My first thought is that a fight must have broken out. There’s a crowd of people outside Currys.digital. It’s after closing time so I can’t understand what they’re doing there. The people towards the back are fighting to get to the front. The people at the front are standing completely still. The display lights and the televisions in the window are illuminating their faces. The light in their faces and their expressions remind me of stained glass windows.
I cross over to the crowd and try to see what they are gathering around. I stand up on my toes to look over their heads but I can’t see anything. I try to wriggle in between people, pushing my way to the front, not at all sure that I want to see what is there. Someone’s elbow hits me in the teeth. Someone’s sweaty hand slips off my shoulder, twisting my t-shirt. I reach the front of the crowd, where people are standing staring. They are looking in through the shop window. They are looking in at a television screen.
I stare with them for a while before I realise what I’m looking at. BBC News 24 is showing. The red band at the bottom of the screen says ‘UN holds disaster conference’. Some other words are scrolling underneath. There is a man on the screen. I recognise him as a reporter but I can’t remember his name. I’m still standing and staring and I notice his cheeks are shining with tears. He is reporting from outside the United Nations building where it is still daytime. The sun is bouncing off the glass walls and off his wet face. I hear him choking out words like ‘environment’ and ‘life-support’ and ‘resources’. There are people on the street with him. They are standing silently as well. The news cuts to the inside of the General Assembly. They are sitting in silence there.
The reporter comes back on the screen, and I see the face of the man next to me, reflected in the shop window, super-imposed over the face of the reporter. It looks like a hologram seen from the wrong angle, caught halfway between two images.
Five days. Who didn’t know this was coming, really? The shock is not that it’s the end. It’s that we know when it is coming. We know how it is coming. We can count down the days and we can picture the scene. I don’t want to picture the scene.
I spend the next two days just walking. I walk all over London. I see people dropping like hailstones from the tower blocks.
On the third day, Friday, I’m walking through the city and I look in through the window of this place called MARINE ICES. It’s a low, white building that doesn’t fit in with its neighbours at all. It looks like it hasn’t changed since the 1950s. First I think there’s nobody in there. The lights are on, but the TV attached to the wall in the corner is off. It’s the only TV I’ve seen all day that hasn’t been tuned to the news. Then I notice there’s a girl sitting in one of the window seats. She’s sitting there with a pink milkshake. She has a transparent straw to drink it with, and I watch the milkshake moving slowly up inside the straw. She raises her eyes from the drink and looks at me. She pushes a stand of black hair out of her face and tucks it behind her ear. I go in and sit down with her. She smiles so easily I realise there’s no way she’s heard the news.
She keeps smiling, and we keep talking, and we leave the empty ice-cream parlour. The street lamps have stopped coming on at night, and it’s too dark to see her face while we walk. I keep picturing her pushing that strand of hair away from her eyes.
We get to the top of Primrose Hill and turn to look over the city. There’s an orange glow across the horizon that I hope she takes for light pollution. We sit down on the ridge of the hill. She smiles at me. I am not going to tell her. We warm each other’s hands. We stay up on the hill all night.
We walk all day Saturday. The heel of my trainer comes loose. She loses a hairgrip and we crawl around until we find it again. I try my hardest to pretend that finding the hairgrip is really important. When the sun goes down on Saturday evening, the orange glow is brighter, and taller, and closer. She asks me about my plans for the future. I am drowning in a sea of violins. I make up an answer. She smiles, pushes that strand of hair out of her eyes, and says they sound like good plans.
I cross over to the crowd and try to see what they are gathering around. I stand up on my toes to look over their heads but I can’t see anything. I try to wriggle in between people, pushing my way to the front, not at all sure that I want to see what is there. Someone’s elbow hits me in the teeth. Someone’s sweaty hand slips off my shoulder, twisting my t-shirt. I reach the front of the crowd, where people are standing staring. They are looking in through the shop window. They are looking in at a television screen.
I stare with them for a while before I realise what I’m looking at. BBC News 24 is showing. The red band at the bottom of the screen says ‘UN holds disaster conference’. Some other words are scrolling underneath. There is a man on the screen. I recognise him as a reporter but I can’t remember his name. I’m still standing and staring and I notice his cheeks are shining with tears. He is reporting from outside the United Nations building where it is still daytime. The sun is bouncing off the glass walls and off his wet face. I hear him choking out words like ‘environment’ and ‘life-support’ and ‘resources’. There are people on the street with him. They are standing silently as well. The news cuts to the inside of the General Assembly. They are sitting in silence there.
The reporter comes back on the screen, and I see the face of the man next to me, reflected in the shop window, super-imposed over the face of the reporter. It looks like a hologram seen from the wrong angle, caught halfway between two images.
Five days. Who didn’t know this was coming, really? The shock is not that it’s the end. It’s that we know when it is coming. We know how it is coming. We can count down the days and we can picture the scene. I don’t want to picture the scene.
*
I spend the next two days just walking. I walk all over London. I see people dropping like hailstones from the tower blocks.
On the third day, Friday, I’m walking through the city and I look in through the window of this place called MARINE ICES. It’s a low, white building that doesn’t fit in with its neighbours at all. It looks like it hasn’t changed since the 1950s. First I think there’s nobody in there. The lights are on, but the TV attached to the wall in the corner is off. It’s the only TV I’ve seen all day that hasn’t been tuned to the news. Then I notice there’s a girl sitting in one of the window seats. She’s sitting there with a pink milkshake. She has a transparent straw to drink it with, and I watch the milkshake moving slowly up inside the straw. She raises her eyes from the drink and looks at me. She pushes a stand of black hair out of her face and tucks it behind her ear. I go in and sit down with her. She smiles so easily I realise there’s no way she’s heard the news.
She keeps smiling, and we keep talking, and we leave the empty ice-cream parlour. The street lamps have stopped coming on at night, and it’s too dark to see her face while we walk. I keep picturing her pushing that strand of hair away from her eyes.
We get to the top of Primrose Hill and turn to look over the city. There’s an orange glow across the horizon that I hope she takes for light pollution. We sit down on the ridge of the hill. She smiles at me. I am not going to tell her. We warm each other’s hands. We stay up on the hill all night.
We walk all day Saturday. The heel of my trainer comes loose. She loses a hairgrip and we crawl around until we find it again. I try my hardest to pretend that finding the hairgrip is really important. When the sun goes down on Saturday evening, the orange glow is brighter, and taller, and closer. She asks me about my plans for the future. I am drowning in a sea of violins. I make up an answer. She smiles, pushes that strand of hair out of her eyes, and says they sound like good plans.
1 comment:
this is good. i really liked it.
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