It might have begun with my relationship with James, my new career on the corporate ladder, my friendship with Ginny, my increasing need for the approval of those around me, but there were a hundred things afterwards that added to it.
It was a gradual thing, the tiniest, smallest changes that aren’t worth bothering about.
The physical changes that were part of my makeover needed maintenance; my haircut, nails, eyebrows, waxing, the new clothes needed a new diet and exercise regime to ensure I could fit into them. Small things, filling my life with a barrage of time-consuming rituals that helped me feel less empty.
I joined a gym and gave up carbs. I got rid of my wet weather gear and started shopping in Zara and Warehouse. I learnt how to do a cat’s-eye flick. I wore heels instead of steel-toed boots. I started to drink wine and prosecco instead of beer and rum. I drank at the Chiltern Firehouse rather than the Carpenter’s Arms. I genuinely knew someone called Orlando and I liked him.
I was promoted out of my EA position into one where I could use my writing skills and knowledge of the shipping industry to draft bids for large contracts of work insuring cruise liners and tankers. ‘You’ve got a job writing again!’ James grinned. I couldn’t tell him it wasn’t anywhere near the same, I couldn’t crush his happiness. Instead I cried silently and secretly as I signed my new contract. My salary doubled, as did my working hours, and I no longer left the office at 5 p.m. on the dot to squeeze an hour of work on my second novel in before James got home.
It was all so subtle and slow that I didn’t even notice I was morphing into someone else. And even if I had noticed, I am not sure I would have cared. I thought I was growing up, becoming the person that I needed to be, an adult.
I ignored the part of me that missed writing, that found herself scribbling paragraphs on scraps of paper while commuting to work. I ignored how, every time I read something great or saw an interview with an author I loved, I got a gnawing pang of jealousy in the pit of my stomach.
I was a grown-up now, in a grown-up relationship, with responsibilities. Grown-ups didn’t chase wild dreams. I wasn’t that person any more.
January 19th 2024
I’d been driving on the M1 for about two hours when I realised I didn’t actually know how to get to Scotland.
I’d been for a weekend in Edinburgh before, but that had been by train. I’d never actually driven further north than Nottingham.
Damn you Google for making me rely on you and now no longer existing.
I pulled off at the first services I found and breathed a sigh of relief when I found an AA roadmap in the back corner of WHSmith.
I was then annoyed to realise I should have been on the M6 rather than the M1.
The M1 was the road north – everyone knew that. Stupid maps.
I picked Lairg as my destination. I had no idea what it was. Town? Village? Field? It was just past Inverness and I could drive most of the way there on the A9, and it seemed far enough away from any major towns to have a fighting chance at having missed the plague. I thought about going further, but wasn’t sure how long the diesel would last, and I didn’t want to get stuck in the middle of nowhere with no way of leaving apart from walking.
Amongst other, less useful things, some of the Russian sailors had taught me to sail. Only outboard motors and the rudiments of judging currents and which side to pass other boats on, I couldn’t sail anything with proper sails; but, in theory, I could take a boat out to one of the small islands off the Scottish coast. But, I didn’t know where I would get hold of a boat, wouldn’t know where one of the islands was unless I could see it from the coast; plus, the weather had been awful and I didn’t want to get stuck on one of the islands and slowly starve to death.
So Lairg it was. Remote enough to answer my question, but close enough to be safe.
Under normal circumstances, and especially given the lack of other traffic, I would probably have been able to do the journey from Northampton to Lairg in one day, two at the most. However, I was increasingly conscious that currently, if I was awake, I was high. Not London ‘fall out of the hammock and have to crawl on the floor’ high, but relaxed enough to not want, or be able to go, much above forty miles an hour. So, the normal one-day journey took nearly a week.
Plus, I wasn’t in a particular hurry to find a reason to kill myself, so it was all self-preservation really.
I quickly developed a driving rhythm. Get up, eat, put diesel in the Defender from one of the canisters, drive, get hungry, pull over, let Lucky out, eat, get Lucky back in, drive, get tired, pull over at the next services, get sleeping bags and find somewhere to sleep, eat, sleep, repeat. To begin with I sometimes stopped if I saw a house with lights on or a car in an unexpected place. But I soon learnt that these incidences were much like the people I had ‘seen’ in London, and my impromptu diversions inevitably led to depressing scenes of death and decay or empty buildings that inexplicably still had power, so I stopped pulling over and began to drive past, saving myself the disappointment.
I was coming to the end of my fourth day of driving when I saw a glow on the horizon. I hadn’t seen a town with working lights in two days and had thought that electricity must have been out all over by now.
I checked my map and realised the glow was most likely coming from Glasgow. My mind was immediately filled with possibilities. Maybe Glasgow had escaped the clutches of 6DM, maybe Glasgow was thriving, with electricity and gas and water and people. Maybe this was my sanctuary.
I drove recklessly towards Glasgow, unfounded hope filling my heart and making me push my foot heavily onto the accelerator.
Lucky was whining again.
I should have listened to him.
Glasgow was on fire.
Literally.
The whole place.
Or, at least, the whole place as far as I could see.
