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Michael's father pulled the Range Rover into the dark,
empty car park behind the pub. Vanessa was already cashing
up. It was only 8 o'clock but the pub was empty too.
She had arranged candles around the bar and she worked
from the light of a torch tucked underneath her arm.
The cash register was dead so she was figuring everything
out with a pencil and a scrap of paper.
"The lights went off at four thirty," she
explained. "A few people stayed for a while hoping
that the power would come back, and to keep out of the
rain. Half an hour ago they all went home." She
looked at them helplessly.
"Don't worry," said Michael's father, kindly.
"We'll finish off. Take the rest of the evening
off."
The entire village was in darkness. As they'd approached,
the last light they saw was ten miles away. Out of curiosity
Michael slipped behind the bar and climbed the back
stairs to the main landing. At the end of the landing
a door let on to a second flight of stairs up to the
attic rooms. Years ago Fred and Wilma had converted
the attic into two bedrooms, one for each of the children,
to keep them as far as possible from the noise of the
bar. Getting young children to go to sleep, they correctly
reasoned, was hard enough without the appeal of a perpetual
party downstairs.
Michael liked the rooms. They were spacious and private,
and they looked onto open fields at the back of the
pub. He opened the skylight window and smelt the scent
of wood smoke in the air. His breath made a cloud. There
were no electric lights for miles. He could just about
make out a few faint lights, probably candles or paraffin
lamps. One house, on the other side of the village,
seemed to have surprisingly bright candles, which seemed
odd.
He closed the window and reached for his clockwork
torch. He cranked the handle then pushed the button
forward. A powerful beam of light pierced the far corner
of the room, casting shadows all around. The quiet,
reassuring sound of the mechanism gently filled the
room.
He turned away and switched on his computer. The battery
was full, so it should work for an hour or two, and
the phone lines would be working, he felt sure. At least
he could surf. He picked up the extension in his room
to check and was surprised to find that it was dead.
Slowly he returned the handset to the cradle, thought
for a moment, and then reached for a small handheld
radio on the nightstand. Last summer, when his parents
took them all to California, he had bought two pairs
of these Motorola two-way radios. He knew they we legal
in the US, guessed that they were probably illegal back
home, but he bought them anyway, on the grounds that
in any fair world they should be legal.
Back home, he had tried them, very cautiously at first,
listening carefully to a regular radio and to the TV
set to check for interference. When no one complained
he started to use them more, with gradually increasing
confidence, and eventually decided that they were safe.
It was unlikely that he would be caught, and he could
always plead youthful ignorance.
Michael glanced out of the window. Lea's house was
just in line of sight half a mile away, but he couldn't
see any sign of life. If they had candles or lamps they
were too faint to be seen. He pressed the call button
once and waited patiently. At the other end the radio
would warble and then go silent, and Lea, if she heard
the call, would answer right away if she could, or else
take the radio to some quieter and more private place.
It was tempting to press the call button again but
Michael resisted. After a minute he heard Lea's voice,
very quiet but clear. "Did you call me?"
He whispered his response. "Can you talk?"
"Yes. Is your power off?"
"Looks like the whole village is dark. The phones
are out, too."
"That shouldn't happen in a power cut."
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