Afterlight (2 page)

Jenny would much rather have stayed where they were, out in the middle of the road, well clear of the dark shadows, the interiors. But water,
safe
bottled water, was something not to be without. Her children were right, this was probably as good a place as any to see what they could find.

‘All right,’ she said.

She turned to her daughter, Leona, and handed her one of their two kitchen knives. ‘You stay here and mind Jacob.’

Leona’s pale oval face, framed by dark hair, looked drawn and prematurely old; she had eyes that had seen too much in the last few days, eyes that looked more like those of a haunted veteran from some horrible and bloody war than those of a nineteen-year-old girl. A week ago at this time of the morning Jenny could imagine her daughter lying under a quilt and wearily considering whether to bother dragging herself across the university campus to attend the first study period of the day. Now, here she was being asked to make ready to defend her little brother’s life at a moment’s notice with nothing better than a vegetable knife whilst the matter of a drink of water was seen to.

‘Mum,’ she said, ‘we should stay together.’

Jenny shook her head firmly. ‘You both stay here. If you hear me shout out to run, you run, understand?’

Leona nodded and swallowed nervously. ‘Okay.’

‘Mummy, be careful,’ whispered Jacob, his wide eyes hidden behind cracked glasses and bent frames.

She ruffled his blond hair. ‘I’ll be fine.’ She even managed a reassuring smile before turning towards the nearest shop: a WH Smith’s newsagent.

She could see it had been repeatedly visited and picked over in the last week from the litter strewn out of the doorway and into the street. It was surprising, even now, after so many days of chaos, how worthwhile finds could still be had amidst the debris - a can of soda pop here, a packet of crisps there. Looters, it seemed, weren’t the systematic type; the shadowed corners of a floor, the spaces behind counters, the backs of shelves, still yielded goodies for someone patient enough to squat down and look.

She stepped towards the shop, her feet crunching across granules of glass. Outside the door - wrenched open and dangling from twisted hinges - sat a news-board bearing a scrawled headline from last Wednesday.

OIL CRASH - CHAOS ACROSS LONDON

 

Wednesday seemed so long ago now; it was the day this country flipped into panic mode, completely spiralled out of control. The day the government suddenly decided it needed to be honest and tell the public that things had become extremely serious; that there would be severe rationing of food and water and there’d be martial law.

Actually, Wednesday was the day the world panicked.

She’d witnessed snarling fights, torn hair, bloodied knives, things set on fire, bodies in the street casually stepped over by wild-eyed looters pushing overladen shopping trolleys, and woefully few police, who watched, powerless to stop any of it. A madness had descended upon everyone, particularly here in London, as people desperately scrambled to grab what could be taken, and were prepared to kill in order to keep hold of it. Jenny remembered the news stories of the Katrina survivors in New Orleans; those stories paled against what she and her children had seen.

She stepped inside, holding her breath as she did so.

Standing still, she let her eyes adjust to the dim interior. Like every other shop it looked like a whirlwind had torn through. The floor was a mash of spoiled goods, newspapers, magazines and paperback novels; shelves dangled precariously off the walls and a row of fridge doors stood open, the contents long since emptied.

A plastic CD case cracked noisily beneath her shoe as she slowly moved deeper into the store, her eyes working hard across the carpet of trampled and soiled stock, searching for an overlooked bottle of water, a can of Coke. Something.

‘You okay, Mum?’ called Leona.

‘I’m all right!’ she replied, hating the feathery sound of growing fear in her voice.

The sooner they cleared London the better. After that . . . Jenny didn’t have a clue. All she knew was that this city was death now. There were too many people tucked away in the dim corners of every street, cowering in dark homes, ready to use a knife or a smashed glass bottle or a gun to take what they wanted, or keep what they had. She really had no idea what they’d do once their feet hit a B-road flanked by open fields. She entertained a fanciful notion of living off the land, Jacob trapping rabbits and cooking them over a campfire; all thick jumpers and outdoors rude health. Almost idyllic, just like that old BBC show,
The Survivors. If only Andy was with them . . .

Her husband - their father - was gone. Dead in the city.

