Surviving The Evacuation (Book 7): Home by Frank Tayell

told me that.”
    “Who’s Chris?” Nilda asked.
    “Back on the farm. Back when—” Stewart stopped, his cheerful demeanour replaced by the black cloud that visited him whenever he remembered the past. Nilda knew he’d found refuge at one of the inland farms, and that their food had run out. After that his story had a gap before he was being shot at somewhere near Kew Gardens. What exactly had happened in between was unclear other than that people had died. She assumed, from the way that he obsessed about food, it was from starvation.
    “Newspaper? Will anything else do? Can we use books?” she asked, prompting him back to the present.
    “I dunno. I suppose it absorbs the moisture. No,” he added, speaking to Marko. “Look at the bruising on that one. Won’t last another day. Add it to the pile to be cooked.”
    “Back at the mansion, we were pickling them,” Simone said. “We collected all the vinegar from the fish and chip shops.”
    “Not apples,” Janine said. “You don’t pickle apples.”
    “How much vinegar do we have?” Nilda asked.
    “Not enough,” Aisha said. “The ledger’s over there. I think it’s about fifteen litres.”
    Nilda moved to the counter near the door to the storeroom. There was a new ledger, in it everything had been recorded, and with far more precision than the list they’d used before. There was vinegar, and next to it ‘fifteen litres +/- 5%’. To salve her own unquiet mind, Nilda opened the door and checked. There were far fewer boxes in the storeroom. The food was now out on display for anyone to see. She found the vinegar on a shelf near the far wall. There were a few large bottles, but most of the containers were the small, table-sized ones similar to those they’d found in the riverside pub.
    Aisha had followed her into the room. “We haven’t enough to preserve very much. Even if we did, we’ll be eating it in a few months,” she said.
    “Is there that little?” Nilda asked, her voice low.
    “I’m not sure,” Aisha said. “Not yet. Not until we’ve brought it all in, but the problem isn’t going to be quantity, but quality. A lot of it’s bruised or beginning to rot. Over the next week, there’s a lot we’re going to have to eat or feed to the animals, because it won’t keep.”
    “But how much?”
    Aisha shrugged. “I really can’t say.”
    “We can look for more salt and vinegar,” Nilda said. “Though I don’t think we’ll find it quickly enough.” She thought back, more to autumnal television programmes than to her own experiences. “Could we make jam?”
    “We’d need sugar,” Aisha said.
    “Can you use soda syrup?” Nilda asked. “That’s just sugar and flavourings.”
    “It might work, but we don’t have any, nor any jam jars to store it in.”
    “Racks,” Marko said. Nilda hadn’t noticed the boy had followed them. He stood very close to Aisha.
    “My new shadow,” Aisha said, smiling at the boy.
    “What do you mean, racks?” Nilda asked.
    “It’s what we did in the mansion. That’s how you store it. The food shouldn’t touch. That’s what Amy taught us. She was nice. I miss her.”
    Nilda tried to think of something to say. “I’ll add that to the list,” was all she could come up with.
     
    Back in the dining hall, she found Styles and Greta in quiet conversation over the coffee tub.
    “What’s the plan for the day?” Styles asked, filling a mug.
    “We need to get the rest of the food from the coaches,” Nilda said. “Then we can work out how much there is and how much we need. The next most urgent thing is hygiene. We’re one sneeze away from epidemic here, and we can’t afford anyone getting sick. Bleach and soap are on the list, but clothes have to be at the top of it. That apartment block to the west of the castle will have those. Aisha’s got the kitchen organised, but she’ll need help with the sorting, and with washing the dishes. Could the children do that?”
    “They’ve learned to