Parts of Coventry, on the other hand, seemed to have power; they drove along a deserted section of dual carriageway that was fully lit by the arc sodium lights along the central island. To Jenny’s eyes the distribution of power seemed almost haphazard, as if some central switchboard had been overrun by monkeys who were now randomly punching the shiny buttons in front of them. She’d thought there might have been an even-handed distribution of powered time-slots, or if not that, then certain ‘safe’ regions - a little unfairly maybe - which would be allocated a constant supply of power to the detriment of the lost-cause big cities.

But no. There seemed to be no discernible pattern at all to it.

South of Coventry, the lights along the motorway went out and they once again adjusted to the pitch-black of night. Paul spotted a sign for a Travelodge ahead and swung Mr Stewart’s car down the slip-road as it came up.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Jenny.

‘I need to sleep. I’ve not slept since Monday night. It would be stupid if having made our escape earlier, we end up wrapping ourselves around the central barrier on the motorway.’

Jenny nodded. It made sense.

‘Let’s give it a look. If it’s surrounded by a baying mob, then we’ll push on, all right?’

They drove off the slip-road into an empty car-park in front of the motel. There were tell-tale signs that similar things had happened here as at Beauford Service Station; bits and pieces scattered across the parking area, some broken windows in the lobby at the front of the building, but that was all. The Little Chef next door to it on the other hand, looked like it had been more thoroughly seen to, every window smashed and a trail of detritus and trampled goods strewn in front of it.

‘Well, seems like whatever happened here has been and gone,’ said Paul.

‘I suppose everywhere that can be looted for food and drink has been emptied by now,’ said Jenny. ‘I wonder when all that’s been gobbled up, what people will do for food?’

‘I’m sure we’ll start seeing troops or police on the streets sometime today. It’s got to happen today,’ he said with less conviction than the last time he’d bullishly asserted things would right themselves quickly. He swung the car round and parked it just outside the entrance to the motel.

‘It seems okay to me.’

Jenny looked up at the two floors of dark little curtained windows. It would be nice to have a bed to sleep on, and the chance of stumbling across any wandering bands of thirst-maddened crazies here appeared to be acceptably remote.

There was no sign of anyone here and she wondered where exactly everyone was. Sixty-five million people on such a small island and since leaving Beauford Services, she’d seen hardly any.

Paul climbed out of the car and led the way inside. It was dark, of course. Pitch-black inside, with no ambient light from any source at all coming in through the cracked smoked-glass at the front.

‘Hang on,’ she heard him murmur, and a moment later, a pale square of light lit the foyer up dimly.

‘What’s that?’ she asked.

‘My organiser.’

‘Clever.’

In the absence of any other light, it was surprisingly bright.

‘Okay . . . stairs,’ said Paul. She watched the pale square of light float across in front of the reception desk towards a doorway, ‘Over here,’ she heard him say.

She followed him through, up one flight of stairs, through another door, and then they were standing in a corridor.

‘You seem to know your way around this one,’ she said.

‘They’re all very similar. And I use them quite a lot. Right then, first floor rooms. You choose.’

Jenny walked down the corridor, passing a door that was open. Jagged splinters of wood jutting out from the door-frame told her the door had been forced. She didn’t want to sleep in a room that had been picked over by someone. That just somehow felt . . . clammy. The next door along had also been kicked in, and the next. Finally towards the end of the corridor, she found a door that remained intact, locked. ‘I’ll have this one,’ she said.

‘You’re okay being alone? I spotted another locked one on the other side, up the far end. I can take that one.’

Jenny stopped to think about that. She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to spend the night sleeping in the same room as this guy, but then . . . being alone down one end of the corridor, in a deserted motel.

‘Okay, maybe we should share this one.’

‘I think that makes sense,’ said Paul.

He lifted his organiser up towards the door to read the room number. ‘How does Room 23 sound?’

With one well-aimed kick at the swipe-card door lock, the door swung in and banged off the wall inside; the noise echoed disturbingly down the empty corridor.

Inside, it was how she hoped she’d find it, undisturbed, cleaned, bed made for the next customer. She opened the curtain and the blind behind it, then swung open the window. The room was hot, and a faint breeze wafted in.

In the sky the grey light of dawn was beginning to provide enough natural light for them to find their way around. Paul quickly turned his organiser off and pocketed it.

‘Okay then, sleep,’ said Jenny, sitting down on the bed; a double bed.

Paul pulled open a cabinet door to reveal a drinks fridge. ‘A-hah. We’re in luck.’ Inside he found it decently stocked. ‘There’s several cans of Coke, ginger beer, tonic water, and a pleasing range of mini-liquors: vodka, gin, rum, whisky. Some beer even.’

Jenny smiled in the pale grey gloom of dawn. After the recent hours, the last few days, a single stiff rum and Coke would be absolutely what the doctor ordered, even if it was going to be warm and without ice.