She thought she saw the glint of a soda can on the floor - dented, but quite possibly still full of something sickly sweet and bubbly. She was bending down to pick it up when she heard a noise. A plastic
clack
followed by a
slosh
of liquid. An instantly recognisable sound; that of a plastic two-litre bottle of some drink being casually up-ended and swigged from.

‘All right?’ A boy’s voice, a teenager perhaps; the cadence wavering uncertainly between choirboy and manhood.

Her eyes darted to where the voice had come from. Adjusted to the dark now, she picked out a row of four . . . maybe five of them, sitting on crates, buckets, boxes. She could see the pale outline of sporty stripes and swooshes, trainers and caps, and the soft amber glow of several cigarette tips.

‘Uh . . . fine . . . thanks,’ she replied.

‘You after somethin’?’ Another voice, a little slurred this one.

‘I . . . I was looking for something to drink,’ she replied, taking one small step backwards. ‘But forget it, you can have this shop. I’ll try another.’

‘Don’ matter,’ said the first voice, ‘we got loads. Wanna share?’

She heard a snigger. Several cigarette tips pulsed and bobbed in the dark. She recognised the smell - a familiar odour from long ago, from college days, the same smell she picked up occasionally off the dirty laundry Leona brought back from university. Dope.

They’re just kids,
she told herself.
Just boys
. Boys who could be scolded and cowed if one picked just the right tone of voice.

‘So where are your parents?’ she asked.

Another snigger.

‘Who cares?’ replied one of them.

‘Fuckin’ dead for all I know,’ said another.

Jenny took another step backwards, hoping it was too dim for them to see her attempt to put further distance between them.

‘You should get out of the city, you know,’ she said, trying hard to sound like a voice of authority. ‘Seriously. You’ll starve when there’s nothing left to pick up in the shops.’

‘Thanks, but we’re all right, love.’

She saw the pale outline of a baseball cap move, the scraping of a foot and the tinkle of broken glass. One of them getting up.

‘Hey, why don’t you give me a blow job? An’ I’ll give you a fag.’

A snort of laughter from the others.

‘How dare you!’ she snapped, hoping to sound like an enraged headteacher. Instead it came out shrill and little-girly. She stepped back again, her foot finding a plastic bottle that cracked noisily beneath her shoe.

‘Hey? Where you goin’?’

She saw more movement, they were all getting up now.

‘I’m going,’ she announced. ‘You boys stay here and get pissed if that’s what you want, but I’m leaving.’

‘Look,’ said one of them, ‘why don’t you stay?’ Phrased as a question, as if she was being given a choice in the matter. The nearest boy took another step forward, wobbling uncertainly on his feet and swigging again from his plastic bottle.

Her hand closed around a wooden handle poking out from the waistline of her skirt. She pulled the knife out, feeling emboldened by the weight in her hand.

‘You stay where you are!’ she barked, holding the bread knife out in front of her.

‘I just wan’ you to give me a little
luurrve.’

‘Yeah, me too,’ said one of the boys behind him.

‘I’ve got a knife!’ shouted Jenny, ‘and I will fucking well use it. Do you boys understand?’

That drunken giggling again.

‘We’re going to a
part-eee
,’ one of the others cheerfully announced from the back with a sing-song voice.

‘She’s doing
me
first,’ insisted the lad nearest her. He lurched clumsily forward, reaching out for her with big pale hands. Instinctively Jenny slashed at one of them.

‘Ahhh, fuck!!’ he screamed, tucking his hands back. ‘Shit! Bitch!! Bitch fuckin’ well cut me!’

A torch snapped on and, for a moment, she caught sight of the boy’s face. Beneath the peak of his hoodie-covered baseball cap she saw the porcelain skin of a child, pulled into a rictus sneer of hate and anger. Surely no more than fifteen, sixteen at a stretch, his big hands, one gashed, reached for the knife. It happened too quickly to remember anything more than a blur of movement. But a moment later she could see the handle protruding from the side of his waist, a dark bloom of crimson spreading out across his Adidas stripes.

