Page 50 of 59 Minutes

FRANKIE

Now the mist has drifted away, a full moon is visible in the clear night sky.

Frankie’s head aches so deeply the pain has turned into a sound, her face is slick with tears and blood.

The gun feels grotesque and surprisingly heavy.

But if she has to use it to get someone to help Otis, so be it.

What does she have to lose now? Twelve minutes before everything changes.

Life and death. Fuck. Like, actually life and death.

She thinks of the teenage girl, running like crazy in the other direction. If she called her back, told her there was shelter, would she hear? Frankie doesn’t even know what name to call out. And would Ashley hear instead?

Frankie makes no sound. The girl will make it, she tells herself, but she’s on her own now.

A cloud slides in front of the pitted grey moon, and everything dissolves to a deep black again. She doesn’t dare use the flashlight on her pocketed phone, not yet, not with Ashley sitting metres behind her.

The lane twists ahead of Frankie, the going uneven.

It twists again and when she looks back, she can’t see the wreckages of the truck or car, just the glow of the hazards in the sky.

She finally puts on her light. It lights very little.

All she can really see is the mud at the side of the road, the great grooves chomped out of it by hundreds of horse hooves.

Is that a Dartmoor pony?

She can see the cottage easily now, silhouetted by the moonlight, the smoke guiding her. Her skull feels explosive with pain, her stomach churning, but she tries to run, gripping the gun and pointing it away from her, distrustful of everyone.

As she draws closer to the building, she can see wisps of light in the windows, at the edges of curtains. Or maybe barricades. The stone is not black, as it first appeared. It’s honey coloured but darkened by a great beard of ivy.

Shelter.

On the driveway sits an old 4x4, its skirt muddy, its tyres enormous.

If she could use that, she could drive to collect Otis in it, drag him into the back.

The front gate opens with a squeak and she grabs at the door knocker, slams it down.

The metallic thud rings across the fields, around the pig’s tail lane.

Maybe the keys are reachable through the letterbox, she tries to push her hand through but there’s only space for her fingers and she feels nothing but air.

And anyway, then what? Where would they go in the 4x4? The holiday cottage has nothing in it, barely any food or water. That man Robert outside the shop said that food and water was the difference between living and dying.

She bangs on the door. ‘Please open up, I really need your help!’

Nothing happens. She rattles the door handle but it’s locked. Of course it’s locked. Frankie bangs on the door with her fist now, the sound conducting through her aching skull – more feeling than sound.

She prises the letterbox open again and peers through, but she can just see an empty set of stairs.

There are ten minutes left. There is not enough time to find anywhere else, it’s here or …

nowhere. She bangs the knocker again and then, when that doesn’t make a difference, she tramples barefoot through one of the little flower beds that sits in front of a wooden window and starts to bang on the glass.

‘Please, I’m pregnant. I’m alone. I need your help! ’

She clumps her way back to the front door and starts to count as she bangs and slaps the door.

One.

If they don’t open up by the time she reaches three …

Two.

… she looks at the gun.