Outside, the light was strange.

The sky was a cloudless, mid-April deep blue; the last of the night’s chill was already dissipating. But Venus was clearly visible in the east, a bright spotlight: a third light in the Scottish sky, neither Moon nor sun.

And there was something else, a silvery-grey texture to the air, as if everything was veiled by a fine smog, leaching out the colours. It was the reflected light from the quicksand, tinging the air grey: quicksand, rock chewed-up and transformed by something from the Moon, glowing silver-grey by the light of the wreck of Venus.

This is a strange time, she thought uneasily.

She got in the car and snapped on the radio, flicking it to a rock channel. She started the car and turned south, towards Henry’s lab.

If Ted can face this, so can I.

It was a little after seven. The early commuter traffic, heading towards the city centre, was already building up. Men in suits, fewer women, strictly one to a car. More than usual? Less? She couldn’t tell. But there were other vehicles: a lot of four-wheel-drives and people movers, Ford Galaxies and Renault Espaces, some laden with possessions and kids, moving in every direction, east, west, north — every direction away from the Seat, to the south. Early evacuees?

Evidently Ted wasn’t alone in his intuition.

Of, course there were some who would relish this.

Perhaps there were survivalists, even here in respectable suburban Scotland, waiting for it all to fall apart — heading for the highlands with their cans of corned beef, ready to aim illicit shotguns at anyone who came begging. Or maybe they just wanted some place more challenging to take their 4WDs than the car park of Sainsbury’s. Riding out the cosy catastrophe, in Barbour jackets and Land Rovers.

“Fuck them,” said Jane aloud. In a year such folk would be starving, chasing sheep around the highlands, and in two years they would be dead.

There was a queue of cars forming already outside the hypermarket. There was even a line of pedestrian shoppers forming outside the Iceland supermarket.

Frozen food. Smart. Not that she’d thought to exclude that from the list she’d given Jack. But the kid was brighter than she was, in many ways; he’d probably figure that out for himself.

She ought to make sure he put in tampons, though.

When she reached the Holyrood Road she found herself in a stationary queue of traffic. She got out of the car and walked a little way forward, until she could see to the head of the queue. There was a pair of police cars parked crudely across the carriageway, blocking the way, and a tape stretched more symbolically across the road. Some cars were already being turned around and were coming back; the drivers looked irritated, business types with meetings they needed to get to.