Flash Flood

Chapter Eleven

Ben clung on. Filthy Thames water sluiced over his head. The water was icy cold, sending pains all over his body and making his fingers go numb instantly. His brain played him terrifying images — the woman struggling to climb the coral-tree while the water battered its branches like an angry demon trying to shake her loose.

Freezing spray filled his eyes, nose and mouth. It tasted of mud and oil. They were travelling fast, as if on rapids, completely at the mercy of the current. The raft wobbled and undulated under them, as though it was about to fold in half at any moment. Ben could make out shapes crouched against the other end, but the spray kept forcing his eyes closed. The only things he could see with any certainty were right beside him in the water, buffeted against the raft: a blackboard sign from a pub; litter bins, surrounded by a confetti of KFC wrappers, coffee cups, tickets, leaflets, half-eaten burgers. A small bundle of drenched clothes bobbed up nearby. Ben saw a face, wet hair like streaks of black seaweed dragged across the forehead. A body. He couldn’t tell if it was male or female. Then it was swept away from them again.

Suddenly Ben spotted a short black spike in the water. He realized it was the top of a lamppost and his brain did a quick reality check. Those lampposts on the South Bank were about three metres high. He got a sudden blinding sense of panic at the thought of all the water below him. And what if something tore the raft?

Still the current pulled them on. They passed a man helplessly riding a giant seesaw in the air above them. He was clinging onto the gangplank of a restaurant boat, which was waving free over the water. His face was grim, unseeing.

Now they were passing Westminster Bridge, gliding over the approach road. The bridge itself had shrunk to a small hump in the middle of the water, and Ben could see boats and a floating restaurant stuck at the arch, thumping against the concrete as though the current was trying to use them as a battering ram to smash through to the other side. To their left a Day-Glo orange van hurtled towards a tall grey building and crashed in through one of the windows, leaving a black hole. Ben’s heart turned a somersault. Suppose they were carried into a building? Into the dark? Into a fire?

Suddenly he realized that one of the shapes on the raft had gone. He looked at the empty section of rope. Just like that, without a sound, one of the people who had been in that room had disappeared. One minute they were there, the next they were gone. Who was it? Ben couldn’t recognize any of the remaining shapes. They were all soaking wet, their clothes darkened by the water, their hair plastered down. Just lumps of wet clothes. He looked around in the water, searching for someone in trouble.

A big powerboat came speeding past, as tall as a two-storey building. It clipped the raft and sent it whirling round like a fairground ride. Ben hung on, blinded by spray. The raft bounced off a double-decker bus, a truck, a park bench, a bin, all the time undulating like a waterbed. It felt loose, as though it was about to deflate entirely and leave them all struggling in the waves like debris. He was so cold, but he had to stay still and cling on. He felt like he was only a set of fingers clamped around a piece of rope, waiting for it all to stop. The rope was digging into his hands. Everything hurt.

They glided on past the Houses of Parliament, strangely stunted now that their lower floors were submerged. The graceful tower of Big Ben stood above it all, aloof from the chaos. Beyond it Ben could see what looked like a battleship nudging at the gothic windows of Westminster Abbey. All at once he recognized it as HMS Belfast, which he’d been to see on a previous trip with his mother. It had drifted off its moorings on the other side of the river. It was a surreal sight, these two pieces of London history juxtaposed like that. If I’m going to die, he thought, let it be now. With that image in my head.

They circled past the abbey and then on down a street of tall white buildings. Ben’s mind was replaying the image of the van disappearing through the window, but they were swept on past the buildings and into an open area.

Here, only the tops of trees were poking up out of the water. They must be floating across one of the parks. That was even more frightening — it was like drifting out at sea.

Suddenly the raft hit a tree and Ben was slithering into the water. The raft was bobbing away from him. The last thing he saw was its orange sides, now with only three hunched figures clinging on, unaware they were leaving one more behind.