Ash, page 10
Emma didn’t go over to her desk. No work was coming in and orders from the back catalogue had dried up. Food deliveries were sporadic. Retail had been her main source of income. It was in crisis and certainly no-one was interested in training days anymore.
When Emma noticed that her light still burned away, she got up to turn it off as instructed. She then put the kettle on and made herself a hot drink before the power went off for the day. She put on the central heating. The pipes and radiators made their comforting ticking sound as they heated up. After about fifteen minutes the house seemed a little warmer, then at ten o’clock there was a familiar click as once more the power went down. The bathroom was still freezing, so she skipped the shower and got dressed in some warm winter clothes.
She had never felt so alone.
Emma lit the few coals that she’d laid in the grate the night before and then stood and watched as the fire took hold. It cheered the room more than heating it, but she was so desperate for a little comfort, she thought it well worth the fuel. She took out a pencil and wrote down a list of things to buy today. Milk. She hadn’t had any fresh milk for a week. Batteries, matches, bread, more coal, soap. She screwed up the list. Emma knew that she’d be lucky to find any of these things. If she saw anything useful or edible in any of the local shops she would buy it anyway.
She ate a bowl of dry cornflakes, and then put on her coat to go out. In the hall she collected her shopping trolley and trundled it down the steps. She’d seen it in a charity shop window only last week. It was the perfect way to carry heavy goods back from the shops now she’d no petrol for her car. And no-one could see what she was carrying. The wheels made tracks in the settling snow. Every shop she passed was scrutinised for anything of value. She got some matches from the corner shop and some dried milk. It had doubled in price but she bought all six packets on the shelf.
In the supermarket, things were a little better. They had just had a delivery and she managed to get some fresh vegetables, bread and some tea. Customers were allowed two tins per person, so she chose some tuna and some mixed pulses, all high value food which would be essential when the fresh food ran out. Emma then saw some charcoal stacked up by a display of useless-looking barbeque grills on the seasonal isle. The pictures of summer on the boxes came from a different time. She lugged a couple of bags of the charcoal over to the checkout and paid her bill.
The load was too heavy for the rickety shopping trolley so Emma had to push it carefully over the slippery pavements. She warmed up with the exercise even though snowflakes were driving into her face. Everyday life had never been so hard or so alien.
She turned into Purbeck Road, thankful that she was nearly home. Everywhere was eerily quiet due to a lack of traffic combined with the muffling effect of the accumulating snow. She looked up for a moment and saw some people coming towards her. Two men in their thirties and a youth. She froze inside when she noticed two of them exchange barely perceptible glances. Options flew through her mind. She wondered whether to walk up someone’s drive as though she were home, or to run. Should she phone someone? Indecision made her plod on. The only thing she could think of was protecting her purchases. It was crazy; they could be armed. And she was outnumbered. She looked straight ahead and for a moment thought she’d got past them when they made their move.
All she remembered was feeling a pain in her upper arm where she had been felled with a blow. They grabbed some stuff and in a moment they were running down the road leaving her to get to her feet. She tried to right the now ridiculous-looking trolley which they’d left on its side in the gutter. Her hands were wet from melting snow. She tried to wipe them on her coat, but she was shaking violently. She thought her legs might give way. Her heart hammered in her head as she pushed the empty shopper along the road and into her driveway. Tears streamed down her face in a torrent of rage and humiliation. With her shaking hands and blurred vision she couldn’t get her key in the lock.
“You alright, babe?” said a familiar voice behind her. Then, when he saw the state she was in he guessed what had happened straightaway. “Oh my God, look at you!” he said. He put his arms around her and she sobbed on his shoulder right there as they stood on the step.
“Bastards! Bastards!” she said when eventually Andy managed to get her inside. “They took my stuff – everything. I’d done really well. My dried milk, my tin of tuna...” She started to sob again.
“It’s gone darlin’. Forget about it,” said Andy, trying to be practical.
“But I can’t. They were mine.” Emma was furious. “And there might not be anything to eat soon. It’s all different now. Those things were precious.”
“I hate bloody tuna,” said Andy. “Good riddance to it,”
Emma sniffed then laughed, despite herself.
Andy then picked up the phone. “I’m going to ring Carol Ashton. Get her over here – you need some company today.”
“Oh, there’s no need. I’ll be okay.” Emma didn’t really want anyone to know what had just happened. She felt like such a fool.
Andy ignored her protest and called anyway. “Carol said she’d be right over. As soon as she does, I’ll get on with fixing up your woodburner.”
“It’s really good of you Andy.” Emma said.
“It works both ways,” he said. “At the moment, I need the work.”
* * *
Half an hour later, Carol hurried into the living room and gave Emma a long hug.
“Everybody’s worst nightmare,” she said sympathetically. “I’ll stay tonight if you like.”
“That’s very kind but I don’t want to put you out,” Emma said feebly.
“That’s settled then. I’ll get my stuff later.” Carol continued, “I don’t suppose you’ve heard about James and Kate?”
“No, what about them?” Emma thought she was going to hear that they’d split up. After all their problems it wouldn’t have been unexpected.
