She pours another glass of sherry for herself, looks at mine, untouched, and puts the bottle down.
‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ she says. ‘I reckon you know where she is.’
‘What?’
‘It’s in your nightmare, your vision. You’ve seen it over and over. There must be clues to where you are. Tell me about it.’
‘It’s just flames and fire, a building collapsing around us. We’re trapped. Adam’s there. He takes her from me. He takes her into the fire.’
‘That’s what happens, but where are you? Think, Sarah, think. It’s in there.’
She’s staring at me now, willing me to remember. I look into her eyes, and they take me deeper into myself.
‘Think, Sarah, think. Close your eyes now. What do you see?’
Chapter 61: Adam
There’s no way out of here. You can’t bust out through the window. You can’t bust out through the door. My only chance is going to be when they transfer me.
When they brought me here my hands were handcuffed in front of me and I was in a van with several others. It’s gonna be difficult to beat up a guard and break away with my hands together. Would the others join in? The best time would be before I’m shut in the van, when they’re leading me out of here. I pace around the cell and I think about elbows and knees and feet – the damage I could do with them. I’ve got to do it. If I end up in Sydenham, I’m stuffed. I’ll spend New Year’s Day banged up. I can’t let it happen, a sitting duck, stuck in a cell. Not seeing, not hearing, not knowing what’s going on. Buried by the walls, maybe. My last resting place, a fucking prison. It’s not going to happen. I’m not going to let it.
They took my watch and my belt off me when they arrested me, so I don’t know how long it is before they come for me. Must be ten or twelve hours, though, because they’ve brought me two meals, if you can call them that, and the little square of window in my cell got dark a long time ago.
It’s not what I’m expecting, though. This time I’m cuffed to a guard. He’s a fat bastard, about ten years older than me, with a smear of a moustache on his top lip. With two more guards in front and behind, we’re into the yard and locked in the van before I know it. The engine starts up and we’re away.
Damn, damn, damn. I missed my chance. What the hell am I going to do now?
‘What’s the time, mate?’ I ask him.
‘Quarter to midnight.’
‘Shit!’
‘What’s the problem? Missing a party? You and me both. Bloody New Year’s Eve and they cancelled all leave.’
‘What they done that for?’
‘Where’ve you been? In a cave? The whole city’s gone mad. People clogging up the roads, trying to get out, and the rest of them, the ones that are staying are treating it like it was 1999. They’ve set up a field hospital in Trafalgar Square to deal with all the drunks. Jesus, people in this town are mental.’
‘I could do with joining them. Honest, mate, I need to get out of here.’
He looks at me, warily, and I catch his number. First of January. I’m handcuffed to a guy who’s going to be dead within twenty-four hours. I don’t get any clues from his number, though, it’s just blackness, blankness, that’s all. A strange one.
‘Don’t start with that,’ he says.
‘It’s important. I need to get to my family.’
He shakes his head.
‘Not tonight, mate. You’re going to Sydenham, end of. We’re over the river now, take us fifteen minutes max. There’s no way out of these vans.’
‘They don’t stop for nothing?’
‘Nothing. No fag breaks. No comfort breaks.’
‘What if I hit you?’
He snorts.
‘One, I’d hit you back so hard you wouldn’t know what was happening to you. Trained, you see. Two, there’s a camera up there. The guys up front can see everything that goes on in here. You start getting out of line and they put the sirens on, put the pedal to the metal and we go to the nearest cop shop, and then you get the beating of your lifetime.’ But they’d have to open the doors to do that, wouldn’t they? ‘It’s not worth it, honest, mate. It only makes things worse and …’
I ball my hand up into the tightest fist that I can, duck away from him and thump him hard on the side of the head.
He lurches sideways, then reaches into his belt and brings out a baton.
‘Fucking moron!’ he shouts. He makes to swing the stick at me, but I scramble to my feet and jam the heel of my foot into his crotch. He crumples forward, and I snatch the baton out of his hand and bring it down on the back of his head. There’s a sickening crack as it hits. 112027. Is it past midnight yet? Is it me that kills him?
