Page 52 of 59 Minutes
CARRIE
Carrie is on her guard, as she runs towards the sound of people. She has not heard a static crowd since Waterloo and that crowd was penned in by armed officials. Is this one the same? She emerges from Cotton Gardens onto Kennington Lane and is faced with a swarm of people’s backs.
They’re gathering outside the old pub that’s now a community hub of some kind.
At first, she thinks they’re all trying to get inside but then she sees that the movement of the crowd isn’t them pushing their bodies forward, but passing things towards the building.
Carrier bags, bottles of water, blankets, toys.
The faces inside stare out, wide eyes in little faces. Most are children.
‘Pass it all down, that’s it,’ a warm voice at the front calls out. As people let go of their goods, they start to peel away, breaking into shuffling runs or at least determined walks to nearby streets and homes.
‘Thank you, gorgeous,’ another voice calls. ‘Love you all.’
An elderly woman approaches the back of the crowd gripping a shopping trolley, full of blankets and soft toys. She’s hobbling slightly, wonky like she has an old injury stiffening one side. She passes the trolley to a grey-haired man near the back the crowd. ‘Get these to the children,’ she says.
‘How much time do we have left?’ Carrie asks but the old woman just shrugs.
‘Don’t want to know, doesn’t really make any difference to me.’ The woman looks back at the faces in the windows and shakes her head. ‘Just want them to be comfy.’
‘Eight minutes, love,’ an old man says as he starts to jog awkwardly away in stiff trousers. ‘Get cracking if you’ve somewhere to be.’
She heads down Kennington Lane where some of the beautiful old buildings have been carved up into flats.
She thinks of the people living on the top, first to be hit.
And if not hit, because she has not one clue what actually happens in a missile strike no matter what Grace hinted at, then the first to receive a blanket of fallout.
Right? So they’re stuffed. And maybe everyone is but they’re the most stuffed.
Have their downstairs neighbours let them into those lower flats? Surely they must have?
During the pandemic, this road had been filled with people clapping for the nurses, putting their children’s rainbow drawings in the window and shopping for their neighbours.
And those people back there, outside the community hub …
yes, she tells herself, of course the downstairs neighbours have let the upper floor neighbours into their flats.
But she can’t bear to look up just in case she sees any stranded faces.
Around the slight bend by the bottom of Chester Way.
The King’s Arms, her local since she first moved into Pepper’s building.
Even though it’s not strictly her nearest pub, the actual nearest one is fancier and more expensive.
The shutters at the King’s Arms are closed but the hum of people inside still reaches her.
Faces she’d recognise, bar staff and customers.
A proper pub, as her dad would have said.
Real ales. She can see the green felt of the pool table in the corner window, flipped on its side to cover the shutterless glass.
She imagines the spots and stripes rolling between legs.
The pub has been here since 1800. Pepper – who goes every Thursday for his gin and bitter lemon – still calls it the Little Apple, as it was called in its days as a gay pub.
Over a century before that, it had a theatre licence.
She’s always loved collecting little scraps of history like that.
She hopes those little scraps will be preserved somehow. But god knows how.
She runs across the road, to the secret archway between two huge Georgian houses, their stucco bottoms cream-dipped. As she passes between them, she can hear a dog going bonkers, a baby crying.
Carrie’s feet feel wet. Blister-pus, blood, sweat and street slop. But it’s okay, it’s all worth it, because Grace got home to her family and so will Carrie. She can’t be more than two minutes away.
She runs along the back of the Georgian villas that line Kennington Lane.
She’s always thought of this as seeing behind the velvet rope.
Backstage. The brick is unpainted at the back of the houses.
The scruffy rough-wood fences and overgrown lawns of homes that are new-pin-perfect at the front.
The expensive-looking tree house in one of the gardens – painted in Farrow and Ball Whirlybird – that always makes her feel bad for Clementine, for whom they will never, ever be able to afford to build a tree house like that.
Through some gates, she can see piles of black bin bags.
If there are any survivors here, these bags will surely mount in the coming weeks.
Although, will they even be able to leave their homes to get rid of rubbish?
Open the window and lob it out or … or live with it?
With the disgusting remnants of how they live.
The maggots. The cost of doing business, of life, laid out and stinking.
‘I read a lot about this … I don’t think it’s going to go how people think.’
No, people will find a way to make it all work. It won’t all be for nothing. It can’t be. People are fundamentally good, innovative and helpful. They will find a way.