“Last night, they said it would be available from seven,” David said helpfully. “As I came up the stairs, I could smell bacon cooking.”
“Good. I’m feeling really hungry.” Now that she could hear the water from the shower, she disappeared into the bathroom. There was a sudden gasp from the bed.
“Why you in here?” Ivelina asked, looking at David.
“It’s OK,” David replied, holding up his hands, palms outwards. “I’ve only come to get Jackie.” He looked at the girl in the bed. She had pulled the duvet up to her chin and her frightened, dark-brown eyes were staring out at him. “Please tell Jackie that I’ll be waiting outside.” He went through the bedroom door are disappeared.
Very soon, Jackie emerged from the bathroom, wearing just a towelling robe. She turned on the light and saw Ivelina cowering in the bed. She looked completely terrified.
“Are you OK?” Jackie went over to the bed.
“There was a man, David, in here.”
“Oh that! Yes, I know. He came to wake me up so we could go down for breakfast together. Are you hungry?”
Ivelina shook her head.
“Well, I think you must be. So I reckon that you should get up and have a shower and then get dressed in your clean clothes.”
“No … No! I wait … after you go.”
“Don’t be silly. We all had a bath together last night and then slept with each other in this bed. There’s no need to be ashamed.” Ivelina, in reply, pulled the duvet over her head, lay on her side and curled up in the foetal position.
“Listen, Ivelina.” Jackie knelt down next to the bed and put her hand onto the younger girl’s shoulder. “After you’ve had a shower and got dressed, we can all go downstairs and find your brother. But first, you must get up!”
“No! I can’t.” Her answer came, somewhat muffled, from under the duvet.
From the bathroom door, Liz was watching this exchange.
“Jackie’s right,” she announced. “We can’t wait here all day. Here, take my robe.” Liz let it slip from her shoulders and threw it onto the bed, before picking up her clean clothes from the chest of drawers by the door. First she stepped into her panties and then put on her bra. Ivelina’s head emerged from the duvet to pull the bath robe to her. She was crying.
“Come on, Ivelina. It’s not all that bad,” Liz said.
“Actually, I guess it might be. I think her period has started,” Jackie suggested.
“Well, that’ll be a bit inconvenient,” Liz agreed. She went to the bed and sat down. “Are you bleeding?” Ivelina nodded. “Right. That’s OK.” She picked up the robe on the bed and put it on over her underwear. She turned to Jackie. “Try and get her to the bathroom. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.” With that, she left the room.
“Can you get to the bathroom?”
“I think … OK.”
“Here, I’ll help you.”
Jackie drew back the duvet and helped Ivelina to sit up. She slipped off her own bathrobe and put it around the Bulgarian girl’s shoulders. Drawing the duvet further back, she noticed some spots of blood on the bottom sheet. She helped the younger girl to swing her legs over the side of the bed, before gently pulling her upright.
“Do you have stomach pain?” she asked.
“Yes. Always. But will be OK in two, three hours maybe.”
“You’ll feel better after a hot shower, as well, I expect.”
Jackie put her arm around Ivelina’s waist and, together, they walked to the bathroom. Jackie made her sit on the toilet, while she started the shower. There now seemed to be a lot of blood. Soon she was under the shower and washing herself properly. Jackie washed and dried her hands and went back into the bedroom, where she quickly dressed. She opened the bedroom door to find David waiting outside. He rushed to her and they kissed each other hungrily.
“Blimey! Love’s young dream!” Liz was back, carrying a box of tampons and some pads. “Is our young friend all right?”
“She’s in the shower.”
“I’ll see if she’s feeling any better.”
“Hang on. I’ll come as well.” She turned to David. “Can you wait just a bit longer?” He nodded.
They could hear the water was still running. Liz went to the bathroom door. Inside everything was very steamy, but she could see Ivelina standing under the shower.
“How are you feeling?”
“A little better.”
“I’ve got some tampons and some pads for you. Whichever you prefer.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ll leave them here for you.”
Liz went back to the bedroom where she finished dressing. Her stockings were missing, but that didn’t really matter as they were very badly torn. Her blouse, however, had been expertly repaired. The jacket and skirt were pressed and clean. That’s really rather impressive, she thought. Jackie had thought the same as she was dressing. Liz looked at Jackie.
“Why don’t you go down with David?”
“OK.”
“I’ll hang on here for Ivelina and then we’ll come down together.”
“OK.” Jackie repeated, before disappearing through the door.
Liz pulled the duvet off the bed and bundled up the bloodied bottom sheet before replacing the duvet. Ivelina came out of the bathroom, looking rather pale, but definitely brighter. She went to her clothes and started to dress.
“Who make them clean?” she asked.
“Staff from the hotel, I expect.” Liz simply presumed that laundry maids would have done the work, not realising of course that, these days, there was only Betty. She looked at the young Bulgarian girl. “Whereabouts are you from?”
“Bulgaria.”
“Yes. I know that. Which town or city.”
“A little village, called Balsha, near to Sofia.”
“Do you miss it?”
“Oh yes. It is very pretty and everybody is very friendly.”
“Why are you here?” Liz asked her disingenuously.
“My brother is to look for work. I asked to come with him. He is trained, how you say, as carpenter? With wood. I want to learn better English before I return home. We have uncle who lives in Will…es…den.”
“Why were you in the bus? That’s nowhere near Willesden.”
“Our uncle is to work in day, so we went to see London Tower. Then we went on bus to see river and boats.”
“Do you have any travel documents?” Ivelina looked up sharply, suddenly realising that she had been under interrogation. “Why you ask? Who are you?”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” Liz returned the look. “I should have said. My name is Woman Police Constable Elizabeth Drury. I work at Scotland Yard. I am currently working in the Illegal Immigration Section…”
Ivelina nodded slowly, looking carefully at the other woman. “My brother has all the necessary documents,” she said slowly.
“That’s OK, then.” Liz broke the tension. “Are you ready? Come on! I’m starving.”
She opened the bedroom door, to find Jackie and David standing outside, holding hands. “We’re off for breakfast.”
“We’ve been waiting for you.”
Together they all went downstairs to the dining room, where they found the other refugees from the bus and the boat. Ivelina went over to her brother where she spoke to him in their own language. He stood up and hugged his sister, while he surveyed the room. He noticed WPC Liz Drury watching them from the doorway, before following Jackie and David across the floor to an empty table.
In a demonstration of normality, Chantelle was taking the orders and both Jack and Sebastian were serving the breakfasts as they arrived in the dining room. Down in the kitchen, Betty was cooking the hot breakfasts to order. The speed with which the breakfasts arrived seemed to demonstrate that this was just another day in the hotel, albeit somewhat busier than normal. Outside the sun was trying to break through the mist. They had all heard the news. Each succeeding bulletin was increasing the detailed informat
ion about the disaster. Nothing had been experienced in London like this since the Blitz, nearly a century earlier.
Fred Shemming climbed up the training tower just before dawn. The long night slowly and somewhat reluctantly was turning into a misty, grey day. There was little wind and visibility was very poor. He could hardly see beyond Canary Wharf and down to the Isle of Dogs. After a few minutes standing there alone, Dinah joined him.
“What are you doing up all by yourself?” she asked.
“I’m so bloody tired, I just needed to get away from all the activity downstairs.”
“It’s not like you to use bad language.”
“I know.” He slowly shook his head. “But in the circumstances, I think it’s absolutely appropriate. We’ve been relatively lucky here on the Isle of Dogs. That wave was so high, it should have been far more destructive. We haven’t really surveyed all the damage to the housing estates down in Millwall and I guess there must have been extensive damage out in Canning Town and Beckton, but our teams have only brought in twelve dead people so far.”
Dinah put her arms round her husband’s waist. “Even before the wave arrived, you were thinking what to do for the best and you made sure all the children and teachers evacuated. Was that prescient or just good sense? Your actions have done more for this community than anyone could have expected.”
“I’m not so sure,” Fred replied. “All I do know is that it’s been a hell of a long night and now we’ve got a river mist hindering the work.”
“I don’t think it’ll last long.” Dinah looked up at the grey sky. “There’s no wind and the air is really quite warm. I expect the sun will burn it away by ten o’clock.”
“You may well be right. But until then, we’ve still got plenty work to do.”
Just to the east, a mile downriver, a motorized army patrol on the north bank was driving rapidly eastwards along the A13 towards the Hornchurch Marshes and the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge. The mist over the river seemed to be lifting and the sun was already trying to break through.
After passing Barking and Dagenham to its left, the road turned south east towards the Rainham Marshes. All the soldiers were looking towards the river and, as the mist cleared, they could see sea containers, vehicles of all types and bodies scattered haphazardly between the road and the river. In the direction of the Bridge, there were columns of black smoke, mixing with the mist and drifting idly away, down river.
Just before Aveley, the road crossed over the railway and turned more southerly towards the river, in order to skirt around the township. There were no obstructions on the road and soon the column was leaving Aveley behind. It turned first to the north and then eastwards before approaching the M25 at the Mar Dyke Interchange.
Here, the column halted to survey the roads and the land to the south along the London Orbital Motorway towards the river. The approach road to the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge was raised well above the surrounding land on concrete pillars but, although it was still closed, all three southbound lanes were completely blocked with traffic. To the east, they could see that the oil depot on the south of the Thurrock Trade Park was burning, creating an enormous pall of oily, black smoke, which was mixing with the remains of the sea mist and slowly drifting down river towards the sea. Every so often, they could hear the whump of a muffled explosion as more oil caught fire.
After carefully assessing the situation and formalising the most suitable route, the column continued east along the A13 to the next junction, where it turned south down the A126. Moving slowly and carefully through the devastated streets, it made its way into West Thurrock, before finally entering the Trade Park.
It now turned back towards the Bridge along Oliver Road and entered the oil storage depot. The roadways were covered with spilt oil, making them virtually impassable. Many of the storage tanks were leaking and there were regular explosions, as the fuel oil caught fire. It appeared that, before the blackout had plunged London into a frightening and disorientating darkness, power cables had been snapped apart by heavy containers floating in the flood water causing short circuits and starting a number of fires. These spread to other storage tanks which were still burning, creating the choking, black smoke.
