CHAPTER 48
10 years AC
Shepherd’s Bush, London
Leona had lost count of the days. She guessed maybe fourteen or fifteen of them had gone by. Obviously Jacob and Nathan weren’t coming. Obviously, they hadn’t made it.
It’s time.
She’d decided that this morning was going to be her last, but had spent the day in a fog of ridiculous procrastination, pondering how best to do it. Pills in bed had been the plan. But then an awful thought had occurred to her that she might not do it right; not enough to kill her outright, but leave her alive with a failing organ, or paralysed. In any case, the chemist on the corner of Uxbridge Road had been stripped of every single medicine.
She’d found a knife and had a trial run at seeing whether she’d have the courage to push it through her skin, all the way so that it severed an artery. Just like last time, she’d baulked at doing it, heaving several times, her forearm marked and scratched with a dozen aborted attempts.
As the afternoon waned into evening she realised the only certain way of doing this was a drop. A drop high enough to ensure she wasn’t left dying in agony with ruptured organs and shattered bones.
She knew a good place.
One last trip upstairs to say goodbye to their bedrooms. Leona had always considered a person’s bedroom to be the ‘negative space’ they left behind, like an impression of a coin in a blob of Blu-Tack - it was them, or at least a negative of them, and it was the closest thing she had to saying goodbye in person.
Jacob’s room, north-facing, was dim. She smiled at the wallpaper of pirate ships, the shelves still stacked with Playmobil and Games Workshop figures, and books and rubber-banded packs of trading cards.
She whispered a farewell.
Out on the landing, dark but cut by a golden lance of sunlight across the floor, she hesitated beside the only closed door. She didn’t need to open it again. She’d done that several days ago and wished she hadn’t. Several panes of glass had smashed, leaves were dusted across the room and piled up in one corner. A bramble of some kind was growing on the bed, taking root in the quilt and feeding off nutrients that had long ago soaked into the mattress. Feeding off her dad. She’d angrily wrenched the damned thing off the bed and tossed it out through the window and not been back in since.
Bye bye, Dad.
Then she was down the stairs, tiptoeing across the hall. She opened the front door and stepped outside. A quiet still suburban street. She realised how beautiful the world could look on an evening like this; the russet and green leaves of the horse-chestnut trees on fire in the sunlight, red poppies in the opposite garden like discarded M&Ms. The summer green of tree branches almost meeting each other now across the narrow street, sweeping and hissing in the breeze and the broken tarmac road, dappled with shifting light.
Really quite pretty.
Jacob and Nathan watched the dome from the outside. It was warm enough that they sat out in T-shirts on the edge of the vegetable plantation, on the quayside overlooking the Thames.
In the middle of the dome’s canvas roof, multicoloured lights marbled the surface from inside, and out of the very apex, twin spotlights lanced up into the night sky. They could just about hear the gentle thud of music drifting across the rustle of leaves, and the murmuring of quiet conversations from groups of people nearby.
‘It looks amazing, doesn’t it?’ said Jacob.
Nathan nodded. This was the first time they’d come outside to watch the lights. Better than staying inside the dome, where the pounding music made it impossible to sleep anyway. Pretty much all the workers spent Party Night outside, some dragging their bedding with them, happy to sleep outside until dawn.
A fortnight ago, as Snoop had escorted them out of the central arena, he’d told them that Party Night normally lasted into the early hours. He’d not been wrong. As well as the machines, he’d said, there was alcohol . . . and the girlfriends, too. He’d winked at them both as he shooed them down the stairs and out through the turnstile. ‘Play your cards right and you bros be joinin’ the fun soon enough.’
‘It’s going to be cool,’ said Jacob.
‘Yeah.’
He imagined it was going to be a bit like the rock festivals Leona used to go to. She always used to say she had a well-bangin’ time at them. After-gig parties that lasted until dawn in a field somewhere. People still dancing hypnotically as the sun came up. Others zonked out in tents or eagerly discussing the meaning of life in hushed voices around smouldering campfires. She told him once, before the crash, that he had all of that to look forward to at college; parties, music, stage-diving, girlfriends, his first proper hangover, his first joint . . . all the cool things she was enjoying . . . between occasional essays, lectures and course work.
Except, of course, she’d been wrong.
His teen years had been spent watching the North Sea pound relentlessly at the rigs’ support-legs; watching migrating Vs of birds and every few weeks - a special treat - picking through warehouses and cargo containers on Bracton’s freight storage quay.
‘We’re going to stay here, then?’ asked Jacob.
‘Shit, I know I am.’
He nodded after a moment’s consideration. ‘Me, too.’
Maybe he’d give it a year or so then check with Mr Maxwell that it was all right for him to go back home and pay the rigs a visit. Maxwell seemed like a decent enough bloke from what he saw. A bit grumpy, but somehow that was reassuring; like they were seeing him warts and all. No pretence. Far better than somebody, all smiles at first, that you just knew was going to turn out to be someone else entirely later on.
He watched as the dancing spotlight beams panned across each other, producing a giant X in the sky. He lay back on his elbows and looked up at the stars.
He’d go back and tell Mum, and Leona, and Walter about their time here. How good they’d got things at the Safety Zone. Maybe he’d even be able to persuade them to come back with him and see for themselves; merge the communities together. There was certainly space enough for everyone here.
‘Hey, Nate?’
‘Uhh?’
‘You reckon being one of these praetorians is a bit like being a soldier?’
Nathan gave it some thought. ‘S’pose. More like being a policeman, I think.’
‘But they get guns.’ He’d seen them patrolling outside in pairs, watching the workers, guns slung over their shoulders.
‘They gotta have guns, mate. I mean, them wild kids that attacked us? They’re out there, Jay. Reckon they’ve got to patrol the perimeters like border guards or somethin’.’
