Fragile Minds Page 0,6

was—’ Kenton collected herself, ‘I didn’t realise you were coming too.’

‘Boss thought you might fuck it up,’ he said smugly, and hung up.

Kenton counted to ten slowly and then dug her iPod out to begin the walk west, shuffling the wheel for the Meditation CD Alison had rather shyly suggested she try for stress.

‘Breathe deeply. Now imagine yourself in a safe, secure place. Somewhere you are entirely comfortable,’ the man’s voice droned unconvincingly. ‘Perhaps you are in a childhood—’

Someone pushed Kenton so violently from behind that she stumbled, just righting herself in time before she fell; her iPod hitting the pavement hard.

Before she could pick it up, she was pushed again. Heart racing, she turned to see who her attacker was, but they had run on. There was some sort of commotion on the far side of the square behind her, beside the big Swiss bank – but she was too far away to see exactly what it was; the railings round the green blocked her view, so she could only see the edge of the building site beside the bank. About fifty metres away, a woman in a burqa stood on the edge of the pavement, about to push a buggy across the road. Now the woman began to run towards the group of people at the bus stop.

As Kenton neared, adrenaline flooding her veins now, she could hear shouting and then another, more eerie noise: a high-pitched wail not unlike the keening of the bereaved at an Arabic funeral.

A bus pulled in, blocking her view again; and then a woman was screaming and shouting something unintelligible and Kenton saw people on the bus look out, and then stand up, a man pointing, pointing out of the far window and then—

All was chaos and noise and white, exploding light.

FRIDAY 14TH JULY CLAUDIE

I stood on the quiet street outside Rafe’s flat. The church clock on the green struck seven, and a double decker slid into place at the bus stop in front of me. Unthinking, I climbed on. I didn’t check the destination, I just slapped my Oyster card on the reader like it was a dead fish, and I sat in the first seat I came to.

I kept thinking I need to be somewhere only I couldn’t seem to collect my thoughts; and when I did manage to assemble them a little, I found I was thinking of Ned, and then of Will. I fiddled anxiously with my locket, realising I had a sudden urge to see my husband. Oh the sweet irony: an irony Will would not thank me for.

The old lady beside me smelt high, as if she’d been ripened especially for months. She kept grumbling about the driver, on and on she droned. ‘He’s trying to scare us, that lad, you mark my words, it’s because they don’t learn to drive here, they learn in Africa, too many holes in the roads, those jigaboos.’ After a few minutes, I said, ‘I’m afraid I don’t share your horrible opinions,’ and I moved to the back, stumbling against the other commuters who stared at me with empty eyes.

We reached Russell Square. Tessa; that was it; that was what I had to do. I changed buses and boarded a new one. It seemed to take forever to reach Oxford Street where we became one in a line of nose to tail buses, crawling at tortoise pace – something was holding us up, but we couldn’t see what; until eventually I knew, I knew I had to get off the bus NOW. I began to smash on the doors until the other passengers stepped back in fear, until the driver thought I was truly mad, and gave in, and let me off.

And I ran, ran, ran towards Berkeley Square.

FRIDAY 14TH JULY KENTON

Somehow the bus protected her. Forever after she would be grateful; she would look on London’s famous red double decker as some kind of lucky charm; some kind of talisman to her.

Instinctively, Kenton had hit the floor when the explosion ripped through the north side of the square. She had lain motionless on the pavement with her hands over her head for a minute or two, until the noise settled, the rumble stopped, and there was quiet across the square. A strange pocket of silence in the city, broken only by the incongruous sound of birdsong.

And then a new noise began. Now it was the alarms that filled the air: the cars, the shops and flats; the electrics triggered