Wish you were here

Sunday 23rd June 2030

To: Lauren Green [email protected]

From: Ava Cooper [email protected]

Subject Hello?????

Darling Lauren,

I hope, oh how I hope you get this. It’s been more than four years since we messaged and I think of you so often and wonder how you and the boys are doing. I was so glad to find this message board in one of the few areas of the internet still working, what a great idea. I keep an eye on the member list to see if you or the boys pop up. I am doing fine, our little community is very fortunate – we are sufficiently remote that we don’t get much trouble, so we’ve been able to make a little life for ourselves.

Of all things, I have landed up more-or-less in charge. You would laugh to see your pathologically anti-joiner sister on the committee, discussing things diplomatically and making decisions. How strange this life we lead is. I always wear that locket you made for me for my 50th; the filigree heart and inside three little moons for the maiden, the mother and the wise woman – or as you teased me, the crone! I look at it and wonder who died and left me in charge – and then I remember; most of the world died!

When it all started kicking off – as the media died, as the world contracted even further after three years of lockdown, – I nearly gave up. I was sure my disability would leave me useless! After a month of fever and sickness, it took every scrap of will I had to crawl from my bed and forage in the houses nearby to keep myself going. Oh Lauren, so many dead – some by their own hand.

And then I found a few, like me, in shock and aching with loss, but still putting one foot in front of the other. Ironically, it was at the pub in the village, where I was looking for another sort of oblivion, that I met Jenny, and then Illya and Sally from the farm, and then Stan, Carl and Sita. We started working together, taking it one day at a time. It was all we could think of to do.

Rather than being thought useless and a burden, I volunteered for all the sitting-down jobs which actually meant that I got to know everyone in our original group quickly and found ways to pull everyone together. There are a lot of outdoorsy farming types (thank heavens!) in our group and they’re always out-and-about. I sat myself down – we use the kitchen at the Bear pub for communal meals and cooking – and I started peeling potatoes and chopping things and it went on from there. You remember how I used to love making soup in my expensive soup machine? Now-a-days it’s a big old iron pot constantly bubbling on the stove (we were fortunate to find a fancy-schmancy solid-fuel cooker in one of the posh houses and the guys installed it here). I have the reputation of being able to make soup out of anything, although the first couple of years we all got very tired of potato soup. We were so fortunate, though, to have the crops around us that first autumn when we were so helpless and grieving – anyone could walk out into the field and pick enough potatoes for a meal.

I am not a good wise woman, but I’m a hell of an organiser and I run the inventory. We send out groups of people, nowadays by horse or bicycle (all fuel is saved for the farm machinery) to scavenge and are able to make a lot of stuff now. One of my favourite jobs is unpicking the fancy woollens we find and washing the wool and winding them up into balls. Do you remember doing that with Nana? We would sit for hours with our hands held wide, holding the skein so she could roll the balls.

I must go. Except for a couple of hours on windy Sundays, we save the electricity for practical purposes like the chick warmers and charging up the tools or radio batteries. I am holding the locket you gave me on that sunny day when we thought having to meet in the garden was a hardship and thinking so hard of you all. Lots of love, Ava.

Sunday 22nd December 2030

To: Lauren Green [email protected]

From: Ava Cooper [email protected]

Dearest Lauren,

I had a message from Sarah Evans, who used to live next door to you. She said she saw Greg at a market about a year ago and that you were well then. I can’t tell you how excited I am!

It was a little bit of light in an otherwise dark time. The winters are always difficult. It’s a struggle for people to do the chores and we’re literally all living with chickens under the bed to keep them safe from foxes in the long nights. I have plenty of willing hands for the winter evenings of knitting and weaving and knotting, though. Do you remember that rug-knotting kit we were given, by Auntie Grace I think, which we voted the worst Christmas present ever when we were stroppy teens who just wanted make-up and clothes, but which we really enjoyed doing one dank February weekend!

We have lost a few from the community, as we do each winter. Age and grief and ailments that we could ease or even cure before. Thankfully no viruses though – guarding against the Big Nasty at least means we don’t pick up ‘flu and such like. It’s a small comfort, but I haven’t even had a head cold since before the first lockdown.

