“Your dad’s a very wise man,” I tell Izzy.
Izzy nods. “Da ’n’ Max’ve gone into town to check on my aunt.”
“Fair play to Declan now,” says Mo. “Kids, if you’d give Zimbra a run in the garden, I’ll make pancakes. Maybe I’ve a dusting of cocoa powder left somewhere. Go on, give Holly and me a little space, hey?”
Once they’re out, a grim and anxious Mo tries to thread friends in Bantry, where the Cordon’s westernmost garrison is stationed. Calls to Bantry normally get threaded without trouble, but today there isn’t even an error message. “I’ve got this nasty feeling,” Mo stares at the blank screen, “that we’ve kept our Net access as long as we have because our threads were routed via the server at Ringaskiddy, and now the Chinese have gone … it’s over.”
I feel as if someone’s died. “No more Net? Ever?”
Mo says, “I might be wrong,” but her face says, No, never.
For most of my life, the world shrank and technology progressed; this was the natural order of things. Few of us clocked on that “the natural order of things” is entirely man-made, and that a world that kept expanding as technology regressed was not only possible but waiting in the wings. Outside, the kids’re playing with a frisbee older than any of them — look closely, you’ll see the phantom outline of the London 2012 Olympics logo. Aoife spent her pocket money on it. It was a hot day on the beach at Broadstairs. Izzy’s showing Rafiq how you step forward and release the frisbee in one fluid motion. I wonder if they’re all putting on a brave face about the end of the Lease Lands, and that really they’re as scared as we are by the threat of gangs, militiamen, land pirates, Jackdaws and God knows what streaming through the Cordon. Zimbra retrieves the frisbee and Rafiq does a better throw, lifted by the wind. Lorelei has to spring up high to catch it, revealing a glimpse of shapely midriff. “Medicine for the chronically ill is one worry,” I speak my thoughts aloud, “but what kind of life will women have, if things carry on the way they are? What if Dónal Boyce is the best future the girls in Lol’s class can hope for? Men are always men, I know, but at least during our lives, women have gathered a sort of arsenal of legal rights. But only because, law by law, shifting attitude by shifting attitude, our society became more civilized. Now I’m scared the Endarkenment’ll sweep all that away. I’m scared that Lol’ll just be some bonehead’s slave, stuck in some wintry, hungry, bleak, lawless, Gaelic-flavored Saudi Arabia.”
Lorelei throws the frisbee, but the east wind biffs it off course into Mo’s wall of camellias.
“Pancakes,” says Mo. “I’ll measure the flour and you crack a few eggs. Six should be enough for the five of us?”
• • •
“WHAT’S THAT SOUND?” asks Izzy O’Daly, half an hour later. Mo’s kitchen table is strewn with the wreckage of lunch. Mo, of course, did unearth a small tub of cocoa powder from one of her bottomless hidden nooks. It must be a year since the last square of waxy Russian chocolate appeared in the ration boxes. Neither me nor Mo had any ourselves, but watching the kids as they ate their chocolate-laced lunch was a sight more delicious than the taste. “There,” says Izzy, “that … crackly noise. Didn’t you hear it?” She looks anxious.
“Raf’s stomach, probably,” says Lorelei.
“Sure I only had one more than you,” objects Rafiq. “And—”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re a growing boy, we know,” says his sister. “Growing into a total pancake monster.”
“There,” says Izzy, making a shush gesture. “Hear it?”
We listen. Like the old woman I am, I say, “I can’t hear—”
Zimbra leaps up, whining, at the door. Rafiq tells him, “Shush, Zimbra!”
The dog shushes, and — there. A spiky, sickening sequence of bangs. I look at Mo and Mo nods back: “Gunfire.”
We rush out onto Mo’s scrubby, dandelion-dotted lawn. The wind’s still from the east and it buffets our ears but now another burst of automatic fire is quite distinct and not far away. Its echo reaches us a couple of seconds later from Mizen Head across the water.
“Isn’t it coming from Kilcrannog?” asks Lorelei.
Izzy’s voice is shaky. “Dad went into the village.”
“The Cordon can’t have fallen already,” I blurt, wishing I could stuff the words back in, ’cause by saying it, I feel I’ve helped to make it real. Zimbra is snarling towards the town.
“I’d better get back to the farm,” says Izzy.
Mo and I exchange a look. “Maybe, Izzy,” Mo says, “until we know what we’re dealing with, your parents’d prefer you to lie low.”
Then we hear the noise of jeeps, this side of town, driving along the main lane. More than one or two, by the sound of it.
“Must be Stability,” says Rafiq. “Only they have diesel. Right?”
“Speaking as a mum,” I say to Izzy, “I really think you ought—”
“I–I—I’ll stay hidden, I’ll be careful, I promise.” Izzy swallows, and then she’s gone, vanished through a gap in the tall wall of fuchsia.
I hardly have time to dismiss the unpleasant feeling that I’ve just seen Izzy O’Daly for the final time before we notice the timbre of the jeeps has changed, from fast and furious to cautious and growly.
“I think one of the jeeps is coming down our track,” says Lorelei.
Vaguely, I wonder if this blustery autumn day is going to be my last. But not the kids. Not the kids. Mo’s had the same thought: “Lorelei, Rafiq, listen. Just on the off chance this is a militia unit and not Stability, we need you to get Zimbra to safety.”
Rafiq, who still has some cocoa powder in the corner of his lips, is appalled. “But Zim and me are the bodyguards!”
I see Mo’s logic: “If it’s militiamen, they’ll shoot Zim on sight before they even start talking to us. It’s how they work.”
Lorelei’s scared, which she should be. “But what’ll you do, Gran?”
“Mo and I’ll talk to them. We’re tough old birds. But please”—we hear a jeep engine roar in a low gear, sickeningly near—“both of you, go. It’s what your parents would be saying. Go!”
Rafiq’s eyes are still wide, but he nods. We hear brambles scraping against metal sides and small branches being snapped off. Lorelei feels disloyal going, but I mouth “Please” and she nods. “C’mon, Raf, Gran’s counting on us. We can hide him at the sheep bothy above the White Strand. C’mon, Zim. Zimbra. Come on!”
Our spooked, wise dog looks at me, puzzled.
“Go!” I shoo him. “Look after Lol and Raf! Go!”
Reluctantly, Zimbra allows himself to be pulled off and the three are clear of Mo’s garden and over the garden wall behind the polytunnel. We have a wait of about ten seconds before a Stability jeep barges its way through the overgrown track and up onto Mo’s drive, spitting stones. A second jeep appears a few seconds later. The word Stability is stenciled along the side. The forces of law and order. So why do I feel like an injured bird found by a cat?
• • •
YOUNG MEN CLIMB out, four from each vehicle. Even I can tell they’re not Stability; their uniforms are improvised, they carry mismatched handguns, automatic weapons, crossbows, grenades, and knives, and they move like raiders, not trained soldiers. Mo and I stand side by side, but they walk past us as if we’re invisible. One, perhaps the leader, holds back and watches the bungalow as the others approach it, guns out and ready. He’s scrawny, tattooed, maybe thirty, wears a green beret of military origin, a flak jacket, like Ed used to wear in Iraq, and the winged figure off a Rolls-Royce around his neck. “Anyone else at home, old lady?”