Toby perched on the edge of the two-person sofa and watched as Nicola pulled the seat cushion off the armchair. Without the thick cushion to sit on, the seat was only a few inches off the floor. It made Toby feel taller somehow.

“What are you doing?” he asked her.

Nicola’s freckled nose was screwed up as she tried to bend the big square seat cushion in the middle. She could only bend the edges round. “In the movie they used doors, but these seem strong enough to me.”

“Strong enough for what?”

“The walls, of course. Are you just going to sit there?”

Toby had seen the foam inside the seat cushions when his mum had taken the indigo covers off to wash them. They hadn’t looked strong enough to make walls, but Nicola was taller and stronger than Toby was, even though she was a girl and he was older, so if she couldn’t bend one, maybe they were strong enough after all.

“Stand up,” she said, dropping the seat cushion on the carpet in the middle of the room and grabbing the edges of the one next to him.

Toby stood up. Nicola pulled both cushions off the sofa and piled them on top of the first. Soon she had all six seat cushions in a waist-high tower.

“Don’t let my mum see them on the floor,” Toby warned her quietly.

“Only one of them’s actually on the floor,” she pointed out. “Now, the next thing we have to do is lean them up against the wall.”

Toby looked around. “Which wall?”

Nicola frowned. The sofas were against adjacent walls and the armchair was in the bay window. The fourth wall contained the gas fire, on one side of which was the telly and on the other side were bookshelves from floor to ceiling.

“Let’s take them out into the hallway,” she said.

Toby stuck his head through the sitting room doorway and looked both ways along the hall. His mum wasn’t in the kitchen. She had said she was going upstairs to do some ironing and as he listened, Toby heard the radio playing in her bedroom, accompanied by the occasional hot wheeze of the steam iron.

“Okay, she’s still upstairs,” he whispered.

“Come on, then,” Nicola said. She was standing behind him with two of the seat cushions stood on end. As Toby found out when he tried to pick more than one up at a time, they were too heavy to lift, but not too heavy to drag.

The distance between the sitting room and the front door was a little over six cushions long. Nicola began to lean the cushions against the wall, using her leg to make sure the angle of the slope was such that the height off the carpet was the same as the distance from the wallpaper. Toby returned with the final two cushions to find her patting the other four, making sure they weren’t going to fall down.

“There we go,” she said, when all six cushions were lined up in a row.

Toby crouched down and looked inside. Nicola had made a sort of tunnel, but she had wedged the cushions together so tightly that no cracks of light got through. It was so dark that Toby couldn’t see the wall at the other end.

“There’s not much room,” he said.

“There’s enough,” Nicola said, pulling him out of the way by his T-shirt. She lowered herself onto her front then wriggled into the tunnel.

Toby stood up and watched until her feet disappeared inside.

“This is perfect.” The voice came from the far end of the tunnel and was a bit muffled by the thick cushions. “Follow me in, then.”

Toby sighed and crouched down again. He could hear Nicola rustling about but he couldn’t see her. He dropped onto his belly and started pulling himself along the carpet with his fingers and elbows, pushing with his toes.

“Careful!” said Nicola. “You almost had the wall down then.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”

Toby felt hot. He didn’t know how deeply he was into the tunnel because he couldn’t turn his head round without bumping the cushions again.

“What’s that smell?” he asked.

“I can’t smell anything.”

“Well, I can.”

“Maybe there’s something on the carpet.”

“Dog sick!”

“I don’t remember smelling anything when I got in.”

Toby reached forward again. Instead of finding the carpet, his fingers grabbed a foot. Nicola let out a sharp giggle and kicked Toby in the face.

“You just kicked me!” he cried, his elbows collapsing from underneath him as he groped at his eye. Fortunately Nicola wouldn’t see how it was watering.

“Well, don’t tickle me, then,” she hissed.

“I didn’t mean to.”

“Are you crying?”

“No.”

“Are you telling the truth?”

“Yes, and I found out what that smell was too.”

“What is it?”

“Your smelly feet!”

“My feet don’t smell!”

“Yes, they do.”

“No, they don’t.”

“Yes, they do!”

“Do you want me to kick you again?”

