Flare

Chapter 46

“Maybe another twenty minutes,” Emily said, pointing at a sign by the side of the motorway. “You’ll need to direct me once we reach the city.”

We’d taken leave of the farm with a new backpack, enough food to see us through twenty four hours and a couple of torches, all they could spare for us.

I glanced at the bag by my feet and wondered again at the kindness of total strangers, so unexpected after everything we’d gone through.

“Let’s not even bother with the city,” I replied, “Angie never needed an excuse to avail herself of her parents’ hospitality, and their place is about half an hour closer.”

“I’ll still need directions.”

“It’s the turning after next, then just follow the signs for Woodford Aerodrome.”

She nodded and returned her attention to the road while I kept glancing down at the detector on my belt. Even though I knew it was my imagination, I swear I could feel the hovering threat of radiation prickling my skin, wondering if even now I was receiving a lethal dose that my detector was too damaged to pick up.

“Will you stop that? You’re making me nervous.” Emily waved a hand towards my belt. “It’ll tell you if there’s a problem, and checking it every few seconds won’t do more than give you neck-ache.”

“But what if it doesn’t work?”

“The detection system is gas and paper, what’s not to work? The only electronic bit is the alarm, so as long as you keep an occasional eye on it, you’ll be fine.”

“Ok, sorry. Radiation scares the shit out of me, though.”

“You’d be a moron if it didn’t, but if we’re committed to this then what choice have we got?”

“Not much.”

“Then why worry?”

“Because I’d never forgive myself if you died because of me.” I realised the words were true even as I said them. I’d only known Emily for a handful of days, but already she was closer to me than anyone bar Melody. Time and again she had put herself in danger on my behalf, although for the life of me I couldn’t see why, and now she was driving into an area that for all we knew was irradiated enough to kill us both, and all because of me.

“Emily, why are you doing this?”

She glanced over and I could see a slight flush to her cheeks.

“Doing what?”

“All this. Keeping me out of trouble, helping me to find Melody, driving towards a nuclear bloody disaster for someone you barely know.”

She opened and closed her mouth a few times as if about to speak, but seemed unable to find the right words. I waited patiently, watching her hands tighten on the steering wheel until her knuckles were white.

“I, uh, ah shit, I’m no good at this,” she said finally, then abruptly stopped the car and turned to face me. “Do you really have no idea why?”

I shrugged helplessly. “If I did I wouldn’t have asked.”

She rolled her eyes towards the heavens.

“God give me strength,” she muttered. “Look, you’re a really nice guy, ok?”

I nodded, feeling like a seventeen year old being given the brush-off.

“A really nice guy,” she continued. “In fact you’re the first man in years who hasn’t tried to impress me with how strong he is, or how masculine, or how many tours of Afghanistan he’s done. Do you know how refreshing it is to spend time with a man who can hold a conversation and doesn’t try to get me into bed after thirty seconds?”

“Probably about as refreshing as it is for me to spend time with someone who can answer the phone without having to do her nails first.”

“Your ex?”

I nodded. “You have no idea.”

She put the vehicle into gear and pulled away again, then turned up a slip road and took us onto a roundabout that I recognised as only being a few miles away from Woodford. I could feel my hands trembling with anticipation, both from seeing Melody again and the conversation we were having.

“What I’m trying to say,” Emily kept her eyes firmly fixed on the road, “is that I like you a lot, and if circumstances had been different then I think we’d already have, uh, well…”

“Become romantically involved?” I said it light-heartedly but I could feel my pulse racing.

She nodded. “If you want to sound like a Mills & Boon novel, sure.”

“I usually try and avoid that.”

“Good choice, but let me finish before I run out of steam, ok?”

I nodded. “Sure.”

“Now all of my training tells me that being romantically involved with someone you may need to put your life on the line for is a bad idea, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t… ah bollocks, well I just like you, ok?”

Her cheeks were burning, and I wondered where the competent soldier had vanished to as she stared rigidly through the windscreen. The other thing that confused me was how at odds this sudden awkwardness was with the way she’d acted in the shop in Maidenhead when we’d been getting changed. I sighed and shook my head, wondering if I’d ever be smart enough to understand a woman properly.

“Well thank you, for everything,” I said with what felt like my first genuine smile in days, “and for the record, there’s no one I would rather have had with me.”

She smiled back, then glanced up at the sky. “Looks like rain.”

I followed her gaze to see dark clouds scudding in from the northwest, still in the distance but moving closer. Neither of us voiced the worry we shared, that the clouds would be carrying irradiated water from the power plant, but Emily picked up speed and I leaned forwards as if it would help us travel faster.

We hit Woodford village at a steady sixty, only Emily’s excellent reflexes keeping us on all four wheels as she took corners that were made for half that speed, and as the neat, detached and semi-detached houses flashed past, I saw one or two people out in their gardens, presumably drawn by the noise of or approach.