I drop the baton and put my hand to his neck, pressing into his skin to try to find a pulse. He’s still alive.
The alarm starts up then, a deafening sound, filling up the inside of the van, and we’re both flung towards the back as it accelerates sharply. I’ve got to get out of the handcuffs. The guard is slumped over with his head between his knees. I push him off the bench, get on my hands and knees and start going through his pockets. I can’t find a key anywhere.
The baton’s rolled to the other side of the floor. I reach across, dragging the guard’s arm with me, scrabbling with my fingers ’til I can close them round the handle. Then I kneel up and heave his arm to the edge of the bench. I pull my hand as far away from his as I can so the chain of the cuffs is tight. I smash the baton at the chain. It dents the links but doesn’t break it.
‘Shit! Shit!’
The van’s lurching wildly now. I topple backwards, hitting my head on the floor. We rock back the other way. This thing’s unstable.
‘Stop the van!’ I’m shouting now, though I know they wouldn’t take any notice of me even if they could hear me over the siren. ‘Slow down, for Christ’s sake!’
I claw my way up to the front, dragging Fatboy with me and bang on the cab wall with the baton.
‘Your mate needs help! Get us to a hospital!’
I’m slammed against the bench as the van tips again, but this time it doesn’t right itself. With the siren still wailing we tip up and suddenly the wall’s the floor and the floor’s the wall and we’re over again. My travel buddy’s on top of me, crushing the air out of me and then everything flips and he’s underneath. The van’s bumping and banging and there’s an almighty noise and the floor – or it could be the wall or the ceiling – hits my chin and I black out.
Chapter 62: Sarah
I close my eyes. The telly’s blaring out the countdown. ‘Six, five, four …’ I can’t see anything. I can’t get there. ‘Three, two, one …’ Big Ben’s chimes ring through the lounge. ‘Happy New Year!’ Outside fireworks are going off like Kilburn’s a battlefield.
‘Think, Sarah.’
The flames are behind me and in front. I can’t find Mia. I can’t find her. The building’s creaking, something’s breaking away. Oh God, the roof’s falling. It’s hot. Unbearable. The paint’s blistering on the stairpost. The stairpost. The stairpost. With the smooth curves carved into it, worn smoother by the hands that have swung round it as the children clatter downstairs and jump the last three steps. The children. My brothers and me.
I open my eyes.
‘It’s my house. She’s with my parents. They gave her to them.’
Val’s still looking at me, and her eyes are oceans of sympathy and strength.
‘That’s where we’ll go then. We’ll fetch her back. Come on, Sarah, no time like the present.’
‘Now?’
‘Now. I’ll just fetch me bag from the kitchen.’
And then with a ‘pop’ the TV switches off, and the house is plunged into darkness.
‘Bloody hell, not again!’
The fireworks carry on for a bit, brighter than ever now, and then peter out. It’s dark, but there’s something eerie about the darkness. I look past Val towards the kitchen window.
‘Oh my God!’
/>
‘You all right?’
‘I’m fine. It’s the sky. Look at the sky.’
With the electricity out, there are no reflections to stop us seeing out. The tower blocks are black fingers, outlined by a sky that’s going crazy. Ribbons of green and yellow light are pulsing in the air. They shift in front of our eyes, glowing and fading, dissolving and reappearing.
‘What the hell …?’
‘It’s awesome, Val. What is it?’
‘Dunno, love. I’ve never seen nothing like it. Have you noticed something else?’
‘What?’
‘That bloody dog’s stopped yapping.’
She’s right. All day we’ve heard its constant yip, yip, yip through the walls, but now there’s quiet. Everything’s quiet.
‘Thank goodness for small mercies,’ she says. We lapse into silence again, and then a whining howl starts up.
‘Spoke to soon, love. God, that thing’s a pain. Don’t know what Norma was thinking, getting that bloody pug.’
And then there’s the biggest bang I’ve ever heard in my life, and the floor rears up underneath me, hurling me into the air, and I don’t know what’s up and what’s down, and my ears are full of banging and crashing and splintering, and my head and shoulder hit something hard, and there’s a red flash in my head and then nothing.
