Page 31 of 59 Minutes

CARRIE

Carrie and Grace stagger along the street in silence.

Clusters of people are wedged into shops, their ashy faces pressed against windows.

More frightened faces stare from upper floors.

Outside, groups surge angrily against doors and shutters, begging, banging, threatening.

Motley crews of people who might never otherwise meet.

Tailored coats and high-vis jackets, straggle-haired men and snooty-looking women and, weaving between all their legs, little kids in winter clothes.

All banging, all shouting. Do the children understand or are they just natural participants?

The way Clementine will clap when Carrie claps, poke her tongue out when Emma does that to her, join in with her mothers’ songs when they’re singing along to an all bangers playlist while cooking.

Away from the groups, lone figures zip frantically around. They sprint or cycle or skitter, one way, then another. Parents run, coats flapping, pushing wiry buggies loaded with children, shedding bags and lunchboxes into the road.

Grace and Carrie cling together, stumbling as if in a three-legged race. The sports day at the end of the world.

‘Back in the ends,’ Carrie says. Grace looks at her, appalled.

‘I know that’s what the kids say, so don’t give me that look.’

‘Oh my god.’

A silvery dog, loose from its owner, barrels into them and they part, just briefly, watching it rush off behind them. Its lead flows behind it as it yelps and runs frantically towards stationary traffic.

A small crowd beats the door of a brutalist church as they pass.

‘But you have to give us sanctuary!’ shouts the man at the front of the crowd, his coat neatly buttoned, his scarf poised just so .

His exasperated voice might otherwise be demanding to board a plane first, protesting that he has gold frequent flyer status.

‘You are being derelict in your duties,’ he shouts at the closed church door, turning to display his outrage, his shock, to the others around him.

The church is not calling anyone to prayer, its bells are silent. Are they usually silent?

From the road, a chunky man in ill-fitting jeans and a fisherman’s jumper runs past and collides with Carrie’s shoulder, spinning her round as he vaults the low fence of the church and belly flops face down on the chessboard-tiled ground.

Obviously hurt, he still scrambles to his knees, praying and crying.

The frequent flyer watches in disgust, then smooths his own coat.

‘Are you okay?’ Grace asks as Carrie tentatively rubs her shoulder.

She nods. She’s already smashed her knee, her teeth, her hands.

Her whole body is tenderised with bruises that should hurt.

But she can’t feel anything under her skin now, which prickles with adrenaline.

Even her legs that felt on the brink of collapse while climbing those metal stairs are now thrumming with movement, with readiness.

On the opposite side of the road is The Hercules pub, on whose wooden benches she and Emma spent their first official afternoon as a couple, having spent thousands of similar afternoons as friends, sinking frosty glasses of rosé and cheesy chips.

She didn’t know then that she was already pregnant with Clementine.

Now, men and women bang on the pub doors. Benches are shoved askew, some lie on their side.

A school building now. Faces collaged in its windows. ‘They’re wearing the same uniform as you,’ Carrie realises. Grace nods. ‘Yeah.’

‘Any friends?’ she says, thinking of herself at thirteen, of Emma.

‘I’ve got friends,’ Grace says, a hurt in her voice that Carrie hadn’t heard before.

‘Of course you do. I mean, do you see any of your friends in there?’

Grace shakes her head but doesn’t say more, only ever giving what she must. Is that mistrust or confidence?

Either way, she’s the opposite of Carrie, who will overshare so uncontrollably she’ll lie awake replaying her monologues and torturing herself for weeks about what she’s told to whom.

All except one secret. The worst possible secret.

‘How come you were at Waterloo then? You live in the opposite direction.’

‘I went into town after school,’ Grace says. Her voice falters. ‘Wanted to get a present for my little brother. It’s his birthday the day after tomorrow.’ Whatever Grace got, it must now be lost in her long-abandoned bag, sinking into tube grot.

‘I’ve never not been with him on his birthday,’ Grace says.

‘You will be.’

Grace says nothing.

There is a roadblock at the junction of Lambeth Road and Kennington Road.

It stops cars attempting to head towards the A3.

A terrified-looking police officer lifts a megaphone to her lips as two of her colleagues flank her.

‘Kennington Road, Lambeth Road and the A3 are now emergency service roads, you cannot pass.’

Cars beep, raggedly queued, jammed any which way.

Kennington Road ahead of them is eerily empty save for a huge fire engine, racing away, towards the main road.

Horns blare throughout the queue of vehicles and – almost as if they’ve planned it – several men simultaneously leap from the various cars nearest to the roadblock and charge at the police.

The officer with the megaphone lifts it again, even as a wiry man fights to pull it from her.

