The physicist is looking at me intensely, as if trying to gauge how much is getting through. Not much is. ‘Last time, geologically speaking, it happened as fast as the flick of a switch.’
They all have their eyes on me.
‘So we have to do what we can to warn people,’ says Kristin Jons dottir. ‘There’ll be huge coastal flooding. Not just locally. With the domino effect, within a very short time we’re talking about the whole globe.’ She blinks. ‘Scandinavians call it Rag-narok.’
‘Chaos,’ says Frazer Melville. ‘A kind of Hell.’ My heart shrinks to a tiny hard marble. What does he want: my approval? Ned flicks to the next image, of the Earth, spinning slowly and transmogrifying with each turn.
‘The last time it happened, glaciers melted, huge areas were flooded. There were mass extinctions. This time, whether it’s triggered off the coast of Siberia or Indonesia or Florida, it won’t just be that region that’s affected. It’ll flash-heat the whole planet. Imagine a cataclysm on a scale that humans have never seen before.’
I can’t. Not even with the Earth spinning in front of me, its white and blue and green patches shifting and melding into one another like a giant ball of plasticine.
‘But wouldn’t the energy company that owns it know about it?’ I can hear my own stubbornness. Denial, for now, feels like an appropriate response. They are all being absurd. It’s science fiction. The fact that there are precedents for such a catastrophe is irrelevant. These things may have happened in prehistory, but they can’t happen in the age of man. Nature can’t just destroy civilisation. We’ve come too far. We can cope with things on this scale nowadays. We can prepare for them.
Ned says, ‘There might not be any visible signs at this stage. But even if the company does know, it might not want to publicise it. Especially if it’s corrupt and mismanaged. There are plenty of those, believe me.’
‘It might try to contain it,’ I say. But even as I say it, I can hear the absurdity.
One side of my face feels hot, as though my body is registering what my brain is failing to. A moment passes. Kristin Jons dottir walks over to the window, re-angles the slats on one of the blinds, and stares out. Ned is clicking at his laptop, and the physicist, perhaps finally taking the hint that I want no more to do with him, is staring fixedly at the images on the whiteboard. Outside, a plane scrapes a white arc across the sky, leaving a delicate snail-trail of vapour.
‘So what now?’ I ask.
‘I spoke to Harish Modak,’ says Frazer Melville. ‘He still doesn’t share our sense of urgency. But I persuaded him to travel over from Paris tonight.’ He stops, and glances at Kristin. She nods her head. There’s more. Something she knows about, which neither of them is keen on conveying. ‘He’s coming on the understanding that we’ll have something new to show him by then. If not proof, then a compelling piece of supporting evidence.’
‘Why on earth did you say that when you can’t guarantee it?’ I’m baffled. Kristin gives me a strange, supplicant look.
‘Because it was all I could come up with. I was hoping that with your help, Bethany might be able to remember some more.’
Sharply, it becomes clear. ‘So this is where I come in, right? This is why I’m here?’
‘Gabrielle,’ says Kristin gently, ‘we do need your help. You have already gone further than anyone could have expected in this. But we can’t do this without you.’
I sigh, sickened. ‘If we want more information from Bethany, she has to have more ECT. Do you realise that? It’s the only way.’
There is a silence. Yes, they do realise.
‘It’s what she’s been telling us,’ confirms Kristin quietly. ‘It’s what seems to work.’
‘And I have to supervise it,’ I continue, thinking aloud. ‘And if it goes wrong I take responsibility.’
The physicist reaches out and rests his hand on mine and gives it a small squeeze. If I had any pride left I would shake it off but I need his touch. I can feel its heat. I can remember the time when a gesture like that would have flooded me with love. Now I just want to cry. He says softly, ‘You remember how we felt after Istanbul. That night, when we heard the news and—’
No. I don’t want to.
My phone rings. I should leave it — it’s not the moment — but I am relieved to have a distraction, an excuse to emerge. I flick it open — and instantly regret doing so.
‘Detective Kavanagh here. Where are you exactly, Miss Fox?’
‘At home,’ I lie quickly. A reflex. But the wrong one. ‘Let me call you right back,’ I say, thinking wildly of ways to right what I’ve just said, and signalling to Ned that I’ve been caught unawares. But he is shaking his head. It’s too late. I have blown it.
‘No need for that,’ says Kavanagh evenly. ‘If you’re at home, you can just open the door. I’m right outside. I’ve been ringing the bell. But no joy. I’m surprised to hear you’re in there, to be honest. Because there’s no sign of your car out here.’ I say nothing. ‘Have you heard of the term perverting the course of justice, Miss Fox? A dangerous minor’s been abducted. Bethany Krall is a known killer. That’s quite heavy stuff. I don’t know what kind of disabled facilities they have in a women’s prison like Holloway. But you can be sure there will be, er,
But he doesn’t get any further because I’ve shut my phone and turned it off.
‘Well, forget about going back to Hadport tonight,’ says Ned. ‘You’ve just become a criminal.’
The three of them are staring at me. From the next room comes the theme tune of
‘You questioned your involvement earlier,’ says Ned. ‘But given the sudden change in your legal status…’
I look at him, and at Frazer Melville and his lover. I try to think of the world. Its innocence. The children who will die. But for now, suddenly, all I can think of is me. My pain, my jealousy, my double loss of womanhood. My lack of any future.
I am not ready for any of this. I will never be ready.
If I shut my eyes tight, I can blot it all out.
Chapter Eleven
‘Problem sorted,’ announces Bethany, striding in barefoot. She is brandishing a red plastic bucket. ‘Cereal, milk, one apple, an omelette and fifteen Haribos, thank you for those, Ned. Puked up the lot in three goes. So now my stomach’s empty for the anaesthetic and Wheels here has one less thing to fret about. Care to inspect?’
We don’t get the choice. Having done our duty, Ned and I exchange a glance which turns into a smile. You can’t help admiring Bethany’s commitment to her fix.
If I’d been told a few weeks ago that I would find myself in a creaking farmhouse unpacking medical paraphernalia with an Australian climatologist in a room where illegal electroconvulsive therapy would be shortly performed on a matricidal teenager I was suspected of abducting, I’d have had trouble believing it. But here I am with Ned Rappaport, in a small damp parlour, surrounded by boxes and bubble wrap. Before dark descended, I looked outside at an apple tree, its fruit littered across an overgrown meadow shaking with teasel-brushes and the flat shimmering coins of dried honesty, and I thought of my father’s garden, and then my father, and missed him so fiercely that I was ready to leave on the spot, drive to the care home, haul him out and bring him here, for no other reason than that I am the flesh of his flesh and I am lonely. The ECT machine is a small box similar to the one Dr
