Had she got out?
Would she have had time? The basement was three flights down from the ground floor and the water had flooded in so rapidly.
Could his mother’s friend be dead?
‘Regent Street seems to be dry,’ said Meena Chohan, ‘but there are people and traffic everywhere. It’s chaos. Buckingham Palace has escaped for the moment but the Mall’s under water. Most of Westminster’s cut off.’
Westminster. That was where his mum was.
Ben ran round to the front of the building again. The terraces of Westminster had gone. The water lapped at the windows so that the Houses of Parliament looked like a famous painting he had seen of Venice. Where was Bel having her meeting?
He got out his phone and speed-dialled her number. I don’t care if you’re in a meeting, he said to himself. For once, just answer.
He didn’t expect her to answer, of course. He expected her abrasive answerphone message again but he never even got a ring tone. Instead he got an automated message from the phone company. ‘Lines are busy. Please try—’
The message was cut off. There was silence. He tried again but there was nothing — not even the message that told him her phone was out of reach.
He tried home; his dad in Macclesfield.
Nothing. It was as if the battery was dead. But it wasn’t: the display was glowing as usual and the battery icon showed more than half charged. But the signal display was blank.
A bang like a firework going off made Ben look out of the window again. At the same moment the lights in the gallery went out. He saw that the lights in all the buildings nearby were down. There had been a massive power cut.
The London Eye had stopped. At the bottom, glowing sparks were fizzing out of the mechanism. Ben watched as two parents, up to their waists in water in a half-submerged capsule, struggled to lift their three young children onto their shoulders. The official escort in the navy London Eye uniform was frantically searching for a window that opened.
Further up, other passengers started to notice the panicking passengers below. They hammered on the glass with cameras and shoes, until the whole wheel looked like a grotesque mobile, a painting of hell, the pods swinging as people tried to escape from their glass prisons.
The glass in one of the higher pods sprayed out in a shower. A figure in a red cagoule hurtled out into the air — feet first, nose held as if anticipating the plunge into the water. Another followed, legs and arms cycling in the air as if he had lost control of them. The figure in the red cagoule hit the water. The other figure splashed down soon after.
Slowly Ben raised the binoculars and watched.
The jumpers had underestimated the fierce current. He saw flailing arms rise briefly above the choppy surface, already being carried away from the Eye like twigs caught in a whirlpool. Once again, he lowered the binoculars, but he could still see the small helpless figures. They were swept towards the concrete walls of the ArBonCo Centre. He didn’t see them hit, but he did see the tide suck them away again. When it did they were unmoving, lifeless.
Ben felt sick. He put the binoculars down on the window ledge and turned away.
Strange — if he looked at the room, it was as if nothing had happened. Outside the windows, the sky was the same grey as it had been before. The carpets, the easy chairs, the low tables all looked so everyday. The only thing that was odd was that all the lights had gone out.
What should he do? Hide up here? It seemed nice and safe and normal.
And then the creeping fear began to steal up on Ben as well. He began to notice the sounds. No, it was not normal. Car and burglar alarms shrieked from the streets below. And there was another sound: muffled shouts and screams. Once he became aware of them, Ben couldn’t block them out. They filled him with fear, just as the people in the London Eye had transmitted their panic to each other, reverberating through the spokes of that giant wheel.
He didn’t want to stay here alone.
Chapter Nine
In the middle of the gallery was a green EXIT sign and a pair of fire doors.
Ben ran for them. He snatched the doors open and started to run down the white marble-tiled stairwell. Somewhere below him, he heard running footsteps — so many that it was like distant machine-gun fire. And shouting and screaming, louder now. He went down past one door, then another, then another. Floor after floor went by. The sounds grew louder. Ben kept his hand on the black handrail, counting down the floors, swinging round and round as he went. Floor five … four … three.
He caught up with a small group of people, who barely looked at him, all intent on getting out. They were half jogging down the stairs, not daring to run fast but too frightened to walk.
When they reached the second floor, they saw a man wearing a red armband printed with the words FIRE MARSHAL. He was waving people in through the open fire door, like a policeman directing traffic.
Ben caught a glimpse of something further down the stairwell. Something black, glossy and moving. The building was full of water. He wondered with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach whether Cally was still down there.
‘In here, please,’ said the fire marshal, and Ben obeyed.
It was a big, open-plan room, which took up nearly the entire floor of the building. It was full of people sitting in chairs, on desks, leaning against the window ledges. They looked calm and orderly, all waiting patiently. The ones who had just arrived were joining a queue and filing past another fire marshal, who was ticking off names on a list.
Ben joined the queue. He felt better now that he was with people, reassured by the queues. OK, he thought. Maybe we’ll all be all right. But there was a smell in the room: cold sweat and fear.
There was another smell too — something salty, tarry. And a sound, like gentle splashing. The water was lapping just below the windows.
It was Ben’s turn to be checked on the register. Another fire marshal peered at him. ‘Who are you?’ His list of personnel ran to several pages. The building must have thousands of people working in it.
‘I’m a visitor,’ said Ben.
‘Who were you with?’
‘Cally—’ Ben realized he didn’t know her surname. ‘Cally in Clean Fuels Research.’ He looked around the room, hoping to catch sight of her.
The pen scanned up and down the list, over the page, found a name and hovered. ‘Is she with you?’
Ben hesitated. ‘No.’
‘Where is she? She shouldn’t have left you alone. Visitors shouldn’t be unaccompanied. Where is she?’
Ben didn’t want to say. His throat was dry. It took him a few goes to get the words out. ‘She went to a meeting in the basement.’
The fire marshal didn’t look up. He kept his pen over Cally’s name for a moment, then put a dot in the margin next to it. Ben stared at it.
Then the man waved him on.
A woman sitting at a desk beckoned Ben over. Beside her was a big green first aid kit; a man in glasses was dabbing antiseptic on a gash in his arm. ‘Have you got any injuries?’ she asked Ben.
He shook his head. ‘No. I’m fine.’
‘OK. Find a seat and wait for instructions.’
Ben did as he was told. He approached a group of people who were sitting chatting. They looked almost unconcerned, though he noticed that one had a bruise over one eye. Most of them had rucksacks or bags with them, and coats. He passed some people who must have escaped from the flood water outside too — a woman was rubbing her legs with a towel; her companions’ jeans were wet up to the knees; high-heeled boots lay discarded on the floor, the leather soaked through. It grew darker as Ben made his way towards the middle of the floor, away from the windows. He could see tiny patches of light as people used their mobiles as torches to read, or listened to music or played games.