Page 67 of 59 Minutes

CARRIE

Pepper writes carefully.

Emma was watching for you out of the window, Carrie.

Carrie stares at each word as they form the sentence. Grammatically perfect and precise, even as the pen shakes between Pepper’s index finger and thumb.

When the helicopter crashed, she saw you fall.

‘What?’

He stops, avoids her eye, fusses with the pen. He is stalling, and she can’t bear it.

‘Please, Pepper!’

She went out there. There wasn’t long left and she went out to help you inside.

‘No …’ Carrie shakes her head. ‘No.’

I tried to stop her.

He pauses. The whine in her ears has faded just a little. She can just make out the wails of fire engines, police and ambulances. It sounds like make-believe. Like TV.

I saw her trying to help you but you both fell over. I saw you fight her off.

He stops and looks up at Carrie, reaching up and cupping her filthy chin so gently, so sadly, that she cries out. Then he takes a sharp breath and writes the rest.

You could not have known it was her.

Now Carrie is running on her shaking legs, her damaged arm swinging.

She is down the stairs.

She is at the front door.

Pepper is coming after her and as she yanks the door with her good arm, he pulls her from behind, tries to turn her face to his.

She shakes him off. She has to find Emma, to tell her sorry, to tend whatever injury she has.

To tell her they should move to Brighton, eat rock every day, just be together with Clementine for ever and ever.

To tell her over and over again that she didn’t know it was her. She couldn’t see, couldn’t hear. Would never have—

Oh god.

The air outside is still thick with smoke from the helicopter, sour and dank. Rubble and detritus are strewn like Lego. The huge, burned-out carcass lies on its side, blades limp like dead dragonfly wings. The flames are lazy now, just a few licking along the outline of the machine.

On a bench nearby, a man lies still, arms crossed. Carrie will later find out he took all his insulin at once and lay there to die, unable to make it home to his family in time. Right now, he looks like he’s sleeping. People pay no attention to him as he slowly fades away.

Several figures squat down behind the trees, pause to look at something and then hurry away.

She strains to see. Her eyes are still sore and puffy, but she can make out a shape between the tree trunks.

There is something there that troubles passersby but not enough to keep them from their own people.

Maybe nothing could stop a person tonight, unsure whether to truly believe that their world – flawed and beautiful – has survived.

Her eyes are leaking, half-closed, but she steps outside and moves closer, dodging the hazards, only realising that she’s still barefoot due to the pain. Shards of glass slice through her soles as she moves closer to the place where Emma grabbed her, and where she struck out.

She wipes her eyes with her scrubbed and raw hands and tries again to make out the shape on the ground.

She must be screaming, even if she can’t hear it, because Pepper is outside now and he’s grabbing her, pulling her into the house away from the flames and the people.

Away from Emma’s body and the huge, bloodied brick next to her beautiful, damaged head.