Toby snorted. “I’m getting out.”

“You can’t get out. You’ll die.”

“I’ll die anyway if I have to lie next to your smelly feet.”

Then Toby started wriggling backwards, which was even harder than wriggling forwards. The tunnel seemed much longer going this way. When he could see his hands again, he rose up onto his knees and then stood up.

As he wiped his palms on his jeans, Nicola pushed the end cushion over and looked out at him angrily. “You’d be dead by now if this wasn’t just a practice.”

“Well, I’ve had a better idea anyway. Get out.”

Nicola climbed out of the tunnel at that end and then carefully put the seat cushion back in place. Toby folded his arms and waited at the other end.

“If you go in backwards,” he said, “then I go in forwards, my head will be next to your head, instead of your smelly socks.”

“My socks don’t smell.”

“Your smelly feet, then.”

“They don’t smell either.”

“Look, do you want to do it my way or not?”

Nicola thought for a moment, then nodded. Toby waited as she got down on her hands and knees then slowly wriggled into the tunnel backwards.

“Okay, I’m in as far as I can get. My feet are touching the wall.”

Toby crouched down and wriggled in after her. He could hear her breathing so didn’t bump into her this time. He stopped pulling himself forward when he reached out and found her arms folded on the carpet in front of her.

“Are you sure you’re in as far as you can go?” he asked.

“Yes. Why?”

“My feet are still sticking out the end.”

“Come in further, then.”

“There’s no room.”

Nicola sighed loudly. Toby was close enough to feel her warm breath in his hair. “Okay,” she said. “What if I lie on my side, then you lie on your side, then you squeeze in beside me, so we’re like face to face?”

“Is there enough room?”

“Of course there’s enough room.”

“Okay.” Toby listened to her turn onto her side.

“Watch you don’t knock over the wall again.”

“I didn’t knock it over last time.”

“Well, just be careful.”

Toby rolled onto his left side, until his right shoulder was pushing into the seat cushion overhead. His left arm was trapped under his chest and useless, so he had to kick his way along the carpet. He looked at his feet. They were undercover.

“Are you in now?” Nicola asked.

She was so close her voice was loud even though she was whispering. Toby felt the individual pulses of her breath on his lips as she spoke each word.

“Yes,” he said.

“At last.”

For a minute they just lay there, breathing on each other.

“Eugh! What was that?” Toby said finally.

“What was what?”

“Something wet just touched my mouth!”

Nicola didn’t say anything.

“Did you just kiss me?” Toby cried.

“No!”

“What was it, then?”

“I just moved my face. My lips must’ve brushed past yours. That’s all.”

“You kissed me!”

“No, I didn’t!”

“Yes, you did!”

They lay there in silence for another minute. Toby thought he could hear his heart beating, but then he realised it was Nicola’s heart he could hear.

“So what do we do now?” he asked.

“I don’t know. What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know. What did they do in the movie?”

Before she could answer, another voice made them both jump, and bump their foreheads together in the dark.

“What the hell is going on down there?”

Toby’s mum was at the top of the stairs, but her voice was so loud it sounded like she was standing right over them. Toby started to wriggle backwards out of the tunnel as her feet stamped quickly down the stairs.

Before he had got his head out, his mum pulled the seat cushions away. She was strong enough to lift two at a time.

“What on earth are you two playing at?” she demanded.

Toby stood up as Nicola appeared from behind the next cushion. He looked at her to explain it. He still wasn’t sure himself exactly what it was that they were doing.

“I’m waiting for an explanation,” his mum said.

Nicola stood up fearlessly and said, “I was showing Toby how to make a new clear war shelter for when the terrorists bomb your house.”

Toby’s mum stared at her. “Excuse me?”

“I saw it in a movie last night,” Nicola added proudly.

Toby’s mum turned her glare toward her son. “If you two want to muck around, go outside and do it. You know you don’t play on the furniture.”

Toby nodded, hoping Nicola didn’t think he was crying about being told off because his eye was still wet from where she had kicked it.

“Go on, then,” Toby’s mum said sharply.

