Chris Ryan
Flash Flood
Location: London
‘I know you’re probably sick of environmentalists like me banging on about global warming. The sea level rising and all that rubbish. But think of it this way. You know the Thames Barrier? You know that without it a lot of central London would be under water? Well, in twenty-five years’ time, if you don’t build a much bigger Thames Barrier, London will be under water anyway. That’s what rising sea levels mean.
‘Twenty-five years; it’s not long, is it? Or, if you’re really unlucky with the weather, it could be twenty-five minutes.’
Dr Bel Kelland, environmentalist,
News Focus, August 2006
Chapter One
‘This is crap, this train,’ said the youth with the pierced eyebrow, and kicked the door next to his seat. It was one of the old-type trains with doors that slam shut, and when he kicked it the window rattled.
A woman sitting on the end of the row with a leather holdall on her knee jumped at the sound and looked annoyed. The youth’s two friends, both wearing hoodies and a variety of face piercings, saw her reaction and snorted with laughter. They were about sixteen, they were bored, and they were determined to make everyone else suffer too.
Like everyone else in the carriage, Ben and Rachel tried to ignore them. The train journey was unpleasant enough as it was. Ever since they had got on at their home town of Macclesfield in Cheshire it had been stop-start all the way. Now it was stop. Heavy rain had caused flooding and signal failures. The carriage smelled of wet raincoats and damp seats; the floor was wet from dripping umbrellas. Some people were wearing wellington boots. You could hardly believe it was the first week of August.
Everyone was fed up, wondering when the train was going to move again. Ben Tracey — dark blond hair, thoughtful face, thirteen years old but looked older — was going to London to spend the day with his mother. His parents were separated and he didn’t get to see his mother very often because she travelled a lot. Twenty-two-year-old Rachel, his next-door neighbour, was fully made up and dressed much more smartly than Ben. She was accompanying him as far as Milton Keynes, where she had a job interview. She’d already had to phone to tell them she’d be late. Everyone in the carriage was sitting and gritting their teeth, or looking out at the relentless rain, which lashed the windows like a storm at sea.
‘I said this train’s crap,’ said Pierced Eyebrow, and kicked the door again. This time he kicked harder and the window slipped down in the frame. Water dribbled in through the gap and down the window, leaving streaks in the black grime and pooling on the dirty floor.
His two friends laughed. ‘Hey, man, you’ve broken it.’ One of them scratched his nose, making the piercing he’d got there jiggle up and down. He noticed the woman with the holdall looking at it distastefully. He stuck his finger into the nostril and waggled the stud from inside like someone making a teddy bear wave. ‘Hey, Grandma, do you like my piercing?’
She looked pointedly the other way, out of the window.
Pierced Eyebrow fished in his pocket. He brought out a marker pen and wrote an unreadable signature in big letters on the glass, then sat back grinning.
Through the open window they could hear the sound of a train approaching. Pierced Nose got up, stuck his head out and yelled at the train.
‘Any chance of a lift, mate?’ His last word was swallowed up by the thunder of the train approaching. Pierced Eyebrow and his companion, who had a septic-looking piercing through his top lip, grabbed Nose’s Abercrombie hoodie and yanked him back in.
The train bowled past close to the windows; the clearance couldn’t have been more than half a metre.
The three youths looked shaken for a moment, then started to laugh. Pierced Nose shook the rain out of his hair. ‘Hey, man, that was cool — you gotta try it.’
Septic Lip stood up and stuck his head out of the window. ‘There’s another one coming. Watch this.’ He pushed the window all the way down and leaned his whole upper body out, waving with both arms while the train drummed closer. ‘Woo-hoo!’ he called.
Now everyone in the carriage was staring at them. This train was going a lot faster; it was an inter-city. They could feel it shaking the floor of the carriage. Its horn blared.
‘Woo-hoo!’ called Septic Lip, his arms waving wildly out of the window. Nose and Eyebrow grabbed the back of his jeans and pulled him in. The train passed in a blur of blue and white. The shock wave shook the stationary carriage from side to side.
The youths were laughing. Septic clutched at Eyebrow’s sweatshirt and pushed him towards the window. ‘Come on, man: your turn.’
Eyebrow wasn’t going to stick his head out without the audience’s attention. He looked around at the rest of the passengers to see how well the show was going down. Ben thought he looked as if he expected some kind of praise for being so brave.
Pierced Nose noticed Ben’s expression. ‘What are you looking at?’
Rachel had been looking too. She looked away immediately the youth started talking to them. But Ben held his gaze. ‘Be careful,’ he said.
Now the other people in the carriage were looking at Ben.
‘Go back to reading Harry Potter,’ said Eyebrow. He turned away and looked out of the window, planning when he’d stick his head through. When he glanced back, Ben was still looking at him.
‘What?’ he said.
‘Well, it’s just that I had this friend …’ Ben said. ‘But go ahead, it’s your life.’ He turned back to the novel he’d been reading.
Pierced Eyebrow couldn’t stand losing his audience’s attention. That wasn’t meant to happen. Especially as that audience was now paying more attention to Ben than to him. He walked over to Ben. ‘Yeah? And what are you saying?’
Ben put his bookmark carefully back in his book before looking up at Pierced Eyebrow. ‘He was a good friend too. I’d known him for years.’
‘That’s lovely,’ said Eyebrow. ‘Very touching.’
Ben nodded, as though considering the matter, but said nothing. He opened his book again to resume reading.
Eyebrow looked irritated. ‘And …? Your point is …?’
Ben gave a sigh and carefully replaced his bookmark. He definitely had Eyebrow’s attention now: he could take all the time he wanted.
‘It was very sad. He got on a train — one of the old ones with windows like this. He’d had a burger at a stall in the station — you know how they can be a bit dodgy. Well, he started feeling sick, which serves him right really for eating such rubbish.’ Ben paused again.
‘Come on, I haven’t got all day,’ said Eyebrow, but Ben wasn’t to be hurried.
‘There was a woman sitting next to him,’ said Ben, ‘and my friend thought, I’m going to be sick, what shall I do? I can’t be sick on her. But he couldn’t stop it, so he put his head out of the window.’
Septic and Nose looked at Ben as if they suspected the story was about to turn into a joke and make them look foolish. But they couldn’t help but listen.
‘And then what?’ said Eyebrow testily.
‘A train came the other way and took the top of his head off. Like an egg.’ Ben mimed it, one hand slicing over the top of the other.
For a split second the look on the youths’ faces was shocked. Then they covered it up with bluster.
‘Yeah, right,’ sneered Nose. Eyebrow glanced towards the window as though he was still going to take his turn playing chicken with the next express, but Ben noticed he didn’t put his head out again.
Ben opened his book and scanned the pages, as if taking time to look for the bit he’d been reading. ‘But you go ahead. Carry on doing what you’re doing.’