‘These are now emergency service roads.’ Her shaking voice ricochets from nearby buildings, followed by a screech of feedback. She tries to say more but another man knocks the megaphone from her hands as her colleagues put up riot shields, the synchronised sound like a chorus of plastic crickets.

There is a solid, immovable layer of cars at all angles coming from Lambeth Bridge and Waterloo. Where have they emerged from? Were they all lying in wait in the centre of the city, dormant in underground car parks?

A bus horn blows from somewhere as more people tumble out of their cars, running to join the angry swell at the roadblock.

As Carrie and Grace run past, down Kennington Road, the police behind them are so overwhelmed that a car smashes straight through the blockade.

More cars start to flood the road now, the other protestors peel away to take up positions behind steering wheels, getting through while they can.

At first, traffic creeps forward and it seems almost normal.

Just for a moment, this is the same Kennington Road it always is.

Stop/start, but flowing. And then the cars at the front – now beyond Carrie’s viewpoint – must have reached another roadblock because a sea of urgent brake lights and shrieking tyres spreads backwards towards them like a wave.

The crunch is louder than anything she’s heard before and even as she runs, Carrie covers her head with her right arm and, without thinking of personal space or consent or any of that, puts her left arm around Grace’s head to protect her.

Cars have slammed into one another, abandoned cars shunted along with them.

People scramble out of the way as vehicles mount the pavement.

A small silver car narrowly misses Grace before crashing into the white wall of a four-storey Georgian building.

For a moment, nothing more happens, but as they run past the little silver car, the driver’s door opens and a woman tumbles out, frees herself from a tangled seat belt, yanks open the back door and pulls out a screaming baby.

‘Oh no,’ Carrie says. ‘We should help them.’ Before they can do anything, the woman bundles the baby under her arm like a rolled-up carpet and sprints away, leaving her car door open. Its radio is still on.

‘Do not attempt to travel,’ says a crisp voice through the car speakers. ‘Roads are expected to be impassable. Stay in your homes or places of business. If you are not currently inside, seek shelter at the nearest building to you.’

As they pass a crashed taxi lying sideways in the road, a different voice brings breaking news. ‘We can reassure Britons that the king and his immediate family have been taken to safety,’ it says.

‘Fuck the king!’ someone shouts.

They push on faster, past the Three Stags, crowded with faces, across the rammed and stationary crossroads.

The traffic lights merrily flicking through in turn, as if cars were still able to drive, as if people were still standing at the crossings, patiently waiting for the green man.

As if the whole of Kennington Road wasn’t a scrapyard, and people weren’t scrambling, bloodied, from scuffed and crushed cars.

The Imperial War Museum lawn is dotted with people holding on to trees, crouching like animals, some with their foreheads pressed against bark, others with their arms wrapped around the trunks.

Are they misguidedly hoping for shelter or just giving up?

They are all looking inward, into the bark, not out at the carnage.

A few metres away, she realises there is a couple lying on the grass, a woman on the ground, skirt up and tights down. A man on top of her. They claw at each other, kissing fiercely. Another couple, two men, press up against a tree.

Carrie moves slightly in front of Grace. ‘Just focus on where we’re going, it’s not long now ’til you’re home.’ Grace keeps looking over anyway. Right, distraction needed.

‘Hey,’ Carrie says, ‘what will you miss most about normal life?’

Grace stops, just briefly. She looks as if she wants to correct Carrie, to chastise her.

‘For me,’ Carrie ploughs on, ‘it’s Nando’s, McDonald’s breakfasts, cheesy chips from an oily van at the end of a night out, bags of fizzy sweets on a long journey and …’

‘That’s all food,’ Grace says.

‘Yeah, you’re right, I need a drink too. Put in—’

‘Put in?’ Grace laughs now, what a lovely sound. ‘Put in where?’

‘The time capsule or whatever, the list of stuff we’ll miss. Add in a black + white shake from Shake Shack. With whipped cream.’

‘That’s just more food, basically,’ Grace says. ‘So what you’re actually asking me is what junk food I’ll miss.’ They jog along the pavement littered with glass, smashed bottles and the frothy fragments of safety glass windscreens, pushed out in escape.

‘I guess I am,’ Carrie says. ‘Yeah.’

People are still flooding into the museum, its every door flung open.

People must be pressing themselves into the exhibition tanks, clinging under the fuselage of long-cold RAF planes and taking refuge in the gift shop.

To have a War Museum, it suddenly strikes Carrie, when war is still so very present. What a ludicrous world.

‘Papa John’s barbecue meat feast, XXL original crust, with chicken poppers,’ Grace says. ‘And put in two litres of Dr Pepper.’