Toby took his and Nicola’s trainers off the rack beside the front door and led Nicola into the kitchen. As they sat on the linoleum floor to tie their shoes, Toby heard his mum sighing loudly whilst she replaced the seat cushions.

Outside they found Toby’s dog Chewbacca fast asleep in the willowy ornamental grasses Toby’s mum grew in the back garden. There were several flattened patches where Chewbacca had curled up in the sun, but then shifted to another spot when the sun had moved. It was a bright day, warm, and Toby had to squint to look into the blue sky. Giant puffs of clean white cloud moved slowly across the sky, the kind that never seemed to float overhead and block out the sun.

Nicola sat down on the seat of the picnic table as Toby went and crouched down beside Chewbacca. He slowly reached under the Yorkshire Terrier’s leg and lifted it up. It was floppy. Toby liked it when his dog was this fast asleep because he could rearrange its head and legs into all sorts of funny positions before it woke up and gave an aggravated little bark. Chewbacca continued snoring unaware.

“What are we going to do without a shelter?” Nicola said.

Toby grimaced to himself. She still hadn’t lost interest even though they’d got told off. “Do we really need one? I don’t suppose the terrorists will drop a bomb on our house, anyway. We haven’t done anything.”

“No, but they’re terrorists. They just want to kill people. Besides, these bombs are big. They could drop one at the end of the street and your house would still fall down. You didn’t see the movie, Toby.”

Chewbacca woke up, barked and moved out of Toby’s reach to go back to sleep again. Toby stood up and turned to Nicola.

“I don’t think my mum did either,” he murmured.

“She probably thought it was just a cartoon.”

“How do you know it wasn’t?”

“Because cartoons are for kids. That’s why I watched it. I thought it was going to be like ‘The Lion King’. But it wasn’t meant for kids, not really.”

“Then why did they make it as a cartoon?”

Nicola bent down to pick a few daisies and shrugged. “Well, it was old. I suppose they didn’t have the special effects to show what happens in those days. So they did it as a cartoon, which is just a load of drawings, really.”

Toby sighed. “How do you know it’s real then?”

“Because my dad said so.”

“Yeah, well, your dad says fish can’t swim backwards.”

“They can’t!”

“Yes, they can.”

“Have you ever seen a fish swimming backwards?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean they can’t swim backwards. That just means they don’t have any reason to swim backwards. I don’t walk backwards because I don’t have any reason to walk backwards. But I still can. Look.”

He started walking backwards around the picnic table.

Nicola threw the daisies at him and said, “If fish can swim backwards, why don’t they swim out of fishing nets, then?”

Toby stopped walking backwards. “I suppose.”

Nicola beamed happily.

“Could we build a shelter out here?” Toby wondered.

“I don’t know. They didn’t in the movie.”

“Yes, but if you only need a shelter indoors in case they drop a bomb on your house or down the street and your house falls down, well, the terrorists aren’t going to drop a bomb on someone’s garden, are they?”

Nicola leapt up. “You’re right! And out here, there’s no danger of the house falling on top of us, so we only really need a shelter from the Fall Out.”

Toby frowned. “The what?”

“The Fall Out.”

“What’s that?”

“It was in the movie. These bombs are so big that they blow stuff miles into the air, and then it falls back down again, so you need a shelter from that.”

“Like what kind of stuff?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Dustbin lids and watering cans, maybe.”

Toby climbed on top of the picnic table. “Yeah, and if all that stuff flies up into the air, it might hit birds and they could fall out of the sky as well.”

“Exactly! Which is why we need a shelter.” She put her hands on her hips and looked around the garden, biting her bottom lip.

Toby looked down at his feet. “Well, what about this?”

“What about what?” She didn’t look round.

“This. The picnic table.”

Nicola turned and gave him a look like his mum did when he was being silly so Toby jumped up and down on the wooden tabletop a couple of the times. The joints didn’t even creak under his weight.

Nicola’s face brightened. “That’s perfect!”

Toby beamed proudly. He jumped off the edge as Nicola approached and climbed over the seat. The picnic table was a single piece of garden furniture, with the seats on either side attached to the table legs at both ends.

“What about those?” said Toby, pointing at the narrow gaps between the slats of creamy yellow oak that made up the tabletop as he climbed under it.

