Ice Diaries Read Online Free PDF Page B

Dissatisfied, Nina switched topics.
    “While we’re on the subject
of the shops, may I remind everyone that we agreed we’d only
use them as a group? There are plenty of other places you can go to
do personal foraging, or you can wait for our set days. I expect
everyone to behave responsibly about this, else it’s not fair
on the rest of us.”
    Expressions round the table were
carefully bland and innocent; only Greg looked shifty and hung his
head. Nina has a bee in her bonnet on this subject, and it’s
easier to humour her. The fact is, we all go on our own if there is
something we need – I even saw Archie in Argos on one occasion.
Nina suspects we don’t keep to the rule, and it irks her that
she has no way of enforcing it.
    “Now, contacting other groups of
survivors.”
    Every so often, we talk about
travelling to check out Londoners like us who are living in scattered
enclaves. Greg is keen on this; he fancies having more people to
trade with, and Archie feels it his duty to reach out if at all
possible, because there might be people needing a priest. Charlie
dreams of moving into a larger community where there would be a
bigger audience for literary events and it would be possible to start
a writing group – maybe even set up a micro-publishing
business. The problem is, travelling on foot is arduous and although
the smoke from their fires seems deceptively near, it would take the
best part of a day to get to them. And we don’t know what our
reception would be like, or whether they’d put us up overnight
which we’d need if we weren’t to walk solidly for a day
and a night. Tantalizingly, below ground is the tube network,
reaching out like a spider’s web throughout London. Once in the
tunnels, you could walk anywhere without getting lost. The difficulty
is access; most underground stations are in low rise buildings. You’d
have to dig down to them, and dig up when you reached your
destination. Our nearest, Old Street, is beneath twenty metres of
snow. So for practical purposes, those other settlements might as
well be on distant planets. As ever, we decided to postpone a
decision.
    “Moving on. The book club. Tori,
what have you got for us?”
    We take turns to choose a book to read
and discuss; it has to be one the chooser can find several copies of.
The last novel we read was Charlie’s choice, Madame Bovary .
Charlie said it was a seminal work and a masterpiece, and is no doubt
right, but I found it depressing. Nina objected to the dislikeable
and immoral heroine, and Claire said the ending when poor little
Berthe went to work at the cotton mill made her cry. I don’t
think it was Archie’s cup of tea either, but he said you had to
admire it as a fascinating study of nineteenth century French
provincial life. (We’ve yet to read a book he didn’t find
something nice to say about.)
    I dug in my bag. “ Can You
Keep a Secret , Sophie Kinsella. I’ve got four copies.”
I handed them round to a certain amount of eye rolling and lip
pursing from Nina. She prefers more literary works, though she has a
weakness for family sagas. “It was that or Bleak House –
I found six copies – but I thought we could do with something
frothy and feel-good next.”
    There was no other business; Nina
reminded us there was a group forage on Friday, and a ceilidh on
Saturday, and we all went home. A typical meeting.

    That evening Greg came over for his
postponed wash. He could do it at his place, but I suspect he’d
be tempted not to bother, and anyway, he’s in the habit of
coming here. Greg is my nearest neighbour. His flat is in a council
block not far from me, just off Old Street. It’s not
particularly nice; the rooms are small and the ceilings are low –
though admittedly this makes it easier to heat – and the
windows are UPVC with those ugly thick glazing bars. Nina told him he
should move into the Barbican, Bézier or the office block
where Charlie and Sam live above Liverpool Street Station. Not