He got out, and shuddered as the rain trickled down his neck again. He muttered a warning to Bel under his breath as he started off: You’d better be at Charing Cross when I get there.
After a few minutes he came to a telephone box. Relief flooded through him, along with an overwhelming sense of homesickness. He didn’t have to be alone: he could phone his dad.
He pushed the door open gratefully, then looked at the phone for a moment, wondering what to do. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d used a call box as he usually had his mobile. This one took coins — which was no good — but it also had a number you could call to reverse the charges. Just what he needed. He picked up the receiver.
Nothing. It was dead.
Of course it was. Why had he thought it wouldn’t be?
He jiggled the cradle up and down a few times, hoping the phone would come to life.
Ben started when a car horn suddenly blared out in the empty streets. He looked around. Where had it come from? There were people out there — but where?
He couldn’t see anything, but the rain was blurring the windows of the phone booth: it was like trying to see out of a shower cubicle. He put his head out but the street was empty.
Another sound made him look again. It was the roar of a car engine. Ben jumped out of the phone booth, waving madly. Headlights came speeding towards him. He waved again — perhaps he could get a lift. Just to be with other people would be good.
But the car swished past, sending up a wake of spray like a boat. Ben stared after it as it raced towards a junction, where dark traffic lights stood watching mutely. Its brake lights come on momentarily, then it wheeled round the corner and disappeared.
Ben felt disbelief, then crushing disappointment. Surely the driver must have seen him. If it had been him or his dad and they’d seen someone alone in a situation like this, they wouldn’t have just left them.
But this was the big city. He remembered that girl he’d helped with her luggage at Waterloo. Vicky James; he’d even remembered her name. Everyone else, though, had blanked her. In London, if you didn’t know anyone, you were on your own.
Chapter Fourteen
But he wasn’t totally alone.
As he made his way to the junction, he caught a glimpse of movement at an upper-storey window. Someone was watching him.
‘Hello?’ he called, and waved.
The movement stopped. The figure had moved away from the window, not wanting to be seen.
In another house Ben could see a shadowy figure behind a large frosted window. Someone was hurrying up a flight of stairs, a box in his arms.
‘Hello?!’ he shouted.
The shadow quickened its pace up the stairs and vanished, as if it was afraid of him.
At the junction Ben picked a turning and found himself in a road with a few shops — a newsagent and a delicatessen.
The delicatessen was dark, but in the window, arranged on a marble slab, there were loaves of bread and delicious-looking savoury pastries. Ben’s stomach rumbled at the sight of them. He must have used up a lot of calories keeping warm in the water. He tried the door but it was locked.
Reluctantly he tore himself away and trudged on, turning off into another street. The first buildings he came to were hotels. Their names were picked out in neon letters over the doors, but the signs were dark.
A big four-by-four in a parking bay started to shriek, its indicators flashing. The noise continued for about thirty seconds and then stopped. Ben couldn’t see what could have set it off and no one came to investigate. Other alarms and sirens sounded in the distance, as if in answer. Thirty seconds later the alarm came on again. How long would it carry on like that? Until its battery was dead?
Was there another sound too, mingling with the far-off sounds of alarms and sirens. Human cries?
Or was that his imagination?
Down a side street Ben caught sight of a figure trudging slowly along, head bent against the rain. The man was walking away from him, but Ben’s heart leaped at the thought of company. Should he run to join him? This trek was so lonely. He had never had to fend for himself and make all these decisions before. He yearned to have someone to talk to, the reassurance of another human being. Someone to stop him imagining he heard screams in the wail of a car alarm.
No, Ben told himself. I know where I’m going. Keep to the plan.
As he walked on, he caught sight of himself in the window of a bookshop. He looked bedraggled, as if he’d been sleeping rough. The expensive Burberry mac on top of his sodden jeans was obviously stolen. No wonder no one wanted to stop for him; he looked a real vagabond.
He glanced down a flooded street and saw a red dinghy with an outboard motor chugging slowly along between the buildings, at first-floor level. One of the boat’s three occupants was standing up, looking in through the windows. They were dressed for the weather in heavy-duty rubberized yellow sailing coats.
They must be looking for people in trouble, thought Ben. At least some people were helping each other. It restored his faith in human nature.
In a richly furnished house down one of the flooded streets, a middle-aged couple were carrying boxes up the stairs.
‘There’s a boat out there,’ said the woman, spotting the small dinghy chugging along outside the window. She came into the living room and put the box down on a black bin liner on the pale carpet. It contained their passports, building society books and share certificates from the safe downstairs. Another box was filled with the jewellery she had inherited from her grandmother — a diamond necklace and a string of pearls. They lay in satin-lined leather boxes on top of some other essentials — some bottles of water, a few croissants and the keys to the BMW in the garage — although the car was probably ruined: the garage was in the basement and the whole ground floor was underwater.
Those boxes were all the couple had been able to salvage from the ground floor when the flood started.
‘Did you hear me?’ said the woman. ‘I said there’s a boat out there. People are getting out of London … Do you think we ought to?’
Her husband was easing his wellington boots off, careful to keep them on a black bin liner so that he didn’t mark the carpet. ‘No, we should be all right here.’
The woman noticed that one of the men outside was standing up in the boat. She waved at him and he waved back. The boat stopped beside the window to the stairwell, so she put down her box, crossed to the window and opened it to talk to them.
Two of the men climbed in without waiting to be invited, muddy water dripping off their boots.
The owners were a bit surprised, but then it all turned very strange indeed. For, shockingly, unbelievably, rather than helping them, one of the men pointed a stubby handgun at them.
The woman felt the blood drain from her face.
‘Stay quiet and no one will get hurt,’ said the gunman. Rain dripped off his yellow coat onto the pale carpet.
The other burglar pushed past them and went over to pick up the box on the sofa.
‘Hand over your valuables and no one gets hurt,’ said the gunman. He nudged the woman with the stubby end of the weapon and she whimpered.
Reluctantly her husband stood back, letting them take the box. The burglar turned it upside down. The slim black jewellery boxes fell out on top of the passports and certificates. He picked up the jewellery and stashed it in his jacket pockets. He left the rest, and gestured to his partner.
‘That’s it. All done here.’
‘See?’ said the gunman. ‘Painless if you let us get on with it.’
And the intruders climbed back out of the window and joined their partner in the boat.