Nicola stuck her fingers through one of the gaps. “I don’t suppose any Fall Out could fit through those. It should be okay.”

“What if it’s raining on the day the terrorists attack?”

“Oh. You’re right. In the movie they also climbed into big paper bags. But they were indoors. Paper bags would get soggy in the rain.”

“How about bin bags?”

“Have you got any bin bags?”

Toby nodded. He put his hands on the seat and vaulted over it. As he headed back to the kitchen door he poked his tongue out at Chewbacca. The dog had woken up and was staring at the little girl sitting under the picnic table.

Toby’s mum was back upstairs again. As he pulled a couple of black bin bags off the roll from the drawer he heard the dull thuds of her feet on the landing carpet and the squeak of the floorboards beside the bath.

Nicola appeared in the doorway. “Also, have you got any rations?”

“Of bacon?” Toby frowned.

“No, rations! We need food and something to drink.”

Toby looked around. The only food that wasn’t in the cupboards was the fruit ripening in the sun on the windowsill. “We’ve got some grapefruit.”

Nicola screwed up her nose. “Got any sweets?”

“There’s some custard creams in that biscuit tin on the shelf behind you, but they’ve been there for ages. My mum doesn’t like them and she only has them to put out for visitors. She wouldn’t notice if we took them.”

“Okay.” Nicola grabbed the biscuit tin off the shelf and tucked it under her arm. “What about drink? Hey, grab that bottle of Pepsi Max!”

Toby grabbed the half-empty bottle as Nicola took the biscuit tin outside. “So why do we need to take this into the shelter with us?” he called. “Why can’t we just leave it in here and come and get it when we’re hungry?”

“Because if the house falls down, it’ll all be ruined, you silly boy.”

Toby followed her out. She climbed back into the shelter and placed the biscuit tin under the seat nearest to her. Toby handed her the bottle and the two bin bags and then climbed in after her. Nicola wrinkled the end of her bin bag until she found the opening, then shook it open and spread it out.

“I can’t get it open,” Toby said.

“That’s because you’re trying to open the wrong end.” Nicola snatched his bin bag off him and found the opening for him too.

“Oh. Thanks.”

The bin bags looked bigger empty than they did sitting full of rubbish in the front garden. Nicola crouched over hers, shuffled into it, then pulled it up until it was around her neck. Toby copied her.

“Right. This is it,” Nicola declared. “From now on this is a practise for the real thing. The terrorists have dropped new clear bombs. All the houses have fallen down, and now the Fall Out is falling down right on top of us. We-”

“Hang on, I’ll get Chewbacca.”

“You can’t!”

Toby ignored her and climbed out of his bag. The Yorkshire Terrier was still awake, still watching them as it lay on its front in the sun, its head resting on its front paws. Toby stood beside the shelter and patted his thighs.

“Come on, Chewbacca! Come on!”

Chewbacca blinked.

“Leave it!” Nicola cried. “It was probably killed by the bombs.”

“No, he wasn’t. Come on, Chewbacca! Come here!”

Chewbacca didn’t move. Toby approached it slowly, holding both arms out wide. As he got near, Chewbacca lifted its head. Toby leant forward and lunged for it. In one quick movement the dog bolted between his legs and disappeared down the garden. Toby chased it for a few feet, then gave up.

“It’s definitely dead now,” Nicola said.

Toby pouted as he climbed back into the shelter and got into his bin bag. He noticed Nicola had cream-coloured crumbs around her mouth.

“Did you eat one of those biscuits?”

“No.” Nicola shook her head.

“Well, I want one anyway. Give me the tin.”

There were three custard creams left in the biscuit tin. Because Toby had one, Nicola had one too, then they spent a couple of minutes arguing over who should have the last one. Toby still thought Nicola had already had one. Nicola still insisted she hadn’t. In the end Toby tried to split it, and most of it ended up on the grass. After ten minutes all the biscuits were gone, and so was most of the Pepsi Max.

“So who are these terrorists anyway?” Toby asked.

