The Chaos (29 page)

‘Sweet Jesus.’

The houses around us are wrecked, but it’s not that that’s shocking. It’s the road, or rather the hole where the road used to be, the one I found earlier. It’s ten metres wide and a hundred, two hundred, three hundred metres long, like someone took the biggest knife in the world and ripped it through the surface of the earth.

And I feel like that knife is ripping through me too, and I know that I can’t stay here for another minute. My daughter’s out there, in this damaged, ripped-up city.

‘Val, please, please, let’s get out of here.’

‘Yes, Sarah, we will. I’ll just nip home. It won’t take a minute.’

‘No, Val, look at it. It’s not safe.’

She starts making her way over there anyway. I catch up with her.

‘Sit down a minute. I’ll go.’

‘You know what you’re looking for, don’t you? A wooden box. It was on the mantelpiece.’

‘Yes, okay, I’ll get it.’

I set off across the rubble. It’s difficult to find my footing. I keep stumbling, my ankles turning this way and that as the debris shifts. The back wall of the lounge is still standing and the side walls. The ceiling is still in, just. The mantelpiece is still attached to the wall at one end. The other end has come free and is sagging down towards the floor. The carpet has disappeared under a layer of broken furniture and ornaments. Everything is covered in dust. I bend over and start picking through stuff.

The ceiling creaks and a stream of dust falls down beside me.

‘Have you found it?’ Val’s voice drifts across the rubble.

I don’t reply. My fingers are already scratched and sore from helping the rescue effort through the night. I’m taking the tips off them again, as I scrabble through. This is hopeless. I don’t want to admit defeat, but each new groan from the building around me sends waves of panic up and down my spine. I don’t want to be buried here.

‘Come out!’ she shouts. ‘Leave it. It don’t matter.’

I can’t find it. I stand up and start to turn around, when something catches my eye, something white and shiny wedged under a picture frame. I crouch down and examine it – a little china swan, intact, still perfect. I put it in my pocket and pick my way out of the room for the last time.

Val comes to meet me. She puts her hand on my arm.

‘I thought it was going to go. I thought you’d be buried. I’d never have forgiven myself. Don’t know what I was thinking of, selfish old cow.’

Behind me the building is creaking again.

‘We should move further away,’ I say.

We get out onto the road.

‘Sorry about Cyril,’ I say, ‘but I did find this. It’s not broken.’

I dip into my pocket and produce the swan. I put it in Val’s open hand. She looks at it and runs her fingers all over it.

‘We got this on our honeymoon,’ she says, quietly, talking to herself as much as me. ‘A week in Swanage, on the south coast. He was as hot as axle-grease that week. God, I thought I’d never walk again!’ She must sense me cringing because a throaty laugh starts up, which rapidly turns into a coughing fit. ‘Too much information?’

I nod, too embarrassed to say anything.

‘Thanks,’ she says. ‘For this. It’s something, innit? Shame about the box though.’

‘It’s only ash, Val. It’s not really him.’ I’m trying to say the right thing, if there is a right thing to say at a time like this.

‘I know that, love,’ she says, ‘but I put eight thousand quid in there with him.’

My jaw drops open.

‘Eight thousand? What did you do, rob a bank?’

‘Not me, love, it was Cyril’s. Rainy day money, he called it.’

‘Do you want me to go back?’

We both look over to the house, and somewhere inside there’s a loud crack and the chimney on top of the roof tilts. 

‘Oh shit, it’s going.’

The chimney falls sideways punching a hole in the roof, and then the whole lot goes, crashing through the bedroom floor, down into the lounge. Debris is flying out of the place. Instinctively I turn away and put my arms round Val. It’s like a blast from a bomb. We’re showered with dust. I keep my head down and my eyes closed for a long time. When I look up again and turn around, the whole house is just a heap of rubble. 

Val’s as pale as a ghost. 

‘You could have been in there …’

‘I wasn’t. I got out.’ I give her a reassuring squeeze, but I’m shaking, arms and legs trembling uncontrollably. She squeezes me back, wrapping her arms round me, rocking me gently from side to side. Then she pulls away a little and wipes the dust from my face.

‘Come on, Sarah,’ she says. ‘We’ve got a baby to find, haven’t we? Come on, love. Let’s go. Let’s find her.’

