‘Well, if we all stuck to that rule, then nobody would speak at all,’ said Lana. ‘You’re boring when you don’t speak, Martha.’

I opened my mouth to reply . . . but then I didn’t have anything really good to reply with. So I thought now would be one of those good times to say nothing. And, yeah, I get the irony of that. So I walked off towards the muscle ring.

‘Oh, Martha, don’t go,’ said Kate. ‘Lana will say sorry.’

‘No, I won’t,’ Lana said, ‘because it’s true.’ But she said it quietly, because she normally does say sorry eventually.

I gave Kate a quick happy wave to show that I was fine, but I didn’t turn round, because I wasn’t happy and I did think I was probably going to cry.

As I walked away, my head down, I kept seeing those dark patches beneath the surface of the Jellyfish, and they seemed already smaller; there were parts of them already being digested. We’d been avoiding looking in that direction, and nobody else was standing over at that end. I felt that rush of sadness again, but also fear. And then just loads of tiredness.

I couldn’t be properly angry at Lana. Not just because she was right, I suppose: I can be boring a lot of the time. But also because there’s something about staring out across the heaving, wide, endless ocean, that makes any argument feel ridiculous and pointless, like you’re so insignificant in the world that your petty squabbles don’t matter.

Chapter 20

20

In the murky light of early evening two people were lying on top of each other grunting and groaning, just twenty metres away from the Big House. Because – like most of us – they both had such matted dirty brown hair, it was impossible to tell who they were, or even if they were male or female. It was impossible to tell what way up they were, or even to tell for definite what they were doing. Inside the Big House, there was only the light from the pitiful fire, so it was also difficult to see who was missing. There’re a lot of dark corners in here at night-time and I’ve never thought about dodgy stuff going on in them, but maybe that’s because I’ve been young. Or stupid.

It’s not that we’ve never had a ‘no sex’ rule explicitly – or maybe if there has been one, nobody’s talked about it in front of us. It’s just that nobody . . . well, you know. You wouldn’t want to get pregnant. And you wouldn’t want everybody to see you having sex, would you?

‘Right,’ said Soldier John loudly, ‘I think we need to start looking at other strategies for tomorrow.’