“I think they’re called the Russkies,” Nicola explained. “That’s what they called them in the movie, anyway. Though sometimes they called them the Jerries instead, but then they said that was a mistake, and it was the Russkies. I don’t know. That bit was a bit confusing.”

Toby nodded. “Are they the same people who flew those aeroplanes into those tower blocks that were on the telly?”

“I should think so. It’s the kind of thing they’d do, isn’t it?”

“I suppose. They won’t fly aeroplanes into my house, will they?”

“No, silly boy. Why would they do that when they’ve got bombs instead?”

Toby scowled. “Well, why didn’t they drop bombs on those towers, then?”

“Oh. I don’t know. These bags are a bit hot, aren’t they?”

“Yes. Can we get out of them yet?”

“No! You’ll die!”

“But it’s not even raining.”

Toby wasn’t wearing his watch but he reckoned it was around twelve o’clock. The sun was directly overhead and shone in hot beams through the gaps in the tabletop. Toby could feel the sun warm on his neck. His hands were starting to get all sticky from holding the plastic bin bag bunched up around his chin.

“Crash!” Nicola went suddenly.

Toby jumped. “What did you do that for?”

“That was the Fall Out. It just fell on top of the shelter.”

After they had been sitting inside their bin bags under the picnic table for around quarter of an hour, Toby sighed and started to get up.

“I need the toilet. I’ll be right back.”

Nicola’s arm shot out whilst it was still inside the bin bag. Toby found himself being grabbed by the corner of the black plastic sack.

“No, you can’t,” Nicola told him. “It’s too soon. We have to stay in here for two days. It said so in the movie.”

Toby laughed. “What? You’re making it up as you go along!”

“No, I’m not! It was in the movie! You didn’t see it.”

“Why didn’t you say anything before, then?”

Nicola shrugged, her bobbing shoulders pulling the bin bag taut around her. “I didn’t think. There was a lot to remember, you know.”

Toby sighed. “Well, I think it’ll be safe now, anyway. The Fall Down has already fallen down, hasn’t it?”

“Fall Out. And that was only some of it. Crash! See? There was some more.”

“Yes, but this is only a practice, isn’t it?”

“Yes, which means you practice exactly what you’re going to do when the terrorists bomb your house for real.”

Toby thought for a moment. “Now I see why the people in the movie built their shelter indoors. They could still use the toilet, even if the house fell down.”

Nicola shook her head. “No, they couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“There were rats in it.”

“Rats?!”

“Yes. I think they were using the toilet as a shelter themselves.”

“So what did the people in the movie do when they needed the toilet?”

“They used a bucket with sand in, I think.”

Toby laughed. “Well, we don’t have one of those!”

“No, but we have this.” Nicola picked up the biscuit tin and opened it. “A biscuit tin with crumbs in. That’s kind of like a bucket with sand in.”

Toby stopped laughing. “I’m not weeing in my mum’s biscuit tin.”

“After the terrorists bomb your house she probably won’t care.”

“But they haven’t yet. This is only a practice. Actually, shouldn’t we get my mum in our shelter as well? She needs to practice what to do too.”

Nicola shook her head vigorously. “No. There’s not enough room.”

Toby frowned. “So what’s she meant to do?”

“Well, she could stand under that tree, I suppose.” Nicola pointed to the large old pear tree growing at the bottom of the garden. The branches were thick with dark green leaves and old blossom that was turning into baby pears.

Toby screwed his nose up. “If you stand under that, earwigs drop down and try to get into your ears.” He remembered it all too well.

“Yes, but the branches are big and thick and would catch the Fall Out.”

“Oh. I suppose any earwigs sitting on the branches would get squashed by the Fall Out as well, wouldn’t they?”

“Exactly!”

“I wish we’d stood under the tree,” Toby mumbled. “I could go behind it.”

Nicola shrugged. “You could go between the seats, I suppose.

“Not with you sitting right there!”

“Well, I won’t look.”

Toby shook his head. “I can hold it.”

“For two days?”

“No, just as long as we’re practising for.”

Nicola snorted. “Bet you can’t.”

“Bet I can.”

“What do you bet?”

“A punch in the arm.”

“Deal!”

