Ten

That night we stop at a public toilet. It’s a big old Victorian thing, standing alone in among a square of levelled buildings. The toilets are blocked and stinking, but it is better than sleeping out in the open. We sit on the cold concrete floor and eat sweetcorn and peaches straight from the tins. Then without any warning she’s crying and saying she thought she was going to die and she was so scared and she didn’t know there was anyone left alive . . .

“Me too.” I touch her shoulder. I’m not sure what I can say to comfort her. What words are there for this? What can I possibly say to make any of this better?

“It’s not right,” she says. “Stuff like this isn’t supposed to happen. It can’t all be over.”

I wish she would stop crying, so I ask her what she did, before the Cataclysm. That is how she gets to telling me all about her boyfriend, Andy, who was out of the country when the meteors came down. How she left her house and ran and saw the boiling of the Thames, and all the people–the businessmen and tourists and children–who were scalded alive by the smoke. How her house was smashed to grit, and how a meteor came down right in front of her and she was trapped and couldn’t move for ages. How when she finally shifted the weight from on top of her it was to find that the world as she knew it was dead.

And then she stops talking and looks at me like it’s my turn. I don’t want to talk about Sharon. I don’t even want to say her name. Instead, I begin, “my fiancée . . .” but that’s worse. “Sharon . . . ” I force myself to say it. “Me and Sharon. We were both at work when it happened. She called me up as soon as the first news reports came in. Nobody knew what it was then, of course, but she said she had a bad feeling about it. We both met up by the river. And then the first rock hit . . .”

I watch Lisa playing with her hair as I talk. I tell her about Sharon. About what happened to her, what happened to me. Finding the gun. Hiding for days on end. Everything up until the two of us met. And to my surprise it isn’t so bad. It is better. I thought I might never talk to another human being.

The evening goes on and it gets darker and darker until we can hardly see each other in the gloom. We each wish each other goodnight and move to opposite ends of the room to sleep. I put the gun within easy reach. I think about doing it, ending it all, now, before I have to face another day of fear and pain and cold, but I decide against it. Not yet, I think, not until things get really, really bad.