Chapter 65: Adam

M
y head breaks the surface just as I breathe in. I get a mixture of air and water; it catches in my throat and makes me cough and retch.

I dip down again, underwater, but I know now what I’m aiming for, and I push my hands through the water forcing my body up. I cough and spit and take a deeper breath in. It helps me float, and I lean back, face clear of the surface and carry on getting air in my lungs. Above me the green and yellow lights have almost gone, but there’s a half moon in the sky, and its light means I can make out dark shapes either side of me. I don’t have a clue where I am. I’ve no idea how long I was under, but I can feel I’m still being moved along.

The water is raging and powerful. I’ve got no choice. I’ve got to go with it. I start getting a feel for it, I’m almost comfortable with it, when a side-wave hits me and I’m under again, caught in a current, swept along. And then my arm’s scraping on something, something hard ripping through my sweatshirt. My foot hits something else, gets hooked and my
leg’s pulled backwards and I’m jerked to a standstill while the water carries on blasting past me.

I try and reach down, but my body’s fighting the current. My face breaks the surface and I gulp down some air and duck under again to find out what’s going on with my foot. It’s caught on a railing – my shoe’s wedged in there. The water’s so strong, it’s sapping my energy. I know I’m getting weaker. I go up for more air and duck down again and this time I manage to get my fingers into the back of my trainer. My foot doesn’t want to come, but I wriggle it about and pull the shoe looser ‘til suddenly I’m free, and the water snatches me and takes me further on.

If there was a railing, the river’s flooded over the streets, but the water here will be shallower. I’ve got more of a chance of getting out. I start kicking with my legs and whirling my arms over my head and into the water. At first, it feels hopeless, but then I can tell that I’m moving and the water is flatter. I cut my way through –
keep going, keep going –
till at last my fingertips graze against the bottom. I stop swimming and put my feet down. The water’s only knee deep here. It’s still moving but the current is gentle, so I can sit and not get swept away.

My chest is heaving painfully. I can’t believe I done it. I’ve escaped. I’m alive. If I was going to die today, surely that was Death’s chance to grab me. I never even got my twenty-five metres badge at school. They used to laugh at me: ‘Black kids can’t swim.’ I had no idea I could do that.

I try standing so I can wade out of the water, but my legs don’t have the strength, so I shuffle along on my bum for a bit, and then crawl a bit more. I bump into something. It floats away from me, a dark shape in the water, with two pale hands picked out by the moonlight. After a bit the water is
down to a few centimetres and I drag myself up to my feet and start walking.

It doesn’t take long to work out where I am. After ten minutes I can see the big circle of the London Eye standing out black against the sky. It makes me think of Mum. 

Don’t go to London. Don’t let Nan take you there.
 

Where is she now, Mum? Is she looking down at me? Was she there with me, giving me that little extra bit of energy to drag myself out of the river? We forgot what she said, Nan and me. Nan ’cause she’s a contrary old cow. Me ’cause I met Sarah, and I had to try to help her. We forgot what she said and now we’re suffering for it, though God knows what’s happening to Sarah and Nan. In my heart, I think they’re okay, ’cause after all, I seen their numbers. I know they’re both survivors. But even so I get the jitters when I think about them and I start running. I’m going to get through these dark streets and I’m going to get home.

It takes me hours. I have to get across the river, and half the bridges in London have gone. There are police at Vauxhall Bridge keeping people off it because it’s not safe, but I barge past them and belt across as fast as I can ’til I’m over and through the police cordon at the other side.

It’s just getting light when I find the High Road, but as I get to Nan’s street, I can’t believe my eyes. Half the road’s disappeared. There’s a massive hole, hundreds of metres long. The houses have collapsed. It takes me a while to work out which one is Nan’s, which one
was
Nan’s. It’s been ripped open at the front, and the roof’s fallen in, so all that’s left is a couple of walls and a heap of rubble. A few of her gnomes are lying spread-eagled at the front of the heap, like little corpses.

‘Oh my God,’ I say out loud. No one could have survived that if they were inside the house. And where else would they
be? I don’t get it. I thought they were both survivors. I thought Sarah was my future.

My legs can’t hold me any more. I sink down to the ground and close my eyes. This isn’t right. It can’t be right.

