17 September

We were standing on the grass in a crowd of people, and the sky was getting darker. The riots had all migrated to the cities, and here, in the park, it was calm almost to the point of spookiness. There were bonfires, and people were singing old and new songs, together and separately. In the distance I could hear a band. People were dancing, running, just standing there. They were doing whatever they wanted.

I stood with Mum and Sean, with Dad and Anneka and the babies, with Violet, with Zoe, and with her family. The children had no idea, of course, of what was about to happen; they ran around giggling, and Hans-Erik clung to my legs and said, ‘Libby!’

I remembered babysitting them that night just after I’d played Juliet. We had stayed up and eaten chocolate. Although he’d been one then and he was two now, I thought that I had changed, since then, even more than Hans had. I leaned down and picked him up, held him close and hoped that he would grow up. He was squishy and perfect in my arms, brimming with possibility.

Violet had fitted into our world as if she had always been there. Her parents had died, one after the other, a couple of years ago, but it had still taken the impending apocalypse to prompt her to trace her birth mother, and when she did meet Mum she realized that her mother had been a terrified teenager and she found that she could understand and forgive at last.

I was being brave tonight, because there was no other way to be. We had all stepped into a different realm, and there was absolutely nothing to do but wait. Giving up, right now, would have been the same as being brave, just as it had been when I was in Paris. Either way, there was nothing to do but wait and breathe. The atmosphere had been notably shifting for weeks. It had been shifting more throughout the day, and we all had gas masks, but no one was wearing them. I thought I wouldn’t put mine on, but then I supposed that when it came down to it I probably would.

I was standing with my family and waiting for the atmosphere to change so much that we couldn’t live in it any more. Zoe was right next to me, holding my hand. Zoe and I had spent the past three weeks together, and now we had run out of time. I couldn’t think about the future. No one could because it was impossible.

I was here with the people I loved. I had a lot of life left to live. I was longing to live it.

I took a deep breath in.

I breathed out.

I breathed in again.

I breathed out.

I

breathed.