Best of British Science Fiction 2016

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “Are you going to your sister’s, Bee?”

  “Yeah, what about you?”

  “I’ll be here.”

  Bee drops the inhaler.

  “Nell, you can’t stay in Manchester.”

  “And where else am I going to go? Mum and Dad are dead, which frankly feels like a mercy. I’ve lived here over half my life. This is home.”

  “What about…?” Michelle trails off. My friends watch me warily. Even after two years, even in these circumstances, Kat’s name is a mine in an open field. I shrug.

  “Oliver called. Wants me to go to London.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. He got in touch. She didn’t.”

  “She might be scared,” says Bee tentatively. “To reach out.”

  “Fear isn’t in Kat’s nature.”

  From next door there’s a shriek of delight; one of the kids has triumphed in Call of Duty. Nila checks the clock on the wall. She’ll be worrying about the roads.

  “So.” Michelle looks round. “We’ll see each other on the other side, right?”

  “Oh God –” Bee starts crying. Nila murmurs a few words of prayer. In this moment I envy her her faith.

  “Come here, girls.” I hold my arms out, and we fall into a four-way hug. I think of everything we’ve been through the past twenty-six years. University, hopeless relationships, drugs, marriage and divorce, birth and estrangement, losing parents, jobs, faith, and friends. I know them as well as I know anyone. But as we pull apart, eyes wet, I can see them turning inward, focus redirecting to those they hold most dear, to flesh and blood, to partners and children.

  On the way out Michelle takes me aside.

  “Come with us. I don’t want you to be on your own.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  She sighs.

  “One of you has to break the silence. You know that, Nell.”

  I nod mutely. Watch her climb into the Land Rover. Across the road, Bee squeezes inside her Smart car, the bag on her elbow hanging heavy with the weight of the meat cleaver. I watch her drive away, wondering if I could, if I would. If I had someone to protect, no question. Even when they cut you out, even when they hate you, there’s nothing in the world you won’t do for your kids.

  Six days left and I’m on my own. I wonder whether I should follow the girls’ lead and get out of town. But there really is nowhere to go. Besides, Manchester is what I have left: the familiarity of a place I’ve lived and loved and fucked up. I can’t leave it. I won’t.

  Day Six

  The buildings change, but the figures flailing down their sides look the same all over the world. The Shard. The Eiffel Tower. Pisa. The Empire State. The video’s creator had overlaid the footage with R.E.M.’s ‘End of the World As We Know It’, but was forced to pimp the song with some kind of Europop backing track after the rights police swooped in. The suicide montage has been on YouTube for an hour and it already has eighteen million views.

  There’s something undeniably compelling about the film. Many of the jumpers are solo, but some are in pairs or groups, gripping each other’s hands for as long as they can. I think of the courage required to take that leap. It’s not a courage I possess. I’ve made my preparations: stocked up on vodka and Valium. I’ll be unconscious.

  The doorbell rings. I check the eyehole and find a smiling, identikit family of husband, wife and young child, each carrying a fat sheaf of leaflets. I swing the door open.

  “Yes?”

  Their smiles falter at the sight of a black woman in a Kermit-the-Frog nightshirt with unfettered hair. I give them my best arched eyebrow. (Note to self: this brow deserves a place on the Achievements list.)

  “Jehovah’s Witnesses?” I ask.

  The woman looks affronted.

  “We are with the one true Church.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “The Rapture is coming,” squeaks the child.

  “Fuck off,” I repeat, and shut the door. Ten seconds later, a leaflet slithers through the letterbox and drops onto the floor.

  So far I’ve had the Witnesses, scientologists, infidel bashers, and a few obscure cults I’d never heard of until the asteroid, but their main commandment would appear to be lining their bank accounts with the lifetime savings of pensioners. I should have offered them my overdraft. According to the believers, this is all poetic justice. We were destroying the planet. We had thought ourselves gods. Now God was coming to show us what omnipotent power really looked like.