Chapter 63: Adam
One side of me is cold and wet. I shiver and sit up. Above me the sky’s exploding; there’s rockets bursting like mortar shells, stars showering over me. I can see the colours reflected in front of me – it feels like I’m surrounded. It sounds like a battleground. Bonfire Night’s always like this, I think. But then I look up again. It’s not the fifth of November. It’s midnight on New Year’s Eve. It’s past midnight. It’s the first of January.
I put my hands on the ground to support me. A metal bracelet slides down my wrist. A bracelet? I don’t wear jewellery, never have. My hands touch slime and I realise it’s mud under my fingers. I’m by a river, with the water a metre or two away from me.
I look around me. Another rocket lights up the sky and in its flash I see a van lying on its side by the wall. The cab’s smashed in, the back door’s open.
I stagger to my feet, wincing at the pain all through me. I take a few steps towards the van. Its siren is quiet now.
There’s a heap of something on the ground nearby. I crouch down. It’s a person. A body. My guard. The matching half of the handcuffs is still on his wrist, the chain broken on impact.
‘Sorry, mate,’ I say. I can’t find any other words.
I stumble to the cab. The ground’s soggy. It drags at me, putting me off balance. Two more bodies inside the van. Their airbags inflated okay, but they didn’t save them.
I turn away.
Where the hell am I?
I blunder forward and my hands hit something cold, rough, slimy – the river wall. I follow it along, treading on rubbish and God-knows-what washed-up at the side. I reach some steps and collapse onto them, breathing hard, trying to get my head round everything.
The fireworks are easing off now, just a few rockets in the distance, but the water’s shimmering, green and yellow. It’s the weirdest thing. I look up and there’s ribbons of colour glowing and fading in the sky.
‘What the hell …?’ I murmur, and then I hear the loudest bang I’ve ever heard in my life and the ground’s lifting under me and I’m thrown into the air. I land in water, ankle-deep. The sky’s still full of shimmering colours, and now it’s the only light there is.
Everything else has gone.
The whole city’s in darkness.
And it’s quiet. No traffic, no sirens, only a few shouts and screams echoing across the river.
The water around me drains away, taking some of the mud from under me. I feel like I’m being drawn into the ground, like I’ll disappear, swallowed up by the bed of the Thames. It’s like the seaside, like Weston, when you stand at the edge of the beach and the waves come and go, sucking the sand from under your toes, making you wobble.
The water’s gone now, all of it. There’s wet mud there now, not river. I start walking back to where I think the wall is. If we crossed the river, I’ll need to be back the other side to get to Nan’s. But, wait a minute, there’s no water. I could walk across. I don’t need to find a bridge. I turn round and head off the other way, but I’ve only gone a few steps when a little voice in my head takes me back to Weston again.
The waves come and go.
The water hasn’t just disappeared. There’s no plughole in the Thames. It’s a river, a tidal river. It’s gone now, but it’ll come back.
And suddenly my head is full of the twenty-sevens I’ve seen with watery deaths, lungs filling up, helpless, drowning.
I turn round again and try to run, but the mud’s so sticky it’s like I’m running in slow motion. Off to my left, I can hear a sound, a rumble or a roar. Come on, come on. I’m pushing myself on, lifting one foot up then the other. I’ve got to find the steps and get out of here and then climb up somewhere, get higher, out of the way.
But it’s too late. I look over my shoulder. I can’t see it, but I can hear it. There’s tons of water barrelling up the river, a monster raging towards me. I stop in my tracks, take in a lungful of air, but it’s here before I’m ready. It hits me as I’m breathing in and blasts me off my feet. All I can do is shut my mouth and close my eyes as my body’s being tossed around like a rag doll. The water holds me ‘til my chest is bursting. I can’t hold on any longer. I’ve got to breathe. I’ve got to open my mouth.
I can’t.
I have to.
