Page 5 of 59 Minutes
FRANKIE
‘This has to be rubbish, right?’ Frankie holds her phone out in her palm like a rescued bird as Otis continues to stare at her belly in the mirror.
The cottage is too warm, a smell of reheated dust tickling her throat.
A chunky reclaimed radiator tuts as Frankie shoves her screen in Otis’s face again.
He frowns. The same look he gets when she gets gloomy about climate change, politics, calories on menus, traffic accidents, and on and on until he tells her, gently, to shut up and have a bag of crisps.
Life can’t be that bad if we’ve still got crisps.
He starts to read out loud from her screen, stilted in a way that shows her exactly what he was like as a schoolboy.
Eager to please, slightly guileless. She feels the burden of tears welling and coughs to stop all that.
Because Otis is a grown man and not a little boy.
Because this is a happy moment. Because this is not a real warning. It cannot be.
‘ “Severe alert, nuclear missile threat.” Nuclear missile threat ?’ He looks up and then back at the phone. ‘Nah, that can’t be real. Who sent it?’
‘It wasn’t a number, look, it’s not a normal text, it just appeared on the screen.’
‘Like that test a few years ago?’
‘I never received it.’ She’d joked about it at the time. Not one of the designated survivors, clearly.
‘Maybe it’s another test,’ he says, handing it back. ‘Or maybe they’ve sent an alert by accident. Anyway, I don’t want to think about that, I want to think about …’ – he presses a big palm to her stomach and she instinctively sucks it in – ‘our baby.’
‘Due on July nineteenth,’ she says, ‘and apparently the size of a poppy seed, but—’
‘A poppy seed?’ He pinches his fingers together. ‘How is that even possible?’ He shows her his fingers. ‘How big is a poppy seed? Like this big?’
‘Otis.’ She reaches for his hand and holds it.
‘I don’t know seeds,’ he says, frowning and allowing her to lace her fingers through his.
‘Otis, I’m so happy you’re happy but can you just check your phone as well, just so we know for sure. I don’t think we should assume …’
‘Ay, alright.’ He gets up with a grunt, pats down his pockets and then plods out of the room with a lack of urgency she finds reassuring.
Of course it’s bollocks, it has to be. It’s total bollocks, and they’ll celebrate with that fancy bag of crisps from the hamper, he’ll bring them back up for sure.
She’s eating crisps for two now, that’s the joke she’ll make.
It is waiting on her lips as he runs back up the stairs, his feet slapping the wooden steps so hard it shakes the floor. He has no crisps.
‘I got it too,’ he says.
They thumb their phones, trying to find news.
Nothing happens, the screens just hang. Frankie opens Twitter, or whatever it’s called now, and tries to refresh it, but it’s just stuck on the timeline from when she last looked in the car, the same binary politics, sarcastic hot takes and weird promoted tweets from crypto bros and elasticated bra companies.
Otis doesn’t even use social media, something she admires and finds annoying because it makes her feel bad about her own screen time.
Otis tries to call his mum. ‘Nothing’s happening,’ he says, holding the phone away from his ear and trying again. ‘She’ll be doing her nut.’
Frankie tries to call her brother Seb back in Manchester, who always knows what to do. Nothing happens. She tries again but there’s no ringing, no recorded message. Then she remembers he’s in Dubai.
‘If this is a hoax,’ she says, ‘it’s still managed to jam the networks.’
‘There’s a telly downstairs,’ Otis says, standing and offering her his hand, helping her up as if she’s newly fragile. Oh god , she thinks, I like that more than I should .
The remote control for the TV sits on a handmade doily, which upsets Frankie for reasons she can’t articulate. It feels so quiet and normal here in this gently fussy room, with its low beams and lacework, that she can feel hope holding her insides in place.
The news will tell us it’s a hoax and then we can add this to our roster of things to joke about. Then get back to talking about our magical poppy seed baby.
Poppy , she thinks, that’s a nice name .
She likes natural names like that, plants and animals.
Countryside names for her city kid. She imagines Otis with a little girl called Poppy.
Plaits and miniature T-bar shoes. Tiny fingers to wrap him around.
He’ll be the loveliest, most devoted dad.
No beer benders and hangover-fuelled rages.
Their baby, their Poppy , will never be hidden in a cupboard ‘just in case’ like Frankie and Seb during their father’s worst years.
A beat in time, one last moment of hope, then she presses the power button and they watch the television screen come to life.
Otis reaches for her hand and they stand in front of the telly, staring.
There is no proper picture, just a black screen with a white crown on it, like the header of a government website.
Subtitles roll along the bottom that match the calm voice speaking.
‘… announcements will be made about the care of children in after school and childcare settings, your food and water supply, delivery of stable iodine tablets and care of animals and pets. Do not make mobile or landline phone calls—’
They look at each other, their hands becoming slick in each other’s grip.
‘… because the phone system could become overloaded. Any emergency notifications will still reach your phones even if the networks are down, so keep them charged for as long as you can.’
The words start to swirl into one another. In the distance, Frankie can hear a siren. Army? Police?
‘Further announcements will be made about the care of children in—’
‘It’s really real,’ Frankie says, putting her other hand on her stomach and allowing Otis to fold himself around her, muffling her words into his hoodie. His heart is the fastest she’s ever heard it. A rabbit heart. Hunted and trapped. ‘Oh my god, Otis. What the hell are we going to do?’