get started.’
The crowd of people around her shuffled compliantly into a long queue, and the young man pulled up a seat to sit on and another stool to use as a makeshift desk. The two armed policemen, wearing Kevlar vests and casually cradling their machine-guns, took a step back, perhaps sensing this crowd was too beaten and tired to pose any sort of security risk.
The woman, meanwhile, disengaged from the process and found a quiet space between two large potted plastic plants and, ignoring the sign on the wall behind her, lit up a cigarette.
Andy wandered over towards her. Closer, he could see how tired and drawn she was; there were bags beneath her eyes, and a nervous tremor shook the hand that held the cigarette shakily to her lips.
Her eyes fixed on him as he closed the last few yards. She almost bothered to put her ‘we’ve-got-it-all-under-control’ smile back on for him . . . but clearly decided it was too much trouble.
‘Help you?’ she asked, blowing smoke out of her nose.
‘Do I get a choice?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Do I get a choice? I mean, if I don’t want to be taken into one of these safe zones?’
‘You don’t?’ She was genuinely surprised. ‘Why the hell would you not?’ she said, and then took another long pull on her cigarette.
‘I need to get home to my family.’
She shrugged, ‘I can understand that.’
Andy turned round. ‘These people,’ he said gesturing at the queue that had formed in the middle of the departure lounge, ‘are going to die in your safe zones. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘How many people have you rounded up at Battersea, Leatherhead, the Dome?’
‘Look, I don’t know off hand . . . I’m just a sub-regional coordinator. ’
‘Guess.’
‘Shit, I don’t know,’ she shook her head, too tired and strung out to want to get sucked into this kind of conversation.
‘A hundred thousand? A million?’
She nodded. ‘Yeah, maybe half a million around London, and in other places too. Look, we’re doing our best—’
‘I don’t doubt you are. But do you have enough food and water to feed them for six months? Nine months? Maybe even a year?’
‘What?’ she said, her eyebrows knotted with confusion. She blew out a veil of smoke. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Recovery.’
‘Listen,’ she said flicking ash into one of the pots beside her and glancing casually at the ‘No Smoking’ sign on a wall nearby, ‘it’s not going to take a year for the oil to get flowing again. Some pipelines got blown, some oil refineries got damaged, right? That’s what happened.’
Andy nodded.
‘So how long does it take to fix that? I’m sure there’re people out there working on it right now. We’ll have oil again in a couple of weeks, okay? So look, why don’t you give me a break, join the queue and let me have a fag in peace?’ She offered him an apologetic shrug. ‘It’s been a really long, fucking day.’
Andy took a step closer and lowered his voice. ‘Somebody up there, in charge of things, is being very naive if they think it’s all going to be hunky-dory again within a few weeks.’
‘So . . . what? You want us to let you go?’
Andy nodded, ‘Yup. I’ll take my chances outside one of your safe zones.’
She stubbed her cigarette out and tossed it into one of the pots. ‘Okay then, your funeral. I’ll have one of our lads escort you out of the perimeter.’ She pulled the radio off her belt and talked quickly and quietly into it. ‘Somebody will be along shortly to take you out,’ she said to him.
‘Thanks,’ said Andy and then turned to go and sit down again.
‘Wait,’ said the woman.
He turned back to face her.
‘You really think this is going to go on that long? Six months?’
‘Sure. The oil might start gushing again next week, but where’s our food going to come from? The Brazilian farmer growing our coffee beans, the Ukrainian farmer growing our spuds, the Spanish farmer growing our apples . . . think about it. Is his little business still functioning? Is he still alive, or is he injured, or sick? Or how about this . . . has his crop spoiled in the ground, uncollected because he didn’t have fuel to operate his tractor? And what about all those crop-buyers, packagers, processors, distributors . . . all the links in the chain that get food out of the soil around the world and into the supermarket up the road? Can