surprising- there was one very obvious question. “Do you have any idea who…?”
The policeman raised his hand and cut them both off. “Wouldn’t want to rush to judgement before we’ve got any evidence. If anyone claims responsibility for it, we’ll all know soon enough.”
They left soon after that, leaving behind contact numbers for a couple of victim support groups. Natalie and the others sat in silence for a while. Alex had got in between Natalie and Rosalyn, so that he’d be in the perfect position to put a comforting hand on their arms if they started to fidget. It was funny- with most other boys (men really- Alex was twenty-three, after all), Natalie would have found that annoying. It would have felt like they were staking a claim, or making a show of calming down the hysterical females. But with Alex, there didn’t seem to be any ulterior motive. Honestly, he barely even seemed to notice he was doing it.
“I wish I’d never found that bloody book,” Rosalyn said quietly.
Once again, Alex and Natalie spoke at the same time:
“No, you can’t think like that…”
“Don’t be daft, Rosalyn, you couldn’t have known…”
Rosalyn sighed. “I know, but… We got so excited over it, and look how it’s ended up. We should have just stayed in and watched 24.”
If Isaac had been here, he’d have said something about how being sliced to bits by broken glass was much less painful than having to watch 24, but coming from Natalie that would probably have been in bad taste. She wasn’t the one who’d been sliced to bits, for a start. “We can’t do that every night. We take a bigger risk every time we cross the road…”
“Rosalyn, listen.” Alex sat up straight and put his hand on Rosalyn’s shoulder. “We were all happy to come out tonight. We all wanted to see that graffiti. And if somebody else decided to ruin that, then it’s their fault, not yours.”
“But I made such a big deal about it. Going on about fate and stuff.”
“We’re students,” Natalie said with a smile, “We’re allowed to make a big deal about silly stuff without having to worry about ending up in hospital for it.” She would have said more, but at that moment, Mariam came through the doors, her forearms dotted with white bandages.
“Mariam!” Alex stood up to greet her, holding his arms wide. “How are you?”
“Well, I need to come back in two weeks to get the stitches removed, but until then, they’re done with me.” Mariam let herself be pulled into an awkward hug. “Any news about Isaac?”
Natalie shook her head. “Shouldn’t be too long… They said his cuts weren’t any worse than yours, right?”
“Yeah, but on his face, though?” Mariam sat down beside Rosalyn. “I’m just worried about scars.”
That was what Natalie had been worried about, too. Now that someone else had said it out loud, she felt a whole lot worse.
It hadn’t surprised her when Isaac had got excited about the graffiti in the park. If anybody was going to get excited about some silly graffiti about gossipy bees, it was Isaac. He was always bouncing from one thing to another, always making extravagant declarations for everyone else’s benefit, as if it was his job to keep them entertained. And he should have been allowed to be like that without something like this happening.
Mariam’s eyes flickered from left to right. Natalie saw her decide to change the subject. “So, um, I think I worked out what the graffiti meant,” she said, looking at Rosalyn.
“Really?”
“Yeah- I got thinking about it while they were cleaning up my arms. I remembered a book I read when I was at school. They talked about an old beekeeping superstition where you’re meant to tell the bees any important events in your life, or they’ll get annoyed and stop producing honey.”
Natalie didn’t know why that made them all laugh so much. It was something about the idea of a bee sulking, combined with how tense they’d been for the last couple of hours. She’d heard people talk about safety valves, in situations like this. “Stroppy bees,” she said, and that set Rosalyn off again. Natalie caught her breath and managed to say something useful. “There’s kind of an animal theme, then, with Kelpie and Silkie. We’ve got bees, seals…”
“Horses,” added Alex, “Kelpies could transform into horses.”
“How are you an expert on kelpies all of a sudden?” demanded Mariam, still laughing.
“I used to live in Edinburgh! They’re very proud of their folklore!”
Natalie glanced guiltily around the waiting room, but no-one else seemed annoyed by their giggling fit. The nurses and receptionists had probably seen a lot worse, and the other patients all had bigger things to worry about. “Do you think there’s other messages out there?” she asked the others, “Working their way through all the animal superstitions?”
Rosalyn’s eyes lit up a bit. “There could be…”
“There’s almost certainly one about black cats somewhere.”
“Something about finding jewels in toads’ heads…” added Mariam.
Just then, the doors to the side of the desk opened, and Isaac came through. “That was a bit of a palaver, wasn’t it?” he said in a loud, chirpy voice.
This time, all four of them jumped to their feet. Isaac barely had time to get two yards from the door before they were crowding around him. “How are you?” asked Mariam, taking his face in her hands.
It didn’t look good. Isaac’s forehead, nose and left cheek were covered in gauze, and that was bad enough. The little scabs around the edge were worse. They gave the impression that he had barely any face left under there.
