attendance. The utter lack of traffic, though she could hear the throaty roar of farm vehicles working the fields. No newspapers in the little post office; the Daily Mail board stood empty, blank and weathered. The English flags that fluttered from every rooftop and out of every window, even from the aerials of the stationary cars, the cross of Saint George everywhere. And there was the warmth, of course, the unseasonable warmth that had persisted all winter, and had got the grumbling farmers out working their fields earlier than they had been used to. But this had suddenly become a desirable place, as you could tell from the caravans and mobile homes and tents clustered around the old core of the village, including Amanda’s own caravan, for Postbridge was more than three hundred meters above the old sea level. This was the heart of Dartmoor, the highest location in southern England.
She glanced down at herself, in a battered quilt jacket, worn jeans, heavy walking boots. She looked like a farmer’s wife-which, effectively, she was, though she and Wayne hadn’t married. The Amanda of 2015 wouldn’t have recognized what she had become.
Lily took in the sights of the village curiously. “In the States you see the flag everywhere, the Stars and Stripes, and yellow ribbons tied to the trees for the lost. But I don’t remember all these flags in England. Except when the World Cup was on.”
That made Amanda smile.“Actually they’re still playing football, a lot of the big stadiums in the north stayed open. A kind of cut-down league based on who can turn up. Wayne follows it on the radio. Bradford City are the league champions, imagine that. At least they’ve given up staging big matches abroad. Pity about the World Cup though..”
The sisters passed out of the village and followed a footpath south.
They didn’t get far before they came to the village’s barbed-wire perimeter. The path was blocked by a rough barrier of a cut-down telephone pole, manned today by Bill Pulford, son of a local farmer. He nodded at Amanda and let them through.
Amanda tried to break the ice. “We’re not far from Bellever Tor.” The tors, massive granite outcrops pushing out of peat moorland, were Dartmoor’s most famous feature, back in the days when it was a magnet for tourism. “There’s a wood. Only conifers, but you get a lot of bird life now. They’ve come up from the flooded valleys, I guess. And some archeology, hut circles-”
“Where are the kids?”
“Working,” Amanda said, pointing.“A couple of kilometers that way. The new fields have been laid out but they need clearing; the farmers always need muscle for that. I’d rather they were at school, but what can you do? Benj is sixteen now, and Kristie fourteen, they make their own minds up. Anyhow the outdoor work is good for them, and they get paid.”
“With what?”
“The local scrip.” She dug in her pocket and showed Lily a handful of money. It was old sterling or euro notes and coins, marked or clipped to reflect a local barter rate. “We do get stuff from outside, of course, but-”
“Can you call the kids? Do you have mobiles?”
“Of course we have mobiles.” Reflexively Amanda took her phone out of her jacket pocket. It was four years old, elderly by former standards; it had actually come through the flooding of London with her.
“Call them,” Lily urged her.“Right now. Get them to come meet us. Maybe at the tor you mentioned? Would they know how to get to it?”
Amanda weighed the phone in her hand, frowning. “I don’t know if I should.”
“Please, Amanda. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
“And then what?”
“I told you. We get out, the four of us, to the car at Cheriton Bishop.”
“It must be twenty kilometers. More.”
Lily glanced at the sun. “It’s not late. I walked here yesterday and this morning. I stayed over in a pub. Four, five hours should do it. The car will wait until the sun goes down, later if I call.”
“And then we all just drive off, is that the idea?” Anger flared in Amanda.“You know, you’ve got a nerve, Lily. Without any warning you parachute back into the middle of my life. My life, the life I’ve been building for myself here, me and the kids. It hasn’t been easy, you know.”
“I don’t mean to mess things up for you.” Lily sounded strained, tired; she seemed drained behind her South American tan.
“You’re doing your best to come between me and Wayne, aren’t you?”
“I don’t mean to do that either. Look, please, Amanda-you have to trust me.”
“Why?”
“I promised I wouldn’t say.”
“Promised who? AxysCorp, the great Nathan Lammockson? Why won’t you say?”
“Because it would cause panic.”
That made Amanda pause. Panic? Amanda had seen panic, a frantic sort in Greenwich on the day the Thames Barrier fell, and later a more long-drawn-out miserable sort of panic when the river started rising again and west London had to be evacuated. But here she was in Dartmoor, far above any flooding. What could there possibly be to panic about? She felt resistant, angry, unwilling.
Lily saw this in her face. “Please, Amanda, the kids.”
Amanda had to trust her; this was her sister. And besides she could always come back when the fuss was over, whatever it was. She hefted her phone. “Shall I have them call at the caravan first, pick up their stuff-”
“No,” Lily said. “Forget the caravan, forget packing. Just get them to meet us.”
“Wayne won’t take kindly if he finds out you’re having us sneak off, if that’s the idea.”
“So don’t tell him.” Lily closed her eyes, and a muscle in her cheek worked. “Look, I’ll make a deal. Once I have you and the kids in the AxysCorp car you can call Wayne, or whoever you like. My priority isn’t Wayne. It’s not even your feelings. My priority is only you and the kids. Your safety.”
“You’re scaring me,” said Amanda, though she was still more angry than frightened.
“Good,” Lily said bluntly. “Make your calls. Please, Amanda.”
So Amanda pressed the fast-key numbers, and called.
38
It would take a while for the kids to catch up with them. Lily and Amanda walked slowly to the tor.
A farm vehicle buzzed in a field. “More fields being broken,” Lily said.
“Yes. They’re growing crops up here now, instead of raising sheep and cattle. You can thank the warmer weather for that. There are problems, though. Like bluetongue, and African horse sickness. New kinds of viruses nobody’s dealt with here before. The government vets still come around sometimes.” It was another result of the flood-induced warming, a spreading out of the old hot regions of diseases of animals and of humans, like chikungunya and Rift Valley fever.
Lily asked, “Where do you get your fuel from?”
“There’s a tanker port at Taunton.” The lowland of Somerset was all but drowned, but harbors and port facilities had hastily been improvised close to what had been an inland town. “It’s rationed, of course; it’s really just for the farm vehicles and the power stations. We use the cars for emergencies. We’ve a few bikes too, Wayne has one. They’ve had to rebuild the port once already, when the sea kept rising.”
“It’s the same story all over.”
“Nobody seems to know how long the tankers will keep calling.”
“Who controls the rationing?”
Amanda looked at her. “Well, the police. Who do you think?”
“It’s just that you’re kind of remote up here. All that barbed wire. The SAM missiles,” Lily said frankly. “Is it true the locals ‘nationalized’ the Tesco’s in Taunton?”
“Sort of,” Amanda said. “There was a lot of objection to the profits they were taking out of the area.”
“That wouldn’t have happened in the old days, would it? A lot of England is disconnected from the center nowadays.”
“Well, the government is hundreds of kilometers away, in Leeds. They don’t worry about us. Wayne says we