They reported back to HQ all that they could observe, as well as forwarding videos of the damage and devastation in the oil storage depot. The column turned northwards, before reaching the fence at the end of Oliver Close that separated the road from the railway line. After cutting the metal links, two jeeps were deployed to drive eastwards along the tracks in order to assess the state of any damage at the tunnel entrance where the railway disappeared under the river. When they returned, they reported that the tunnels were full of water. The column turned back along Oliver Close to drive under the railway bridge to the roundabout on the north side of the tracks, before proceeding up St Clements Way.
Before it passed under the approach roads to both the Bridge and the Dartford Road Tunnels, the column waited for the other two jeeps to return. Once again, it turned north up Stonehouse Lane, until it came to the roundabout where it was able to access the slip road coming off the north bound lane from the road tunnel. There was no traffic moving northwards at all, so the column was able to drive the wrong way down the slip road, heading back towards the road tunnels. Unlike the Bridge, there was no traffic on either the southbound or the northbound lanes. Very soon, the column reached the tunnel exit and parked.
Two platoons were deployed, one to the northbound tunnel exit and the other, across the central reservation, to the entrance of the southbound tunnel. Both teams immediately reported that the tunnels were completely flooded and full of smashed vehicles. The cars nearest the entrance had been forced back by the weight of the water into the vehicles behind them, completely crushing them. All the drivers and passengers were dead. As far as they could see, the tunnels were full of vehicles and because access to both entry and exit lanes were blocked, the immediate assessment was that the surge of water, after overwhelming the Thurrock Trade Park, had swept into the approach roads, not so much because the defences had failed, but simply because of the immensity of the wave.
That enormous amount of water then forced itself into the tunnel, demolishing those first few vehicles near the entrances, before inundating all the rest deeper in the tunnel. Without appropriate cutting and lifting equipment, it would be impossible to enter the tunnels or even extract any vehicles. In fact, it would take many days of heart breaking work to clear and drain the tunnels and it would take even longer to identify all the travellers.
The soldiers wondered why there were no vehicles on the approach roads themselves, before reaching the conclusion that the wave must have been so massive, it simply scoured the roadway of all vehicles. Any that were on the approach road would have simply been swept upriver and dumped onto the Rainham Marshes and beyond. There was even a possibility of some survivors, but each vehicle would have to be searched individually and that would take both manpower and time.
A third platoon was now despatched to assess the state of the Bridge’s concrete pillars. Some containers, after being swept into the river from the container port at Tilbury, were carried across West Thurrock and the Thurrock Trade Park, before crashing into the concrete uprights of the bridge. Some simply sunk next to the bridge, although others were swept further west onto and beyond the Rainham Marches. Each of the concrete pillars would need a careful assessment. Although the Bridge itself was closed, all the lanes leading south were full of standing traffic. As the mist continued to clear, the soldiers could see the lines of traffic snaking southwards, even out and over the river itself.
A similar military column, despatched to the southern end of the Bridge, was reporting the same level of death, devastation and destruction. In addition, it was able to explain the non-movement of the traffic from the Bridge. As the wave swept over the fence and into the tunnels on the south side, it also carried vehicles southwards along the carriageway until it met the toll booths where ther
e were now many vehicles piled up in a mountain of twisted, broken metal. Soldiers were already searching for survivors, but with precious little reward.
After reading the reports from the Dartford crossings, civil servants at the Ministry of Transport, liaising with the Police, deployed officers to help clear the Bridge of traffic and to turn the queues around. The Bridge would be closed for the foreseeable future, until its foundations were thoroughly checked and passed ‘fit for purpose’. The Minister for Transport was also advised that every bridge over the river Thames, from Dartford to Teddington, would be subjected to a similar survey and that, until this task was complete, London would become a city split east/west by the river.
In Downing Street, after freshening up, the Prime Minister called an emergency cabinet meeting. At ten o’clock, as his ministers filed into the Cabinet Room, he faced them looking pale and drawn. Although impeccably dressed, he appeared to have aged several years. His whole demeanour made him look as though he had worked through the night, which, of course, he had.
"Colleagues. I have no simple words to describe the catastrophe which has struck London. We have an immense disaster on our hands which is immediate, overwhelming and defining. You are all aware that, yesterday afternoon, a sea surge, created by whatever malevolent meteorological forces, flooded vast swathes of London, on both sides of the river Thames. To put this into a wider, more European context, that same sea surge has overwhelmed Holland and caused widespread flooding throughout northern Europe from France and Belgium, through Holland, Northern Germany and Denmark. The loss of life has been immense and widespread.
"Here, in London, my office is receiving regular updates of the structural damage and loss of life. The Metropolitan Police and the River Police are working closely with the Army. The Ambulance Service is working in tandem with the Fire Service. Together with innumerable members of the public, each service has already worked through the night and many lives have been saved. They are also engaged in recovering and identifying the dead, a task of immense difficulty.
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