“They’ve left London. Gone to live with her parents, apparently. Somewhere in the country. I’m not sure it’s a good idea. It’s not as though anyone can grow their own food, and with these fuel shortages, if you’re anywhere remote, you’re stuck.”
“I suppose so,” said Emma. “But I can’t say I blame them after today.”
“It’ll be my flat-mate next,” said Carol.
“Really? But where would she go?”
“Spain. She has a relative with a villa. I can see the pull, but it leaves me in the lurch.”
“In what way?” said Emma.
“I rely on her rent to pay the mortgage.”
“But surely she wouldn’t leave permanently. She has her job here and everything.”
“That’s what I thought at first when she said she had plans to go abroad. Now she tells me she wants to hand in her notice at work and end her tenancy. Everyone’s panicking.”
Carol looked desperately sad. Emma wished she could say something to help.
* * *
That night Emma and Carol were three-quarters of the way down a bottle of wine when the power came on again. Immediately the intimate atmosphere of the candle-lit room gave way to a sense of harsh reality. Emma jumped up into life at once.
“Okay, I’ll finish that later. First I need to put the washing machine on – it’s all loaded up ready. Then shower. Oh, and emails – I need to check them, too. Dishwasher – that’s not been on for two days. Or shall I just run some hot water and do it by hand?”
“For God’s sake Emma. If everyone does the same, the electricity will be off again in half an hour.”
“And I don’t want to miss out if it does.”
Emma was buzzing, dashing around the room, booting up her laptop and getting her phone charged up before heading to the bathroom for her shower. After two minutes under the delicious hot water she turned off the shower and wrapped herself in the last clean towel. She shivered in the cold as she tried to get dry as quickly as she could. She hurried downstairs and sat in front of the fire. Carol got back from the kitchen.
“I’ve put your dishwasher on and your laundry.”
“Thanks, Carol,” said Emma taking a drink of wine. “Let’s try the news while I check my emails. I’ll just put the TV on.”
It was more of the same. The cold zone was spreading out across continental Europe. It was inching south, too. The sea temperatures were the lowest ever recorded in June. Icebergs had drifted as far south as the Northern Ireland coast and could be seen from the town of Ballycastle. On the east coast a few icebergs could be seen in the Moray Firth. The extent of the Arctic ice cap was now the greatest it had been for a century. The glaciers had halted their seemingly inexorable retreat and now stretched their icy fingers further into the North Atlantic with every passing month. In Scandinavia, seaports were iced up, preventing cargo and passenger ships from getting in or out. Emma wondered if Lawrence’s friends, Oliver and Zoe, had made it back home. She wondered if they were any better off if they had.
In parts of Scotland power lines were down leaving large numbers of houses without any electricity and in some cases, no water. Emma was horrified.
“Those poor people” she said to Carol. “How can they manage with nothing? What are they going to do? The government must help them.”
Right on cue the newsreader said that teams of power workers were being sent up north to restore the supply. The Royal Engineers were going to help. Even so the experts said it could take weeks to get the system fully functioning again. Emma looked aghast.
“Weeks! Life was nearly impossible now with cuts on a rota basis. How could anyone manage for weeks like this! No, worse than this.”
“They won’t,” said Carol flatly. “A lot of people won’t get through.”
“What do you mean?” said Emma turning around.
“There are going to be a lot of casualties before this war is over,” she said.
Emma felt a chill crawl all over her.
“My God, I hope you’re wrong, Carol.”
“So do I,” replied her friend.
For the first time that Emma could remember, she had no emails. She tried to make light of it, but it was quite worrying all the same. She had been waiting for payment for her recent job in the north-east, but had received nothing and no explanation. That meant she still hadn’t paid Lawrence Hewitt for his work. He’d been okay about it up to now but she didn’t want to spoil their working relationship by things getting awkward. She called him to let him know she hadn’t forgotten her commitments.
“Give it time,” he said, “But I think we might have to write this one off.”
Emma was stunned. Were things really that bad?
She finished drying her hair and poured out some more wine for herself and Carol. At least the alcohol made them feel warmer.
Emma got up from her seat. She went over to the window and pulled the thick curtains back. It was nine-thirty and not yet dark. Most of the snow clouds had cleared leaving a milky, faded blue sky up above.
“I just need to be able to see out. It feels like winter having the curtains drawn all the time. It’s making me claustrophobic.”
“It makes me feel weird,” said Carol. “It’s like living on a different planet.”
“Maybe we are – living on a different planet,” said Emma. “This certainly isn’t the Earth I know.”
Carol shuddered.
Suddenly Emma noticed something and pressed closer to the window.
“Hey! Look at this, Carol.”
Carol hurried over to the window. The twilight was changing in front of her eyes. Dull blue-grey had been replaced by a fiery, orange glow in the sky, streaked with pink and lilac brushstrokes which lit up the edges of bright metallic clouds. The intensity of the colours was magnificent as the sinking sun caught billions of tiny ash particles which refracted a host of sunset colours back over the city landscape. She’d never seen anything like it. As they stood and watched, pink and orange light suffused the air around them, bouncing around the streets and buildings until the air seemed alive with colour and energy. It was breathtaking. For ten minutes they stood and stared. As quickly as it had begun, it started to fade. Then it was gone. Emma closed the curtains.
