‘Up ahead, that’s Lambeth Bridge, that’s where we’ll cross. But we’re going to have to be careful as there’re security cameras on the gantry and we don’t want to be filmed. Pull your scarf as high as you can and keep your head down.’
The structure looms towards them, lit by beams of piercing white light.
‘Right,’ he says. ‘Here we go. Remember what I said: don’t look up.’
They cross the bridge quickly. The fierce wind blows the snow into their faces, coating their clothes and deterring her from looking over the parapet. They keep their heads down until they reach the southern bank and are a good distance beyond the range of the cameras.
Here they stop behind a tree and look back. ‘Can you see anyone?’ Daniels asks.
Evie shakes her head. Visibility is poor but if someone was following, she would have heard them.
Daniels lowers his scarf and indicates that she can too. ‘Well, we’ve made it to Lambeth at least.’ He sounds relieved and his sudden lighter mood infects hers moderately too.
‘We’re walking in Lambeth,’ she says. ‘Who would have thought it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Because of the song!’ She starts to recite in a monotone, quickly realising she can’t remember the lyrics and must improvise. ‘All the lovely Lambeth gals, with their lovely Lambeth boys, dud-d’dud, d’duh, you can see them all, walking the Lambeth walk.’ She ends with a single muffled clap with her gloved hands and looks up for a response, but he appears confused.
‘You sang it for us once in the garden, for me and Matthew,’ she says, ‘and did this funny sideways dance with the edging tool, kicking out your legs from below your knees.’
‘The stuff you remember!’ He turns his face away but not quickly enough to hide his wiping his eye with the side of his glove. Now she wishes she’d kept her mouth shut. The past is too painful. Like walking barefoot in the garden in the dark and treading on thorns.
Ahead of them a rail bridge crosses over the road. The glow from a fire flickers over the steelwork beneath.
Daniels halts and pulls her over. ‘Let me check what’s happening,’ he says. ‘We may have to take a different route. Stay here.’
From the doorway of a Victorian terraced cottage, she watches him creep down the road until he is just twenty yards short of the bridge. Beside her, pasted to the brickwork, is a poster promoting a boxing match depicting two burly men going at one another with bare fists, luridly tinted blood splattering their shoulders and chests.
Daniels sneaks back towards her, keeping close to the shadows cast by the buildings.
‘What’s there?’ she asks, as he catches his breath.
‘A group of homeless navvies. They’ve got quite a bonfire going. Mattresses and packing cases and god knows what else. Their preoccupation seems to be keeping warm and if there’d been any women or children amongst them, I might have chanced it but as it is, it’s too much of a risk. If they wanted to play difficult, we’d be in trouble. Happily, we’ve other options.’
They take a turning to their right and then one to their left and approach an arch heaped with abandoned battery packs leaking a wide pool of acid which they skirt around by keeping their backs to the bricks.
Daniels forces a smile. ‘Don’t worry. It’ll be easier from here. We’re going to cut through Lambeth until we reach the Thames again and then cross back using Tower Bridge. Going this way will save a couple of miles at least.’
‘I’ve heard of Tower Bridge,’ she says, ‘but I thought it fell down… or was that London Bridge?’
‘I don’t know about any of that but none of the bridges are in great shape.’
The snow has finally stopped and the air is still and silent. The only sound is from the tramp of their feet.
‘So what do you make of it all so far?’ He gestures ironically at their surroundings.
‘I don’t know what to think. It is all just so different.’ A whole strange, curious and almost unbelievable world has been unfurling around her. On her own, even in daylight, without the protection and guidance of Daniels, she would be petrified.
‘I guess it probably is.’ The snow crunches under his boots and her shoes. ‘We need to start making plans for what we’re going to do. We’ll go to Iz’s first but we can’t stay long, it wouldn’t be safe nor fair on her. Matthew owns a cottage out in the sticks. It’s empty and the only person who’s been there for years is me to check on it. We’ll be okay there for a bit. Who knows, if it proves safe, we may not have to move on again. Or at least not for a while. Hopefully it’ll be a chance to draw breath.’
The thought of finding somewhere safe and holing up has an irresistible appeal.
A yellow and black hova glides up behind and, swerving, passes at shoulder level, just a few inches from Daniels’s head. Both of them duck. The car continues on without paying them attention.
‘That could have been messy,’ Daniels says, cramming his hat back down and glaring after it. ‘Could’ve taken my head off.’
‘There was no one in it,’ she says.
‘You saw inside?’ He always forgets that her senses are better than his.
Evie nods. The car reaches the corner and glides around it.
‘It’s a driverless then. They’re programmed not to hit anything, but that’s not to say they don’t.’
‘Why would it be going around without anyone in it?’
‘Making its way to its next pickup most probably, though sometimes the software goes haywire and they end up circling the same route for days until a dispatcher summons them back.’
This gives her pause for thought. Last summer, one afternoon, she’d emerged from a daze with Simon shouting furiously in her ear. She’d been unconsciously looping the garden for an hour.
In the distance a spike rears above the rooftops.
‘You wouldn’t know it now but that building was famous once for its dazzling glass exterior,’ Daniels says.
‘What happened to it?’ she asks, staring up at its blackened and bent tip, almost lost to view in the thick clouds.
‘The glass sheets started shearing off and in the end it got so dangerous, no one dared get close. They were going to rebuild it or demolish it, one or the other, but before they could make their minds up there was a big fire.’
‘I remember,’ she says. ‘It was just after I arrived.’ The blaze had lit up the sky and a black column of smoke had extended for miles. Then when the wind got up, the ash blew everywhere, coating the windows of the apartment and leaving a sticky sooty layer over the whole garden. Daniels had scrubbed at the paving with a wet broom for days.
‘Yeah, it probably was. Anyway it scattered sparks onto the roof of London Bridge Station and the adjacent hospital, setting them on fire too. The area has never properly recovered and because most of the roads have still not been cleared of debris, we’re going to have to cross the railway lines ahead by going over the tracks, or face a long detour. In daytime I’d use the tunnels but not at this time of night, they’re too unsafe.’