THE H-BOMB GIRL by Stephen Baxter (beach books txt) 📕

he’ll get bored with me quickly. That’s why I gave in fast. To get it over.

The worst thing about the bomb is that it took way all the things that are supposed to protect you. The vote. The law. Parents.

Those days before the bomb seem like a dream now. My memories seem to be dissolving. Baked-hard ground to scrape, a sky like an oven, mouldy potatoes that never grow right, hunger all the time. That’s the world. That’s reality. All there will ever be for me, I suppose.

All that and Corporal Wesley.

Laura flicked forward. The next long entry was from the following spring.

Monday 15th May 1967.

In People’s Hospital Number Seven. A cellar in Huyton. They keep us mums-to-be underground to shield the babies from the sun, and the radiation.

Baby due any time.

The food’s good in here. Beds clean. They look after mothers.

General Gresson, the American who kicked out General de Vere, is keen on mothers. One day, he says, we will build an army again, and cross the Channel, march through what’s left of Europe, and dish it to the Russkies once and for all. He needs mothers to produce all those soldiers.

During the Sunday war, they kept on until they’d fired off everything they could, shot off every missile, dropped every bomb. I suppose they’ll keep on now until they’re down to killing each other with rocks and bare fists.

But my baby isn’t going to be a boy. The doctor told me. I think I’ll call her Agatha.

Laura looked at Agatha, who was watching her read. Forty years old, scrawny, her hair patchy, her eyes were bright.

Joel visited. He’s Lance-Corporal Joel, now.

He’s getting into technical projects. He always was bright. He says he’s having a chance to complete the education that was cut short by the bomb.

He says a group of officers have got a secret plan.

When the bomb fell there were military bunkers all over the place. In Britain there were tiny little bunkers, for two or three men each, where men of the Royal Observer Corps holed up with their chemical toilets and their stacks of baked beans, while the Third World War raged over their heads, and made notes.

Some of the bunkers that survived, especially in the states, had advanced technology. Computers, lasers, all that. They were the best the military could buy. And after the bomb, while the rest of us were scratching away on the farms, in the bunkers and citadels, all that technology kicked off new research.

Joel says his officer buddies are talking about a time machine.

The Sunday War was a huge mistake. Probably even General Gresson, our new American emperor, would agree to that. So, suppose you could go back to 1962 and fix it? Stop the Cuba crisis blowing out of control the way it did? Wouldn’t that be worth doing? “You could save forty-five million lives in Britain alone,” Joel said. “At a stroke.”

“What would have happened instead?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then how do you know things would have been better?”

“They could hardly be worse, could they?”

Anyhow it’s all a dream. We can’t even grow enough potatoes, and he wants to build a time machine.

He always did like conspiracies, Joel. All his whispering buddies in CND before the bomb. Of course CND turned out to be right.

Also, Joel brought Little Jimmy to see me. Not that he’s so little now. Eleven years old, he grew up on a farm in the Lake District, and he’s as strong as an ox.

Jimmy was a bit wary. Maybe he didn’t remember me. But when he came into the ward I held out my hand. “Shillin’.” Then he grinned.

The three of us got weepy, talking about old times.

I admitted to Joel what Corporal Wesley had done to me.

After that, somebody beat Corporal Wesley to a pulp.

Laura looked up. Her eyes were tired from trying to read by candlelight. And she was tired inside too.

Agatha just watched her.

Laura flicked through the diary, until she came to the last entry of all. The handwriting was big, like a child’s, and it wandered over the page.

Saturday 18th April, 1970.

I can barely see to write. Stupid cataracts.

Joel came to see me, in the ward. He bounced Agatha on his knee. She’s always loved her Uncle Joel.

Joel looked clean, well-fed, healthy. The army lads always do. Not that I can see much of his face but a blur.

He says the Timeline Rectification Project is going well, but it might take another thirty or forty years to complete.

Too late for me. I said he should be looking for a cure for cancer. Like the cancer that’s going to take me away from Agatha before her third birthday. The bomb got me in the end. It gets all of us, said Joel.

We talked about old times. And we talked about what might have happened if not for the bomb.

I’m twenty-two. Might have gone to college, might have kids, might have a job Joel says men would have walked on the Moon by now. England would be getting ready to defend the World Cup they would have won in 1966 (in his dreams). The Beatles would have retired, rich and famous.

And Joel might have married Bernadette. That really is a dream, I said.

The nurse is coming to give me my bed bath. Joel is paying for her. You only get nurses if you pay for them. The National Health, another thing the bomb put an end to.

Joel has taken Agatha for a walk. I’m glad. She’s spent most of her life in holes in the ground, poor kid.

The sun is bright outside. Not harsh like it was a few years ago. There’s a bit of green in the fields, and I can hear a bird singing. When Agatha comes back I’ll tell her how mu

The last entry finished there, an unfinished sentence, an incomplete word.

Agatha was watching.

Laura didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry I left you.”

Agatha looked away.

Joel came out of the dark. “Nick’s