‘I’ll have a rum and Coke, please.’

‘Good choice, Ma’am,’ said Paul. She heard the pop and hiss of the Coke can, the click of a lid being twisted off and the gurgle of the rum being poured.

‘Here.’

The first one was a strong one. The second drink she asked for she wanted weak, but Paul’s definition of ‘weak’ didn’t seem to square with hers.

‘So, you mentioned something a while back,’ said Paul, ‘about your hubby predicting this?’

‘Well, sort of. He wrote a report a while back . . . lemme see, yeah it was back in 1999, because that was the year we did Christmas in New York. It was an academic paper really, he wrote most of it when he was at university in the States, but then when he got commissioned to write it again, he did some new research and updated chunks of it with new data he’d managed to track down.’

‘And it was about this whole thing?’

‘Well, sort of I suppose. Andy was very secretive about it, client confidentiality kind of thing. But I know it had something to with Peak Oil, and our growing reliance on fewer and fewer major oil reserves, and how that made us much more vulnerable to someone needing only to disable a few places around the world to hold us all to ransom. He described how it could be done . . . which were the most vulnerable places . . . that sort of thing.’

The people who’d commissioned his work had paid him good money for that. Very good money - enough that they bought that house of theirs outright, and money left over that they were able to put both kids through fee-paying schools.

‘But after doing that job, you know . . . he started changing. Became I guess . . . edgy, very serious. He spent too much time obsessing about the whole Peak Oil thing. And a little paranoid too. Just silly little things like worrying about viruses on his computer that might be spying on him, noises on the phone line. Daft really. I don’t know, he used to be so much fun. Great company. And then, like I say, he changed after New York. And it’s been a slow steady roll downhill ever since. So much so, in fact, I was actually in the middle of organising our big split-up when this happened.’

‘That’s too bad,’ said Paul. ‘So, where is he now?’

‘Somewhere in Iraq. He’s been getting regular assignments there for the last few years. He was over there when this started. And my kids are alone in London.’

Jenny’s voice caught.

‘You okay?’ Paul asked, placing a hand on her shoulder and squeezing gently.

‘Of course I’m not. I just want to get home. They need me.’

His arm slid across one shoulder, across her neck to the other. ‘Don’t worry Jen, I’ll get you home safe and sound. I’ve got you this far haven’t I?’

She felt the tips of his fingers slide under her chin, lifting her face up to look at him, and it was then that she knew where this was going.

‘Look, I . . . errr . . . I think I’ve had enough to drink.’

‘You’re kidding right? There’s loads more, and Christ we deserve it after the shit we’ve been through together. What do you say?’

‘I think we’ve probably both had too much. We need to keep our wits about us, right? Who knows what might happen tomorrow? ’

Jenny swung her legs off the bed. ‘And you know what? I might try one of the other rooms—’

A hand wrapped around her forearm. ‘Why? What’s up?’

It was a tight, urgent grip, and it hurt a little.

‘Look, I just think it’s a good idea, okay?’

‘What? Come on. We’re just talking here. No harm done.’

‘Can you let go please?’

His grip remained firm. ‘I’ve been looking out for you these last few days. It’s not too much to bloody ask is it? A little . . . conversation?’

She could hear the slightest slur in his voice. He wasn’t pissed as such, just a little tipsy. No worse than the couple of come-ons she’d fended off at the last office Christmas party she’d been to; harmless enough somewhere crowded, but a little disconcerting, alone like this.

‘I’ve been looking out for you,’ said Paul again. ‘Not asking much, for Chrissakes.’

‘I think Ruth looked out for me a little more than you did,’ she replied, and almost immediately wished she hadn’t.

‘Fuck you,’ he snarled.

‘Would you mind letting go please?’

He let her go, and she headed for the door. ‘I’ll see you in a few hours, when you’ve sobered up.’

She stepped out into the corridor, and strode through the darkness of it, the only light, the faintest pre-dawn grey coming in through a window at the far end. She picked a doorway halfway down on the right. It was a door that had been forced by someone, and as she stepped in, she could see that the room had been hunted through and the drinks cabinet emptied.

She’d hate to see what Paul was like when he was fully loaded.

Jenny pushed the door shut behind her. And as an afterthought, she pulled the armchair in the corner of the room across the doorway. Not that she thought it was entirely necessary. Paul was like the other office Romeos; emboldened a little by the booze, but still essentially a coward. A sharp ‘no’, or a ‘piss off ’, did the trick for the likes of them . . . most of the time.

She lay down on the bed and then felt the tears coming - worried about Jacob and Leona, and Andy too, realising she’d been so wrong in the way she had treated him. She wished the robust, no-shit-taken Ruth was here with her right now, talking some good plain common sense, probably making her laugh too. If Ruth were here, they’d probably be raiding the drinks cabinet together right now and shamelessly taking the mickey out of Paul.

Jenny closed her eyes and was asleep within a minute.