Isaac made a big show of shrugging. “Not too bad, not too ba-a-ad…” He winked at Mariam. “They’ve loaded me up with the good stuff. How about you?”
Mariam smiled. “Some of it, yeah. Just a bit of paracetamol in my case.”
It can’t be that bad if they’re not keeping him in overnight, Natalie told herself, but that didn’t even seem like the point. All they’d wanted to do was enjoy their evening. Those little pebble-dash scabs shouldn’t have been the end result of anything. Isaac might have been shrugging it off, but Natalie felt just about ready to murder someone.
Alex had an arm round Isaac’s shoulders, and he was guiding him to the exit. “Come on, let’s go home. You can sit up front this time.”
Isaac glanced around at Natalie and Rosalyn. “What, not in between two lovely ladies? Aww.”
Mariam laughed. “Alex is a lovely enough lady for anyone.”
Isaac really must have been on the good stuff, because he was practically nodding off by the time they got back to the house. None of them could remember whether you were supposed to avoid falling asleep after taking painkillers or if that was just after a head injury, so they all spent the next few hours sitting in Isaac’s room, watching the noisiest DVDs they could.
At some point, Mariam remembered that they hadn’t had dinner, and sent Natalie outside to phone for pizza. She went to the kitchen, so as not to talk over Armageddon, and made the call. One large margherita, one large pepperoni, plus garlic bread and Pepsi. The guy on the other end told her it would be about half an hour.
Barely ten seconds after she hung up, Natalie heard the kitchen door creak open behind her. “Natalie,” said Alex, softly, so as not to startle her.
Natalie turned round.
“I just wanted to tell you- if you need to be alone for a few minutes, that’s OK.” He had one of those voices that got slightly rougher as it got quieter. “Everyone understands.”
Natalie grinned. “Trying to get rid of me, are you?”
She felt bad immediately after saying it- he was just trying to be nice- but Alex didn’t seem offended. “You seemed on edge.”
Shit. Was it that obvious? “Well… aren’t we all? It’s not as if I was the one who got my face filled with broken glass.”
“People react to shock in different ways,” said Alex, his big brown eyes wide and earnest.
“And apparently my way is not being able to concentrate on Bruce Willis films.”
“Well, Natalie, some might say that makes you the sanest one of all.”
They both laughed. Not hysterically, the way they had in the waiting room when Mariam had mentioned the bees, but reassuringly. Just a smile and a puff of air each, but it was enough to make Natalie relaxed enough to say things out loud. “I don’t know what’s up with me.” She kept thinking about a time not long after her little sister, Stephanie, had started secondary school, when she’d come home letting out the most heartbreaking sobs Natalie had ever heard because some of the other girls in her class had torn up her Geography homework after she’d worked on it all night. It was a really good thing that Natalie and Stephanie had been at different schools at the time, because otherwise nothing would have stopped Natalie from going after the little shits with a cricket bat the next day. Isaac wasn’t eleven, wasn’t crying, and wasn’t her sister, but even so, it was the same feeling all over again. “I feel like I’m either going to burst into tears or punch a wall.”
“Either would be fine,” said Alex. He looked around critically. “Although I’m not sure these walls would stand up to many punches.”
Natalie glanced at the cracks in the plaster. “Yeah, you’d get three or four hits in, and then it would disintegrate.”
Alex nodded, and put his arms out by his sides, as if it was the natural thing to do next. Natalie briefly felt like putting him off- I’m not five, you’re not our dad, if anyone needs a hug it’s Isaac and Mariam– but she didn’t. She stepped forward, let him hug her, and hugged him back. She was pretty sure that Alex was actually an inch or two shorter than her, but the way his arms squeezed around her back and shoulders made it feel as if she was being cocooned on all sides.
“I’ll come back in,” she said, “Armageddon’s not that bad.”
Alex laughed again, and let go.
*
There was a booming noise coming from the pillow just below Denny’s ear, as if a tiny army were marching through the bed and up to meet him. He’d thought this before. The image had been in his head since he was about six, ready for him to summon and use for exactly this kind of situation. A tiny army, inside the pillows and mattress just below Denny’s head, dressed in shiny red uniforms, marching up a white spiral staircase until they reached the top. Denny tried to think his way down. He tried to sink into the pillow, through the mattress, until he could meet the marching army face-to-face. He couldn’t be trusted anywhere else.
He’d done such bad things. He was sorry, but “sorry” didn’t stop it hurting. “Sorry” didn’t stop him doing the exact same things again next time. His friends and family had all worked so hard, but Denny kept disappointing them. There was just something wrong with him, really wrong, deep down.
He’d told himself he’d had good reasons for doing it, but it was a lie and he knew it.
camelwithout 