Chapter 64: Sarah
I hurt everywhere, not just inside my head. I don’t know where I am. I think I’m lying on my front. I can move my arms but not my legs. There’s stuff in my mouth, hair or fluff or something, catching on my tongue, making me gag. I retch a bit, and try to spit my mouth clean.
Someone’s shouting in the darkness.
‘Adam? Adam?’
It’s Val. She’s alive, and not far away, but I can’t see her.
I try to shout back, but my voice comes out as a whisper.
My legs are caught under something. I twist round and stretch towards them, groping to find out what’s there. I can’t see a thing, but it feels like one of the armchairs, not that heavy, but awkward to shift from this position. I get both hands on it and push. There’s a slight movement and I manage to manoeuvre my legs round so I’m sitting up properly. Another push and there’s a scraping noise and a crash, and my legs are free. Pain shoots up them, as though someone’s sticking foot-long needles into me.
‘Jesus!’ I can’t help crying out, and now my voice is back.
‘Who’s that?’ Val’s voice is gravelly and wary.
‘It’s me. Sarah.’
There’s silence. Then, ‘Who are you? What are you doing in my house?’
‘It’s me, Val. Adam’s friend. Sarah. It’s me.’
‘Whoever you are, can you get me up? I feel like a bloody beetle. I’m flat on me back here.’
She sounds like she’s only a couple of metres away. I don’t trust my legs, so I start to crawl towards her. Underneath me, things crunch and move and dig in as I shuffle forward. All Val’s ornaments, thrown about and broken; all her souvenirs and mementos, all the little things that had caught her eye. I try not to think about it as another one shatters under my knee.
Reaching in front of me, my hand touches something soft.
‘That you, Adam?’
‘It’s me, Sarah.’
‘Sarah.’
She says it deliberately, like she’s feeding it into her brain, trying to remember.
‘Sarah with the baby,’ I say. ‘Sarah who paints.’
‘Sa-rah.’ It sounds like the light’s dawning now. ‘Sarah with the baby.’
‘Yeah, that’s right.’
‘Oh my God, I remember … Where’s Adam?’
‘I don’t know, Val. They locked him
up, remember?’
‘Oh shit. My boy. My beautiful boy.’
‘Can you move? Are you hurt? We need to get out of here.’
The building is groaning and sighing around us.
‘Val,’ I say, ‘are you hurt?’
‘No. I dunno. Help me up.’
Our hands meet in the dark, hers bony and desperate. They cling onto mine like they’ll never let go. We manage to get to our feet.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ I say.
‘Okay, love, where’s the door?’
‘We don’t need a door, Val, we just walk.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The front of the house has gone, Val.’
‘Don’t be silly. We had a bit of a bump, that’s all. We’re still here. The house is still here.’
‘We are, but half your house isn’t. Keep walking.’
Arms linked, we pick our way over the debris. There’s a half-moon above us, giving enough light to show shapes in the gloom, but you can’t see any detail. Someone out on the street is shining a torch around and they flash it our way for a few seconds. And now we can see it: a mound of rubble where the front wall of the house used to be, spilling out into the yard. We have to scramble up and over it to get out, but there’s no other way.
The beam of light moves away from us and we’re walking blind again.
We wobble our way over the last of the stuff that used to be a house. A stretch of garden wall is still standing, so we perch on there, looking back where we have just come from.
The air is full of dust, thick with it, but as the moonlight filters through we can see what’s happened. The front walls of all the houses in our row have gone. It’s like a crazy doll’s house where you can see inside the rooms.
‘We were lucky to get out of there,’ I say.
‘Lucky,’ Val repeats. ‘Lucky.’
Something moves on the ground next to me. I catch the movement out of the corner of my eye and yelp.
‘What is it?’
I’m expecting to see a hand or an arm or something, but it’s not human. It’s a small, black thing wriggling and squirming. Then it makes a noise, halfway between a grunt and a whine. I get off the wall and crouch down next to it. I put out my hand and touch dust, but there’s soft fur underneath, and warmth. The thing responds, lifting its head, and in the moonlight I can see an empty socket where its eye used to be.