Meg Rosoff

How I Live Now

  People who had friends or friends of friends who had managed to get phone calls or e-mails through said that London was occupied and there were tanks and soldiers in the streets and fire and anarchy all around. Supposedly the hospitals were filled to bursting with all the people who'd been poisoned or bombed and everyone was fighting over food and drinkable water.
  One crazy old man kept whispering to anyone who would listen that the BBC had been taken over by malign forces and that we shouldn't believe anything we heard on the wireless but his wife rolled her eyes and said he was still worried about the Germans from last time around.
  I saw expressions on people's faces that I'd never seen before, something like anxiety and superiority and paranoia all mixed up in one polite grimace. Everyone tried to look like they knew all about all the news already, or that they had much more recent information but weren't at liberty to give it away.
  Each day we'd walk down the hill to the village and hang around in a line outside the village shop waiting for our turn to get inside and choose a few essentials. For some reason it reminded me of Supermarket Sweep which I'd always wanted to go on, only there wasn't much in the way of food and you weren't allowed to run around stuffing as much as possible into bags.
  The worst part was having to listen to everyone's crackpot theories and there was no hope you could pretend to be deaf due to it being such a small town and everybody knowing everything about you.
  Here's the sort of thing we'd hear, all in low hushed tones especially when us children were around, and if it doesn't sound so bad to you try playing it on an endless loop while you listen and smile politely until your cheeks go into spasm and you develop a twitch:

  1. My brother-in-law says it's the French bastards.

  2. My friend in Chelsea said the looting is terrible and she got the most amazing wide-screen TV.

  3. My neighbour in The Lords says it's the Chinese.

  4. Have you noticed that no Jews have been killed?

  5. There's a nuclear bunker under Marks & Spencer that's only open to shareholders.

  6. People are eating their pets.

  7. The Queen is bearing up.

  8. The Queen is breaking down.

  9. The Queen is one of Them.

  You can imagine it was the social event of the day, everyone competing for the worst piece of news.
  One of the couples who lived in London but had a weekend house near the village were here for the duration, saying that they had two kids and a purebred Bouvier des Flandres, which turns out to be a dog, and they figured it would be a whole lot safer here than in London. Well they were probably right about it being safer if you didn't count the locals who were suddenly getting all Them and Us all over the place. So far it was fairly civilized but you could see that under the surface everyone hated those people and their fancy French-sounding dog and were just waiting for a chance to get even when the food ran out.
  A lot of worried families asked if we needed a place to stay because of Aunt Penn being gone but it was obvious they didn't really want us even if we'd wanted them, which we didn't. Sometimes when we said "No, thank you", they looked so relieved we couldn't help feeling a little hurt.
  As every day passed you could see the panic on more and more people's faces, and the rest carefully composed their features to look sombre and made clucking noises and said how awful it was. But once we were away from them we actually felt pretty cheerful and laughed on the walk back to the house, partly to cheer Piper up and partly because it still felt like an adventure and because the sun was shining and it was a beautiful walk, war or no war.

How I Live Now © Meg Rosoff, 2005. Published by Puffin Books.