Page 4 of 59 Minutes

CARRIE

Carrie is incapable of drawing breath, her senses reduced to nothing but a thunderous heartbeat.

The crowd bulges around her and she looks for someone who knows what to do.

Proper adults, trusty faces in crisp uniforms. But no one else seems to know how to act.

The staff are still bunched by the platform gates, looking like children in their uniforms. Wild-eyed, they stare back at the crowds.

Two members of staff at the nearest gate start to argue. Fragments of it reach Carrie.

… just let them on …

… need to follow procedure …

… nowhere to fucking go anyway …

People merge into soup. More bodies fill the space around her. Faces bleached of all detail by terror. Panic washes over the glass roof, up and down the escalators, sloshing over the platforms and onto the tracks. She can smell it.

A woman slips off her pointy-heeled shoes, throws them to the floor and runs towards the underground entrance. This unleashes others. Normally aloof, waves of commuters start to scramble to get below ground. Seek immediate shelter.

Carrie knows she should move but her body is not on board with her brain, and she feels herself grow smaller as she’s bumped, shoved, lifted up and moved. More people flood into the station from outside. Bodies press into the shops and food places.

‘Please walk in an orderly fashion and remain calm,’ the Tannoy says.

Where are the police? The army? She can hear sirens outside, but this is London and there are always sirens.

Look for the helpers, that’s the phrase.

But she can’t see any and can barely move.

She is cubed, diced, someone’s leg between her knees, someone’s forearm over her eyes.

But there must be something to do, somewhere to go, a plan . There is always a plan.

She gasps for air and twists to see behind her.

Yet more people pour in from outside, through the entrance over there in the corner, and over there by the toilets and at every other entrance she can see.

People flow relentlessly inward. Not at speed, there isn’t enough space for that, but slowly rolling in like boiling sugar, ready to set around her.

The never-true-darkness of a London sky hangs heavily over them, just the other side of the glass roof.

Will that fill with blinding light?

An elbow glances off Carrie’s chin as a tall man shuffles past, fighting his way towards the platforms and then goodness knows where.

The trains are all cancelled, and some passengers who had already boarded are jumping back off and cramming down the staircases that are cut into the platform surfaces, leading to the underground trains.

The doors down there must be closed because people then start bubbling back up and spilling out onto the platform.

Some shove their way towards the main concourse, scrambling over the barriers and joining the crush.

More people are jamming on to the trains, apparently hoping to flee for the countryside.

She would do the same, most likely – a country-raised girl will usually return there in the end – but Clementine and Emma are not in the country, they are in Kennington.

She can walk there in twenty-five minutes, run back in less.

And they need to be together as a family, that’s just a given.

And there’s Pepper who lives upstairs from them.

Their landlord, but ‘landlord’ barely covers it.

Beloved friend. Father figure. De facto grandfather to Clementine.

A man who, despite his acerbic and grumpy appearance, has one of the kindest hearts she’s ever known.

He will need help too. An anathema to him but tough tits, Pepper.

He’s wound the neighbours up so much with his bitching and troublemaking that they’ll all leave him well alone.

So if Emma hasn’t already, Carrie will get him to bring his supplies down to theirs, hunker down with them in their ground floor flat.

It’s technically his flat anyway, he owns the whole building.

And yes, it will be hard to prise him from his things.

The photographs and paintings that cover every wall from artist friends, lovers and enemies.

The countless knick-knacks. But she will carry him down if she has to, wriggling and kicking like Clementine when she’s tired.

Yes, she thinks, this is a plan.

Even as she makes her decision, she’s being shoved and shunted further from the exits.

She’s closer to the now open barriers of platform 17.

A train that was due to leave for Woking sits crammed with people, their faces pressed against the windows in dreadful hope.

‘It’s not gonna leave,’ a man in a train company jacket is shouting to anyone who’ll listen, waving his arms at the windows. ‘You’re gonna have to get off!’

She turns, sucks in a breath, and starts to elbow her way back towards the archway she came through just a few minutes ago. Some people instinctively shuffle to make space, others don’t seem to see her at all. She catches more fragments.

… fuck is wrong with you, man, move your …

… nothing left of the city …

She starts off polite, timid, but after being pushed back twice, and clobbered with a bag, she stops saying please and just starts shoving. Hard.