Free Arcadia by James Treadwell

“It’s me,” he whispers.
    â€œWhat are you doing?”
    â€œI need a pee.”
    She snorts crossly and flumps back down onto the mattress. “Could you try not waking everyone up when you come back?”
    â€œSorry,” he says, and slips out, banging the lantern on the doorframe.
    â€œFor God’s sake!”
    â€œSorry!”
    He clicks the door shut behind him. He’s so full of guilt and terror they’re like the gas inside a balloon: he’s stretched out, about to pop. He wipes his hands on his pajamas and gives the lantern a few noisy cranks, conjuring a thin and brutally white light. He has to go through with it now. He patters downstairs, feeling invisible eyes following him. The Abbey’s twice as big in the dead of night, and older too, and somehow alive. He turns the handle as he goes, dreading the thought of darkness catching up with him. Its noise sounds like a ghost groaning.
    The fire’s out in the big room. They won’t light it again until the next evening, it’s not properly cold yet. The cellars are freezing, though, and heavy and shadowy as a tomb. That’s why they use them to store food. He hurries to the larders. There’s a squashy sack full of plastic bags on the floor. He takes one out and starts filling it, too desperate to get this over with to think about what he’s picking up. Apples. Carrots. Beans. Floppy skeins of samphire.
    â€œRory?”
    He drops the bag. The food spills out and rolls around his feet.
    Kate’s in the doorway, wearing a raggedy dressing gown and fluffy slippers and carrying a tiny night-light in the shape of a cube. Its orangey glow falls mostly on her hands.
    He stands stock-still while the apples slowly come to rest. He doesn’t have a single word to say.
    The slippers must be padded, because Kate makes almost no noise as she comes in, squats down, and starts picking things up. He ought to help instead of watching her scrape around on the floor, but he can’t move. Some carefully built tower is about to blow down. Some structure he lives by is on the point of collapse.
    â€œYou know,” Kate says, “if you think you need extra you only have to ask.”
    She props her arms on her knees and looks at him. He feels as tiny and worthless as a mote of dust.
    â€œNo one owns any of this,” she says. “It’s not like the old days.” She puts the last couple of things in the bag and straightens up, swinging it thoughtfully from one finger. “Everything’s for everyone. If someone’s hungry, it’s fine, you can have a bit more, as long as there’s enough for the rest and you really do need it.” She holds the bag out to him. “There you go.”
    She’s waiting, so he takes it. Kate’s like that. It’s hard not to do what she wants. She has that particular sort of kindness that makes you feel utterly helpless.
    â€œThe thing is, though.” She puts her hands on her hips. Pink’s lantern hasn’t been spun for a while so it’s faded almost to nothing. The little night-light shows the torn pocket of Kate’s dressing gown; he can hardly see her face at all. “We all have to know who needs what. Otherwise anyone could say, I need this, I need that, and it might not be fair. That’s why you always have to ask. See?”
    â€œYeah,” he whispers. He actually tries to say the word properly but he can’t.
    â€œOtherwise . . .” She pauses, thinking about it. “Otherwise it’s like saying your needs are more important than everyone else’s. Like saying, I’m hungry and I don’t care whether everyone else is hungry too, me being hungry is the only thing that matters. Which is the thing we can’t do anymore. Isn’t it?”
    â€œI know,” he says. Being told off by Kate in her Nice way is actually worse than being told off by his mother in her tearful