Paradice

Prologue.

15th of May, 2037

Unease may be no stranger to cubicles on a Friday afternoon, but this is desperation. Parker rakes his hands through receding hair, stares closer at the table of data readings on the monitor; the numbers remain stubbornly unchanged.

There’s no way this should be happening until next century. He begins to extrapolate. Fear gains forms, and sweat beads on his forehead. Taking this job at the North Atlantic Observation Centre was not the clever move he imagined. Less still investing all his money in a property up here. He’d thought to beat a wave of climate escapees. It was supposed to heat up in the Scottish Highlands. Not the polar opposite.

At least he’ll have no trouble convincing his wife about what they must do now; she hates the dark winters and the isolation of Caithness. He calculates latitudes; around the 40th parallel is safest. Portugal, between Lisbon and Oporto, but on the coast to avoid the forest fires and the summer furnace of the Spanish Meseta. They won’t be able to afford a nice place…but nice is such a relative word.

He scans the office; three colleagues remain at their desks. Pretending an errand at the printer, he gets to the private meeting room without having to go near them. He shuts the door, draws a shuddering breath, and makes the call.

“Dewar Properties, this is Liz speaking.”

“Afternoon Liz, this is Parker Watson.”

“Hello Parker. How are the two of you getting on in the cottage out in Dunnet with all those fine views over the Pentland Firth?”

“It’s wonderful. But the reason I’m calling, Liz, is I’m afraid we’re going to have to sell up. I’d rather not go into details, just that it’s a family situation that means we have to urgently move back south.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that. Well it’s a desirable property and I think you should be able to get back a bit more than you paid for it, although it might take a few months. If you’re…”

“Actually I was hoping for a fast sale. One that’s locked in by the end of next week.”

“Sorry, next week?!”

“I assume it must be possible? I’m prepared to drop the price as required to make it happen. How much would you say?”

“Well…” He can sense Liz adapting, doubtless sniffing a fast, easy commission. “If you really have to sell that quickly we’ll need loan-to-value low enough that a mortgage can be fast-tracked. It’s your choice, but for what you’ve said my feeling is a fixed price at four-nine-nine to come in under the crucial half-million mark.”

It's an eighty-thousand-pound loss on a property he only bought nine months ago, but he has to remember what it’s going to be worth as soon as the world knows.

“Do it please.”

“I’ll need, let’s see…” Liz is turning eager now. “I can get the listing up on the website on Monday if you stop by the office and sign some paperwork today. Can you get here in the next hour?”

“No problem.”

“And you’re certain about this?”

“Yes.”

Because numbers have never lied to him, so he knows just how soon this place will become a hellscape.

---

And yet taking such a big financial hit grates horribly.

When he returns to his cubicle he looks again at the new readouts for their cold reassurance, and is chilled appropriately. He has system override authorisation to correct anomalous figures, and he abuses it now to hide the future until the next measurements arrive in a fortnight.

It's only when he’s gathered up his things and is about to leave that Parker realises there might be a profit for him in all this after all.

Algernon Bloom. The Right Honourable, which is British humour at its best. Minister of State for Trade and Development, his speciality peddling information and influence in any way that aids his hedge fund. Parker came into his orbit via a friend-of-a-friend, hush-hush contract to remove some embarrassing trojans from the politician’s home network.

He got three thousand in crypto for that night’s work. And there was another ten grand four years later when Parker, having risen to a decent level in climate modelling algorithms, decided to cash in on secret knowledge of the Northern Sea Route becoming unexpectedly ice-free.

Of course Bloom’s hedge fund then went on to make several million with futures trades based on the information, so this time Parker resolves to hold out for a way better price. Play this right and his new Portuguese villa can have a pool, views, hibiscus-filled gardens and everything.

“Hello? Yes?” The slick, posh voice is cautious.

“This is Parker Watson. I’m sure you remember.”

Breathing like a resting boar comes down the line. “Sorry, not a name I know. Let me give you my office number so you can tell them the details.”

“I have information similar to last time, but exponentially bigger.”

Another pregnant pause eventually births greed. “Go on.”

“First let’s talk money. I want two percent of all your firm’s profits that derive from what I’m about to tell you.”

“That’s preposterous!”

“I can go elsewhere.”

“Hang on, hang on! Look, purely in theory of course, but that kind of thing would take a lot of setting up. Friendly tax regime accounts, shell companies, structured dividends and whatnot. Juice would have to be worth all that.”

“It is. How and when is flexible, but I want my two percent and I’ll know what I’m due from your investor reports and company filings. Agreed?”

“Hypothetically speaking, if…”

“Just a plain yes or no please. And remember if I don’t get what I’m due I can release certain information from our previous dealings into the public domain.”

“You promised you were going to delete everything!” The minister’s voice is suddenly an affronted hiss. “I do not take kindly to being blackmailed.”

