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rubbish, and smashed it hard against the wall. I remember hearing her scream insanely. I suppose I may have been holding a chairleg above my head, but seeing her terror I dropped my arm. I felt suddenly tired.
    ‘You’re my family,’ I said. My voice had gone wobbly. ‘You and Luke. I know things have been … difficult. But he’s getting stronger. So are you. You said you would marry me, remember.’
    The odd thing is, she agreed to it, because she had promised, because of Luke. She would marry me, as a pledge to the child, but no longer live with me or love me. ‘I’m tired of men, as a matter of fact. They’re okay as friends, but I’ll live alone. Or else with Sylvie and her child. That would be company for Luke. Don’t cry,’ she said, seeing my stricken face. ‘Get a grip on yourself. You’re a father. And you’ll always be special,’ she added, more kindly. ‘It’s just … I trusted you too much. I think that women should be independent.’
    And so we got married; a kind of divorce.
    And much of it’s still a mystery to me. How can I explain it to these crazy kids, who live for food, and fire, and sex? How love was so important to us. How tiny shades of wants and wishes made us fight, and sob, and part. How humans had everything, and valued nothing.

5
    C old, cold, battering cold, cold that howls and bites and burns, cold we shrink from like an enemy, as darkness comes, as the sun slips away. We huddle together round the fire like friends, but can anyone be friends with the wild children? They let me creep close, they tolerate me, because they want the things I have – my expertise with the machines, my stories. They think I am as old as god …
    They have no family, no history.
    In the middle of the night, the cold is like stone, black and solid and hard as death, and as the dawn comes it sharpens to pain, as light creeps back with the morning wind. (I loved it, once, that little wind. In the Tropical Time, it came like grace. Now it’s the wind that takes the dying. Comes like a blade to finish them off.)
    And then the sun. See, it’s rising. Our friend the sun, my only friend. The line of white along the horizon, the light reflected off the back of the ice … It will redden soon, then the sun will appear, and this frozen ball will roll towards it, the sun will climb over the smoking towers (that stain of foul greasy smoke from the chimneys, hinting at a long night’s killing and eating), piercing the mesh of the perimeter fence, till the heat begins to melt the grey grass, and a dull soaked greenness spreads in patches, and the torn airport fence begins to drip, glitter and weep as the frost dissolves, and the broken windowpanes catch fire, great burning lakes for a few brief moments, and the human mound starts to shuffle and groan, what looked like a pyre of blackened bodies begins to colour and shift and dissolve into hundreds of moaning, stretching creatures, and my own blood creeps back, slowly, painfully, my aching limbs unclench and stir.
    By night I sleep like a nervous cat, waking whenever a shadow moves. That’s when it will happen, one icy night when the dark makes me indistinguishable from any other skinful of meat and grease that would make the fires blaze up for a minute, keep a few starving kids alive.
    … One night after the lights have gone out. One night when Kit isn’t there to protect me. He does protect me, in a way, though he might be rough with me if I’d let him. He is my friend, I suppose, in a way.
    His foot prods me in the small of the back. ‘Get up, Gramp,’ he giggles. ‘Here –’ He hands me a can of hot water. The edge is raw metal. I drink with care. I don’t look at him until I’ve finished. It’s difficult to unlock my neck, to make the effort of looking up. His skin is a windreddened dirty brown, and the one empty eyesocket puckers like an arsehole, but he smiles cheerily, through yellow teeth.
    ‘Writing,’ he says, impatiently.