A couple of minutes later, Toby got out of his bin bag again. “Okay, don’t look, will you.” He shuffled to the edge of the picnic table on his knees.

Nicola sighed. “I won’t, you silly boy.”

Toby unzipped his trousers. “You’re looking!”

“I have to make sure you don’t get any inside the shelter!”

“I won’t! Stop looking!”

“I’m not.” But Toby could tell she was.

“I wish you’d told me before I drank the Pepsi Max,” he grumbled. As he climbed back into his bin bag, Nicola gave him a punch in the arm.

“What was that for?” he cried.

“I won our bet.”

“Oh. Well, didn’t hurt anyway,” Toby said indignantly.

As he got comfortable again, his mum appeared at the back door and looked out into the garden. She looked around, and only at the last moment did she spot them sitting under the picnic table. She walked over, hands on hips.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“This is our new clear war shelter,” Toby said proudly.

Toby’s mum looked right at Nicola. She guessed who was behind this. “Your mum’s out in the road, Nicola. I think it’s your lunchtime.”

Nicola sighed and started climbing out of her bin bag.

“Can she come back this afternoon, mum?” Toby asked.

“Yes. Your lunch is nearly ready too. Give it an hour, Nicola.” She frowned and wrinkled her nose. “Has Chewbacca peed on the lawn again?”

Toby and Nicola glanced at each other sheepishly and grinned as Toby’s mum headed back into the house. Nicola got out of the shelter and Toby followed.

“When I come back this afternoon we’ll just carry on where we left off,” Nicola told him. “This is just like pressing pause on the video.”

As Toby led her through the house to the front door, he groaned. “I could’ve held it for those last couple of minutes after all!”

Nicola grinned a smile of crooked teeth, but didn’t say a word.

For lunch Toby had a bowl of spaghetti in tomato sauce with grated cheese on top. He’d only eaten half of it when he started to wish he’d just let Nicola have the last custard cream after all. He was forcing himself to eat the spaghetti by the end, and took almost twice as long to polish it off. Of course, that meant he only had another fifteen minutes to wait until Nicola came back.

As he rinsed his bowl and slipped it into the dishwasher, there was a knock at the door. Toby’s mum answered it.

“Toby,” she called.

Nicola was early, he thought. He went to the front door, but it wasn’t Nicola knocking. It was Samuel, the boy who lived on the corner.

“Want to come out and play?” said Samuel.

Samuel was wearing a bright green T-shirt and baggy black jogging bottoms. He was a year younger than Toby and Nicola so he was an irritating kid. However, he was good to have around when there was nobody else to play with.

“I can’t,” Toby said.

“Why not?”

“Nicola’s coming round soon.”

“Can I come in, then?”

“No.” Nicola didn’t like Samuel at all.

“Why not?”

“It’s only meant to be me and her.”

Samuel looked a bit hurt by this, but then his face brightened considerably. “You’re playing mums and dads, aren’t you?”

“No!” Toby cried.

“Hey, I could be your baby!”

“We’re not playing mums and dads!”

Samuel scowled. “Then why can’t I come in?”

As Toby tried to think of a good excuse, he watched Sarah from down the road ride past on her bicycle with white frills flying from the ends of the handlebars. Now if he didn’t let Samuel come in, Toby knew the irritating kid would go and tell Sarah that he and Nicola were playing mums and dads. He sighed.

“Please, Toby!” Samuel whined.

“Okay. But we’re not playing mums and dads.”

Samuel grinned and ran into the house. He didn’t care.

Toby took Samuel into the back garden and showed him the shelter. The bin bags had blown down the garden and Chewbacca was back sleeping nearby. Toby told Samuel about the terrorists, the bombs and the rats in the toilet.

“That’s not a shelter, that’s just a picnic table,” Samuel said, as he walked around it and checked to see if there were any biscuits left in the tin.

Toby hadn’t expected him to understand. “No, it’s a new clear war shelter and if you don’t get in the Fall Down will hit you and you’ll die.”

“Well, I don’t want to get into the shelter.”

“Then you might as well go home, then,” Toby said, as he collected the bin bags and returned to the shelter, wedging them under the biscuit tin. He realised that Samuel was standing in the pee puddle, but decided not to mention it.

