in the hallway.
Dan looked at her. ‘Uh, Leona, you’re breaking and entering.’
‘She’s a friend. She wouldn’t press charges. Now let’s get our stuff inside as quickly as possible.’
She headed out to the van to grab a load when she spotted the DiMarcios’, two doors down, on the other side of the avenue. Mum was on pretty good terms with them, particularly Mrs DiMarcio.
‘Leona!’ she called across to her.
‘Hi, Mrs DiMarcio,’ she said offering a little wave.
The woman was slim and elegant, in her early forties - yet, as Mum often said of her, she could easily pass as someone ten years younger.
‘Leona! What you do home?’ she asked, her English clipped with a Portuguese accent.
‘I . . . er . . . my mum and dad said I had to,’ she replied.
‘This thing? This thing we see on the news?’ she asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘Pffft . . . this is terrible, hmm? This Mr Smith, your Prime Minister, he say we will have rations?’
‘Rationing, that’s right. That’s what Dad was saying too. This could be quite bad.’
She looked over Leona’s shoulder at Dan and Jacob carrying another load of shopping bags between them. ‘You buy rations?’
She nodded. ‘We went to Tesco, bought in some tinned goods and bottled water.’
Mrs DiMarcio looked at her with eyes that slowly widened. She knew about Dad’s preoccupation with Peak Oil; he’d bored both her and Mr DiMarcio with it over dinner one night, after he’d had a couple of glasses of red.
‘Your father? He tell you this could be bad?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Is this the thing, what he call it, Peak thing?’
‘Peak Oil?’
‘Yuh, that’s it. Is this . . .?’
‘I don’t know. But Dad said I had to come back, collect Jake, get some supplies in and stay over at Jill’s house.’
Her hand covered her mouth. ‘Oh, meu Deus, o teu pai estava certo!’
‘You know, you should hurry if you want to get some things,’ said Leona. ‘When we left, people were going mad in the supermarket, it was really quite scary.’
‘I wonder, we maybe leave?’ Mrs DiMarcio said, more to herself than Leona. She was thinking aloud. ‘Is city,’ she said gesturing with her hands at the avenue, ‘this is a city . . . I remember your father he say city is a bad place to be in a . . . a . . .’
‘In a crisis?’
The woman nodded.
Leona was surprised at how much they’d taken in. Perhaps they had been listening after all when Dad had gone off on his anti-oil diatribe.
‘I will talk with my husband when he comes in.’
‘Maybe it’s a good idea to leave if you can,’ said Leona. ‘Find somewhere out of town to stay.’
‘We take you and Jacob with us, if we go?’ she offered. ‘We have spaces in car.’
Leona shook her head. ‘Thanks, but I’ve got my orders to sit tight inside,’ she said nodding at her home. ‘And wait for Mum and Dad to get home.’
Mrs DiMarcio nodded. ‘I understand. I talk with my husband. We stay? We go? We will talk about this.’
‘Okay. Look, I better help with the shopping,’ said Leona.
She reached out with her hands, grasped Leona’s shoulders and smiled. ‘You are good girl, very sensible girl. Jenny and Andy I think very proud of you.’
Leona shrugged awkwardly.
‘I go. Maybe I ring Eduardo on his mobile,’ she said, thinking aloud. With that she turned and headed hastily back to her house.
Up and down the normally quiet, leafy avenue, Leona noticed more activity than normal; a man was busy unloading bags of goods from his car, whilst talking animatedly on his phone. A few houses up, a woman emerged from her home, running; she hopped into her people carrier and started it up. Leona stepped out of the road to allow her to pass, as she drove down St Stephen’s Avenue, at a guess heading towards the busy end of Shepherd’s Bush to do some panic-buying.
You’re probably too late, already.
The thought sent a chill down her spine.
She heard a car door slam, and another car engine start up with a throaty cough; it felt like the whole avenue was beginning to stir to life.
Leona reached into the van and grabbed an armful of bags and began to help the two boys get their supplies inside.
CHAPTER 37
10.41 p.m. local time Al-Bayji, Iraq
They stumbled noisily down the back-street, picking their way through small stacks of rubbish, wooden crates of rotting vegetables, trying to avoid stepping in the sewage gully running down the middle.
Andy and the others were no longer