I must have stopped a good few miles from the outskirts but, as I stumbled from the car to stare at the city, the wind blew in my direction and smoke filled my lungs and stung my eyes.
The sheer size of the destruction made my mouth fall open in awe. It was incomprehensible and horrible and dreadful and disturbing and completely awe-inspiring in its magnitude.
How had it happened? It had been drizzling on and off for weeks; surely everything was too damp to burn?
I must have stood watching for at least fifteen minutes before Lucky’s incessant whining distracted me.
I dragged my eyes away to snap a ‘shut up’ at him, but when I looked back I understood his vocal complaint.
The wind was blowing into my face and, while I hadn’t noticed it while I was busy watching, when I looked away and then back again it was clear the fire was growing. Rapidly. Towards us.
Reluctantly I climbed back in the car.
We drove for nearly twenty minutes before we fully passed the flames. Lucky whined the whole time.
Driving got much tougher north of Glasgow. The scenery might have been gorgeous, but the road was treacherous; single-lane, winding, often sheer drops at the side. The temperature had dropped significantly and there were patches of visible – and invisible – ice.
I had been planning to spend the night in Aviemore, somewhere I had actually heard of, but as I slipped and skidded my way up there it started to snow and I was scared of not being able to drive down in the morning, so I carried on and virtually slid down the other side of the mountain (okay hill, whatever).
We spent the night in a small and empty hotel outside of Inverness, and in the morning went into the town to do some shopping. We had somehow managed to eat most of the food and drink most of the water I had brought, despite raiding service stations and shops along the way. Clothes that I had got at Go Outdoors were already feeling too tight and now smelt of Glasgow smoke, so needed changing too.
I was extremely wary of trying a supermarket again, but didn’t want to waste time raiding houses, so I found a Tesco superstore where the doors were already open and sent Lucky in.
I am brave and caring to the very last.
Lucky wandered out again ten minutes later still alive and sans rat or blood, so I reasoned it must be okay inside.
It was still the fastest shop I had ever done in my life.
More pertinent than the need to replenish food, water or clothing was my need to replenish my pharmaceuticals.
I had tried to cut back on Tramadol while driving, but the pay-off was that I needed more at the end of the day to take the edge off and allow myself to calm down enough to sleep. By the time dusk fell on each driving day I could feel the physical twitches begin as my brain became aware that it was free of narcotics, and if we hadn’t found somewhere to stay by then, I would take the drugs anyway and drive at a hazy ten miles an hour until we stopped. I was down to my last six tablets.
I found a chemist on the outskirts of the city that had yet to be raided, but they only had three boxes of Tramadol – enough for about a week at my current rate of consumption – so I’d have to replenish again quite quickly.
As I walked back from the shop, I became aware that the street was rammed with parked cars. I’d had to leave the Defender in the middle of the road because all the parking spaces were taken, a fact that I hadn’t registered at the time because I was getting used to driving and parking wherever took my fancy.
I wandered down the road trying to figure where everyone had been going.
I didn’t have to walk far.
I turned the corner and there they were.
Perhaps a thousand, maybe more.
It must have been some kind of local football club or community centre. There was a long, low building on one side and they had erected a stage at the front of the space. There was no one on the stage (that I could see), just a huge digital clock (now blank) and a massive banner that read ‘Together’.
And about a thousand dead bodies.
It must have been cold and stayed cold because they weren’t visibly rotting; just blue-tinged and stiff. They lay where they had fallen or sat. Some had brought chairs to sit on, foldable camping chairs, garden chairs, dining chairs; three enterprising people had even dragged in a sofa. Some had brought blankets to sit or lie on, some were sitting on the grass, and some were propped against trees or fences. Some in families or groups, some in couples, some on their own. Some wrapped in duvets, some in thick winter coats, some in T-shirts, some dressed in dinner jackets and cocktail dresses. Young, middle-aged and old.
I didn’t look too closely so I didn’t know if any of them were sick.
Maybe it had been some religious thing. Maybe they were all Christian or Methodist or Baptist or Jewish or Muslim. Maybe there had just been too many of them for the local church, synagogue or mosque. Maybe they were members of the same school or community group or the Conservative Party.
But I like to think there was no ‘old world’ reason for these people to be here. It was just for people who didn’t want to be on their own.
For people who, even in that very last moment, recognised their shared humanity and wanted to be together at the end.
God, I was lonely.
I was getting more and more used to the sight of death now. I think once you have watched your own husband die and then washed and dressed the bodies of your dead parents, the death of strangers doesn’t affect you quite as much. I didn’t feel sad when I saw dead people any more, it was the norm in my new world.
I vaguely wondered what would happen when the weather warmed up and they started rotting, but I knew that, one way or another, I wouldn’t be there for that, so I didn’t spend too much time worrying about it. I suppose I might have been losing my empathy.
Maybe the end of the world was turning me into a psychopath.
I might not have been scared at the sight of the dead bodies, but I realised I was scared by them. I was scared because they confirmed my worst fear.
Things didn’t seem to be any different in Scotland.
I didn’t make it to Lairg in the end.
I got lost and, without Google Maps or signs or anyone to ask, I drove around the Highlands in rising panic with no idea where I was.
