One

Jane scrambled to his feet and stretched, keeping his arm tucked in against him. The raft was no longer visible on the water and he thought it might have left without him, or been sunk, but his panic was short-lived. Labourers were huddled together checking plans and drinking hot water from metal cups. Fires had been started all along the beach. He heard laughter from somewhere and it almost scared him. It was such an alien sound, like the sudden cry of an attacking animal. Gradually he allowed himself to relax, to feel safe for the first time in a long time.

'So what's it like, back in London?' Edwards asked him.

'Not great,' Jane said. 'You got anyone there?'

'London? No. Never set foot in the place me entire puff. Nearest I got was Leatherhead, Surrey. Grew up in Leeds. Everyone dead.'

Jane didn't know what to say. As in most cases, he allowed the silence to build a wall between them. Then he turned and walked along the beach, his movements ungainly in the deep, shifting pebbles. Forgotten angles of machinery poked out of the ground like relics from an alien era unearthed by archaeologists. Chains and cogs and pistons and gears, larger than lorries. He felt a little like these submerged weird machines. Machines needed people to work them. Once they disappeared, or the knowledge of their purpose was lost, they became redundant, useful only for scrap. He had felt more and more rudderless in recent weeks. He felt like someone who has aged to a point where he no longer feels relevant, someone pale and lined who drifts around the periphery of things, who escapes attention because he has come to the end of his life.

He supposed that the future would come to resemble the past. Hundreds of years ago, you outlived your usefulness to the planet once you'd procreated. Life expectancy was mid-thirties. He felt another tooth coming loose. Lower incisor. Once your teeth were gone, it became harder to take in the nutrients you needed. Aches and pains everywhere. It didn't matter any more that he knew how to weld, could determine how long to stay underwater on a tank of heliox. These were skills the world no longer needed. He was a shot bolt. He sat down again, weary, sapped to the bone.

An old woman with beautiful hair, silver and soft and long, leaned over him and asked if he was all right. He smiled at her and he saw her wince; blood in the teeth, he thought, and shut his lips. He turned away, looking at the nuclear reactors to the south, the dome of the decommissioned Sizewell A. Jane remembered his concern over these plants, but nothing had come of the threat. He remembered Becky rubbing his shoulder when he became upset that they had survived only to face an impossible future, one fraught with danger at every turn.

'I know a girl,' he said. 'Her name's Becky. She . . . she's pregnant.' He turned back to the old woman. Her eyes were bright blue; remarkably there was no corona edging the iris to speak of her age. She had the eyes of a teenager.

'I know Becky,' she said. She averted her gaze and Jane knew there was something wrong.

'I'm the father,' he said. 'I . . . well, I think. I hope. A woman called Simmonds. She said she was being looked after. Protected.'

The old woman nodded. She sat next to Jane and put a callused hand on his knee. He stared at the liver spots on her skin and thought he'd never seen anything so beautiful in his life. Her nails were long and pretty. He thought he might have fallen in love with her, a little.

'Becky's gone,' she said.

'Gone.' He was finding it hard to imbue anything he said with any emotion.

'She was taken.'

'She was being protected.'

'There was an attack,' she said.

'She was taken.'

'That's right.'

'Where?'

The old woman raised her head and pointed beyond the power station, to where the peninsula swept back to the west and Camber Sands.

Jane stared at the workers in their overalls, hair tied back with bandanas. 'Has anybody tried looking for her?'

The woman looked at him as if he had just made a pass at her. 'Nobody has seen her since she was taken. We just assumed . . .'

'People survive,' Jane said.

'There's nothing we can do.'