Purification

friends, the cars which approached from various directions, the cheers and cries of relief and sadness - he buried her face in his chest and held her tightly.
    ‘Didn’t think you were going to make it over here,’ he whispered.
    ‘Neither did I,’ she admitted quietly. ‘You found us somewhere decent to live yet?’ she asked, looking up into his tired and haggard-looking face and smiling through her tears.
    ‘Not yet,’ he answered honestly, ‘but I’m working on it.
    I’ll show you a few places later. You can choose where we go.’
    In a moment of silence Michael stood next to Emma and watched as she looked around her, trying to take in what she could see of the island. He watched her as she tasted the air and listened to the sounds around her and soaked up the atmosphere. He watched her as she relaxed and he held her as she wept with relief.
    Cormansey was a bleak, cold and often unforgiving place, but both of them knew it was as good as it was going to get.

Epilogue
    Michael Collins
    2nd June
    I saw Jack Baxter this morning for the first time in almost two weeks. He came by the house earlier. Told me he’d been out walking. I often see him in the distance, marching on his own across the horizon. He told me he walks circuits of the island to keep himself occupied.
    Very few people visit us here. There aren’t many houses more isolated than ours. That was a deliberate move. We both want to stay close to the others, but at the same time we want lives of our own too. Most people have chosen to live in or around Danvers Lye. There are some people here who want to build a close community and who want to live, sleep and eat in each other’s pockets. There are some here who couldn’t survive on their own and who need the closeness of others. We don’t want that. We don’t need that. We’ve tried it already. We’ve lived like that for long enough. That kind of life seems pointless now.
    Christ, we could do with having Phil Croft here now.
    We’ve struggled since Emma fell pregnant. Other people have tried to support her and help her, but it’s been difficult and we miss his guidance, company and expertise. It was hard in the winter when she first caught, and it will be hard in the autumn when the baby’s born. At least I’ll be able to help more then. At the moment I feel useless. The others have been understanding. They told us about the baby that was born when they were back in the city and what happened to it. We know that the same thing could happen to our child. Our medical facilities here are virtually nonexistent and we didn’t have any option but to go through with the pregnancy, not that either of us would have chosen to do anything else. I pray that our baby will be all right. I talked to Donna about its chances. She said that although the mother of the baby in the city had survived, it was likely that its father had been killed by the germ. She said that maybe the fact that both Emma and I survived will make a difference. I hope that whatever it is that’s kept us both alive had been passed down and will protect our child too.
    Jack and I had a long conversation about the future today. I’ve agreed to go back to the mainland with Cooper and some of the others in a few days time. It’ll only be the third time we’ve been back. Providing the weather stays good the plan is for Lawrence to fly us over to the nearest port. We’ll salvage whatever supplies we can and then find a boat of some description and sail back again. There’s hardly any fuel left in the helicopter now. We could try to find more, but we need to look for another way of getting to and from the mainland. We’re going to have to keep going back there. We’ll always need medicines and food and clothing. No doubt we’ll become more self-sufficient as time goes by, but at the moment it makes sense to keep scavenging for what we need.
    If I’m honest we’re struggling here, and I can’t see that things are ever going to get any easier. Some people are working on trying to get gas and electricity supplied to the village. They might manage it, but at what cost? It’s going to take an enormous amount of effort for questionable gain.
    How will they maintain the supplies? Who will keep them working? It’s all going to take time, but that’s the one thing we seem to have in abundance. Nevertheless, I can’t help thinking that all of the fighting and the struggling and everything we’ve been through somehow feels