‘They got out, you know.’

‘What?’

I look up and there’s an old man, in his pyjamas and dressing gown. He clocks the handcuff on my wrist, but he don’t say nothing about it.

‘Your nan and a girl. They got out before the roof came in.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Sure I’m sure. They stayed to help me and my wife. They were heroes.’

The news washes through me like another tidal wave. It knocks the air out of me all over again.

‘Was there a baby? Did they have a baby with them?’

He shakes his head.

‘No, just the two of them.’

‘Where are they now?’

He shakes his head again.

‘Sorry, I don’t know. They left here a little while ago. Twenty, thirty minutes. Didn’t say where they were going.’

Twenty minutes. That’s nothing. I can catch them up. I can find them. If I knew where they were going.
Think, Adam. Think, think.
I close my eyes again. I try to focus on Sarah, what’ll be going on in her head. If they didn’t have Mia with them, she’ll be desperate to find her. So where is she? Where’s Mia?

Her mum and dad were there at the police station, the day they charged her with assault. She saw them. They could have taken Mia back with them that same day if the Children’s Workers let them. And why wouldn’t they? Two
decent citizens. Nice house in Hampstead. Nice car. Nice life.

‘You all right, son?’ Pyjama-man is still watching me.

I’m knackered. I feel like I could lie down in the road and sleep right now.

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Yeah, I’m fine. I’ve got a couple of ladies to find.’

‘Ah,
cherchez les femmes
,’ he says. ‘Good luck, son,’ and he winks and turns away.

My whole body hurts; my arm’s bashed about, my wrist’s sore, my ankle’s bruised and twisted, my lungs are aching. But it’s my foot that’s letting me down now. I bend my leg and twist my foot to have a look. I brush the crap off it with my hands – bits of brick and stone, dust, pieces of glass, splinters of wood. I wince and gasp. There’s some deep cuts there now.

I’ll never get to Hampstead like this. I need a shoe. I spot a curtain, still attached to a rail lying on top of the rubble. I crawl over the debris and tear at the material, ripping it into long bandages. Then I start wrapping one round my foot. My hands are shaking, but I can’t stop now. I try to keep them under control so I can circle the material over and under from the toe right up to the ankle, ’til I’ve made a sort of cloth boot, then I tie it in a knot at the front. It’s genius. I take a deep breath, get up and test my weight out. It’s still painful, but nothing like it was before. Yeah, this’ll do it.

I start to walk, and it feels okay so I step it up and start jogging, away from the house where my dad grew up, my home too, for a while. There’s nothing left, but I don’t feel anything about that, ’cause it’s people that make a home, and the three people that’d make it home for me aren’t there any more.

But I’m going to find them. I’m going to find them if it’s the last thing I do.

Chapter 66: Sarah

W
e head across town, but the place we walk through isn’t London at all, at least not the London I grew up in. Nothing is as it should be. It’s completely, utterly changed. It’s not exactly quiet because there are car alarms and burglar alarms going off, and miles away there are sirens, but the background hum of traffic is gone. The noise that you go to sleep to at night and wake up to in the morning – it’s missing.

My head plays tricks on me. As we walk along, my mind is seeing the place how it used to be and I start to feel kind of spaced out when there’s sky where a building should be, where walls are missing, or where the pavement has disappeared under a heap of rubble. We find two more holes in the road. One cuts across the street, making a chasm too wide to jump over, so we have to go back on ourselves and find a different way round.

Everywhere we go, people are shouting for help. Gaggles of people gather where there’s any reason to hope; families,
neighbours, strangers pitching in to try and rescue the ones still alive. They form lines straggling across the rubble, passing bricks and blocks and timber from one to the other. There’s no sign of the police or the fire service or even the army. Not round here, not in Kilburn. We’ve been left. We’re on our own. If we don’t do it ourselves, it won’t get done.

It’s tempting to help, but it’s nearly eight in the morning now and Mia is all that matters, Val and I agree on that.

The first fire is a few streets away. Some flats above a row of shops are blazing away, flames streaking out of one of the windows up towards the sky. Two figures are in the very top window, trapped by the fire below. People have piled up cardboard boxes, anything they can find, in the street below, and they’re yelling, ‘Jump!’