They reached the group. A policewoman stood with them, hands behind her back, smiling, an image of calm competence. Looking around, Amanda saw more police scattered through the crowds, gathering groups together.
But she couldn’t see Kristie. Benj went off to try to find her. Amanda waited, hanging back from the group. Everybody else seemed calm, everyone but her. She felt embarrassed to have turned up in such a panic, without one of her kids, in such an incompetent mess.
Benj came hurrying back. His hair was plastered down by the rain. “Mum, she isn’t here.”
She couldn’t take it in. “What do you mean? Then where is she?”
“I don’t know,” he said, his voice small.
She stood there staring, almost angry at him for coming back with the wrong answer. Kristie had to be here. She glanced around at the calm policewoman speaking into her radio, the children subdued but not frightened, the dismal, soggy car park, the Dome with its crown of spiky pylons thrusting into the air. Racked by fear and inadequacy, she longed not to be here, to be safe in her office in Hammersmith, surrounded by her files and her laptop and with a phone that worked, safe in a world she knew and could handle. Not this rainy desolation.
The policewoman stood on a low wall and clapped her hands. “Can I have your attention?” The kids’ chatter fell silent. “I’ve had fresh instructions. Look, you can see how things are. The tube is out because it’s flooded. The buses are all full up, and have mostly gone anyhow. I’m afraid we’re going to have to walk out.” There was a groan, but the policewoman smiled brightly. “Don’t worry, this is the standard evacuation plan and it’s been rehearsed. It’s not far.” She pointed south. “We’ll go that way, following East Parkside, and then along the southern approach to the Blackwall Tunnel. It’s a flyover, so you’ll be safe from the flooding.” What flooding? “Now, the roads are already clogged up with cars, but we’ve kept the hard shoulder open and we’re looking to open up another lane too, so it should be easy enough. There’ll be lots of other people walking too. It’s only”-she hesitated, looking at the younger children-“let’s say half an hour to the stations, Westcombe Park or Charlton, and they’ll be laying on special trains to take you off.” Off where? Amanda wondered. How do we get home? “That’s all. If you’d like to form up into a column, I’ll follow at the rear…”
As the people gathered obediently into a crocodile, Amanda pushed her way through to the policewoman. “My daughter. Kristie Caistor. She’s got lost.”
“I’ll put a call out,” the policewoman said.“We’ve a contact system in place, Mrs. Caistor. I’m sure-”
“I’ll wait,” Amanda said desperately. “She might come here. She’s bound to be frightened.”
“It’s much better if you move on. We have to get the whole site cleared.”
Amanda snarled, “That’s what they’ve been saying to me since I was kicked out of that stupid arena by a fucking kid.”
The WPC blanched, wet, tense. She fingered the radio button at her lapel.
Benj plucked at Amanda’s sleeve, horribly embarrassed.“Mum, please.”
Somebody screamed, one of the kids. “My feet are wet!”
And suddenly Amanda was aware that her feet were colder, too, and her ankles, her shins. She glanced down. Water, cold and full of muck, was washing over her shoes. She looked to her left, toward the pier. Water gushed over the retaining wall, a steady stream of it, pouring out over the flat surface of the car park. For a heartbeat or two, the people just watched the water rising around their shins, pelted by the rain.
Then there was a surge, and a wave topped the wall and rushed down toward them. Children screamed, and parents broke and ran, dragging their kids away from the water. Amanda reached for Benj.
Then it was on them like a tide coming in, a wave of water that reached Amanda’s knees, and then another pulse came that soaked her to her waist and made her stagger.
The policewoman was yelling, “Go that way, the way I told you! Go on toward the flyover! Keep together!”
The party struggled in that direction. But the water continued to pour over the bank wall, spreading eagerly over the car park. The current was surprisingly strong for such shallow water, and it was difficult to walk through it. One little girl went under. The policewoman and her mother helped her up; she surfaced, coughing, soaked to the skin. And still the water poured over the wall.
Amanda tried to stay standing, staring wildly about. “Kristie. Kristie!”
“She’s safe!” It was Lily, running up out of nowhere, in a wetsuit and heavy orange coat, splashing toward her. And Kristie was with her, holding Lily’s hand, her pink backpack bright.
Amanda grabbed her daughter gratefully. Even Benj let Kristie bury her face in his coat.
Amanda said, “Lily, where the hell did you come from? — Never mind. Where did you find her?”
“She couldn’t get back to you, and she couldn’t make it here, so she went to a police missing-persons point. They’re all over the peninsula. Smart kid. They logged her in, I found her there, came for you-”
A fresh wave came over the wall, and they all jumped.
Lily grabbed Kristie’s hand. “Come on, we need to get out of here. The chopper’s waiting.”
“What chopper?”
“AxysCorp.”
Benj said, “What about everybody else?”
“We can’t take everybody,” Lily said grimly. “I’m sorry, Benj.”
Amanda asked, “Lily, how can all this be happening?”
“I don’t know,” Lily said. “For now I just want to get us out of here. Now come on. Hang onto me…”
Clinging to each other, they struggled through the increasingly powerful currents that swept across the car park, heading for the chopper.
15
So this was Millwall, heart of the east end, a tough old community that stretched around the western shore of the Isle of Dogs, with the dock cut through its heart. Piers had never been here before. with the dock cut through its heart. Piers had never been here
The boom that had brought such glamorous developments to Canary Wharf and Greenwich had evidently passed this place by. But there were signs of redevelopment, industrial parks and commercial buildings and estates of flimsy-looking new housing that crowded out the older stock, what Piers’s mother would have called “two-up two-down.” None of it was being spared by the river water that pulsed along the streets, black and stinking of rot and sewage, lapping at front doors lined with sandbags and rolling over scraps of front gardens.
No cars were moving. The streets were lined with parked vehicles, and a few were abandoned in the middle of the road, their electrics soaked. There was hardly anybody on the streets. Through open windows Piers heard the chatter of battery radios, but there were no lights, no TV sets glowing; maybe the power was already off. The residents seemed willing, for now, to accept the official advice to stay put. Inside the houses he saw homeowners wearily hauling TV sets and bits of furniture up the stairs. But some of the houses already had blankets hanging out of upstairs windows, a sign that rescue was needed, blankets soaked by the continuing rain and flapping in the breeze.
He turned down a terraced street, and he heard rushing water. He looked back. A wave that must have been a half-meter high pushed down the narrow street toward him, black and oily and crusted with rubbish, plastic bins and milk bottles and bits of paper, and a dead bird, a rook, gruesomely spinning in the water.
He turned off the road and through a garden gate, instinctively trying to get away from the water. He climbed a step to a sandbagged front door. But the water came lapping over his legs anyhow, reaching to his knees, the sudden drag making him stagger.