Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: Strangers, Bad Girls Good Women, A Woman of Our Times, All My Sins Remembered. Rosie Thomas
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‘I can remember, when we got back to Nan’s, how grey it looked. Grey and bare.’
After that, it was just a matter of how long it took to get away.
Annie was so quiet. He stroked her hair again and whispered, ‘Did you hear all that, Annie? Are you still here?’
She had heard it, and she could see the children ahead of her. They stopped running to look in at a shop window. There was a Christmas tree in the window, hung with clear glass balls that captured the colours of the rainbow. There were presents all around the tree, wrapped in shiny scarlet paper and tied with scarlet satin ribbons.
She couldn’t see their faces, but the children looked so small and vulnerable, silhouetted against the bright, white lights. She wanted to reach out and draw them into her arms, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t even put her arms around the man in return for his warmth and the comfort of his voice. She turned her head a little and felt him tense, listening to her.
‘Children,’ she said again.
Steve nodded in the darkness, exhausted.
‘That’s right, Annie. Hold on to them. They’re coming for us. Can’t you hear?’
She could see them, still looking at the Christmas tree, but she couldn’t hear their voices. There were other noises, scraping and rattling, drowning them out. But she said, summoning up her strength, ‘Yes.’
They were working in silence now. They bent in a circle under the glare of the lights. Every minute or two they stopped work and listened, and when the silence settled around them, unbroken, they began again, burrowing downwards. In his trailer the police commander waited with his finger touching the corner of his moustache. Martin waited at his point on the barricade, never taking his eyes off the tarpaulin screen.
Children, Steve was thinking. If I had a daughter.
His face was wet, and he thought how stupid it was to cry for her because she had never been born.
I’d buy her a pony, he thought. And ballet lessons, and white satin shoes with ribbons to go dancing in. And when she’s seventeen I’ll buy her a car, and take her downstairs on the morning of her birthday to see it parked outside the house. I’ll open the front door, he thought, and say, There it is …
As the door opened inside Steve’s head, he saw a beam of light.
It shone straight down on to his face and the brightness of it was as sharp as pain. He closed his eyes because the light hurt so much and he saw the dazzle of it inside his eyelids. When it had faded a little he opened his eyes again, and the patch of light was bigger, and still brighter.
He opened his mouth and through the dust caked in his throat he shouted, ‘Here. Down here.’
The light blinked and went out and he felt a second’s terrible disappointment, but then he understood that it was a head, blocking the light to look down at them.
‘Down here,’ he said again. And then, ‘Please. Come quickly.’
‘You’re all right,’ a voice came back to him. ‘We’ll have you out in no time.’
‘Come quickly,’ he begged. ‘She’s bleeding.’
He turned his head to look at Annie. Her eyes were closed and she looked as if she was deeply asleep. Her eyelashes showed dark against the dust that masked her face.
‘Annie,’ he whispered to her, ‘we’re all right. They’re here now.’
She didn’t answer but he held her tighter and with his free hand he tried to brush the coating of filth off her face.
The ragged circle of light grew wider. He could hear people talking, giving orders, and the quick movements and the clink of their tools as they worked. The girl in his arms looked so defeated. He was afraid that now, after all, it was too late.
‘Please hurry,’ he begged them.
They wanted him to talk, and now that it was over he was too weary to speak. The questions came one after another as the men came closer. Steve saw the light glinting on their helmets and their shiny boots.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Is she your wife?’
‘Do you know the woman’s name?’
‘I’m thirsty,’ Steve said.
A moment later they lowered a little bottle of water down to him. He reached up with his free hand and then lifted his head just enough to tip the bottle to his mouth. It ran out between his lips and down his chin, clear and cool. He let his head fall back again.
He told them his name. ‘Her name is Annie. I think she’s badly hurt. When the collapse came.’
‘That’s all right, don’t worry.’ They were trying to soothe him, he knew that. ‘We’re going to try to put a doctor in beside you.’
A moment later someone came sliding downwards and the dust rose chokingly. Steve braced himself, waiting for the extra shock of pain from being touched. Since the light had come, the pain had intensified. He wondered if he could bear it without screaming out.
The doctor crawled into their tiny space.
‘I’m Tim,’ he said, and Steve thought it was just like at a party. He would have laughed, but for the pain in his leg. ‘And there’s Dave, and Tony, and Roger and Terry up there. They’re all wonderful diggers. They’ll soon get you out.’
They lowered a bag down to the doctor. He had a torch, too, and the light burned into Steve’s eyes. It was so bright that he couldn’t see Annie’s face any more, and he didn’t see the flash of the hypodermic either as the doctor slid the needle into his arm.
The pain receded after that. Steve lay and watched the doctor’s black shape hunched between them. He bent over Annie, touching her, and the sticky patch in her coat. Steve heard him rummage in his bag and the tiny, metallic clink of his instruments.
‘She won’t die, will she?’
After a moment the doctor said quietly, ‘I don’t know yet.’
Hurry up, damn you all. Why does it take so long?
‘Okay, Steve,’ someone called out to him. ‘Hold on just a few minutes longer.’
The police commander crouched at the lip of the hole. Under the lights he could see the colour of the woman’s coat. It was blue, and she was wearing black boots.
‘The descriptions tally, sir.’ One of his men had checked the computer-stored descriptions of people reported missing through the long day. ‘And the man is conscious. He says her name is Annie.’
The commander nodded. For a moment he had been thinking of his own wife, and seeing her crumpled amongst the debris.
‘How long?’ he asked the fire chief.
‘Ten, fifteen minutes.’
The men were working in frantic silence now. There was a girder to be lifted and hoisted away before the smaller chunks of rubble could be moved. Once that was done the victims could be lifted out on to stretchers.
The commander looked down at the doctor’s head, and then glanced at the stretcher party, waiting. The ambulances were drawn up beyond the tarpaulins.
‘Her husband’s waiting at the barrier,’ he said. One of his men was already moving, but the commander said, ‘Wait. Leave it for another five minutes, until they’re ready to bring her up. He’ll be in the way here, and if she’s unconscious he can’t help her. Take him into the trailer and tell him, will you?’
Steve didn’t know how long it took, in the end.
The doctor waited beside him, holding up a bag and tubes that ran into Annie’s arm.
The