Page 63 of 59 Minutes

MRS DABB

Relief never feels as it should.

She can’t settle, standing next to the fireplace trying to warm herself, pacing to the window to straighten the curtains again, glancing at the television, squeezing Bunny’s shoulder, scratching herself.

She feels encircled, the helicopters are still flying over, the air still feels thick with threat.

‘Sit down, love,’ Mary says, patting the sofa next to her, but she shakes her head.

‘Too wired.’ But that hardly covers it.

Mary has made them all tea ‘strong enough to stand your spoon up’ and grips hers tightly in her lap, in hands that have still not stopped shaking. Crescents of tea dot her beige trousers but she doesn’t seem to have noticed.

The television is showing footage from around the country, most of it captured on people’s mobile phones.

Poorly lit, badly framed. Feet run up and down stairs.

People fight over boats, buses, planes. A shaky video shows a family jumping off the Dartford Bridge, soundtracked by gasps from unseen mouths.

Cars slide under one another like old penny pusher machines at an arcade.

Footage of the skies around airports in Europe and Ireland show diverted planes that had been meant for England, circling and circling, waiting for a precious spot elsewhere.

And the plane that ran out of fuel, pirouetting down.

They watch this as punishment. Collective, media-curated survivor’s guilt.

Bunny is curled into the corner of the sofa, an old blanket they’ve had her whole life pulled up over her school uniform.

She should go and shower, brush her teeth, bin the tights, get into her clean ‘comfies’ and slough the day off.

Then she will feel like herself. Bunny has literally never still been in school uniform past six o’clock before.

But she seems utterly beaten, crushed by her own guilt even though no one has told her off or even asked what she was playing at, why she bunked off, where she went.

Where does the 118 go from? No one has mentioned the phone. None of it matters, not now. Not yet.