We lost Stan to a gunshot wound. I can’t believe I’m saying that – it sounds like something from a crime novel. We have had trouble from a small gang out of Birmingham. One of the other villages which we trade with was hit first and a few people roughed up. We talked about appeasement, someone even suggested that we offer to pay protection, but in the end we decided that, with the three Gains brothers who joined us last summer (and almost instantly solved our spinster problem, bless them) we have enough intimidating types to force a stand-off. So, when the gang came sniffing around, we ran them off. We wanted to show them we weren’t an easy target and frighten them away – which we did, but one of them got a shot off and hit Stan in the stomach. It took him a long, hard time to die.

We are all still recovering and the extra patrols in the dark and the sense of being always on alert is wearing on us all. I try and comfort people as best I can with warm soup, thick blankets and mulled wine (my first try at elderberry wine – it is pretty rough, but not so bad with lots of cinnamon and nutmeg!) but it feels so difficult right now. Stan was a good friend, occasionally more to me, who has been with the community from the beginning. His death feels so damned unnecessary – how can anyone think that killing others, after what has happened to us all, is even an option!?

Anyway, I am kissing my locket and wishing you all a happy Christmas, hoping you have the safety and resources to have a little celebration – I will be breaking out a few of our precious stores for the occasion. I hope to hear from you soon. Lots of love. Ava

Sunday 18th May 2031

To: Lauren Green [email protected]

From: Ava Cooper [email protected]

Happy birthday Lauren. Somewhere, you are 50 today – my little sister, gosh that makes me feel old! I know, I know, I am old. The funny thing is that I feel it less now than I ever did. I think it’s partly that all of the milestones have gone; being made a fuss of on the “big” birthdays, retiring from work, becoming eligible for concessions – all gone! My 60th passed almost without comment here – Stan and I went camping in the woods with some wine and a fire... I am far more active than I was, which makes me feel younger, I think. It doesn’t hurt that in the first couple of years when the food was so short, when we were between eating the dried and tinned stuff of the past and learning to grow and raise and catch our own food, I lost that couple of stone I’d always found hard to shift.

I also think that getting away from that media blitz celebrating the cult of youth and beauty makes a difference. We are just people here, working together to survive. Gina, who married the eldest Gains brother, Michael, is model-quality beautiful, but here she is appreciated for being able to plough a straight furrow, she has a lovely way with the orphaned lambs and bakes a mean gingerbread from her grandma’s recipe.

I was never model-quality beautiful, not even when young, but here I have a place and a community. What people think of me doesn’t depend on my money or position or status, like before, but is a result of what I can do and what I do for people. I think we all appreciate the little kindnesses more now-a-days – I think we see each other at last.

Time’s up. Happy birthday my love. I wish I could see you and the boys. Give them my love. I am kissing my locket. Lots of love, Ava.

Sunday 28th September 2031

To: Lauren Green [email protected]

From: Ava Cooper [email protected]

Dear, dear Lauren,

How I wish I knew you were well and safe. I have heard nothing and you aren’t on the member list. I heard from Sarah again and she hadn’t seen Greg or you lately.

We have the harvest in – I say “we” but my role has mostly been to work out how to store everything. We have had a bumper crop – almost everything has done extremely well. We will be able to think about babies next year. We have had a couple of little “accidents” of course amongst the younger women, who are very dear babies, but we all swore that we wouldn’t start having families until we were secure. It’s been a long hard five years, but I think we’re almost there. We had a few stores left over after last winter and this year we have even more abundance, our salted and bottled preserves are lasting the course and we have successfully kept a freezer going for the meat (unlike the first year – the electricity was intermittent and we kept having to cook and eat the joints –a feast at the time, but then back to potato soup for weeks on end).

We have gained the skills we need in this new world, through much trial and error! I can remember the first time former-accountant Jas caught a rabbit and solemnly presented it to me for the pot – it was a major event for us all! And the first bread Jenny and I baked from our own flour; it was grey and lumpy but everyone said it was the best thing since, well, sliced bread. Beauticians and bank-clerks and sales-people learned to slaughter animals and thresh corn and fire a gun – with many a slip along the way, we all still tease Illya about shooting that sheep, although it was a set-back at the time.

Oh my dear, I hope that you have gained even half as much. It breaks my heart to have lost you, but I must trust that you are safe and well. I kiss my locket every day to remember you. Lots of love Ava.

Sunday 16th May 2032

To: Lauren Green [email protected]

From: Ava Cooper [email protected]

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Sunday 26th December 2032

To: Lauren Green [email protected]

From: Ava Cooper [email protected]

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