the silly fool had cut too many corners, eager to hurry up and make electricity so he could impress Jenny - woo her into his cot with a spectacular display of his practical ingenuity.
Bitches.
And with Jenny out of the loop for now, for quite a few weeks, if not months, according to Dr Gupta, Walter was having to stand in as her replacement. No one seemed to be particularly happy with that idea. Certainly not that sour-faced bitch, Alice Harton, who seemed to be taking every opportunity to be canvassing support and stoking dissent.
Oh, yes, she sees herself as Jenny’s replacement all right.
Without Jenny at his side he suddenly felt very lonely. Not even the other old boys, Howard and Dennis, were bothering to stand by him. David Cudmore, the chap Alice was bedding right now, must have talked them round for her. They all bunked together on the drilling platform, all thick as thieves.
And there was that Latoc fella, too. He was over there - he seemed to have attracted something of a following.
Groupies. That’s what they were. His adoring bloody fan club.
Walter didn’t have a cluster of people around him that could shore him up. If Jenny’s kids hadn’t buggered off and left him, he’d at least have had them gathered close and giving him some support. But instead, all he had was Tami, and perhaps Martha, although she seemed to be increasingly interested in spending time up the far end of the platforms.
Another bloody groupie probably.
Everyone else . . . they were carrying on with their duties as they were spelled out on the whiteboard and turning up for their correct meal sittings; doing their bit and politely nodding at Walter when he had to issue instructions. But that was hardly support.
‘Jesus, Jenny, hurry up and get better,’ he muttered.
She stirred in her sleep, her clogged voice calling softly for someone.
He wondered how much she was aware of things. Every day there were periods when her glassy eyes were open and she was groggy but awake; moments when she could manage a few muddled words through the fog of drugs, as she sipped carefully spooned tepid stew - not hot, that would hurt the raw skin around her lips. But those were snatched moments amidst a chemical haze. He wondered if she even knew Hannah was gone, that her children had deserted them.
Oh, Jesus.
Thing is, it would be down to him to tell her; news that was going to break her heart. Not now though - not now. If she really could hear him, then that was news she could do without knowing at this point in time.
He looked at her hand, strangely untouched by the explosion, a lean and elegant hand. A grandmother’s hand. A mother’s hand . . . a beautiful hand. He raised it to his lips and kissed it gently, wishing he was twelve years younger and more her type; wishing he was a bit more like the husband she had lost in the crash. He knew she still mourned him, still spoke to him in quiet moments.
He sighed. Only with her like this, unconscious, did he have the courage to say what he’d yearned to say for a number of years now.
‘I love you, Jenny,’ he whispered. ‘I’d do anything for you. You know that, don’t you? Absolutely bloody anything.’
Chapter 29
10 years AC
Thetford, Norfolk
It was far easier to replace Helen’s bicycle than bother to fix the puncture. It went flat with an explosive pfffft just outside Thetford. Half a mile further along the road they rolled past a turning that promised them yet another retail park. Five minutes later the wheels of their bikes and the trailer rolled across a broad leaf-strewn parking forecourt. Untamed weeds pushed up in places, and the tarmac was lumpy where the roots of a row of decorative saplings were making a show of their spread down one side.
Like every other parking area they’d encountered, this one was more or less bereft of cars. Jacob remembered seeing roads clogged with vehicles in the week after the crash. It had seemed any car or van with at least a quarter of a tank of petrol had been pressed into service, packed with families desperately trying to get away from the chaotic anarchy of London.
But every artery out of the city had been sealed with a roadblock manned either by armed police and soldiers or ‘emergency response workers’ - civilians hastily pressed into service, armed and invariably supervised by