When River started speaking, he did so with a low cadence, almost as if he were talking to himself, unaware of the rest of them.
‘I’m not exaggerating when I say that the future of humanity is in our hands,’ River said. ‘The situation is urgent. Worse than urgent, actually. It’s a cataclysmic crisis the likes of which we have never seen before and will never see again. The next three to four years will determine if we save our world. It’s already too late to keep the global temperature rise below 1.5oC. By 2030, I predict hundreds of millions of climate refugees.’
A middle-aged man seated in front of Cosima sneezed, then apologised. River winced at the interruption, then held one hand aloft, like a priest about to bless his congregation. He waited for silence.
‘Worse,’ he said, and here he raised his voice just a fraction, ‘I predict mass slaughter, mass rape, mass starvation. Actually, forget prediction. If we don’t act now, I can guarantee it.’
After the talk, Cosima went home and cried on her bed for two hours. Her weeping was so voluble that even her mother knocked on the door and asked her if she needed any tampons.
‘I’m not on my period!’ Cosima shouted.
When, red-eyed, she went down for dinner, she couldn’t stop thinking about the devastation of the planet and the fact they were all going to die. It was roast lamb and she pushed it around her plate untouched until Susan, their housekeeper, cleared it away.
Two weeks later, when she decided to become vegetarian, her mother called it ‘a phase’ and instructed Susan to buy more chickpeas. Cosima tried to tell Serena it was an ethical stance, tried to talk to her father about it, lobbied her siblings to put food waste into the composting bin, but no one paid any attention. It all seemed so futile. The more her family ignored her, the more she despaired for them. Her despair atrophied so that, after a few months, she despised them for their wilful stupidity. She had to do something. To save humanity. Her family weren’t just part of the problem, they were the problem.
She went back to the community centre and listened to River talk three more times. Then she signed up for her first action.
Cosima doesn’t know what to do. She crosses her arms more tightly over her chest, holding Peatbog’s anorak closer to her. Beyond the terminal gates, Meadow is on the ground next to the unmoving human shape. River. She clasps Peatbog’s arm.
‘Do you think he’s OK?’
‘Can’t tell from here,’ he says.
They are both thinking the same thing. Let it not be fatal. She hasn’t fully appreciated until this moment just how much she’s relied on River’s forcefulness and sense of mission to allay her own anxieties. They’ve all needed his grim single-mindedness and unshakeable belief in the rightness of what they’re doing.
The police are swarming around the scene now, holding their arms aloft, appealing for calm. Broccoli is talking to them, his voice still steady. It’s the tanker drivers who are losing it. One of them has his head in his hands, his back shuddering with sobs.
Cosima starts to walk towards the gates, towards the trucks, towards River.
‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Pineapple.’
Peatbog grips her shoulder.
‘But …’ Cosima finds that she is crying. She wipes the tears away, embarrassed. Peatbog reaches into his trouser pocket and retrieves a fabric handkerchief. He passes it to her and she mops her face with it.
‘Think about it. The police are there. It’s not going to look good for you if, instead of getting back, you end up arrested and your parents have to come and bail you out.’
The dark blue of the sky is melting into patches of lightness. Early-morning shadows are being cast on the tarmac. Cosima checks her watch: 5 a.m. Peatbog, Meadow and Cosima are all meant to be back in the minibus by now, on their way to the station. The train leaves at 6.12. It’s the latest one she can catch to still make it in time for the funeral.
‘Will he be OK?’ she asks.
Peatbog smiles. His eyes turn lugubriously down at the corners and he looks like a friendly basset hound.
‘It will all be OK.’
She is grateful for the kindness of the lie.
‘Tell him … tell him …’
Cosima grasps for the words. They do not come.
‘I will.’
Peatbog gives her shoulder a final squeeze, then directs her back across the scrubland. In the distance, she can make out the headlights of the minibus.
‘Off you go. We shall hold the fort.’
‘Your anorak …’ she says, shrugging it off her shoulders and handing it back to Peatbog.
