Page 80 of 59 Minutes
FRANKIE
ONE YEAR AFTER THE ALERT ST JAMES’S PARK
Frankie has parked somewhere stupid. The kind of place people who live in London would know not to park in. A side street, but with lines she’s never seen before. Zigzagged red? Can’t be good. She’ll find out when the ticket arrives.
A little bird dances on the top of a dog waste bin.
He stops strutting and looks at her, head tilted.
For the last year, she’s struggled to look at birds.
Imagining, every time, their wing tips in flame, their bodies popping in mid-air and just disappearing.
More than people, more than animals, it’s the birds that get her.
They would have all vanished, just like that.
Yet this little bird, with his proudly puffed stomach, fluffy feathers cuffing the tops of his pencil-line legs, he just goes right on living.
He doesn’t even know that there are things in the world that could end all life, including his.
She watches him in envy, forcing herself not to look away, but he loses interest in her and flies off. She takes another step.
This park is grander than it looked on TV. The scale of this place, the length of the lake and that huge slab of misery in the middle seem extraordinary. Like a blockbuster setting. Ideal for a disaster movie.
At the far end, the spectre of Buckingham Palace recedes into the background, weird without its Beefeaters and horses.
The flags along the nearby Mall are lowered to half mast, drooping like fuchsias.
A few people are here already, moving uneasily in little clusters, squatting on benches or behind windcheaters, staking claims to parcels of land ahead of the crowds.
It reminds her of the Coronation a few years ago, which she’d observed through rolled eyes.
As a small business owner, she did not even benefit from the day off.
She wonders if any of the once-royals will be watching from Greece or America.
On one of the nearest benches, a man and woman sit together.
‘Poor Mum,’ the woman sobs, over and over.
The man sits in silent concern, not quite touching her.
Siblings, perhaps, although Seb would be hugging her back, probably crying too.
They would have missed Mam, even if now she’s driving them mad.
Practically asking to move in with Frankie and Otis, to help with the baby.
Luckily flights get more expensive by the month, keeping her at bay, but only somewhat.
There were no hotel rooms available to book when Frankie decided, just yesterday afternoon, to come down to see the wall.
Of course there weren’t any beds. Millions of people are expected to pour into the capital today, the highest number since November last year, and hotels have been grub-handedly upping their prices since the great grief jamboree was announced.
Otis didn’t understand her sudden decision, but they were used to navigating that.
Gaps that were without feeling for him had to be explained, smoke holes where memories should be.
When she told him she wanted to pay her respects to Janet Spencer, he understood, but he did not feel the same need.
He was sad for her and her family, but he blamed the Curtiss brothers for everything.
Otis carried no guilt for what happened during the 59 minutes, and did not understand why Frankie did.
He never even met Janet, never saw her house and seemed never to think of her unless Frankie brought it up.
But if Frankie hadn’t gone to Janet’s house, Janet would still be alive.
Her daughter and granddaughter would not have lost her.
She cannot ever stop thinking about Janet, it’s literally the least she can do.
Thorne Junius Drake is only four months old and it seems insane that he is currently hundreds of miles away.
She can feel a physical pull to him, as if the umbilical cord was tangled around Frankie’s spine, tugging.
But he is safe. Right now, he is in his warm home.
In theory, he is being looked after by Otis but with Otis not-quite recovered, maybe-never-recovering, he’s really being looked after by Otis’s mum, Jo.
They’ll be elbowing each other over who gets to give the morning bottle.
Frankie had always intended to breastfeed, but when Thorne was born, she just couldn’t do it.
When pushed, she told her health visitor it was fear of the discomfort, but this was not true.
As she’d held his little mouth to her chest in those first tender moments, she was seized by the thought that she would pass poison to her baby through her milk.
A mangled cultural memory from long before she was born, Windscale nuclear fire and atomic milk.
A nightmare she knows is not true. There was no bomb.
It didn’t just not go off , it never existed.
And despite the British government’s attempts to blame eco-activists and anyone else it suited, it has become clear that it was a hoax designed by an enemy state and enacted by state-sponsored hackers to cause their rival to destroy itself.
But she couldn’t shake the fear. When she looked online, tumbling down the Mumsnet rabbit hole, she learned she wasn’t the only one with this phobia.
Which helped and didn’t. Otis has an ongoing tremor and Jo plays fast and loose with measurements, so Frankie made up more than enough bottles before she left last night.
Looking at them lined up like little soldiers almost stopped her going.
Saying goodbye took hours and she finally stopped crying around Stafford.