Single Dads Collection. Lynne Marshall
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took ten hours to get him out.
Ten hours, during which Emily sat glued to the screen, watching the endless loop of tape until she knew it by heart, waiting for any further news to dribble through.
And then suddenly, without warning, they cut live to the scene where they’d been working all night, and they showed the rescue workers freeing him, lifting him carefully onto a sheet of corrugated iron and carrying him out.
Alive!
He was alive! His hand was moving, his legs shifting, and they cut to his face, battered and dusty, his mouth crusted and bleeding, and the emotion she’d held back for so many hours poured out in a torrent.
‘Shh, baby, I’ve got you,’ Dan said, cradling her against his chest, and she sobbed and sobbed, her eyes never leaving the screen as they carried him over the rubble and off down the street, Tim Daly, the cameraman, at his side.
‘He’ll be all right, won’t he?’ she asked, and Dan hesitated for a second and then nodded.
‘Hopefully. At least he’s alive. That’s a good start.’
She straightened up and shot him a keen look. ‘You think he could die? You do, don’t you? Dan, he can’t die. I can’t live without him.’
She phoned the television centre but she got nowhere. She didn’t know the name of his boss, and even if she had, who was she? A neighbour. That was all she could say. Not his lover, the woman looking after his baby. Not to the person on the switchboard. He might not want it to be common knowledge.
But she was desperate to get a message to him.
‘Send him a text,’ Dan said, reading her mind. ‘He might have his phone on him.’
But it was lying in the rubble where he’d left it, together with the rest of the contents of his pockets, and it had been crushed beyond repair.
He was alive.
Sore—he gave a humourless laugh at that—but alive. His left arm was broken in two places and they’d pulled it out straight and put a cast on it without anaesthetic because he had been in danger of losing his hand because of the kinked arteries. That had been a bundle of laughs. And as for the rest of him, he was scraped and filthy and bruised to the point of Technicolor, but he was alive.
And so, to his relief, were Ismael and his wife and child. Ismael had a broken leg and concussion, but Rom and the baby were miraculously unharmed by their ordeal.
He went and saw them before he left the field hospital, and Rom took his bandaged hand and pressed it to her cheek and cried.
He hugged her gently, touched the baby’s tiny hand with his bandaged finger and left them to it. They were all alive, and together. That was all that mattered. They were the lucky ones.
And so was he.
He knew what he had to do. Right now, before he did anything else.
But there was no reply, either on her house phone or her mobile, and he didn’t feel he could leave a message. He didn’t know what to say, in any case. He just knew he had to talk to her.
Face to face.
Yes. That was better. He’d do that.
Tim got him back to their base, helped him pack up his few things and took him to the airport.
‘Good luck.’
‘Thanks.’
Tim went to shake his hand, took one look at the bandages and hugged him instead. ‘It’s been good working with you, you crazy bastard,’ he said, his voice choked, and then he let him go and gave him a little shove towards the departure lounge.
He needed no further encouragement.
There was no word from him.
She’d thought, in all the time that had elapsed, that either he or one of the team could have given her a call, but no. There had been nothing.
She knew he was all right. She’d seen him landing at Heathrow two hours ago, battered and bruised, his left eye swollen shut, his arm in a sling and both hands bandaged to the fingertips, but she’d had no word.
Well, what had she expected? That was Harry all over, dropping in and out of her life as if nothing had ever happened, breezing through and leaving her a mangled wreck in his wake.
She stared at the ceiling, wondering when he’d turn up. He would, of course. There was no question about that. He’d come back to sort out Kizzy, as he’d put it. And if she was stupid enough to encourage him, he’d probably stay for a while, but he’d go in the end, like he always had.
Well, she wouldn’t encourage him. She’d let him make his arrangements for the baby, and she’d wave him goodbye and get on with her life.
Somehow.
She turned over and banged the pillow, but she couldn’t sleep. She heard a car stop on the street, then drive on, and then a few moments later there was the sound of stones against her bedroom window.
What on earth…?
She heard it again, and got out of bed and peered round the curtain.
‘Harry? What on earth are you doing?’ she whispered hoarsly, throwing up the window and telling her heart to stop it, but he just grinned, and her heart flipped again and raced.
So did she, all the way downstairs, out of the back door and round the corner, straight into his arms. Well, arm. The other one was a hard line across her chest, and she realised it was in a cast.
‘Ouch,’ he said, laughing, and then the laughter died and his face contorted a little. His bandaged right hand came up to touch her face. ‘It’s nice to see you,’ he said, and she gave a little hiccup of laughter that could just as easily have been a sob, and nodded.
‘It’s nice to see you, too. I wondered—when they showed it…’
She broke off, unable to finish, and he hugged her hard against his side with his right arm and led her into the house.
‘Do you want a drink?’ she asked, but he shook his head.
‘All I want is to talk to you. To hold you. To try and let myself believe that I’m really here with you. But first I need to get my head down.’
‘Do you want your keys?’
‘Keys?’
‘To your house. So you can go to bed.’
His eyes searched her face. ‘Where’s Dan?’
‘Here. Upstairs in bed.’
‘Then come with me.’
She shook her head. ‘I’ll need to feed Kizzy.’
‘Can’t Dan do it?’
She shook her head. ‘No, because…’ She looked away. ‘I gave up with the pump. It seemed pointless. Wrong. So I need to be here. But you could stay,’ she added, and then held her breath.
‘Em?’
She shrugged. ‘I know I shouldn’t. I know you said you were going to give her up for adoption, and it’ll tear me apart to let her go, but—it was all I could do for her, and you weren’t here for her, and I just…’
‘Oh, Em,’ he breathed, and wrapped his arm around her. ‘Come to bed with me. We need to talk, but I have to lie down. We’ll go in your room.’
So they went upstairs, Harry limping slightly, his right leg reluctant to bend, and she led him into her bedroom, closed the door and undressed him, her eyes filling at the sight of the bruises.
‘Sorry. It’s a bit gaudy,’ he said with a strained smile as she helped him ease back onto the mattress.
‘You could have stuck