Numbers 3: Infinity Read Free Page A

ranting, but I can’t stop.
    ‘I’m eighteen, with a girlfriend and three children to look after, a baby on the way, and no home and no food, and it’s never gonna get better. All I know is it’s gonna end one day because I see the end everywhere, in everyone, and I wish I didn’t. And even that isn’t certain because it could all change. It could all be over tomorrow or the next day, or the next. Do you think I want this?’
    ‘Do you think any of us want this?’ she says.
    And now my stomach’s churning. If she’s not on my side no more, then I got nothing.
    But we have to go. It’s not safe here.

Chapter 3: Sarah
    A dam shakes my shoulder before it’s even light. He’s a dark shape next to me. I can’t see his features. Even inside the tent, the cold air is nipping at my face.
    ‘Sarah,’ he whispers. ‘It’s time to get up. We have to go.’
    I pull my sleeping bag up around my ears and turn my back to him.
    ‘ Sarah ,’ he hisses. ‘It’s time.’
    I take a deep breath in, and then push the air out – slowly, slowly, slowly. I’m scared of what I’m going to do next, but I’m doing it anyway.
    ‘I’m not leaving.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘I’m not leaving.’
    ‘Yeah, you are. We’re packing up this morning. Moving on.’
    I wriggle round so I’m facing him again. My heart’s thumping.
    ‘I don’t want to go. I want to stay here for the winter.They’re nice people. There’s a doctor and there’s food. Adam, please.’
    ‘Sarah—’
    ‘No. I’m going back to sleep.’
    But I don’t. The blood’s beating in my ears, and I lie there listening to Adam’s silence. Have I done the right thing? But my swelling ankles tell me it’s right. And my blistered hands tell me it’s right. And the gentle snoring of the kids tells me that we all need a rest. It’s time to stop moving and just be a family for a while. Me, Adam, Marty, Luke, Mia – and the new baby.
    It’s a funny sort of family. I can’t ever be the boys’ proper mum – I’ll always be their sister – but I’m the only relative they’ve got left, so I’m the nearest thing to a mum they’re going to have now. And Adam’s not anyone’s father, though Mia calls him Daddy. When she said it to him that first time – ‘Da da da da’ – his face changed. It was like the sun coming out. We were dog-tired, sitting by the side of the road, hadn’t even put a tent up, but Mia was wide awake.
    ‘Did you hear what she said? Did you hear, Sarah?’
    She did it again, ‘Dada’, and reached her arms up towards him. He scooped her up and danced around with her, and it was like he’d forgotten everything else, just for a minute. It reminded me why I loved him.
    Love him, I remind myself now. Love, not loved. I love Adam Dawson.
    If I say it often enough, think it often enough, perhaps I’ll still believe it.
    But it’s difficult if you know that when he looks in your eyes he can see you dying.
    I close my eyes and try to empty my head of it all, to let sleep wash over me and blank me out, but everything’s allmixed up: people, places, words, and numbers.
    Always numbers.
    Mia’s the last to wake, which is unusual. When she eventually crawls out of the tent, Marty and Luke have already left to forage in the forest. Her eyes are pink and glassy, and her cheeks are flushed.
    ‘Me poorly,’ she whispers.
    I swoop down next to her and put my hand on her forehead. She’s red hot. Her nose is blocked and she’s breathing through her mouth. Her breath is sour and sickly.
    ‘Adam, she’s burning up.’
    ‘Shit.’
    This is the thing we dread: Mia getting a temperature.
    The night of the quake – in the heat of the fire – she had some kind of fit. I can still see her twitching in Adam’s arms, outside the burning house, her legs and arms all stiff. That’s when her number changed. She was meant to die that day – but Adam got her out and Val, his nan, died in the fire instead. Their numbers swapped. Their fates