Under the door that shifted restlessly in its frame, sand spread out into the bathroom. It slithered forward with a soft hiss, itching at the extremities of hearing. Sam and Tink’s only way out was a slender rectangle frosted with modesty glass located above the tub. With the sink pressing against the back of Sam’s legs, they had retreated as far as they could go. He hopped into the bath and held out a hand for Tink. She took it and joined him as the sand covered the entire bathroom floor.

  Hurriedly, Sam opened the window. The storm continued to whip around the house. Below, the garden was filling with the dunes. Sand oozed from below and seeped through cracks, but as yet was not to the height of the first floor. The side alley was flooding too. Poking up through the sand were the red brick walls and, at the far end of the garden, stood a solidary decrepit apple tree. Its branches bore a thinning head of leaves and a poultry crop of immature fruit. But whatever lay beyond the garden wall was obscured by the maelstrom.

  ‘What’s over there?’ Sam pointed.

  ‘There’s another alley that runs along the back of the houses on Sandyford Row – that’s this road – and the houses on Lorimer Avenue.’

  ‘Lorimer as in...?’ Sam said, and Tink nodded. But having roads named after his new family was the least weird thing about today. He shielded his eyes, checking what pipe-work ran down the back wall of the house. Sure enough, there was a fat waste pipe and a thinner one for water drainage, plus a thick drainpipe from the roof.

  ‘Can you climb?’ Sam asked.

  Tink tore her eyes from the sand, now several inches thick on the bathroom floor, and saw what Sam meant. A glimmer of her former swagger came back. ‘Of course, I can. I grew up climbing trees in the woods. I’ll out-climb you.’

  She joined him at the window, pressing close to him, craning her neck. ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘Climb down the drainpipe and along the wastepipe to the garden wall.’ He pointed to the wall which abutted another garden. It too had been deluged with sand, but not as much as the house they were in, nor the side alley.

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Walk down the wall to the passageway at the back.’

  Tink traced the route with a turn of her head. ‘And then what?’

  ‘I don’t know. This ain’t my Ends.’ From a mix of false bravado, annoyance and fear, a touch of his London accent crept back into his voice. He softened his next words. ‘Thought you might have some ideas. Either way, do you want to stay here?’

  The sand was almost halfway up the side of the bath and the lock on the door was straining at weakening screws.

  ‘No,’ Tink said, and hoisted her leg over the windowsill. Sam positioned himself ready to reach out and grab her if she lost her grip. She took hold of the drainpipe. ‘If I die, I’m blaming you.’

  Danger had pressed them into each other’s personal space. His arms encircled her protectively when the joke caught his attention and he looked into her eyes. Her face was only inches away and she was smiling that same too knowing smile. Out of the blue, Tink kissed him, soft and warm, pressing firmly for an infinite second. She might as well have slapped him. In a tender, bewildering way, she had. Dumbfounded for a second, Sam felt simultaneously lightheaded and separated from his body. He blinked. The power of speech seemed to have vanished from his brain. Then she was gone from the window, swinging out onto the drainpipe and into the storm.

  Heart pounding, Sam leaned out. Sand scratched at the blush on his face. Tink had a good grip, but because she was so short, she was reaching down with her toes, searching for the thicker wastepipe that cut across the back of the house with a slight fall.

  ‘It’s just below your feet,’ Sam shouted over the wind, pointing down. ‘A couple of inches.’

  Tink turned her head to him and winced against the chaffing wind. He wasn’t sure she’d heard what he said until she loosened her grip. For a split second he thought she was going to slip and tumble back from the wall and into the shifting sands below. But she slid a few inches before she retightened her grip. Her toes found purchase and she lowered her weight. As the bathroom was at the partition between the two semi-detached houses, it wasn’t far to the wall. However, it was more than Tink’s wingspan. Even if she let go of the downpipe with one hand and edged along the narrow foothold, keeping herself flat to the house, she’d still be short of the wall by a foot or more.

  The modesty bolt on the door gave up, popping at the screws with a snap. A wave of sand pushed the door ajar. It was piled shoulder high on the landing and sloughed through the gap with a breathy sigh. The surge would soon breach the top of the bath and then?

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  When he was twelve, Sam had watched the Mad Max movies as part of a post-apocalypse/dystopia binge with his mother. Everything from Planet of the Apes, through Logan’s Run to 28 Day’s Later, Blade Runner, not to mention another Rutger Hauer ‘80s underrated classic Salute to the Jugger. There had been a scene in Beyond the Thunderdome where a child, Finn McCoo, was swallowed by the sand, and the thought of slowly sinking and drowning in that dry powder had given Sam nightmares. Not that he told his mum. He didn’t want to stop watching. They’d both be glued to the screen with such focus and afterwards Tara would speak with even more intensity and passion about what they’d seen, what it meant, how it fitted into ideas about the world and philosophy and politics. He listened and imbibed it all, understanding some of it. But that sink hole, sucking the life from Finn McCoo no matter the effort of all his friends, haunted Sam for weeks. The desert in Beyond the Thunderdome wasn’t a living thing; its hostility had no design. However, the sand harrowing him and Tink had nothing but malicious intent, like a rude boy with a shank from the Duppy Crew trespassing on his estate, looking for someone to stab to prove they were a big man. So, Sam retreated to the window, keeping his eyes on the invading force until he was straddling the sill, half in half out.

  Tink was hesitating. Clung to the drainpipe, her right foot had edged out along the fat wastepipe. Her right hand kept venturing away, feeling along the wall a little before retracting to the safety of a double-handed grip. Peripherally, Sam saw the sand breach the lip of the bath and tumble into the empty pool just below his feet.

  ‘Hurry!’ he shouted into the gale.

