Page 55 of 59 Minutes

CARRIE

White Hart Street is never empty, never silent. But now everything is hushed, voices trapped inside by whatever is covering their windows.

This street is parallel to her own road but the chunky Kennings Estate sits in between, with its four solid blocks of flats, each seven storeys high. She can’t see her road, but she knows it’s right there. Clementine, Emma and Pepper are right there.

All of Kennington used to belong to the Duchy of Cornwall but now just a few slivers of it sit in the royal purse.

She didn’t believe it at first, when Emma’s stepdad told them they were leaving a part of Devon largely owned by – the then – Prince Charles, only to move to a bit of the capital owned by the very same.

When she told her mum, she seemed to perk up.

The only bit of Carrie’s London plan that she did like.

‘At least I know who’s looking after you. ’

‘Does she think Prince Charles roams around Kennington fighting crime?’ Emma had said. ‘Like Batman?’

She’s never really cared before, but today, the circular nature of it all feels like some kind of message. Or maybe she’s just looking for meaning on a day when, in mere minutes, all meaning could be destroyed.

With no idea of time and no sense of what it will feel like when time does run out, Carrie skids into the grounds of Kennings Estate.

She can see more windows than she can count, heart hurting at the thought of just how many people, how many children, are lined up in there, under beds and behind sofas.

People praying, howling, saying what they need to say.

Repenting. Loving. In the end, what else matters but love?

And then it happens. A roaring sound from above that feels close enough to slice the top of her head off.

She falls to the floor, covering her ears as the sound radiates towards her, soon followed by an explosion somewhere.

Over her? Next to her? She can’t tell, it’s more feeling than sound but it’s louder than anything she’s ever experienced before.

She scrunches up her eyes. The air above her is sucked, chopped, a tornado licking at her.

Is her skin being peeled off? It feels like it, like it’s being tugged away from her bones, her skeleton picked clean.

I am too late.

She is so close to her people but she is too late.

She stumbles to her feet and runs anyway, faster than she’s ever run, even as a black shadow covers the dimly lit lawn she’s running across, its metallic sound mighty and unrelenting.

Her arms pump by her sides, her ears uncovered and no longer working.

No sound, only feeling, as the missile shudders across rooftops all around her, the air churning, ruffling the coat that is somehow still on her body.

Pieces of grit fly up and hit her neck, face and hands.

Maybe it’s not grit. Maybe it’s poisoned detritus falling on her.

Maybe she’s already dead. But still she runs.

Down the narrow pathway that only locals know, reaching a darkened Prince’s Square, she sprints for the communal garden at the centre.

She was so nearly there. She is so nearly there. And she’s not giving up, even as the great shadow thrashes around over her, spinning, taunting her, shaking her bones and rippling her scalp.

Who knew missiles could do this?

Who knew I’d still be able to think while they did this?

Carrie skids through the rosebushes, scratching cat claw chunks from her legs and arms, slashing through her jeans and coat.

The power from above chops great globs of soil up, spraying it metres into the air.

Stones, tree branches and garden gates are tossed up and scattered everywhere.

She ducks as a metal watering can just misses her forehead.

A whirlygig clothes dryer whistles past her.

The air is dense with dust and smoke, she can barely see.

And then comes the bang, heard not in her damaged ears but in her very bones.