The roads were icy and I was skidding all over them.
After a while I stopped looking for signs and just concentrated on keeping the Defender on the road and not in a ditch.
I couldn’t remember if you were supposed to turn into or out of a skid and as a result I was just twisting the wheel from side to side.
Thank God neither James nor Xav were there to see. My extremely poor driving skills was probably the one thing they had ever agreed on and they would have had a field day with this.
James was jealous of Xav. Who wouldn’t be? Xav was rich, good-looking, lived in an amazing house and never worked. I was so used to it and to him, I never even thought about how weird or unfair it was any more, but for James it was infuriating that a simple act of birth had given Xav so much.
Xav thought James was boring.
When we did go out together they would get into niggly fights about who was going to pay for the round, or the pub being too dingy, or the music too loud. So when James suggested that I hang out with Xav on my own in future, I thought it would probably be easier all round.
James liked Ginny. Ginny was funny and smart and talkative and had charm to spare, so had James on her side within half an hour of meeting him. James liked hanging out with Ginny a lot.
Ginny actually didn’t have much of an opinion about James, which was weird for someone who had an opinion about everything. ‘He’s just another middle-class white boy. They all look the same to me,’ she’d said with a wink.
Xav and Ginny only met once.
It was at my thirtieth birthday party.
Ginny organised the whole thing for me as a surprise.
I hadn’t thought about having a party. I didn’t think I knew enough people for a decent sized party. I would probably only have invited James, Xav, Ginny, and my mum and dad – that’s hardly a gathering, and definitely not a party.
This was something Ginny learnt as soon as she started to put together a guest list – I didn’t really have any guests. But Ginny wasn’t going to be defeated by my lack of a social circle, so she invited people from work, some of my old school friends, people from my Facebook account, some people she knew and I had met once or twice, and she got James to invite all his mates as well.
I knew something was going on because she was practically bubbling with excitement for the three days beforehand. She accidentally spilled the beans as we were getting ready beforehand at my house, which was a blessing as she also told me the dress I was wearing wasn’t quite right, so I had time to change. As always, Ginny’s enthusiasm was infectious and, by the time we had sorted my make-up and drunk a couple of glasses of prosecco, I was really excited at the idea of a party where I would be the guest of honour.
By the time we arrived at the bar where the party was being held there were 200 people all crammed in waiting to celebrate my big 3-0.
I knew maybe twenty-five of them.
My mum and dad came but only stayed about half an hour. It was very busy, very expensive, and the trendy DJ was very loud. ‘They charged me £10 for a pint,’ my dad shouted in my ear as he hugged me goodbye.
Then he gave me £50.
‘You might need this to buy yourself a cocktail.’
Ginny did an amazing job introducing me to people I didn’t know and dancing with me to all my favourite songs, which she had arranged for the DJ to play.
After the first couple of hours I just wanted to sit down for a bit. I wasn’t used to being the centre of attention and it turns out it’s pretty exhausting.
Xav rolled up about 10.30 p.m. looking petulant. James had forgotten to tell him about the surprise party; he’d gone to the original venue for the night and had only learnt where we were via Instagram.
I showed him the new Manolo Blahnik shoes James had bought me.
‘Jesus, how do you walk in those thing
s?’ he shouted.
I couldn’t. I’d had them on for one evening and nearly broken my ankle twice, but I wasn’t about to admit that to him, so I just laughed wildly in the same way I had been laughing at everything for the past three hours.
‘Are you drunk?’ he yelled, confused.
It was at this point that Ginny walked over.
She stood square in front of Xav, crossed her arms, and looked him up and down, smirking.
‘You must be the ‘old’ friend.’
Xav paused, very slowly crossed his arms, mirrored her expression, and then said, ‘The ‘best’ friend.’
This is why I never introduced them. They could both be total bitches.
For a moment they just glared at each other.
Then Ginny looked pointedly at me.
‘I thought you said he was good-looking?’
She grabbed my arm and dragged me and my wobbling ankles onto the dance floor.
An hour later the DJ halted the music and everyone sang happy birthday … to Ginny.
She dragged me up onto the DJ booth, made a joke out of it, and then made everyone sing it, again, to me.
It was one of the most excruciating moments of my life.
Xav grabbed me as I clambered down in my teetering heels. I hoped he was going to say something to make me feel better.
‘Ha ha! You looked like a total fucking idiot. I’m leaving. The music’s shit, and did you know that they’re charging a tenner for a pint?’
He messaged me later.
‘I hope Ginny enjoyed her party. What are we doing for your birthday again? Xx’
Bitch.
The weather outside of Inverness started to get worse at about 4 p.m., according to the clock on the dashboard. Light flurries of sleet, more irritating than worrying. By 4.30 p.m. the sleet had turned to snow, and the snow was coming at the Defender in flurries of huge, white petals, landing and almost immediately disappearing from the heat of the engine.
Maybe that’s why I didn’t notice my impending doom. Because nothing really touched the truck or me or Lucky. It was all in my periphery, all background noise to my intense concentration on living and thinking about my death at the same time.
Last One at the Party Page 15