“That was so beautiful,” said Carol.
“Well, every cloud, as they say,” replied Emma.
When the power went off again after an hour the two women groaned. The dishwasher had finished, but the washing machine was full of half-done clothes.
“What shall we do now, Carol?”
“Let’s turn in. We’ve both had a bad day. You’ve been mugged and my housemate is leaving me stranded. The planet is sliding into a new ice age and I’m tired of the whole business.”
“Thanks for staying over, Carol.”
“It’s nothing.”
“No, it’s everything. I mean it.”
Emma picked up her torch and saw Carol to the guest room before heading for her own.
Outside in the clearing sky, frost began to form, clinging to trees and turning the churned up city snow into a crust of iron.
Emma pulled the covers up around her. Her arm throbbed where a large bruise was forming.
That night the temperature dipped to minus six degrees Celsius.
14
London
Zoe and Oliver Carter arrived back at their London house in Grosvenor Street nearly six weeks after they left Iceland. Zoe was still ill with the flu that had been raging through France and the Netherlands. Oliver was recovering but was exhausted from the sheer effort of travelling. Any form of transport had been difficult to access, and after they had arrived in Norway they been thwarted at every turn. There were fuel shortages, frozen points on the railways and roads were blocked by abandoned and broken-down vehicles. Nothing worked anymore.
When they had eventually arrived in Calais, the port was in chaos. Shipping had been commandeered mainly for freight, not passengers, as Britain grew ever more desperate for food. Coming over to Calais from the UK was a different story. Hordes of people were pouring over the Channel on every crossing and on every train through the tunnel. Accommodation was impossible to find in the town as those in transit to warmer places stopped over.
Eventually Zoe found them a bed and breakfast place where they could at least take shelter from the bitter cold. They were used to the harsh conditions of an Artic field trip, but this was something altogether different.
As Zoe mounted the stairs of the B&B, desperate to find somewhere for Oliver, who had the flu, to rest, she looked at her squalid surroundings with utter horror. The light on the stairs didn’t work, which might have been a blessing. Their room was cold and damp. Peeling paper hung from the walls, black with mould. The bed was grubby, with thin covers and a pillow that smelt of too many unwashed heads. It was disgusting. The wash basin was chipped and the tap squeaked when turned on, presumably through lack of use. A dribble of water came out. Zoe wondered if she were taking her life in her hands by drinking some. She had to try. Oliver was burning up and she wanted to make sure the water was okay before she gave him some. She managed to get him to take some paracetamol before helping him into the bed where he dozed feverishly and ached in every limb.
Zoe’s plan was to stay overnight, then to get home the next day if Oliver was well enough. But this was no forty-eight hour virus. This was proper flu. Thousands were dying, unable to access proper care. Especially the very old and the very young.
It was a week before he could get out of bed, by which time Zoe had become ill herself and couldn’t leave the room. She had a sore throat and a raging temperature. She had never been so ill in her life. They had had to stay in that wretched place for a fortnight. At last, when Zoe’s temperature went down, she sat up in bed.
“We have to get out of this place,” said Oliver. “We’ll never get better in this damp room. If either of us gets pneumonia it’ll finish us off.” He’d been listening to the news everyday as the epidemic spread and was rightly concerned for their welfare.
Zoe started to cry. She was still very weak and what Oliver said frightened her.
“Sorry, darling. I know it’s hard, but I’m desperately worried about staying here. I’ve got tickets for a ferry – they cost me an arm and a leg – but it’s a chance to get back home – do you think you can make it?”
“I’m so tired, Oliver. I don’t think I can stand up. And will you stop that scratching? I could hear you doing that all the time I was delirious. It nearly drove me crazy. Have you got bed bugs or something?”
“It’s not me, darling.”
He nearly said you silly bitch, but he could see she was in no mood for his usual banter. His mock insults had become a sign of affection and she always gave back as good as he dished out. But he looked at her frail figure with a wave of pity and tenderness. She looked so vulnerable.
“Well what is it then?” she said.
Oliver didn’t answer. Zoe sank back on the pillow. She could hear it plainly now. She listened for a few minutes, and then a look came over her face. She struggled out of bed.
“Those are rats. There are rats in this room. Oh my God, Oliver, get me out of this place, I need to get home.”
And she sat on the edge of the bed, weeping.
* * *
Somehow they made it back to their house. But their relief was short-lived as they walked inside and flung their bags down on the familiar hall rug. The rooms were permeated by an all-pervasive chill which made the old place unwelcoming. Then Oliver went into the kitchen.
“My God, it smells in here,” he said. He soon saw where it was coming from. There was a trail of dried blood coming from the freezer. The living room was worse. In the cold, some pipes had burst, probably weeks ago. The wet the ceiling was bulging. Huge blooms of mould hung down from around the light fitting. The plaster had started to break off where it was sagging down. Mould was growing over the windows and in every corner. He flicked on the light switch. There was no electricity. He went back to the kitchen; there was no hot water and hardly any food.