Then you should keep your hobbies legal, thinks Parker. “Yes or no?” he demands again.

“Fine; yes. But I wish to place on record my displeasure. Go on then.”

“The AMOC, that’s the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, is the ocean current component of the Gulf Stream and the key reason for Northern Europe’s temperate climate.” Only now, as he relates it aloud, do things truly hit home for Parker. “In recent years, as Earth warms, glacier meltwater from Greenland has been reducing the strength of the AMOC. This is entirely predictable because it’s basic physics, but it’s another climate change effect our leaders have been wilfully turning a blind eye to.”

“Listen here; I’m not paying good money for some sermon. It’s easy for you scientists to spout all this stuff when you don’t have to deal with economic realities or what the voters want.”

“I’m not sermonising,” snaps Parker. “I’m explaining why this is so unexpected and therefore why it’s valuable information. The whole area is deliberately under-researched, or everyone would have seen this coming sooner.”

“Okay, okay. Seen what, exactly?”

“AMOC has reversed.”

“Is that a problem?”

Parker shakes his head in disbelieving frustration. “Do you have a globe of the Earth there?”

“As a matter of fact I do. Very nice geopolitical one in semi-precious stonework my wife bought me for Christmas.”

“Turn it so you’re viewing from above the north pole. Look at Western Europe and the latitude lines from fifty up to sixty degrees north. The whole of the UK falls between them. Holland, Belgium, southern Sweden, Denmark, most of Germany. A combined, predominantly urban and suburban population of maybe two hundred million. Are you doing that?”

“Yes.”

“Now follow those same two latitude lines west. Across the Atlantic they contain Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia. On the eastern Pacific coast British Columbia and southern Alaska, and on the western the Kamchatka peninsula of Russia.”

“I see, but what’s your point? Barring oil and mineral reserves there’s nothing of significance in any of that lot.”

“Because those places spend six months or more of the year under snow and ice. Average - that’s across day and night - midwinter temperatures are minus ten degrees Celsius compared to London’s plus six. Instead of hundreds of millions of inhabitants there are tens of thousands because the surrounding land can’t supply food for more, transport is difficult, and it takes a hell of a lot of power to keep anyplace warm enough for people not to freeze to death in winter.”

“But…now hang on just a moment! I mean…you’re surely not suggesting Britain’s climate could become like this?!”

“No, I’m telling you it will. In fact at the worse end of the range if the AMOC really has reversed, as the numbers I’ve seen suggest.”

Finally the politician seems shocked. “When?”

“This coming winter.”

At the other end of the phone there is only stunned silence, allowing Parker to hear mid-spring birdsong from a verdant Home Counties garden. All of it is doomed.

Algernon eventually finds his tongue. “Jesus.”

“Will not save us,” replies Parker. “It’s going to be every bastard for himself. My two percent; don’t forget.”

1.

18th of May, 2037

Marianne perches on the edge of the half-bathtub and doesn’t quite sob. There was no blood after all. This isn’t like the other times, at least not yet. But she’s only around a month pregnant, and there’s so very long still to go.

Charlie taps at the locked door. “Are you okay?”

“Fine. It’s fine,” she manages.

He’d been all keyed up, just starting to tell her something when she felt the cramp. He was manic in fact, a fragile lid coming off hidden desperation. Bad news? Surely, because what other kind exists anymore?

That innate optimism of his hangs by a thread these days. It was why she married him, despite her family’s disapproval. Despite friends giving unwanted assurances that with her slender, blonde good looks she could do so much better. It was why they fell in love, as far as she’s able to recall.

But his face, never conventionally attractive, is becoming pinched into all its worst lines. He’s giving physical embodiment to lost potential. He’s turning into a man she isn’t sure she can tolerate looking at as they both grow old.

She hears him move away from the door, and after a moment longer to regroup she stands, undoes the lock, and exits into the tiny lounge-diner-kitchen. There’s nowhere to hide or even be meaningfully apart in that room, and Charlie, a big man and high contrast with his coarse black hair, barely seems to fit in it. She keeps her arms folded as he takes the couple of steps over to enfold her in an awkward but gentle embrace.

“You really okay, my love?”

She nods, and now he’s released back into the grip of whatever was driving him earlier.

“Mari, we can’t just let this drift like the other times. We can’t just sit and wait for it to go wrong again.”

These are her thoughts exactly. “No,” she whispers.

Charlie takes a deep breath. “So I found a house.”

She frowns. “A flat you mean?” She can’t abide linguistic imprecision. Maybe he’s found a cardboard terrace with a postage stamp of grass on an estate, but they can’t afford an actual house. He knows that.

“No, a house,” he insists. “This perfect little cottage. Detached, all on its own. And sea views, huge sea views right there. Mari it’s wonderful.”

