Page 61 of 59 Minutes

CARRIE

Before Carrie can make it to her front door, Pepper has flung his open and is beckoning her.

He’s breathing heavily from running down the stairs – a ‘dignified trot’ is usually the fastest he’ll move.

Carrie can just make out the burgundy sheen of his self-dubbed smoking jacket through her swollen eyes, still stinging.

How are we still alive? How is the building still standing?

He points upstairs so they must be in his upper floor flat, surely the worst place to be.

‘What time is it?’ she shouts, tapping her wrist where a watch would sit and shoving her body through the door, slamming it closed behind her.

‘How long do we have?’ But she can’t hear his answer anyway, her ears are still whining.

He tries to hug her but she fights him, there’s no time for this, she needs to get her family downstairs.

He won’t let her past and he’s trying to tell her something, his mouth moving as she tries to get up the stairs. Why won’t he get out of the bloody way?

As she finally gives him the slip and starts to run up, Pepper grabs her bad elbow.

She cries out in pain and shakes him off but he shoves his phone at her.

An old brick of a thing that she and Emma like to wind him up about.

It is sheathed in the burgundy sequinned case that they bought him for Christmas.

She can barely see the screen in the dimly lit hall.

NUCLEAR MISSILE THREAT AVERTED. REPEAT. NUCLEAR MISSILE THREAT NO LONGER IN EFFECT.

‘Really?’ she says, grabbing the phone again and staring at it. He nods, mouths the word, ‘Really’ and then struggles to catch her as she folds over, slowly collapsing.

But the fire? The deafening sound and the smoke and the heat? The bricks and stones and tree branches tossed around like paper aeroplanes?

Sitting in a heap on the stairs, Carrie points back towards the communal garden, mimes an explosion, but Pepper shakes his head, throws his hands into a swan dive like something crashing down from the air.

It would be funny under any other circumstances.

His arm over his head like a blade now. A helicopter. A crashed helicopter.

She doesn’t understand what this all means though, can’t grasp hold of these thoughts.

Everything is choked by the deafening whine in her head, the smoke coating her eyes and throat.

Have the missiles just gone elsewhere? Are there burning white skies over some other city and the scientists or the army or whatever got the warning wrong?

Or have they been cancelled entirely? Turned around and sent back to …

she doesn’t actually know where. Nothing makes sense.

She has fought her way across London, literally fought people, lost her hearing, seen things she will never forget.

All to be back here, with her loves, just in time.

Every atom of energy has burned out. She is empty, exhausted, gripping the banister with her good arm and wobbling her way up each step like she’s a hundred years old.

Barely able to keep up with seventy-five-year-old Pepper and his dancer’s gait.

When he turns back to look at her, she’s never seen eyes so sad.