“I know! Why don’t I be the terrorist?” Samuel said.

“You can’t be the terrorist!”

“Why not?”

“Because you can’t!”

“Why not?”

“What’s he doing here?” said a voice.

Toby and Samuel turned to see Nicola standing at the back door, pouting, with her hands on her hips. Standing behind her was Sarah. Toby scowled.

“Well, what’s she doing here?” he said.

Toby liked Sarah about as much as Nicola liked Samuel.

“I said she could come in our shelter,” Nicola explained.

“Well, if she’s coming in, then so is Samuel.”

“But I don’t want to go in the shelter,” Samuel said.

“I’m not going in a shelter with him,” said Nicola.

“Then you can stay out here and be killed by the Fall Down,” said Toby.

“It’s Fall Out. There’s not enough room for all of us, anyway.”

“Well, Sarah can’t come in, then.”

“Come on, Nicky,” said Sarah. “Let’s go and make our own shelter.”

“No, I made this one,” said Nicola.

“It’s my picnic table!” cried Toby.

“It’s not a picnic table, it’s a new clear war shelter!”

“Well, it’s my new clear war shelter, then! So I get to decide who goes in it! And I say Samuel gets to go in it! So there!”

Samuel let out a short sharp scream from the back of his throat. Toby, Nicola and Sarah, instantly silenced, stared at him.

“I-don’t-want-to-go-in-the-shelter!” he shouted.

Nicola smirked at Toby. “See? He doesn’t even want to go in it. You can’t force him to go in the shelter if he doesn’t want to, Toby.”

Toby felt his face going all hot and red. He stuck his tongue between his teeth and bit down until it hurt. “Fine. Have it your way.”

Nicola beamed victoriously. “Come on, Sarah. Let’s get into the shelter.”

Toby crossed his arms and frowned as Nicola and Sarah climbed under the picnic table, and then Sarah started getting into his bin bag.

“Get in, Toby, before you die,” said Nicola.

Toby glanced at Samuel. “Don’t stand there, Samuel.”

“Why not?” Samuel asked.

“Because there’s pee on the grass.”

“Eugh!” Samuel quickly jumped back a few steps.

“Toby, get in, we’re starting,” Nicola said sharply.

Toby shrugged. “Actually, I think I’m going to be a terrorist instead.”

“What?!” Nicola cried. “You can’t!”

Toby grinned at Samuel, then hollered, “Bomb the shelter!”

Sitting in bin bags under the picnic table, the girls started to scream.

NOTES:
The movie that Nicola watched was, of course, "When The Wind Blows", the Raymond Briggs satire about nuclear war. I was about this age when I saw it myself, and for pretty much the same reason. My sister had to do it in school (it should be shown in all schools, and sleepless nights be damned), but missed it, so they sent her home with the video. I came in and saw she was watching a cartoon so sat down with her. I never directly name the movie, but the title is a reference to it: 'The cradle will rock' is the line that comes after 'When the wind blows' in the nursery rhyme, "Rock-A-Bye-Baby". I also thought this an appropriate title for the 'cradle' connotations with childhood and innocence.

I chose the name Toby because this was going to be a prequel of sorts to "Belief In Magic", the story I wrote for my degree dissertation. Toby was the little boy in that story, and for all intents and purposes, it's the same kid here, maybe a few months or a year younger. That would be fitting, because I got the mumps around the same age I saw "When The Wind Blows". However, as I neared the end, I realised I'd written it so that they couldn't be the same character: "Belief In Magic" is set very specifically in the late 1980s (about 1988), whereas this one is set even more specifically in the mid 2000s, what with the 9/11 references, and Toby and Nicola confusing communists for terrorists as the Big Bad in the same way Jim and Hilda get communists and Nazis mixed up in the original "When The Wind Blows".

I suppose Toby is just my stock coming of age character now, though at least as far as this story is concerned, he's not based on me this time. I was more of a Nicola, though I never engaged my friends in practising for nuclear war. I did, however, when I was a few years older than Toby and Nicola, spend a couple of hours sitting under our picnic table with a friend, practising for a major earthquake. Yep, in England.