Page 19 of 59 Minutes

CARRIE

‘Miss, did you hear me?’

Breathing hard, Carrie stays stock-still, brain wheeling through the possibilities. TfL staff? British Transport Police? A Victorian ghost? Am I dead?

‘I didn’t mean to scare you, miss,’ the voice says. ‘I wanted to say something before but you seemed busy shouting at the mice.’

Carrie turns then, raising the beam of the phone flashlight so that the silhouetted person covers their face.

Carrie lowers the light just a little until the blur of a dirty white sleeve moves down and the schoolgirl’s blinking eyes are visible.

The blazer she was wearing earlier is gone, her jumper now tied around her waist in a way that takes Carrie immediately back to school, rolled waistband, tie stuffed in her pocket.

‘It’s you,’ Carrie says, ‘from up there.’

The girl walks along the tracks towards Carrie now, treading carefully, palms out in front of her, her school bag on both shoulders.

‘I followed you.’

‘Why?’

‘I didn’t want to stay in that meat market and I thought you looked like you knew something.’

Carrie says nothing.

‘And then I saw you starting beef with the mice and realised you didn’t know anything either, but it was too late and I didn’t want to go back without a light of my own.’

‘How old are you?’

The girl hesitates. ‘Thirteen,’ she says, frowning a little like what’s that got to do with anything? and she’s right, but it’s the only thing Carrie ever thinks to ask kids.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Well, I was following you but—’

‘Where do you want to go? Are you trying to get home?’

At this, the brave rigidity softens and the girl nods. ‘I live in Lambeth, and they’ll be there without me.’

‘Whereabouts?’

‘What?’

‘Which bit of Lambeth, which road?’

‘Elm Walk. Do you know it? It’s off—’

‘Kennington Road. I live just the other side but, hang on, what’s your name?’

‘Grace, miss.’

‘Hi, Grace. But look, I can’t slow down. I’ve got to get back to my partner and daughter, no matter what—’

‘And I need to get back to my whole family so let’s get going, yeah?’

It’s false bravado and Carrie knows it, but she nods. ‘Okay. But please stop calling me miss, I’m not a teacher.’

‘Okay.’

‘My name’s Carrie.’

‘Okay, Carrie.’

They walk either side of a live rail, the sizzling sound constant. It has been twenty minutes since the warning came but Carrie doesn’t know how far they’ve walked, or how far there is left to go. Her nostrils are gummed up with stale air and dust, her eyes stinging.

‘You ever experienced anything like this before?’ Grace asks.

‘Not like this, no.’

‘My mum was caught up in 7/7,’ Grace says. ‘Before she had me.’

‘God, was she?’

‘Yeah. She was on the next train at Edgware Road. She doesn’t talk about it though, I only know ’cos Grandad told me.’

‘I was about your age when that happened,’ Carrie says, her feet settling back into the rhythm of before. ‘But I didn’t live here then.’

A faraway tragedy brought to the screen in technicolour when she got back from school, though the news had already gone around the playground.

Her beloved dad had lowered his eyes from the screen, muttering things that sounded sour and unlike him.

For her mother, it was a simple confirmation that London was a bad place full of bad people making bad decisions.

‘What do they expect,’ her mum said, watching footage of stoic Londoners as they walked home, in work clothes and trainers, spreading across empty roads where buses and cabs would normally be. ‘They chose to live there.’

London, to her parents, was a Pied Piper of a city, leading people off a cliff. But Carrie had watched that footage, head tilted, tuning out her parents. The news didn’t put her off. Instead, it confirmed London as special. A place where news was made.

Carrie thinks now of those brave pedestrians on their open roads, walking with determination towards their boroughs.

Of Grace’s mum, not talking about it but continuing to live in the capital, to raise her family there.

She thinks of the courage with which Londoners remounted buses the next day, shuffled down escalators into the bowels of the underground.

She thinks of everyone sardined at Waterloo. The closed exits. Guns.

‘Right, we need to find a way out before we get to the next station,’ Carrie says.

‘What if there isn’t a way out before the next station?’

She hadn’t thought about that. Maybe they’ll have to fight their way through.

Just her and this plucky kid. Maybe there’ll be fewer guards at the next stop than there were at Waterloo.

Maybe. Or maybe they could keep going, crawl along the line and hope no one sees them, keep going all the way home.

But then what? Same again, a fight to get out, a bullet for their trouble.

And what if they’re not even on the Northern Line?

Or they are but she chose wrong and they’re headed north instead of south?

Emerging at Westminster … She gulps the air but it doesn’t help.

‘Are you okay?’ Grace’s hand, wavering and light, touches her shoulder.

‘Yeah,’ she manages. But she’s thinking about Westminster.

If they are heading that way, they’re already dead.

Because you don’t have to know anything about anything to know the seat of government will be a prime target.

And now this girl has hitched her wagon and Carrie is responsible for her too.

Why does she always end up taking responsibility for other people and complicating her own plans?

Why does she always think the best and never plan for the worst?

Okay, think. Maybe they could get a boat at the Embankment, sail it down to Vauxhall Bridge.

‘Do you know anything about boats?’ she says, weakly.

‘What?’

As if there’ll be any boats left. They’ll have fled down the river towards the coast, to France or Ireland. Or simply capsized under the crowds.

‘No, sorry, forget it. I’m just being mad. There’ll be an exit soon. Of course there will. Maintenance people must have to get down to the line between stations.’

‘You sure?’

No.

‘Yes.’

She just needs to get back to Clementine and Emma.

And Pepper. She owes it to him to get back too.

As she picks carefully through the tunnel, she pictures what Pepper will be doing now.

Gathering, as usual, the artefacts Pepper has curated from a life that has spun around so many different coils.

Things gathered during his theatre years and the precious few relics from his childhood in Poland.

Is her and Emma’s flat already stuffed with his mementoes when it should be filled with tinned food and water?

What should they be doing back home? What should she be doing now ?

Carrie thinks of every disaster movie she’s yawned through, fallen asleep halfway through.

No useful techniques stuck and she has no witty lines.

But she has a sidekick now. Having a sidekick and being on an epic quest means Carrie’s undeniably the hero of this film.

And heroes and their sidekicks always survive. Don’t they?

Grace stops suddenly, grabbing Carrie’s arm and then dropping it just as quickly. ‘Look, do you see that?’

‘What?’

Almost everything ahead of them is pitch-black, except for a tiny block of light. Is that …?

‘Oh thank god,’ says Carrie. ‘It’s an exit sign.’

‘You’re definite?’

‘Yes.’ Carrie almost laughs. ‘I really, actually am.’