Page 84 of 59 Minutes

MRS CARRIE DABB

TEN YEARS AFTER THE ALERT

The two police officers who remain at Carrie’s cottage politely eat their way through the scones and the cake. They are too big for the seats, bulked by their padded vests and tall in their masculinity. They hold Carrie’s mother’s best teacups carefully in their thick fingers.

Synchronised, the officers both press a finger to their ears and look at each other.

‘What is it?’ she says, her back pressed to the sink, watching. One officer nods to the other, who says, ‘They just picked up the cousin.’

Ashley had said it wasn’t premeditated, but his cousin Flynn had been outside the church right on cue.

When the side doors flew open, and Ashley ran out, he was able to get straight in and slide under a blanket in the back.

Ashley was dropped off near Chagford as requested, while Flynn went to his girlfriend’s house to cobble together an alibi.

Which, the officers say, has already fallen apart.

The service rattles on in the other room, unwatched by Carrie for the first time.

It’s also the first year that Carrie hasn’t called Grace on the anniversary.

She will call her tomorrow at Beverley’s, where she’ll be celebrating her brother Josh’s birthday.

A teenager now, Carrie has witnessed him growing up almost entirely through sound in the background of their calls.

Some years, the calls have been near silent.

A holding of the hands more than a conversation.

Other calls over the years have been almost giddy.

A sickening hysteria to their recollections.

About rat man. And the people copping off on the lawn.

They often talk up the idea of Carrie visiting on the anniversary, bringing Bunny and eating Nando’s and Papa John’s, gulping down Dr Pepper and thick shakes.

They both know that will never happen but it’s a sweet distraction.

When Grace was eighteen, she nearly chose Exeter University to study for her physics degree.

Carrie desperately wanted her nearby while feeling sick at the idea of regular contact and year-round reminiscences.

When Grace chose Imperial College instead, both were clearly relieved.

Curled up with Mary in the living room, Bunny is still wearing Pepper’s dressing gown.

She always does when she’s missing him. It was Richard Burton’s gown, he claimed, though Bunny has no idea who that is.

And, of course, they’re both missing Pepper more than usual today.

He died nearly four years ago. Until then, he joined them here for every anniversary of the 59 minutes except when the 2029 floods trapped him in London.

That was just before he was evacuated to a new build in Crystal Palace, where he saw out his days.

There are tenants living there now, in the small property inherited by Carrie and Bunny.

Impossible for them to live in, just the thought of London gives her a head rush, but financing Carrie’s unending unemployment since her mother’s pension ran out.

Pepper was the only one who knew everything that happened that day.

When he died, her secret died with him. She set it down in the coffin.

The notes he wrote that day, along with his favourite knick-knacks, were placed all around him like an Egyptian queen.

God, she misses him. He was her life raft in the deadly waters of aftermath.

Bunny – then still Clementine – had clung bewildered to her remaining mother’s neck and Carrie had tried furiously to kick herself to the surface, but without Pepper, they both would have drowned.

He didn’t know Janet but arranged her funeral and propped Carrie up throughout.

And then, months later, he kept her breathing as they said goodbye to Emma.

She had known precisely what Emma wanted for her funeral.

They’d talked about it, through pure chance, just a few weeks before the alert.

‘This is it,’ Emma said, when ‘Crazy in Love’ came on in a pub where they were taking Clementine for lunch.

‘This is what I want at my funeral.’ And Carrie had played along that day because death is hilarious when it is theoretical.

A disco, Emma said. Not even a party, not a club night, she wanted her funeral to be like an old school disco.

She couldn’t have known, how could she? Sitting there with a doorstep sandwich, a split portion of chips, sopping with ketchup.

Two great big glasses of orange juice and lemonade and their legs just touching under the table.

How could Emma have known? She wasn’t magic, even though she was. To Carrie, she was.

People from school lined the pews, even Charlotte Upton who broke Emma’s heart and avoided Carrie’s eye.

Old teachers came too, people from uni, a few colleagues.

Some of them had never met Carrie and she heard them whisper, ‘I think that’s the girlfriend.

’ When the beat of the music started, a surprised laugh rippled through them all.

Carrie sat on the front pew with Mary, John and Clementine, who worked so hard to stay still and not fidget that she shook with the effort.

Pepper sat just behind with his hand on Carrie’s shoulder throughout.

When Beyoncé finished, the celebrant described a version of Emma as if she herself loved her.

And all Carrie could think about was the slippers Clementine suggested they put in the coffin so her mama would be comfortable, and Emma’s flame-red hair, matted with blood.

Emma was so particular about her hair. Carrie was only ever trusted to straighten the back and even then Emma would critique her handiwork.

Oh god, and that time she went to the retro salon and they made her look like a founding father instead of ‘rockabilly’.

That time her mum cut a fringe for her and she looked like Janet Street-Porter.

Always a disaster when anyone but Emma did it.

But when Emma did it, she looked like a cartoon character.

Like April O’Neil. Who did her hair before they laid her in the coffin?

‘It’s okay, darling,’ Mary had said, as Carrie’s breathing quickened and her vision whited out and Clementine shook even more next to her. ‘It’s okay.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Carrie managed, the words more breath than word, her face wet with tears she could barely feel.

And they had gripped one another as the celebrant woman rattled on, describing a facsimile of the girl, the woman, that Emma had been, barely able to measure the size of the hole left behind.

‘I’m sorry too,’ Mary had whispered. ‘Your mum and now …’

‘I promise I will always be there,’ Carrie said suddenly. ‘Not the same, but …’

And Mary had threaded her fingers through Carrie’s and linked them, bone tight. When John later died, it was Carrie that held Mary upright. She told herself that’s what Emma would have wanted. But living like this … small and frightened. Emma would never have wanted this.