The Last of Us. Rob Ewing

and I stare at the rules, wondering who’s to blame. I decide that the rules fit most for him – apart from the mushroom soup and vinegar and alarms bit, and the bit about dog shit, which was anyway a mistake.

      Me: ‘All we needed to do was check our feet. And paper plates, they get mushy after a while.’

      Alex: ‘A minute after you put me to bed I’m asleep and the torch stays on all by itself.’

      Me: ‘All flavours of soup stink.’

      Alex: ‘Would we get a dog? If we had a stray dog we wouldn’t need to waste a single drop of food.’

      Me: ‘You can’t trust dogs to watch your food. Anyway, Alex always stands in dog shit. It’s disgusting.’

      Alex: ‘You’re a dog shit.’

      Me: ‘You’re the king of dog shits.’

      Elizabeth: ‘Stop it, both of you! OK? All I want is for you to help me a bit more, that’s all.’

      We go back to staring at the rules. Most hark back to something that’s happened. It’s hard to get everything right all of the time. Still, Alex does need to be reminded about matches. That’s a big fascination of his.

      We get up, get dressed, do the routine: radios (fizzing noise), teeth (gums fine). I put batteries in the portable TV/DVD player. Snowstorm. Alex takes his injection without fuss this morning, then we have our breakfast. Today for a treat it’s creamed rice, which I used to hate but now love, especially with jam. Then when we’re done Elizabeth goes through the cupboards, making notes of anything we need. I have a suspicion of what she’s going to say before she comes out with it.

      Elizabeth: ‘There’s a big issue I kept off the rules. It would be great if you’d help.’

      Alex’s eyes swing up from sucking his sleeve.

      ‘It would really help if you’d come New Shopping. Even if you end up staying outside, it doesn’t matter. It’d just be a help to have the company.’

      Alex switches from sucking his sleeve to the neck of his T-shirt. The drool on his clothes makes him stink like a dog’s bone. I tell him to pack it in.

      Elizabeth: ‘I’d appreciate it.’

      Alex: ‘What about Duncan, and Calum Ian? Can they not be your sidekicks?’

      Elizabeth: ‘Maybe they’ve decided to do their own shopping? I didn’t even ask. All I know is I can’t do ours all by myself.’

      We think about it. Alex looks very doubting. He plays a blasting game with the lightsaber I made him out of yellow card and tinfoil.

      Alex: ‘There is actually a black lightsaber.’

      He says this when he’s trying to put you off. Usually the conversation goes: There is a black lightsaber – No there isn’t – Yes there is – No there can’t be because light is not black – Yes there is cos I saw it in my Star Wars Clone Wars Encyclopaedia. And black light is radiation. So there. This is what he says when he’s trying to pull the wool over.

      Me: ‘Can we do something fun first?’

      Elizabeth: ‘Like—?’

      Me: ‘Can we go to the rocks and chuck bottles?’

      Elizabeth: ‘We don’t just chuck bottles: we send messages. There has to be a purpose to everything.’

      Alex: ‘Why?’

      Elizabeth: ‘Because we lost our adults. Because we’re alone. So we do all we can, every minute of every day, to get help. Agreed?’

      It isn’t always nice when she spells it out. Anyway, school’s cancelled. To make the agreement proper I head up to Elizabeth’s rule list and add underneath:

      13. All go shopping (after nice stuff.)

      This settles the business for the three of us. Then we shake on it so nobody can go back on their word.

      We take the shore road towards Leideag. Some birds flap around like flags. Out to sea, those islands I can’t remember the names of. We always look for boats, though our eyes are getting used to not finding them.

      Further along we join the beach. There’s a lot of mess on the sand, though nothing new. A jumble of rubber tyres with faded labels on them. Hundreds of kids’ plastic chairs, the sort you’d find in a playhouse. There was a skeleton in oilskins, now there’s just oilskins. Now and then the beach changes and a bone sticks out. Calum Ian and Duncan hate this beach, because they’re scared the bones and skeletons could be one of their uncles.

      We come to the life jacket that used to be around the skeleton. It’s got foreign writing on it. It might be Spanish, or French? Anyway, it isn’t a local fisherman. Elizabeth has told this to the boys, but they’re too superstitious to even come close and they won’t ever listen.

      A track takes us to the end of Leideag, to the radio mast and Message Rock. Calum Ian worked out it’s the best place to launch bottles: because it’s the bit of land sticking out, it’s outside the bay, and also, the island Orasaigh stops the bottles coming back in again. He even put out two markers – yellow wellie boots – at the best launch-off.

      But now he won’t come, because he got cross last time we all came. The argument began with Alex:

      Alex: ‘Don’t want to throw mine in.’

      Elizabeth: ‘But you’re not losing it. You’re telling your wish to the sea by sending. That’s the rule.’

      Calum Ian: ‘A lot of rubbish, making wishes. Seadh, I bet they won’t come true. I bet we all end up wishing for the same thing. That would be dumb.’

      Elizabeth: ‘We might not.’

      Calum Ian: ‘So what’d you wish for? And you? And you? Aye: you all wished for everyone to come back, didn’t you?’

      Me: ‘How did you know?’

      Calum Ian: ‘Stupid fucking rubbish, wishes.’

      But this morning it’s just us three. For my message I draw a picture of me with realistic hair standing beside our house. The house is a deliberate kid’s version (lots of square windows, a pig’s tail of smoke from the chimney) for extra impact. Alex has drawn himself holding a black lightsaber. No details. Elizabeth has done all the details of herself: address, age, name, family name, class at school, hair colour, cos she’s like that.

      We get to the sticking-out edge of Message Rock and chuck them in. My one seems to wait for a bit – then it hurries off. It always seems to be mine that gets washed back up on the beach, which makes Alex gloat. He says he has a better throw than me, but I think it’s just luck.

      At school we learnt about St Kilda. The people there ran out of food and they got tetanus and anyway there was no TV so they sent sea-mail. Sea-mail from St Kilda doesn’t get to America, it gets to the mainland. It’s a law of nature for all time. When the rescuers finally got to St Kilda the men had waited so long they’d grown beards. No one wanted to stay after, so that was the end of St Kilda.

      We watch the tide as it starts to cover the rocks guarding the bay. There’s seals on the rocks, curled up like black bananas, not caring about what happened.

      Me: ‘To the seals it’s all normal. Except for the rubbish, and the oil slick, which anyway didn’t last.’

      Alex: ‘I used to think there was a plughole and the sea was a sink. That’s why the tide went up and down.’

      Elizabeth: ‘It’s a good idea.’

      Me: ‘It’s eejit-talk.’

      Alex: ‘You’re an eejit.’

      Me: ‘Do whales not hibernate?’

      Elizabeth: ‘I don’t think so. I never heard of that.’

      Alex: