2013 part 6.

I had lost so many in this strife and walked haunted by all the goodbyes I never said and all the feelings I had that I could have done more, held them when they yearned for warmth.
There was a strange sense now that nothing must be wasted, not a drop of water spilt, not a moment lost, every kiss, every word had to have potency, it had to have meaning.

We could go somewhere, he said. I know somewhere.
We walked north of the old Euston road, through the craters and ruins behind Kings Cross station. The new builds here had not fared as well as their Holloway Road counterparts, everywhere were pits of charcoal, crushed diamonds where the plate glass windows had exploded.

The pathways gave way to a clearing, and then vistas began to unfold.
Is it possible do you think? America? It seemed like a dream, a shimmering mirage. I didn’t know anyone that had successfully got through. When the strife first began, when the first talk of it emerged there were promises of green cards for people who fought. Then we heard the stories that the US had deterritorialized with little bases everywhere, you could be sent to a camp in Wales and told you were living in America. They didn’t want hordes of us teeming across the Atlantic; they wanted us sealed off here in our dirty contaminated little island. We had borne the brunt of this war, but the US didn’t want us. We were an embarrassment. The rest of the South East had become an American model of exurbia, a ring of postmodern development round the M25. The government kept announcing that the sooner London stabilised the sooner the economy would pick up. By stabilised they meant we had to sit meekly at home by the radio awaiting instruction and not illegally occupying the new builds. Investors will never return to London they said if those towers become ungovernable ghettos.
The days of mobile phones and Internet were long gone; they shimmered to us like the memory of some exotic bird, colourful and marvellous but difficult to believe. We quickly reverted to the age of stumbling miscommunication and hearsay. With the date etched into my mind I longed to see him, never had I felt such joy to hear news of someone. I approached the heath from Gospel Oak like a cub with two hearts.

Ishmael was living.

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