I sought to lose myself in clicking, like a child following bread crumbs in the forest, not even looking for Peter anymore, but still possessed by the sense that I was somehow following a trail, a trail with an end to it. And I thought that perhaps that was what everything in my life had in common: work, and buying things, and going to the gym, and eating meals, and looking at things on the Internet, that they felt like necessary work, resulting in progress toward an unspecified goal.

I bought a coat, some cosmetics, a pair of flip-flops, a bottle of high-end vitamins, spending £400 before I knew what I was doing. I accidentally saw a photo of a man moments before his beheading, eyes wide, head pulled back. And so the day passed.

Everyone else started to go home. Nothing had been achieved. I had a trapped and hopeless feeling. The last thing I watched, before finally leaving around seven, were a few unboxing videos. I had stumbled on this particular series a while ago. They were oddly calming. In each one, a pair of smooth white hands, employing a small pair of scissors and occasionally a craft knife, opened a package containing a desirable consumer item, usually something electronic. The unboxing was always done against the background of a blue cloth and the maker of the video had added an unobtrusive soundtrack, over which the occasional small sigh could be heard when the pair of hands encountered an obstacle—a particularly resistant flap or bit of tape. The process was neither rushed nor unduly lingered over. In each video, the sequence happened in the same order: First the exterior packaging was opened and discarded, then any accompanying information, instructions, and so forth were extracted and held up to the camera, then came the turn of the accessories—chargers, batteries, and so forth—if they existed. Finally, the interior packaging was inspected and the product itself withdrawn, cleared of any protective sleeves and displayed by the hands from each angle. And every time, when the moment finally came, I wondered if the hundreds of thousands of other people who watched these videos felt the same as I did, the same anticipation, the same surprise, and ultimately the same disappointment—that what was inside the box was just a thing.

CHAPTER 6

APOCALYPSE III

I could say it gave me a moment’s pause, going back out to the manor on my own to meet David, but that would be a lie. I was sour at the others for leaving me to spend the apocalypse with my mother, as though they had conspired to make my worst nightmare come true—me and my mother, the last people on earth, locked in battle.