Now she’s shaking her head, angry because he’s clearly lost the plot, inasmuch as they can still be said to have any plot.

“Hear me out, love. Please. It’s way up on the north coast of Scotland. Dunnet Head, the most northern bit of mainland Britain. It just came on the market twenty minutes ago. It’s a bargain and an ’alf. That’s what makes all the financial difference.”

“There are no bargain properties. And John O’Groats is the northernmost tip of Britain,” she corrects him.

“That’s what I thought, but no, turns out it’s Dunnet Head. Surprised me that did.” He’s always deferential to her better education if he wins a point of discussion.

She shrugs; because it’s not like she cares; because it’s not like this can be real.

“And this truly is a bargain house. It’s on at ’alf a million but it’s…”

“Are you insane?! That’s almost double our budget!”

“No, it only seems that way. See there’s a formal valuation done just ten months ago of five-ninety, so if we buy at five hundred we’re immediately that ninety richer in assets. That makes the loan-to-value difference for the bank. We could scrape together what we need to do it. Really.”

She doesn’t believe it, but she so wants to believe it. And he has this financial cleverness bred out of a lifelong fight to make ends meet. Her arms uncross and go to her pockets. She gazes at him now, imploring him to continue, a rare spectre of hope in the air.

Given approval, he gushes like a stream in spate. “We’ll have to move fast, my love. Like every second counts fast. I can do my job remotely, we can assume that. You’d have to quit yours, but there are high schools up there. Thurso’s ten miles away and Wick twenty. I checked. It might have to be supply work, but, I mean, isn’t that better? What with the…”

He’s scrambling for a synonym for baby, their forbidden word.

Finally he sighs and goes thereabouts: “With the pregnancy. But I mean all the marking, all the stress. The extra-curriculars. Put yourself first for once. They don’t value you anything like you deserve, and that’s never going to change.”

She wants to correct him, but 3-F come to mind. 3-F are the antithesis of every reason bright, middle-class, literature-loving girls yearn for careers as English teachers. She is expected to demonstrate achievements with them for the school’s performance rating. The head made a point of saying he was relying on her to do that. This year she is going to fail, and when they turn into 4-F next year it will only become more impossible. Similar situations in the past contributed to the miscarriages, doctors have advised her.

Charlie's reading her: “I just feel a house is what we need,” he says exactly on cue. “Four walls with no one on the other side of them. Our own space to deliver us our own family. I’d do anything to make that happen.”

She nods with new vigour to him. She doesn’t give him a smile because her smiles are mostly to paper over or move past things, and this is suddenly serious. “Have you got pictures?” she asks, heart in mouth.

For the next two minutes they are lost in a vision of paradise on the tablet. The stone cottage is low and square in a vast garden that must be almost a quarter of an acre. A tiny, quaint dormer window sits off-centre in the slate roof. She imagines a child’s bedroom up there, the clatter of excited little feet on narrow stairs.

And then there’s the view! An endless expanse of blue sky and blue sea. The lounge has French windows, and beyond them there’s only a slope of grass to a cliff edge a few hundred metres away. Thereafter it’s all just that clear, fantastic blue above and blue below low-lying spurs of faded green land where mainland Britain extends no further north.

“Yes,” she breathes. “Yes.”

“You’re certain?” he pleads, eyes alight.

“Yes! Go for it Charlie, my Charlie, my fixer Charlie.”

There’s time for only a fast kiss and then he’s dialling. He talks to someone called Liz, the estate agent by the sound of it. He promises to call her right back. Then the bank, where the AI manager bot requests numbers and permissions to assess if the mortgage-in-principle offer they’ve had for the last year-plus of their property search can be increased. Then Liz again, this time with specifics. A deposit amount is discussed; an absurdly rapid timescale. Charlie mutes the phone.

“Are you sure? It’s sight unseen. It’s a mighty big risk.”

“Yes! I’ve seen enough. Yes, my Charlie.”

So Charlie says yes. For the next few minutes his and her phones ping with e-contracts and transfer authorisations, which they sign with trembling biometrics.

“That’s it! It’s ours,” he says incredulously.

You could hear a pin drop in their flat if it wasn’t for the upstairs neighbour hoovering.

“Cuppa?” Charlie asks at last, and she gratefully accepts that English remedy for enormity.

As she sips her head spins. Her parents! She’s astonished and ashamed to realise they didn’t even enter into her thinking…but the bad truth is that’s a lost battle in which lies only further pain, whereas new life is growing inside her. If they could still understand anything they would surely understand what matters more.

Next it occurs to her that her brother Allen will explode when he hears. But let him. She suddenly grins a rare, stolen from nowhere grin at Charlie, and he beams back.

And there it is!

That’s what he’s always brought into her life, isn’t it?

Warmth.