Looking for Jake Read Free Page A

what’s happened? I said.
    You shook your head, shrugged and waved your arms vaguely to encompass everything around us.
    I don’t want to go home, you said. I felt it go. I was in the shop and I was looking at this weird little book and I felt something huge just . . . slip away.
    I was asleep in a train. I woke up and found it like this.
    What happens now?
    I thought you could tell me that. Didn’t you all get issued . . . rule books or something? I thought I was punished for being asleep, that’s why I didn’t understand anything.
    No, man. You know, loads of people have just . . . disappeared, I swear. When I was in the shop I looked up just before, and there were four other people in there. And then I looked up just after and there was only me and this other guy, and the shopkeeper.
    Smiles, I said. The cheerful one.
    Yeah.
    We stood silent again.
    This is the way the world ends, you said.
    Not with a bang, I continued, but with a . . .
    We thought.
    . . . with a long-drawn-out breath? you suggested.
    I told you that I was walking home, to Kilburn, just over the way. Come with me, I said. Stay at mine.
    You were hesitant.
    Stupid, stupid, stupid, I’m sure it was my fault. It was just the old argument, about you not coming to see me enough, not staying longer, translated into the world’s new language. Before the fall you would have made despairing noises about having to be somewhere, hint darkly at commitments you could not explain, and disappear. But in this new time those excuses became absurd. And the energy you put into your evasions was channelled elsewhere, into the city, which was hungry like a newborn thing, which sucked up your anxiety, assimilated your inchoate desires and fulfilled them.
    At least walk with me over to Kilburn, I said. We can work out what we’re going to do when we’re there.
    Yeah, sure man, I just want to . . .
    I couldn’t make out what it was you wanted to do.
    You were distracted, you kept looking over my shoulder at something, and I was looking around quickly, to see what was intriguing you. There was a sense of interruptions, though the night was as silent as ever, and I kept glancing back at you, and I tugged at you to make you come with me and you said Sure sure man, just one second, I want to see something and you began to cross the road with your eyes fixed on something out of my sight and I was getting angry and then I lost my grip on you because I could hear a sound from over the brow of the railway bridge, from the east. I could hear the sound of hooves.
    My arm was still outstretched but I was no longer touching you, and I turned my head towards the sound, I stared at the hill’s apex. Time stretched out. The darkness just above the pavement was split by a wicked splinter that grew and grew as something long and thin and sharp appeared over the hill. It sliced the night at an acute angle. A clenched, gloved fist rose below it, clutching it tight. It was a sword, a splendid ceremonial sabre. The sword pulled a man after it, a man in a strange helmet, a long silver spike adorning his head and a white plume streaming out in his wake.
    He rode in an insane gallop but I felt no urgency as he burst into view, and I had all the time I needed to see him, to study his clothes, his weapon, his face, to recognise him.
    He was one of the horsemen who stands outside the palace . . . Are they called the household cavalry? With the hair draped from their helmet spike in an immaculate cone, their mirrored boots, their bored horses. They are legendary for their immobility. It is a tourist game to stare at them and mock them and stroke their mounts’ noses, while no flicker of human emotion defiles their duty.
    As this man’s head broke the brow of the hill I saw that his face was creased and cracked into an astonishing warrior’s expression, the snarl of an attacking dog, idiot bravery such as must have been painted across the faces of the