Stephen Baxter: Flood

Amanda walked them through the house to the kitchen. It was open-plan from the front door, and had been that way since the internal walls had been knocked down in a 1970s conversion.

Lily glanced curiously around at the living space. Her mother’s books were gone, her slumped antique furniture vanished. The tattered old carpet Lily remembered from her childhood had been lifted too, to be replaced by cheap-looking ceramic tiles. The lower walls were bare of paint or paper, and Lily could see channels crudely cut in the plasterwork where power points had been raised to a meter or so off the ground. The fireplace, which had been blocked off in the seventies renovation, was now open again, and blackened by soot, evidently recently used.

The small kitchen had been much less modified than the living room, and was just as cluttered as Lily remembered, though now with Amanda’s characteristic kipple, principally masses of spice bottles and jars to support her passion for Indian cooking. Amanda sat the two of them on high stools, and handed them mugs of hot chamomile tea. On a shelf over the table stood a row of photographs, of Lily’s mother, Amanda’s kids, and one big portrait of Lily herself, her official USAF image, a younger self smart in a crisp uniform. Lily was touched to see it there.

Lily tried to take in the fact that everything about her life had changed while she had been absent from it-that her mother had died a whole two years before, that her sister had moved from her old flat in Hammersmith into what had been the family home. Maybe she had been detached for too long. She just felt numb.

And she could tell that Gary, who she’d only brought home on a whim, felt awkward to have walked in on a family tragedy.

Gary knew all about Lily’s family from their endless conversations in Barcelona. Lily’s mum had been a GI bride, of sorts, who had met and married a USAF airman stationed in Suffolk. He had given her two daughters before being killed in a friendly-fire incident while working on logistical support during the first Gulf war. Lily had never lived in the States, but she had dual citizenship. With her dad dead when she was fourteen, Lily’s mother had been her anchor.

Amanda said, “I didn’t want to tell you on the phone, when you called ahead earlier about visiting.” She was edgy.

Lily said, “I appreciate that.”

At thirty-five Amanda was five years younger than Lily. She was, in fact, about the age Lily had been when she was taken. Always taller and thinner than Lily, she had her black hair pulled back into a knot behind her head, and she wore a black dress that looked practical, if maybe a size too small for her. Though there was no evidence of smoking in the house, Lily thought she saw traces of the old habit about Amanda, a cigarette-shaped hole in the way she held the fingers of her right hand. “What gets me is why the government didn’t tell you. You’ve been out of Spain for five days already.”

“I think they’re treating us as possible trauma cases.” That was because of Piers Michaelmas, who had been so obviously damaged by his captivity. “They’ve been feeding us news bit by bit. Selectively.”

Looking around, Gary said, “Looks like you’ve had a trauma here of your own.”

“Well, we got flooded out in the spring. It’s all been so bloody complicated, you wouldn’t believe it. The insurance, you know. You have to wait an age for a loss adjuster to come out, and in the meantime you’re not supposed to touch anything. Not even clear the mud out. It stank, Lily, you wouldn’t believe it, street muck and sewage all over the floor. Carpets ruined, of course. No electric or water or gas, buckled floorboards, the water stink seeping out of the plaster for weeks afterward-it was just a nightmare. We were lucky we didn’t get any of the toxic fungi growing out of the walls. Old Mrs. Lucas got some of that-do you remember her? And even when the adjuster has been, you only get a payout if you commit to climate-proofing. Mind you I do admit I much prefer floor tiles to carpet, don’t you? So much easier to keep clean. Of course we were lucky, you know, Lily. Some of the properties around here were condemned altogether.”

Gary said,“I guess these old barns weren’t built to withstand a flooding. What happened? River burst its banks?”

“No. A flash flood…”

A sudden deluge had followed days of steady rain that had left Victorian-age drains and sewers choked. With nowhere to go, sheets of water ran over the ground, seeking a way down to the river, pouring through streets and into houses and schools.

“The kids got home just before the level started rising in the street; we were lucky about that. It poured in under the door. We went upstairs and just huddled. We saw a car get washed away, washed down the street, can you believe it? Then it started pouring up from the sink and even out of the toilet, black mud that stank of sewage. That freaked out the kids, I can tell you. It’s just as well Mum didn’t live to see it.”

Lily said, “It’s hard to believe, all this happened to you and I didn’t even know about it.”

“Or about your mom,” Gary said.“I’m glad I spoke to my own family, my mother. I’m looking forward to seeing her real soon.”

Amanda poured him more tea. “When will they be sending you home?”

“A couple more days. I hear flights out of the civilian airports are problematic.”

“Tell me about it. Heathrow is nothing but flooded runways and power-outs.”

“I’m pretty sure I’ll blag a seat on a military flight soon enough.”

“You’re not in the military, though?”

“No, but I do a lot of work with them. I’m a climate scientist.” When he was taken he had been fresh out of a NASA institution called the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “That’s why I was in Spain. It’s a climate-change hot spot. The interior is desiccating, turning into kind of like North Africa-or it was. All that rain wasn’t in the old models and I’ve not caught up with the latest data. I was on my way to run some ground-truth studies of geosat observations on sand-dune formations outside Madrid, when, wham, a car pulled off the road in front of me.”

“I can’t imagine how that must have felt.”

Gary said, “The first thing I thought was, how am I going to finish my job?”

Lily remembered she had felt much the same about her own abduction. It wasn’t fear that struck her at first, more irritation at being plucked out of her life, her own concerns-that and some residual shock from the Chinook crash, even though she, the crew and the passengers had all walked away from it. At first she had been sure she would be released in two weeks, or three, or four. It was some time after that that the long reality of her imprisonment had cut into her consciousness, and other, stronger reactions had started to take over. Looking back, she wondered if she would have stayed sane if she had known from the start it was going to be all of five years before she was free again.

Amanda was watching her silently.

“Sorry,” Lily said. “Woolgathering.”

“There’s things we need to talk about, Lil,” Amanda said awkwardly. “The will, for one thing.”

“Oh.” Lily hadn’t got that far, in the rather shocked half-hour since they’d arrived.

Gary stood, setting down his cup. “You know, you two need time.”

“You don’t have to go.”

He smiled. He had a broad face that could be prone to fat, a mouth that smiled easily, a freckled forehead under a receding tangle of red-brown hair. Now he covered Lily’s hand with his. “Babe, you just had some seriously bad news. Look, I’ll be fine, I’ll take a walk. It’s for the best.”

Amanda also stood. “It’s good of you, though I feel like a dreadful hostess. If you want to walk, just head down to the Fulham Road-that way.” She pointed. “You’ll reach the High Street and then the river, near Putney Bridge. There are parks, a riverside path.”