But she must. She splashed cold water on her face and went out to the kitchen.

Jack was eating a bowl of Coco Pops, the milk already stained a revolting diarrhoea brown, and he had turned on the small TV that sat on the serving bench.

“Mum, look at this.”

A train crash. Carriages tipped off their track, spilled and split over the ground. The picture, a little shaky, seemed to be coming from a helicopter suspended over the scene. The tipped-over carriages were long and sleek, shattered windows glistening as if moist. Fire was licking from a couple of the cars, bright despite the intensity of the early sun. She could see ambulances, police vehicles, emergency workers in fluorescent yellow jackets, bright in the sun, others in drabber everyday clothes. There were people lying over the broken ground, being covered by blankets, surrounded by buzzing helpers.

A reporter was shouting over the whine of aircraft noise, something about subsidence under the line causing the derailment.

Jack asked, “Will we see Granddad?”

“What?”

He pointed with his spoon at the TV. “On the telly. Will we see him?”

She looked again at the screen, and something still half-asleep in her snapped awake. This was Edinburgh. Abbeyhill, in fact, not a half-mile from the house. The rail line came out of Waverley Station and headed east, tracking the coast, towards Dunbar. The derailment must have been the explosion she heard. Unlike herself, Ted had known immediately what it meant, what to do.

The helicopter camera was taking wider-angle shots now. The bulk of Arthur’s Seat was visible, a crude, grass-clad knot, surrounded by an encrustation of streets and buildings. She could recognize Holyrood Palace. Probably this house was in the image somewhere, if she knew exactly where to look.

On the Seat, the quicksand patches were clearly visible, rough circles shining a matt silver-grey in the morning light, like spilled paint. Millions of tiny eggs, she thought, waiting to hatch.

She wished Ted had stayed. She wished Henry was here now.

“Eat up and get dressed,” she said.

“Have I got to go to school?”

“Listen. Get packed. Not too much. Pack for me… and for Granddad and Mike too.”

“Pack what?”

“Clothes. Blankets.” She frowned, thinking. “Torches. The camp stove. The tent. The canned food from the larder. A tin-opener. Blankets.” She forced a smile. “As if we’re going camping. Candles. Matches. The bathroom stuff—”

“By myself?”

“You can do it. Remember we’ve all got to fit in one car.”

“What about you?”

“I have to go find Mike. I won’t be long.”

The image on the TV had changed. Now there was a picture of a fire at a petrol station. Fountains of flame leaping up from the cracked concrete, the sagging yellow-green canopy of the station forecourt blistering. Another Edinburgh disaster: more subsidence, it seemed. The station’s thin underground tanks had cracked, and there had been a spark…

She went to get dressed.