“Evacuation,” Bhide said. “That’s what we’re looking at, if Dr Meacher is right. First the Scottish Midland Valley towns. We can send people to the highlands and islands in the far north, to northern England, and out of Britain altogether. To Northern Ireland. Eire. France.”

“We’ll have to think about the royals,” Fames said abruptly. “Get them to Canada maybe. Christ. The bloody royals. The King will hate it; he despises the Canadians…”

Holland stepped forward, angry. “Oh, this is all rot. Do you have any idea what you’re talking about?” he snapped at Bhide, and Henry saw old rivalries tense between them. “These are all short-term palliatives. If this gentleman is right, inside a few months, we would have to evacuate the country. It’s impossible. The capacity of the airports, the sea ports, the Channel Tunnel… Dr Meacher, we’re talking about moving sixty million people.”

“Of course it’s impossible,” Bhide said gently. “But we have to try. What else can we do?”

“But where would we go?” the Prime Minister asked softly. “It would be a new diaspora. The British, without Britain.”

Holland took a glass of wine and gulped it down. “Christ, here we go,” he muttered to Henry. “He went catatonic like this when the Euro collapsed.”

Bhide said nothing.

Fames said, staring out the window, “I have to go on TV tonight. A message to the nation. If you were in my shoes, what would you say, Dr Meacher?”

Henry took a breath. “Sir, you have to look at the probability that the machinery of government in this country isn’t going to last for much longer.”

Bhide nodded. “We still have regional government contingency plans from the Cold War days—”

“You have to go beyond that,” Henry said. “You have to plan for a time when you will not be able to govern at all. People must understand that ultimately their lives, the lives of their families, will be their own responsibility.”

“My last act,” Fames said, “will be abdication.”

“No, sir. Education.”

“And,” Bhide said, “we have to keep trying. We must buy time, as Dr Meacher says. And if the scientists can come up with some solution—” She looked to Henry.

“As soon as I’m done here I’m going to America to keep working on just that, ma’am. But—”

“Yes?”

“Right now, we’re nowhere near a solution.”

Fames was silent, gazing through the window.

Holland took another glass of wine; he dribbled spots of it down his shirt. “Catatonic,” he mumbled. “Bloody catatonic.”

When they let Henry go, the butler character led him out through a back way, through the basement which led past the ruins of an old Tudor tennis court; he didn’t want to face the press again.

3

At the end of their first day in the Rest Centre, Ted didn’t make it to bed until one in the morning.