‘The sky reminds us of our own insignificance,’ he said. ‘It will always be there. Isn’t that amazing?’
Little Cosima had nodded and held his hand tighter. She had adored her father; had at one time genuinely believed he knew the answers to all of her questions. She can’t remember the precise moment her love had turned to contempt. It might have been when she walked in on him getting head from the nanny. Or it might have been that as soon as Cosima hit adolescence, she was no longer his little girl. She got acne and independent thoughts and suddenly he found her too difficult to like.
Still, he had taught her to love the natural world. It’s why she does what she does now. She wants to protect all the wildness, to save it from the certain extinction pursued with such aggressive selfishness by her parents and everyone who came before. As Cosima works herself up quickly into a familiar blizzard of fury, she finds her anger warms her and she can feel her fingers again. She hates her parents. Hates the school they send her to. Hates that her father is the Tory fucking Energy Secretary, for fuck’s sake, and that he and his mates have wiped billions off the green budget. She hates her sister Cressida, with her big blue eyes and her stupid ear piercings and her Olivia Rodrigo obsession. She hates her brother, Hector, and his pathetically unimaginative addiction to gaming and Formula 1. She doesn’t yet hate Bear but he’s the youngest and it’s only a matter of time. She hates her parents’ friends. All the thin women in cashmere and fat men in tweeds, clinking their champagne glasses and shooting their pheasants, talking about wokeism and school fees and what-do-we-think-about-Gaza while sitting around long dining tables set with family silver and inherited insouciance. All of them sleepwalking to the edge of the abyss, leaving lights on, flying long haul, eating steaks, driving fuel-guzzling cars. A monstrous army of wealthy navel-gazers. The only one who cares is Fliss. Was Fliss, rather. She still hasn’t got used to thinking of her aunt in the past tense.
‘What was that?’ Peatbog asks and only then does Cosima realise she’s been muttering out loud.
‘Oh nothing. Just angry.’
‘That’s the ticket,’ Peatbog says softly, and although she can’t makeout his face in the dark, Cosima can imagine his smile and his crinkling crow’s feet. ‘Use the rage. There’s power in it.’
He pats her on the back and then – all at once – they are at the terminal gates. Broccoli opens his rucksack and starts handing out their fluorescent tabards, each one emblazoned on the back with orange devil horns – the group’s insignia. The tankers are already lining up at the gates, ready to criss-cross the country with their supplies of death fuel. River catches Cosima’s eye. He lets his gaze linger for longer than necessary and then gives the smallest smile. She catches it. There is a leaping sensation at the back of her throat, as if she has swallowed the wind.
River turns and strides towards the terminal, taking three others and a rolled-up Oblivion Oil banner with him. As the gates creak open, the four slip through the gap and into the darkness. Soon, they’ll start climbing the tankers.
Cosima, Peatbog and Meadow begin to unfurl the second protest banner and tie it to the gateposts; Broccoli stands in the middle of the road, hands pressed together calmly. His posture is erect, defiant and his face is serious and friendly. His features exude approachability.
In the gloomy light, a tanker driver leans out of his cab and beckons Broccoli over: ‘What the fuck are you doing, mate?’
‘We’re trying to raise awareness of the climate emergency,’ Broccoli says.
The tanker driver guffaws.
‘We’re already fucking aware. You lot are all over the news.’
‘We’re glad you’ve noticed.’
‘Yeah, yeah. We’ve noticed alright. Now kindly …’ The driver makes a brushing motion with his hands, as if shooing away midges. ‘Skedaddle. We’ve got a job to do.’
The driver turns back to his steering wheel. A pair of fluffy pink dice hang from his rear-view mirror. His attitude is dismissive, but not yet unkind. Cosima sits cross-legged on the cold tarmac. Meadow follows suit. Peatbog, who has arthritis in one knee, stays standing. They know their role is to stay silent and immovable and to leave the chatto Broccoli. The more time they can give the four others to scale the tankers inside the terminal, the better.
‘I’m afraid we can’t do that,’ Broccoli says.
The driver winds his window back down.
‘What’s that?’
‘I said, I’m afraid we can’t get out of your way.’
‘Bollocks. Course you can. You’ve made your point. Now let us get on with it.’
Broccoli shakes his head and places his hands against the driver’s door.
A queue of lorries has now formed behind them. At the gates, Cosima checks her watch. Enough time for River and the others to have got into position. She squints. Some 30 feet down the line, she can just about make out the fuzzy silhouettes of River and his crew. They are sitting on top of the cylindrical tanks. They’ve made it. She feels a mixture of pride, relief and fear. She chews the inside of her cheek.
The driver leans one arm against the open window and sucks his teeth. Cosima sees muscled tattoos and a flashy watch. There is the minutest shift in atmosphere. A fissure. It’s the moment everything slides; the moment when a wave approaching the shore does not recede but grows impossibly until it blots out the horizon.
‘Look, mate,’ the driver is saying now, each word over-enunciated as if he is speaking to a particularly slow child. ‘Everybody’s aware. We all know you think the planet is fucked.’
Broccoli shrugs. ‘Respectfully, there’s a difference between awareness and action.’
The driver winds his window back up and starts the engine. The wave topples and crashes. A blaring of horns. Shouting.
‘You fucking eco-cunts!’
‘Get out of the fucking way!’
They are used to the language, but it still hurts. Each swear word cuts through the tatty remnants of Cosima’s bravado like a rapier.On the tarmac, she tries to ignore the threat of violence pressing at her back.