  Tink might have heard, or she might have right then worked up the courage. She took a bigger sidestep and pushed off. Her momentum carried her across the face of the wall. With a quick additional shuffle step when her feet came together, she twisted her torso at the last second to fall on the garden wall, catching it across her chest. The garden churned beneath her feet, and she scrambled up onto the wall.

  It was Sam’s go. The rough wind blinded him when he took hold of the drainpipe. Tink’s shouts were inaudible. Eyes screwed shut, he tried to clear his vision. When he opened them, everything was a blur. Below the sand purled and swashed in sluggish undulations. A clear head taller than Tink, the wall wasn’t far for him. He could almost touch it at full stretch, but half blinded and eyes watering it seemed like a leap into the unknown. Under his trainers the frosting of sand on the wastepipe felt unsure. He edged out, chest pressed flat to the wall. The drainpipe wobbled in his grip. A rich tang of salt and minerals laced the warm air like the breath of the sea serpent in Tink’s fairy tale. Its hungry maw ratchetting wide behind his back, breathing down his neck.

  One foot slipped. He saved it, getting back on the wastepipe in a panicked twitch, but it threw his balance off. He was going to pitch back, falling on his back in the throbbing heave behind him, but in an instinctive reflex, Sam punched away from the drainpipe, throwing all his weight to the side. The garden wall hit him full in the ribs. His feet swung after him, and before he could toe punt brick, his trainers hit the dull thwack of sand.

  The skin on his back tried to crawl up over his shoulders. He kicked and thrashed his feet in panic. One foot came free. The other stayed stuck. He felt a sucking tug and imagined himself being pulled inch by inch, down and down and down, until sand poured into his mouth, choking off all the air. Tink grabbed fistfuls of his hoodie, and together they heaved. His foot popped clear, and he scrambled up onto the wall. On their knees, they faced each other. Tink made sure he had his balance and then pivoted and crawled away on all fours and Sam followed through the blinding storm.

  They reached the end of the wall. Tink checked left and right. He couldn’t read her face in the haze, but he looked back to see a yellow-brown spout pour from the bathroom window. Next to them in the corner of the garden, was the dying apple tree. As the sand heaved around the trunk, shaking it, the meagre crop of small hard fruit fell. They’d nestled on the surface for a moment before the shifting sand swallowed them whole.

  ‘Which way?’ Sam shouted.

  Panicked, Tink’s scanned for a way out. There was a river of sand in the alley running along the back of the houses too. They could go left or right, but all they be doing was crawling along a tightrope of brick while the desiccated waters rose to flood them. It was impossible and only confirmed to Sam that this wasn’t natural, and there must be something to what Tink hadn’t told him. All of which did them no good. He took no comfort in the irony of his mother telling him to perceive what no one else can see. Well, he was perceiving some unbelievable supernatural shit now, and it looked like it was going to be the end of him.

  When the apple tree twitched, Sam assumed the trunk had been buffeted by the viscous currents in the sand, but it moved again. Not a twitch, a paroxysm, twisting one way and the other. Up to this point the rising tide in the garden had moved with a gelatinous speed. Now it became frenetic, roiling over on itself, kicking up waves that slapped the wall and throwing up desiccated spume.

  Green buds grew on the tree, quickly turning into pinkish blossoms that disintegrated into a dervish of confetti petals in the storm. In their place new fat red apples swelled along with verdant leaves. The tree stretched higher out of the sand, reaching its branches towards Sam and Tink. In response the tide of sand rose. The tree grew out and up, bigger than any apple tree Sam had ever seen, and one of its boughs heavy with fruit extended between them.

  Sam was ready to take the help. Grabbing for the branch above for balance, he tested the bough with his foot to see it would take their weight. It seemed sturdy enough, and besides the waves were almost at the top of the wall. Tink didn’t look so sure.

  ‘What choice to we have?’ Sam shouted, reaching for her.

  She took his hand and pressed tightly together, like commuters on the rush hour Piccadilly Line, they balanced on the bough. All aboard, the tree swung up and away from the wall. Below the sand increased its agitation, boiling and foaming. The tree swayed as the wind built, bouncing their precarious sanctuary, as if to shake them from their perch. Tink buried her head in Sam’s chest hiding from the stinging storm.

  After a few more feet the tree stopped growing. Perhaps the magic that was driving it – because what else could it be? – could only go so far. Sam didn’t know and there wasn’t time to ask Tink. It had taken them another three feet above the wall, but the sand kept coming, pouring from the windows of the house, surging relentlessly down the alleyways, churning with fury in the back gardens. A wave smashed against the trunk, shaking it violently. One of Tink’s hands slipped and she let out a cry. Sam caught her around the waist, but the grip of his other hand on the branch overhead burnt with the fatigue; their perch bounced without pause. They couldn’t stay put.

  Sam bent to Tink’s ear. ‘We’ve got to get to the trunk.’

  She gripped him tighter around the waist as if to say no but nodded anyway.

  Eyes streaming, Sam shouted, ‘Together. Go slow.’

  Carefully, like an awkward couple in a slow dance, the two of them edged along the bough. Sam inched one foot, then a hand, then his second foot, while Tink didn’t the same a fraction after. It was slow going. Sam’s forearm ached with the lactic fire. Despite the lashing storm and crashing waves, the further they got, the less the bough rocked. He could hold on. He had too. A few more inches and he’d be able to help Tink reach for centre mass of the tree.

  Without warning, the wind lessened, as if they’d passed into the eye of the storm. Sam and Tink looked up in search of clear skies. Instead, a shadow loomed over them carrying with it a whisper which they had to strain to hear and once heard it called for them to turn and face their fear.

  A wave of sand towered above them, blocking out the wind, sucking up all the sand beneath into one powerful, unrelenting cresting dune. They closed their eyes and held on to each other as the wave crashed down.