Page 79 of 59 Minutes
CARRIE
ONE YEAR AFTER THE ALERT ST JAMES’S PARK
The sun will not rise for another two hours but here it is always light.
Pale pink bulbs have been strung along the little bridges connecting the main park to the memorial wall at the centre of the lake, and tiny pinprick lights are dotted amongst the names like constellations of stars.
The polished brass, which runs along the top of the large oval structure, glows in the lingering moonlight.
From this distance, the thousands of tiny names are impossible to make out.
But Carrie cannot will her legs to move closer yet.
She stands at the lake’s edge and watches the wind toy with the surface of the water that surrounds the murder and accident wall.
Or, to give it its official title, the Wall of the Fallen.
People in small sombre clusters sit on the many benches, their plaques named for the donating families. Others, like her, stand cautiously, as if awaiting permission. But from who, she couldn’t say.
Flowers slump along the bottom of the wall, as if washed there by a tide. She feels stupid in her empty-handedness. She left the Airbnb in Clapham in a hurry before dawn, unsure she would be able to face coming here at all, rushing out before her nerves failed.
The streets had been busier than expected, grim-faced insomniacs pacing through Battersea Park with headphones or staring out at the Thames from Chelsea Bridge, newly gilded with memorial plaques.
The pavements running around Victoria were peppered with ghosts, watched over by empty buildings, their tenants moving out to Birmingham, Manchester or Glasgow, or simply unable to coax traumatised staff back into huge glass buildings.
Carrie herself never went back to work, never even contacted them.
They paid her for a few months and then stopped.
A letter was probably sent, or an email – she hasn’t thought to check.
She wonders now, for the first time, how many staff her agency lost. Either during the 59 minutes or after.
People she once ate lunch with, worked late with, talked about behind their backs.
To think she’d ever cared about that work, that any of them had.
After the alert, ad campaigns for cat food and credit cards seemed suddenly as important as they really were, which is to say not important at all.
She has enough from her inheritance, her mum’s solid NHS pension, to live simply without work for at least several years.
She would be incapable now anyway. Getting up each day, living a guilty widow’s half-life while trying to be a whole parent, that takes every part of her.
She only opened her laptop once in those last London weeks, drifting automatically to clunky web versions of social platforms, awash with all the footage and thoughts no one had been able to share during the network blackout.
She closed her computer with a snap after a few minutes of exposure.
It now lies furred with dust under the bed that used to be her mother’s.
She is not exactly a member of the growing smartphone liberation movement, but she doesn’t ever want to look at a mobile phone screen again and she would never believe what is written there.
Back in Clapham, her daughter sleeps on in the double bed they had slept in together last night.
For the last year, they have shared a bed every night.
Clementine clinging to Barnaby, her little forehead frowning in sleep, while Carrie watches unable to sleep until it’s nearly morning.
Clementine sometimes still cries out for Mama when she wakes, but far less often than before. Which somehow hurts more.
Clementine has started asking to be called by her middle name, Bunny. A victory Emma has missed out on, among so many others. It will probably just be a phase.
Carrie plans to get before she wakes but knows that Pepper, sleeping in the second room of the benign all-white apartment, will feed and distract her daughter if she wakes early.
Jam sandwiches for breakfast or sugary cereal, no one cares much about these things now.
When he visited Carrie last month, he had asked, ‘Would you like to stay at my place when you come, Kochanie ?’ He needed no explanation when she shook her head.
Although Carrie has not been in the city for many months, she knew the route here instinctively.
Infected with the knowledge that all Londoners, whether émigré or native, finds it hard to ever shake.
In her final few weeks in the city, before leaving for Dartmoor, Carrie had barely left Pepper’s flat, screaming into his pillows or trailing needfully after Clementine, grabbing at her, hugging her until she fought to get away.
Carrie did not go out onto the street unless absolutely unavoidable, and then walked a pretzel route to avoid certain spots.
She has certainly not been this close to the centre until today.
Too many people. Too much London. Too many memories.
She has promised to visit Grace and her family, to take Clementine for lunch at their flat on Elm Walk.
If she can stand to get that close to Prince’s Square.
And then, the long train home and back for bedtime in the cottage.
Where she will lie next to Clementine’s sleeping body and replay those last seconds, fighting for her life and ruining it at the very same time.
More than replay, relive. Nausea sweeping over her, her hearing faltering, forgetting to breathe or breathing too fast. But right now, she is numb.
The names on the wall are alphabetical. She crosses the bridge for D to F.