She remembered him shaking his head in disgust at the TV, snorting at the dismissive platitudes offered by government suits when uttered by some talking-head.
The fire crackled in the silence. Jacob tossed some broken strips of chipboard onto the flames.
‘It was only in the last year or so, when oil started getting really expensive, that the big important fuckwits at the top - the men in smart suits - began to realise their finely tuned engine was struggling to cope; that we were all gonna get caught out by something.’
‘So why didn’t they change things?’ asked Helen.
Jacob shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
Leona looked up. ‘Because the fuckwits in suits were only thinking about the next financial quarter and their next big bonus, that’s why.’
The others turned. It was the first real sign of life they’d had out of her all day.
‘Too greedy for their own good.’
‘Well, that’s just silly,’ said Helen. ‘The men in charge should’ve fixed things if they knew they were all wrong.’
‘Yeah, right,’ muttered Leona. ‘So, a pothole in the road finally turned up.’
‘The bombs in those oil places?’ said Helen.
Leona nodded. ‘And our finely tuned engine just rattled and fell to pieces.’
‘Within a single week,’ added Jacob.
Leona tossed the wooden leg of a stool onto the fire, sending a small shower of sparks up into the sky, the flames momentarily flickering with renewed appetite. The dancing pool of amber light stretched a little further up and down the smooth tarmac of the motorway, picking out several abandoned cars along the hard shoulder, nestling amidst tufts of weeds that emerged between the deflated tyres and wheel arches.
‘I suppose we all had it coming,’ said Jacob after a while.
Leona nodded, her eyes glinting, reflecting the guttering flames. ‘Dad was right,’ she uttered quietly, before shuffling down on her side and zipping up her sleeping bag.
Chapter 28
10 years AC
‘LeMan 49/25a’ - ClarenCo Gas Rig Complex, North Sea
Walter held her hand. He knew she wasn’t hearing any of this, she was elsewhere, the place people go when they’re dosed up on enough codeine to knock out a horse.
‘The explosion shredded the feed pipes, it doubled back into the methane storage cylinder and blew that to pieces. The shards of that lacerated the other two of our three digesters. So, before we’re going to have some power again, I’m going to need to find replacements for those as well.’ He sighed. ‘They were bloody well perfect for the job as well. I suppose if I can find another brewery nearby . . .’
Jenny lay still, her breathing deep and even. The right side of her face, her right shoulder and arm and her torso were bandaged. The burns from the flash of gas igniting had been third degree across her shoulder and arm, and second degree across her neck and the right side of her face. Dr Gupta had told him Jenny had something like fifteen to twenty per cent damage to her BSA - body surface area. A person could quite easily die from that amount of damage, she’d added.
An infection and a fever had threatened to complicate the matter. So there was little more she could do but dress the knitting skin and keep it as clean as she could and bombard her with antibiotics.
It looked as if the infections were clearing up and the fever lifting. Jenny’s temperature was down, although the skin, where it had burned badly, still radiated an almost fever-like heat. Tami was still keeping Jenny out for the count; sedated and anaesthetised with a cocktail of drugs - as much as she dared use together.
‘There’ll be extensive scarring,’ she had told Walter. ‘This side of her face, her neck and her shoulder. There’s a chance some of her hair may not grow back on the right side. For a woman that’s, well, that’s not easy to accept.’
The scars were always going to be there, across her cheek and neck where she could easily see them every time she faced a mirror; always reminding herself of the day she lost a granddaughter.
He sighed, squeezing her hand gently.
Life’s a complete bastard, isn’t it? A completely cruel malicious bastard.
Truth was, Hannah died because she was playing where she shouldn’t, and had kicked the feed pipe by accident. That would do it, he realised. That would have been enough to dislodge the G-clamp.
But that’s what they’re saying, isn’t it? He kept overhearing mutterings that it was his shoddy workmanship that had killed the poor girl. Nasty spiteful assertions that