42

Fallout

Atomic by Donna McLean

The back door key, hidden under a plant pot in the garden, found easily by her hands; she let herself in. No blood in the kitchen, no green heel in the hall.  Kit came hurtling in after her and jumped on the counter.  Bridget opened a tin of Whiskas, gave Kit half, and left the tin on the counter, the spoon still in it. A bottle of milk in the fridge, she sniffed it and made herself cereal, ate standing up with Kit staring at her.  She left her dirty bowl in the sink. 

All their bedrooms were neat and tidy, beds made, no corpses, no guts dripping down the stairs.  She ran a bath, muddy clothes in a pile and sank beneath hot water and when she rose the house remained as silent as the grave.  Clean clothes, clean hair, the dirt beneath her fingernails picked out with her mum’s tweezers.  She put on her pyjamas and dressing gown, went downstairs, and turned on the telly but kept it quiet, the volume down in case there was a key in the lock.  She drank a cup-a-soup in front of Tom & Jerry and got out the biscuit tin while the news came on, flicking between ITN and BBC both reporting the same shit about politics and Thatcher and the space shuttle that was going to be launched the next day.  After a boring half an hour watching skiing on Channel 4, The Dukes of Hazzard came on and she watched that until she heard the letterbox click and the doorbell ring and wondered why her mum didn’t use her key. 

But it wasn’t her mum.

“Uncle Bill.”

“Alright, Bridge?” 

Paul was with him.

“She found you then.”

Paul pushed past her and ran into the house. 

“She’s not here.”

“Tell her when she gets back they want me down the hospital.  Got a jumper.”  He was always telling them about people at the end of their rope.  He made it sound funny. 

Bridget shut the door. 

In the kitchen Paul sat at the table, swinging his legs.  “Why didn’t mum come with you.”

“She’s not here.”

“But why didn’t she come.”

“I just told you.”

“No you didn’t.”

Paul got a plastic knight out of his pocket.  “Uncle Bill said she’d make me chips for tea.”

Bridget looked in the freezer. 

She got out the chips, spread them on an oven tray like she’d seen her mum do a thousand times, told Paul to go and watch telly.  She guessed the temperature.  She knew they came out sometimes burnt.  She sat on the sofa beside Paul till the end of Play Your Cards Right, but when she opened the oven expecting a woosh of heat, it was as dark and cold as when she’d put them in.

“Fuck.”

Paul trotted in after her.  “You’re not allowed to swear.”

“Fuck off.”

He stood on a chair and got on the counter. “You haven’t turned it on.”

“I have.”

“No you haven’t.  There’s no lights.  There have to be lights.”

Bridget went outside and looked up and down the street.  When she came back in the oven was on. 

“I flicked the switch.”  He pointed at the big red switch in the wall that their mum said they weren’t to touch. 

Bridget turned the dial up to full.  They ate burnt chips in front of George & Mildred.

Paul fell asleep on her shoulder, ketchup round his mouth.  She nudged him awake and dragged him upstairs, ran a flannel round his face, told him to get in his pyjamas, she wasn’t doing that for him.  She rummaged in his room and couldn’t find any, she went downstairs to the bag her Uncle Bill had dropped off with him and found his toothbrush and rabbit in there too, Pauly’s pink rabbit that had been supposed to be Bridget’s, but she hadn’t liked it, had shoved it under her bed where Paul had found it and claimed it as his own.  She’d broken into Greenham Common dressed in a giant pink bunny costume and had the best time of her life.  She’d run from the police and crawled through a fence and she hadn’t cared if she wore pink or blue or what her hair looked like or her fat or her face or what people thought.  She hadn’t been a girl who didn’t fit, she’d been Bridget, whatever that meant.  She’d been going to come home and tell them she was happy. 

She tucked Paul’s rabbit under the covers, tucked him in and turned out the light.  She ate another bowl of cereal standing up at the counter, used the last of the milk, the silver bottle top left bent beside it, not put under the sink in the empty ice cream container that her mum used for collecting them, kept going on about that it was for Blue Peter as if Bridget cared about that shit anymore.  She cleaned her teeth and got into bed, her mattress soft, her blankets warm; no mud, no damp, no dripping rain, no night watch and vigilantes, no women talking quietly by a fire, her house silent, her and her little brother alone.

In the morning they still weren’t back.

Neither of them, her mum who she only wanted home so she could leave, and her dad who she didn’t care if she never saw again.

She made egg and soldiers.

Paul’s hair stuck up in clumps.  Bridget cut the top off his egg.  He picked up a soldier and stuck it at the yolk.  It bent and broke in half.

“It’s not runny.”

Bridget ate one of the soldiers.

“Hey.”

“Hey yourself.”

“It’s supposed to be runny.”

“Just eat it.”

Paul got down from the table.  Bridget heard the television go on.  She ate the rest of his toast and threw his egg in the bin.  She went outside and looked up and down the street.  Kate’s Volvo was there.  She saw Simon Hilperton come out pushing two girls in front of him, dragging the twins behind.  He piled them in the car, slammed the door, started the engine, and roared off down the road. 

“Where’s dad?”  Paul had followed her out.

“Go back inside.”

“Uncle Bill was on the phone.”

Bridget ran up the path.  The telephone was back on the hook.  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“He wanted mum.”

She found his page in her mum’s address book and called him back but there was no answer. 

By lunchtime their mum still wasn’t home.

They ate chips again that evening, less burnt than last time, they finished the packet and Bridget made fishfingers to go with them.  They sat together on the sofa.  He had ketchup down his front.  She put her arm around him.  When she felt him grow heavy against her, she told him to go and clean his teeth.  She stayed up watching TV till the programmes ended, every car that whooshed past her dad’s car, every footstep on the pavement her mum’s.  She left the lights on when she went to bed in case they came in late.  Maybe they’d agreed a suicide pact together.  Maybe they’d decided to leave her and Paul alone forever. 

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