  Online, President Trump has tweeted his delight that the asteroid defence system has been named in his honour. The Guardian should have added irony to its greatest feats.

  Leaving the flat takes more courage than it should. The sky is overcast, a fine drizzle beading my coat. I jam on a hat and take a restless walk around town, tracing the empty tramlines down towards Deansgate. A small crowd has gathered on the bridge over the canal. People still remain in the city, though their movements are furtive, wary. In the water I see a body floating, face down. It’s not clear how they came to die. I think of the tower montage and an irrational terror seizes me – Kat wouldn’t…?

  No. Kat wouldn’t do that. Kat is not that kind of girl.

  Since our estrangement I feel that I know my daughter much better. Perhaps it took the distance for her to come into focus. Our relationship was always fraught, right from the forty-two hours it took to bring her into the world. In birth the hormones are supposed to kick in, activating that nurturing bond, but in my case it didn’t happen. I didn’t understand. I had thought myself happy; now I cried all the time. No one in my family had ever talked about post-natal depression. I thought I was going mad.

  Oliver remained calm and professional. Whilst I unravelled, he seemed immune to the sleepless nights, the baby’s crying and the endless cycles of laundry. My depression lifted eventually, but it left me profoundly shaken; no longer sure of myself, my relationship, or my child. The young couple who had picked out buggies and rattles seemed a world away. Now we bickered constantly. I didn’t want Kat wearing pink; Oliver loved those saccharine Babygros with ‘Daddy’s Little Princess’. He was already looking at private schools, I wanted her state educated. Had we had these arguments before? It was true that Oliver had always read The Telegraph. Day by day, I felt myself forced deeper into a mould I didn’t fit. I was no longer depressed, but I was suffocating. I was going to lose myself with my Idris Elba husband and my beautiful little girl in her velvet and chiffon party frocks.

  And then there was Kat. I assumed she would blossom into the kind of noisy, boisterous brat I had been myself, but my daughter dealt with emotions in a different way to me. If I raised my voice, she stared at me coldly. If I hugged her in public, she stood stiff. She tolerated affection, but never sought it. The one exception was in the aftermath of a nightmare, when she’d crawl into my bed, clammy and trembling, whispering unintelligible words, some private amulet against the dark which only Kat could know.

  She was five when I left. Oliver demanded primary custody and even if the circumstances had been in my favour, I didn’t want to argue. All I wanted to do was get out. It didn’t feel like selfishness, it felt like survival.

  I had Kat at weekends. She adapted quickly; kids are resilient, and Kat, even at five, had a core of steel. I kept waiting for the child I knew I should have had to emerge. By the time I accepted that wasn’t going to happen it was too late; the rift was unbridgeable. In private, I could make her laugh, but I never met her friends and as she got older the weekends shortened, then dropped away. Eventually I realized I was a part of her life she preferred to keep hidden.

  Something broke inside me then.

  Over the years I thought I had grown resigned to the situation, accepted my loss, accepted the intractable label of Bad Mother that lurked behind every interaction with a figure of authority or judgemental parent. We can’t succeed at everything, I thought. Kat and Oliver moved down to London and I told myself it was for the best.

  It
’s dark by the time I head back to Greengate and I hurry, annoyed with myself for staying out so stupidly late. Across the river from my block there’s firelight, music pounding; from my window I can see the impromptu rave that has sprung up the other side of Trinity Way. It’s tempting to go down there, but I know it will turn violent later. I login to Facebook, scrolling through the all-encompassing messages of love and desperate optimism. It all feels utterly false.

  Oliver calls again but I don’t pick up.

  I told Kat I didn’t remember what happened, and in the immediate aftermath I didn’t. But there were chinks in the shell. The night came back in snapshots and sketches.

  Her seventeenth birthday. I was surprised to have been invited, but Kat said she wanted me. As an added incentive Oliver wouldn’t be there. Once I arrived the reason for my invitation became clear: I was here for the dispensing of some long-awaited punishment.