On patrol . . . just like for-real soldiers. A uniform as well.
Jacob looked around and saw a cluster of men watching them silently from a dozen yards away. He’d noticed an undercurrent of resentment from some of the workers towards the praetorians. He decided to lower his voice a little.
‘I hope Maxwell does take us on.’
Nathan settled back on his elbows and joined him looking up at the stars.
‘Me, too. It’s gonna be props, man.’
‘Yeah, really props.’ Jacob sighed. It always sounded naff when he tried using some of Nathan’s cool words.
‘It’s going to be good.’
The one thing Leona feared the most was not doing it properly. She wanted a clean drop, one impact and it was all over. Dying slowly, dying painfully; the thought of that terrified her. Which is why she wanted somewhere high enough to be absolutely certain.
She pushed the maintenance access door open and stepped out onto the roof of the Westfield shopping mall. It stretched out before her like a football pitch, criss-crossed here and there with pipes that ended with AC outlets. At the far end was a spiked brush of antennae and satellite dishes.
By moonlight the pale weathered surface reminded her of the helipad back home. An island alone in a dark sky. With the stars scattered above, she could just as well have been standing on a platform in the middle of space, drifting through the universe for eternity.
She made her way across the broad expanse, seeing her dark moon shadow cast before her. As she neared the edge she saw it was rimmed by a safety rail - not enough to put off someone determined but enough to protect a hapless worker from an unfortunate tumble. She ducked down and climbed between the bars and then gasped as she caught sight of the sheer drop below.
All of a sudden she felt dizzy, her legs wobbled beneath her and she quickly sat down, wrapping one arm around the rail. Her stomach churned, she wanted to throw up - her body’s reaction. It had finally woken up and realised what she was intending to do and was now doing everything in its power to convince her otherwise.
She cursed herself for being a weak, silly cow. Cursed whatever deeply-bedded survival instinct was making this last task so bloody difficult for her, making her hand clutch the rail tightly.
‘Just a little jump,’ she whispered. ‘And then we’re all done.’
Her body remained unconvinced.
‘Just another step,’ she urged. ‘And then . . .’
She imagined letting go and leaning forward; just five seconds of air whistling past her ears, chilling her face.
Please don’t jump.
Leona looked up at the sound of the little voice and saw Hannah, chin resting on the railing, a leg swinging impatiently, scuffing the tarmac with the tip of her sandals.
She smiled at her daughter. ‘Hello again, trouble.’
Hannah rolled her eyes and offered a long-suffering smile. The gesture was so her. Leona laughed softly at the vision of her daughter, hanging on the railing and gazing out at the dark horizon. She could quite happily indulge this fantasy for a minute or two.
Please don’t be a silly gonk, said Hannah.
‘I’m tired, Hannah, love. Tired of struggling along.’
She frowned. Why be so tired?
It was hard to explain to a child who’d never known anything other than life on the rigs. Hard to explain how difficult it was to get up each and every day and work ceaselessly to squeeze such a meagre payback out of life. When once upon a time it was effortless; a meal was the mere opening of a fridge door, the three-minute wait for a microwave. Warmth was the flick of a switch. Skin-tingling luxury, the twist of a hot water tap.
‘I’m just tired,’ she replied. ‘I miss the way things were.’
Was the old times really that good?
‘Yes, they were.’
She remembered there were those who moaned about how materialistic and selfish the world had become; people on late-night TV chat shows, people who wrote columns in newspapers. She wondered how many of them were still alive today, getting on with practising what they’d preached. And for those of them who were still alive, she wondered what they’d happily trade for just one steaming hot shower, for a freshly grilled cheese-on-toast, for an ice-cold beer.
The small things.
It’s still very silly, said Hannah thoughtfully. I didn’t need all those things that you miss so much.
Leona was about to mutter something about it being better to never have had than to have had and lost, but it seemed unkind and dismissive. She wasn’t sure how much longer it would take to convince her hand to let go. And there were things to say.
‘I love you, Hannah. I’m sorry I was a crap mum.’
Mum. Leona felt her aching heart tighten. Why hadn’t she insisted Hannah call her that instead of Leona? Something in the word, in the bond that it implied. She’d missed out on that. They’d been more like sisters than mother and child.
Leona wiped her damp cheek on her shoulder.
Another regret. Something else to ponder on her way down.
I don’t think you should . . . not yet.
Leona laughed weakly. Her fantasy Hannah, it seemed, was every bit as bossy as her real one had been. ‘But I’m ready now. I want to.’ Her hand loosened its grip on the rail.
Not yet.
‘Why?’
Look.
Leona turned to gaze out across the still, dark skyline of London. There was nothing to see.
Jacob was right.
‘What?’
Just look, silly.
She looked again. Dark. Nothing. Dead dark London, that was all.
Lights.
Leona so far had seen nothing. But then the faintest flicker. A beam visible for an instant, gone the next.
‘Oh, God!’ she whispered. She saw the beam again, so faint, like the solitary thread of a spider’s web catching sunlight from an angle, then gone.
Go and see.
Leona’s eyes had lost the beam. She looked to the left a little and her peripheral vision detected the faint lancing movement once more, but turning to look at it directly, it was lost. It was east of Shepherd’s Bush, quite possibly along the river as the boys had suggested; Canary Wharf, perhaps the O2 Arena.
You have to go see.
The shimmering lance of light seemed to have gone now.
She turned to look at Hannah but she, too, had gone. Where she’d stood the pale roof remained unscuffed. A soft breeze whispered along the dark street below teasing a pile of dry leaves to race each other along the kerb, and a shutter somewhere creaked on rusty hinges, clattering against a frame.