The boy cried out, all trace of his puberty-cracked voice gone, now screaming like a startled toddler stung by a wasp. He collapsed heavily onto the floor of the shop, his desperate whimpering accompanied by the clatter of displaced bottles and cans, the scrape of feet as his mates drunkenly clambered forward either to help him or, far more likely, to overpower her now she no longer held her knife.

Jenny turned and ran, stumbling across an overturned newspaper rack, her foot slipping on the glossy covers of a spread of gossip magazines scattered across the shop floor. She headed towards the front of the store and grey daylight, leaving the drunk boys behind her.

This is how it’s going to be from now on, she realised with a growing sense of dread; the world Jacob and Leona will inherit is a world of feral youths, a lifetime of scavenging for the last tins of baked beans amidst smouldering ruins.

 

 

 

J
enny sat up in her cot, a scream caught silently in her throat.

There were others, of course. Plenty her subconscious mind could choose from, but that one in particular kept returning to haunt her sleep. It was worse than the other memories perhaps because the boys had been so young, just babies really - drunk, dangerous babies. Maybe because that particular encounter had happened the day after Andy died. She’d still been in shock then, confused. Running on autopilot for her children’s sake, her foggy mind making foolish decisions.

She rubbed the sleep from her face and tucked the nightmare back in its box along with the others, hoping for a few nights of untroubled sleep before another managed to creep out and torment her.

Through the porthole beside her bunk a grey morning filled the small cabin with a pallid light. The North Sea, endlessly restless, seemed calmer than usual today. She could hear the persistent rumble of it passing beneath the rig, feel the subtle vibration in the floor as gentle swells playfully slapped the support-legs a hundred and forty feet below.

Newcomers to their community always seemed terribly unsettled by that - the slightest sensation of movement beneath their feet. Once upon a time, this archipelago of man-made islands had been called ‘LeMan 49/25a’; a cluster of five linked gas platforms, in the shape of an ‘L’, a couple of dozen miles off the north-east coast of Norfolk. Now it was called ‘home’. Five years of living here and even when the North Sea was throwing a tantrum and sixty-foot swells were hurling themselves angrily against those tall, hollow support-legs, she still felt infinitely safer here than she did ashore.

She heard the
clack
of hurried footsteps on the stairs outside her cabin. The door creaked open. ‘Breakfast time, Nanna.’

Jenny smiled wearily. ‘Morning, Hannah.’ She slipped her legs over the side of the cot, her feet flinching on the cold linoleum floor, and glanced at the empty bunk opposite, the blankets tossed scruffily aside. Leona was gone.

Hannah grinned cheerfully, eyes too big for such a small face tucked beneath a fuzz of curly strawberry-blonde hair.

‘Mummy’s up already?’ Jenny asked, surprised. Usually she had to kick Leona out of her bed in the mornings.

Hannah rolled her eyes. ‘Lee’s eating breakfast already.’

Jenny sighed. She tried to encourage Hannah to call her mother ‘Mummy’, but since Leona actually encouraged the first name thing - sometimes it seemed like she almost wanted to be more of a big sister than a mother - it was a futile effort on her part.

‘Okay . . . tell her I’ll be down in a minute, all right?’

Hannah nodded and skittered out of the cabin, her wooden sandals rapping noisily along the floor of the passageway.

Jenny unlatched the porthole and opened it a crack, feeling the chill morning air chase away the cosy fug in the cabin. She shivered - awake for sure now - and pulled a thick, chunky-knit cardigan around her shoulders and stood up.

‘Another day,’ she uttered to the woman in the mirror on the wall opposite. A woman approaching fifty, long untamed frizzy hair that had once been a light brown, but was now streaked with grey, and a slim jogger’s figure with sinews of muscle where soft humps of lazy cellulite had rested a decade ago.

Or so she liked to think.

She smiled. The Jenny of before, the Jenny of ten years ago, would probably have been thrilled to be told she’d have a gym figure like this at the age of forty-nine. But then that very different, long lost, Jenny would probably have been horrified by the scruffy New-Age-traveller state of her hair, the lined and drawn face, tight purse-string lips and the complete absence of any make-up.