“Next left,” I said, and Emily swung the wheel, almost colliding with a van that had been abandoned in the road. I didn’t bother telling her to slow down, instead keeping my eyes on the advancing clouds through the treetops that lined the backs of the nearby gardens.

“Second right, then the last bungalow at the end of the Close, number seventeen.”

I could barely believe that we were so close, and despite my best efforts I found myself fidgeting like a schoolboy, knees bouncing up and down as I balanced on the balls of my feet.

Emily finally slowed as we turned into the Close, and I pointed to the bungalow at the end, separated from its neighbours by lovingly tended gardens on one side and a garage and driveway on the other.

The Landrover pulled to a halt, the engine falling silent. I reached for the door handle but paused, turning to see Emily watching me.

“I’m scared.” Of what I might find, or might not find, but I didn’t need to say that, the look in her eyes told me she understood.

“Whatever we find, we do it together,” she said, reaching for my hand and squeezing it.

I nodded and we got out. I waited for her to come round the vehicle, and she surprised me by taking my hand again, holding it tight while the other hefted her pistol.

I was about to tell her that she didn’t need it, but then what did I know?

We approached slowly, footsteps loud on the paved path that led to the front door, blue paint faded but still good and the brass knocked in the shape of a lion with the ring in its mouth just as I remembered it.

I came to a stop, one foot on the brown doormat while the other seemed unwilling to leave the path. Net curtains prevented us from seeing anything through the windows but even so the house felt empty, abandoned.

I took a deep breath and grabbed the brass ring, slamming it against the strike plate three times in quick succession.

The hollow knocking echoed in the silent street, my shoulder blades itching as if someone was watching us.

Ten seconds passed, then twenty, and still no answer, no sound of rushing feet from within.

Bending to the letter box I pushed the flap open and called through the hole.

“Melody, it’s dad. Are you here?”

Nothing. I could smell spoiled food and the stink of a latrine through the narrow slit, and dread touched my heart. Someone had been living here, and fairly recently too, but if it was someone I knew then surely they would have answered by now.

Exchanging a glance with Emily, I lifted the mat and was rewarded by the sparkle of the spare key as sunlight hit it. I picked it up with shaking hands and tried to put it in the lock, metal rattling against metal as my nerves got the better of me.

Emily took the key and slid it into the lock, turning it smoothly and pushing the door open.

The smell hit me like a smack to the nose. Half gagging, I stepped back with a hand covering my mouth. Whoever had been living here had clearly been using the toilet just inside the front door for days, and clouds of buzzing flies swarmed around the unflushable waste.

Squaring my shoulders, I stepped through the doorway and into the hall, the soft beige carpet newer than the one I remembered. Photographs of Angie, her brother Doug and Melody lined the walls in small, neat frames, while the telephone table just outside the toilet held a picture of Angie’s parents, Frank and Rita, smiling and holding hands in front of the Blackpool tower.

The lounge was at the back, next to the kitchen, and I led Emily that way, glancing into the bedrooms as we passed but seeing no sign of life.

The lounge was large and airy, with two sofas and several chairs, all angled towards the large TV that sat on the wall above the old fireplace. The room was a mess, books, magazines and empty tins of food scattered everywhere, while the net curtains that covered the patio doors looked as though someone had used them as toilet paper.

Heart in mouth, I crossed to the kitchen, flinging open the door and finding even worse devastation. Not only was every surface littered with empty food tins and packets, many with mould growing in them, but every drawer and cupboard had been turned out, contents spilled onto the floor and then seemingly kicked here and there.

The large larder on the far side of the kitchen stood open, and even from here I could see that not a single bean remained. All eight large shelves were empty, enough food to keep a family going for a month vanished.

I stood and stared, wondering what had happened, where my little girl was and if she had been here when the house was ransacked. The thought was enough to shake me out of the haze of fear and uncertainty that had fallen over me, anger replacing it in a flash.

I spun on my heel and headed back down the hall to the bedrooms, first checking Frank and Rita’s. The bed was unmade, clods of dirt smeared on the end of the duvet, and the usual clutter on Rita’s dresser had been swept onto the floor to create a pile of powder, paint and perfume that almost covered the smell from the toilet.

Almost knocking into Emily, I went to the room nearest the front door and flung it open. This was the guest room, the room that Melody would use if she was staying here.

My heart almost broke as I stepped through the doorway. Melody’s Minnie Mouse sleeping bag, a gift for her seventh birthday, lay unzipped in the middle of the double bed, the inside stained with mud or worse. Her travel case, battered, bright pink and painfully familiar from her weekends with me, lay on one side on the floor next to the bed, the contents trampled and kicked about.

And there, on the small table next to the bed, sat Melody’s diary, the one thing in the world I knew that she would never go anywhere without, and seeing that, I knew that something terrible had happened to my little girl.

Sinking to the bed, I placed my face in my hands and I wept as my world fell apart.