They went into one of the side rooms, which was stacked all around with towels, beddings, and bags of medical supplies. There was a space in the middle with a large table and several chairs, mugs, and plates scattered across its surface. More tears and hugs were inevitable, but eventually the talking had to start. There were two years and a whole new world to catch up on.
So Jack told his mother how he had been looking after Emily, living in the house they'd shared ever since he was born, and how Emily had helped him as much as he had helped her. He said he'd always tried to keep the faith that she and his father were still alive somewhere in the Toxic City. He told her about the doubts he and others had about the government's lies, but that the general populace believed that London was now a city of deadly, toxic monsters. He had met his best friends—Sparky, Jenna, and Lucy-Anne—through the growing certainty that they were all being lied to.
His mother said how proud she was of her brave children, and how not a day had gone by since Doomsday when she had not thought about them and felt desperate for them to be together again.
Whenever Jack mentioned their father, she changed the subject. For now, he allowed her that.
He and Emily took turns relating their journey into London, and when he mentioned Rosemary, his mother smiled and shook her head. “She's become a good friend. As good as any friend can be in this place, at least.”
“She came to get us because of Reaper,” Jack said.
She stared at him for a while, then turned to Emily, speaking past her constant veil of tears. “How are you doing in school, my darling?”
Their mother told them how unbearable it was being separated from her children. Soon after Doomsday, when London stank with the dead and resounded with the agonised cries of those unfortunates still alive, many had attempted to make their way back to family and home. The slaughter had been terrible. She'd seen five people pulled from a car and executed outside a church in Holborn, the military still wearing their bulky NBC suits, still uncertain about what had happened. Every survivor could relate tales of killings from that time. Since then there had been fewer and fewer efforts to escape.
“It became like another world,” she said. “I convinced myself that London was a different place entirely, a different reality, not just the ruin of a city so close to home. I missed you both terribly, but thinking that way made it somehow easier.”
“It's not so wrong,” Jack said. “We've only been here for two days, but it is somewhere else.”
Their mother told them about the hospital, and how difficult it was gathering medicines, bedding, towels, and food without being caught by the Choppers, the problems of sanitation, wild animals, rats…
Emily asked why they needed medicines when there were healers. Their mother replied that most healers’ powers were very specific, and that illnesses and injuries in the Toxic City were much more diverse.
They were talking around so many important subjects, and the more they talked, the more Jack began to fear they would never discuss what was important.
“Rosemary says you're a healer like her,” he said. And here it was. The subject of their mother's change, that in turn would lead on to what had happened to their father.
“Not like her,” she said. “Not exactly. None of them…none of us…are exactly alike.”
“What was it like, Mum? When it happened?”
She shook her head slowly, her face grim. She looked between Jack and Emily and into the past, seeing scenes which Jack guessed she had tried her best to bury. But her daughter had asked, and the good mother would answer.