  “Oh, you must meet my mum,” Kat introduced me to her friends. She’d relaxed her hair, and although I mourned the natural she looked, in my eyes, more beautiful than Beyoncé. “She left us when I was five. Amazing I’m not a junkie really, isn’t it?”

  The Bad Mother label floated somewhere to the left and right of my eyes. I remembered then that Kat was taking Psychology as one of her A-levels. Clearly Freud needed removing from the curriculum; people had no idea the damage he was doing. There was red wine on the table. I got stuck in. The evening continued, darts of hostility thrown my way, enough to sting but not quite enough to make me leave. By the time Oliver turned up I was very drunk, and so was Kat.

  “Your fucking daughter’s learned some really delightful tactics,” I said. “I wonder where she could have got those?”

  “I’ll order you a taxi,” said Oliver.

  I almost made it out the door. Kat got drunkenly to her feet.

  “Oh, look everyone. Mum’s leaving. Again!”

  I turned. Oliver’s hand was on my shoulder. I pushed him away. I felt strangely detached from the scene.

  “Come on then, Kat. Why don’t you say what you need to say? Get it out, in front of everyone. You’ll feel better.”

  “You think you have a right to tell me what to do? You abandoned us,” she said. “You fucked off without a second thought.”

  “If I’d stayed it would have been miserable for all of us. You would have been miserable.”

  She wasn’t comfortable, I could see that. She wanted the row, but she didn’t know how to do rows. She didn’t know about yelling until you were hoarse and then crying and laughing and hugging and making up. So she’d got pissed to engineer this confrontation.

  “Kat, this isn’t you.”

  “Nell’s leaving,” said Oliver firmly. His entire body screamed embarrassment. He started making signals to Kat’s guests that they should leave. No one moved; I guessed that Kat, a meticulous planner, had briefed them.

  “How would you know, Mum? How would you know what is and isn’t me?”

  “Let’s go somewhere and talk about this properly.”

  “You’d love that, wouldn’t you,” she sneered. “You’d love to just walk away again.”

  I gazed at her. My poor conflicted girl, who had hidden so much for so long. What a mess, I thought. What a mess we have made.

  I said, “I wish I hadn’t had you then.”

  How do you take back those words? You can’t. You can’t ever take them back. I couldn’t say to Kat, I didn’t mean what you thought I meant – that I never wanted you – I meant exactly what I said. I wish I hadn’t had you then. I wish I’d had you when I was well. When I was happy. When I wasn’t halfway through discovering I’d married the wrong man, a man I resented and knew I would eventually hate, if I stayed, and who I was now tethered to irretrievably for the rest of our lives.

  I couldn’t say any of those things because, unsurprisingly, after that night she said she never wanted to see me again.

  Day Five

  Alex from Tinder is shorter than advertised with a receding hairline that Instagram filters had managed to obscure. I almost shut the door, but I don’t. My cleavage owes some debts to Instagram. We endure the awkward chat phase while I mix up a couple of whisky sours. More whisky than sour.

  “So,” asks Alex from Tinder. ‘What have you been doing, since…?’

  “I went to Tesco,” I say.

  “How was it?”

  “No staff, of course, but an old lady with a trolley was using the self-checkout. I felt so guilty I almost paid for this.” I lift the whisky bottle. “How about you?”

  “Aggressive cycling around town. The buses have all stopped. It’s great.”

  “I daresay I could get used to a pedestrianised Manchester.”

  This is a lie. I bloody love my car, even if it is a clapped-out old banger. I make a mental note to add Driving test first time to ‘Achievements’.

  Sex with Alex from Tinder is better than expected, which means it’s almost good. Afterwards I recoup the whisky and we finish the bottle. We talk drunkenly about the regrets of our lives. The paths we might have taken, probably should have taken. I don’t mention Kat. Her name chokes my throat. Sad and weary, I have an abrupt insight into what it must feel like to be old. My mum was sixty-eight when she went, young by today’s standards. But she had two decades on me. Mum would have believed the asteroid was the wrath of God. Dad would have replied that if that were the case, God had a terrible sense of perspective. I wish they were here now, though that’s a selfish wish. I wish I could ask them how they made it work.

