The meanest Flood

into the boot there was no car. There was only Marilyn alone in the universe. The sound in the boot would never return, the car would not be seen again and Diamond Danny Mann would have disappeared into the fastness of space.
    There would be no past and no future, no pain and no joy. There would be Marilyn Eccles and an endless empty landscape.
    But it was only a story.
    As she approached Boggle Hole Marilyn wondered if she would be able to stop herself making the story come true. She played with the idea that because she had invented the story then she would be captured by it, forced to play it out within the parameters she had allowed it.
    And the thing, whatever it was in the back of the car, it was as if it knew the story too, and as Boggle Hole loomed into view the banging and thumping in the rear of the vehicle rose to a tumult of sound. Not just impact sounds now, there was breath in there as well, small cries like the whimpering of a child.
     

38
     
    Alice Richardson looked at her daughter. Hannah was at the school gate with her skirt hitched up, chewing gum and practising flashing her black eyes. She’s a tart already and only ten years old, said a voice in Alice’s head. It was the voice of Hannah’s Irish grandmother, Alice’s mother, dead now for five years but still as garrulous as ever. Alice would never be able to shut her up. The gates of Heaven weren’t thick enough to keep out all that gossip, composed as it was of magic, gassy, blathering prose.
    Dominic was over by the tennis courts head to head with Rafiq and Lauren, all of them laughing uproariously at the latest dirty joke.
    ‘Where’s Conn?’ Alice asked.
    ‘Dunno,’ said Hannah. ‘Haven’t seen him since this morning.’
    ‘You don’t keep an eye on him, then? Your little brother?’
    ‘Oh, Mam,’ Hannah said, glancing round to check if anyone had heard. It seemed to Alice that her children could be severely embarrassed by the fact that she drew breath. Hannah had reached the stage where she wouldn’t go out with the family unless there was no alternative. Never to the cinema or the theatre and only to a restaurant if there was a wedding or a wake in the family. Unless it was McDonald’s, of course, but it never was because Alice refused to eat in a place where they threw the plates away after every customer.
    Alice spoke to a couple of the other mothers about the floods while Hannah continued to preen herself and show off her pre-pubescent body to the world. When Hannah had been growing in her womb Alice had spent the whole nine months bonding with her. Since then she had spent another ten years perfecting the bond. So nearly eleven years, all in all, and here she was watching someone who was a stranger. During the same period, Alex, Alice’s husband and Hannah’s father, had spent his time bonding with himself and a few cronies down at the pub and his relationship with Hannah was really no worse than Alice’s. Alice sometimes felt that everything going on around her might have meaning. It was simply a matter of cracking the code.
    ‘You seen Conn?’ she asked Dominic and Rafiq as they passed by on the road, Lauren in a sandwich between them.
    ‘I saw him this morning,’ Dominic said.
    ‘I haven’t seen him, no, Mrs Richardson,’ Rafiq said.
    Lauren smiled through her eye-shadow and sucked her lip ring.
    When everyone else had gone Alice marched over to the school office, only to find it closed. ‘He must’ve gone home by himself,’ Hannah said. ‘We can’t stand here all day. I’m cold.’
    They walked back towards the river. Hannah trudging along in her wellingtons, unable to pick her feet up in spite of her mother’s nagging.
    In the streets sloping down to the river the hexagonal STOP signs were almost totally submerged by river water. It was as if they were floating there instead of being fixed on the top of three-metre posts.
    I’m not going to worry about this , Alice told herself. Hannah was right. Conn had walked home alone. He knew Alice would worry when he wasn’t there, at the school gate, but knowing that had not stopped him. Well, I’m not going to give him the satisfaction, Alice told herself crossly.
    Nevertheless, she found herself walking faster than usual and by the time she entered their street Hannah was fifteen or twenty paces behind her. She waded through the flood waters and stepped over the sandbags at the front door. Alex was standing halfway up the stairs.
    ‘Is Conn