Page 9 of Jenny James Is Not a Disaster
“I’m Bob. From the council.”
He is wearing a hard hat. And his name is Bob. So, automatically, I start humming theBob the Buildertheme tune, and hope that he can fix it. He doesn’t react—maybe he’s heard it before.
“Are you the property owner?” he asks, looking around. I’m guessing that Luke fits more into the mental image of a man who lives in a van than I do. And once upon a time, just a few hours ago, I was wearing office clothes and looking more respectable. Now I only have one shoe and I’m covered in mud.
“We rent it,” I reply. “Or we did. Not much left now. Do you think there’s anything that can be done to salvage it?”
“Oh no, I wouldn’t have thought so,” he says blithely. “Certainly not today. There are people on the way to make the scene safe, cut off the gas and electric, that kind of thing. We don’t want an explosion on top of everything else, do we?”
“No. We really don’t,” I say, my eyes widening. Bob is clearly not someone who is good at reading the room.
“The main thing now,” he continues, “is to make sure nobody gets hurt. I’ve done a quick survey and it looks as though the worst is over, and there won’t be any more land loss. The storm is peaking, and tomorrow the forecast is much better. Then we can do a proper assessment and take things from there.”
“Will we be able to go back?” asks Charlie. “And, you know, see if we can find any of our things?”
“I can’t say at this stage. We have dealt with this kind of thing before on this coastline, but it’s usually a lot more gradual. It usually happens over days or even weeks, which means we can do a planned evacuation, give people time to pack. This... well, this wasn’t that, was it? I’ve not seen this happen before.” He sounds genuinely intrigued, like this has all presented him with an amazing puzzle to solve.
“Wow. We just got lucky, I suppose,” I say, feeling a stirring of annoyance. I control it, because none of this is Bob’s fault.
“It’s the weather,” he says thoughtfully. “Climate change is real. What happens in a big storm like this, the cliffs get eroded. We saw it with the Beast from the East in 2018. This time, though, it’s on top of weeks and weeks of rain, which has softened everything up. That process has probably been going on for a while. We get quite a few landslides when the precipitation is heavy and constant. So you’ve got the rain, the erodibility of the cliffs here, and the erosivity of the waves being whipped up. Between those things, plus the geology, the local currents, the groundwater levels... well, I suppose it was the perfect storm.”
I meet Luke’s eyes, and he shakes his head. It’s not just me imagining it—Bob has said those last words with a total lack of irony.
“Totally,” I reply. “Pretty much the best storm I’ve ever seen.”
He nods eagerly, glad that I agree.
“For now, I need you to stay away from the building. I’ve classed it officially as being structurally unsafe.”
I blink, assaulted with images of cracked walls and the crumbling plasterwork and the roof flapping in the wind like one hand clapping. The toilet, perched on my bed.
“I have to say, I think you’re right,” I answer. It is better than what I wanted to say, which was a heavily sarcastic, “No shit, Sherlock.”
It is only just sinking in, now, how close I’d come to being structurally unsafe myself—running around out there near the new cliff edge, trying to save photos. I wasn’t listening to Charlie, and in that moment, I hadn’t been at all concerned with what might have happened if I’d slipped in the wrong spot and followed my lupins into the sea below. I shudder at the thought.
“Right,” continues Bob, all business. “Well. My team is on its way, as are the emergency services, so for now we need to get you somewhere safe for the night. Do you have family you can go to?”
It is a simple question, of course, but it has a complicated answer. Yes, I have family—but they live hundreds of miles away and I haven’t seen them for almost two decades. We’re not what you’d call close.
Bob doesn’t need to know any of that, so I just shake my head. I see a moment of sadness flitter across Charlie’s face and bite my lip. He has always wanted a bigger family, has always envied the chaos of his friends’ lives, the tangle of siblings and grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles. Whereas I’ve been content with our solitude—I chose it, after all—he has often said he always wished he had more relatives around him. He doesn’t understand that the upsides come with steep downsides, or how the people you love most in the world can also be the ones who hurt you the worst.
I feel a wash of melancholy, probably a combination of everything that has happened today and the brandy—yet another perfect storm.
“We can get you to a hotel,” Bob continues, oblivious to the swirl of emotions he has unleashed. “Find you some clothes, the basics. Maybe you could make me a list of what you urgently need, and I’ll see what I can do?”
“Um... how much will it cost? The hotel?”
I hate the fact that I have to ask. I hate the fact that I am worried about my card getting declined, about embarrassing Charlie, about the money that I don’t have.
“Nothing. We have a fund for things like this—don’t worry. It won’t be the Ritz, and you shouldn’t hit the minibar, but your accommodations and food will be covered.”
“No minibar?” I repeat. “Not even those stubby tubes of Pringles or a Toblerone that costs a tenner?”
“Um... well, under the circumstances, maybe the Pringles? Anyway. I’ll leave you to it and come back in a bit for that list. Are you okay here for the time being?” He glances between me and Luke, obviously uncertain of the dynamic here, of how we relate to each other’s lives.
“They’ll be fine here,” says Luke, my Good Samaritan in a Motörhead top.
Bob nods and leaves with a jaunty wave. The wind almost blows him off his feet as he steps outside, and Betty barks at it, just to be safe.
