Including a nonessential luxury item in each boy’s box has given them permission to play. To have fun. If your survival kit has come with a football, what do you do? You play. You say to the boys next to you, “Who wants a game?” and you make friends, and you run around and you get out of breath and you forget, for a moment, that you’re in a strange place with people you don’t know because the world is coming to an end.
There’s been no communication from anyone. We watch the TV but we don’t get the main channels anymore. The Scottish government, after they declared independence in February, changed it so that we only get a Scottish news channel. I don’t think they tell us the truth. We’ve heard nothing about a vaccine or a cure. They just say to stay calm and keep boys inside and remind us that the penalty for looting is twenty years in prison. I think some of the civil servants who put the Highland Evacuation Program together have died. I still read the opening letter most weeks as if it’s going to have magically changed and transformed into an answer.
Even now, the letter makes me shiver. The threat of prison if I do anything wrong. How did we come to this? I imagine Sue, the woman who signed it, as a hard-faced, flinty woman with square glasses and a pinched mouth. The kind of woman who, had she been a teacher, would have reveled in ripping up pieces of homework and bemoaned the lack of physical discipline in schools. I know that in reality she’s doing her job. She’s trying to save lives. I just wish her efforts hadn’t come at the cost of my family.
The phone rings. I jump on it, hoping it’ll be news of a vaccine too secret to be released on the news.
“Hello?”
“Hello, is that Morven Macnaughton?”
“Yes. Who are you?” God, you can tell I’ve been around teenage boys for too long. My manners have flown out the window.
“My name’s Catherine Lawrence. I’m an anthropologist. I’m so sorry, I know this is out of the blue, but could I please speak to you about the evacuation program?”
“How did you get this number?”
“A friend of mine works at the University of Edinburgh. She helped set up the program. She thought you might want someone to talk to. She said you’ve called the evacuation phone line a few times.”
My face flushes at the memory. I was told off like a naughty schoolgirl by a woman who sounded young enough to be my daughter.
“Are you a therapist?”
“No, no. Although I can try and find one and have her call you if that would be helpful. No, I’m an anthropologist. I work at University College London. I . . . I . . . I’m trying to collect stories of what is happening.”
“For the news?”
“No, for . . . well, for myself, I suppose, but one day they might become an academic paper. It’s a record. I want to record what’s happening. I want to write it all down.”
I’m suspicious of this strange English woman, but the voice of a woman is so welcome. I’ve mainly spoken to men for months. The desire to talk to her is overwhelming. I should put down the phone but I don’t. I don’t want to.
“What do you want to know?”
“Anything, everything. Tell me whatever you can.”
“My son is in a hut at the edge of our land.” The words spill out and I burst into tears. This is mortifying.
“Why is he there?”
“We put him in the hut right at the beginning to keep him safe, before the other boys arrived. We didn’t know if they would be infected so it seemed like the safest option.”
“And your husband?”
“I told him to stay with Jamie but he was worried about me being on my own taking care of all these boys we didn’t know. Jamie’s on his own. He’s been there for months.”