  I sleep for a while. When I wake, Alex is sitting on the edge of the bed, hands in his lap, staring out the window. I can hear sirens. There have been more sirens the last few nights. There are people out there who won’t abandon their jobs. Better people than me.

  “Is it a clear sky?” I ask.

  He shakes his head.

  “Still clouded.”

  “In films it’s always a clear sky, so you can see it coming.”

  “I think I prefer it this way.”

  When Alex has gone I feel a different, smaller tinge of regret. If it wasn’t for the asteroid, I might have got in touch again. But perhaps that’s just my perspective shifting.

  Day Four

  The roads are preternaturally quiet as I drive down Oxford Road. Past the Palace Theatre, past the university, through the curry mile and into the student village. Every official media outlet is urging us to stay calm, continue life as normal, but life appears to have already stopped. A blue bus has been abandoned at the crossroads in Fallowfield. I swerve around it and continue south towards Didsbury.

  The rescue centre has a closed sign in the window, but I can see someone moving around inside. I tap on the glass. No response. I knock louder. They come to the door. I point to the sign.

  “I want to rescue a dog,” I mouth.

  There’s the click of a lock and the door opens cautiously, revealing a thin white girl, younger than Kat, in an oversized hoodie.

  “I want to rescue a dog,” I say again.

  She stares at me for a moment, evaluating, before opening the door wide enough to let me inside. The interior is a pet shop; we go through to the kennels out the back. Barks break out as we enter the yard. I count ten kennels. A couple of Jack Russells, two Staffies. There are always Staffies.

  “Have you had a dog before?” asks the girl.

  “When I was a kid.”

  “We only want owners who can offer a forever home.”

  We look at each other.

  “You don’t run this centre, do you?” I say.

  She shrugs. “Someone has to feed them.”

  I point to the dog I want, the dog I noticed as soon as we entered the yard. It’s a young Husky, male, two or three years old. The kind of dog I have eyed enviously when strolling through parks. The kind of dog you can hug close in a crisis. I crouch down and hold out my hand for the dog to sniff.

  “Lovely temperament, that one,” says the girl. She’s warming up.


  “I’ll take him. I’ve got the car outside.”

  The girl loads up several bags full of dog biscuits and treats, bowls, a leash, and a purple flea collar. The Husky barks and licks my hand enthusiastically.

  “I’m amazed you’ve got petrol,” says the girl. “Pumps are dry. Everyone’s getting out of town.”

  “To go where?”

  “Fuck knows.”

  We load up the boot.

  “What do I owe you?”

  She shakes her head. “His name’s Vader, by the way.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Wasn’t me who named him.”

  Vader takes the passenger seat. Vader is the happiest dog in the world. In my rear-view mirror, I watch the girl closing up as we leave, her skinny form hurrying away down the street. The newsagents’ door on the corner swings freely on its hinges; glass is scattered over the pavement.

  Day Three

  Vader loves the car. Vader loves pedestrianized Manchester. In fact, Vader loves everything. In an enthusiasm showdown between Vader and Professor Brian Cox, it’s not clear who would win.

  My lists have expanded. On the Achievements list, I have added Travel to five countries not my own, Eyebrow, Driving test and Last minute dog. After Kat on the Failures list is Oliver, obviously, Cooking, and That fucking job at Barclays.

  At two thirty in the afternoon the landline rings. I pick up without thinking.

  “Hello?”

  “Mum?”

  For a few seconds my heart scrunches up, my body freezes. I can only stare at the hundreds of tiny scratches on the parquet floor. Vader’s nose comes into my field of vision. He paws at my leg.

  “Kat?” It comes out as a croak. I clear my throat. “Kat, is that you?”

  There’s a few seconds silence, and then her voice comes through, cool and assured.

  “Dad said I should speak to you.”

  “Is that why you’re calling? Because your father told you to?”