Page 73 of 59 Minutes

CARRIE

THE DAY AFTER THE ALERT

Carrie snaps awake. Clementine has climbed onto the bed next to her, Barnaby wedged into the crook of her little arm. What time is it? It’s dark out and the bowl of stew Pepper brought her earlier is congealing on the nightstand. Its meaty smell twists her stomach.

‘Mummy?’

‘What?’

Her voice, an unpractised bark, does not sound like her own. Clementine must think so too as she bursts into tears.

‘Oh,’ Carrie says. For a moment, she watches her daughter cry into Barnaby, his furry neck strangled in her plump little hand in the soupy grey of the room, yellowed by the streetlight outside.

Tears rain down on pyjamas that are too small and which she meant to weed out and put in a charity bag.

For a moment, the sadness on the little screwed up face does not touch her, the smallness of her daughter does not affect her as it normally does – with a constant base level of shock that anything so small can be autonomous, have thoughts and feelings.

She thinks then, suddenly, of the moment her own mother came into the family room at the hospital, after Dad died.

How teenage Carrie had stood waiting, shaking with grief, but her mother had not touched her.

Had not comforted her. Had entirely collapsed under her own sense of loss.

Carrie reaches for Clementine and pulls her in.

She softens her voice and smells her hair, the days-old trace of shampoo.

‘Sweetie,’ she says, ‘my little bunny rabbit, it’s OK.

’ Clementine grips Carrie’s clothes – what clothes?

– Carrie looks down and realises she’s wearing Pepper’s pyjamas.

When was she helped into those? She has no memory.

Oh god, Pepper. He has kept her human. ‘It’s okay,’ she says, the rough edges of her voice falling away.

‘Mummy’s here. Mummy will always be here. ’