Strangers. Rosie Thomas

wife. She’s in there somewhere.’

      The policeman hesitated for a moment in propelling Martin backwards. Martin saw the young face twitch with sympathy under the helmet.

      ‘Do you know for sure that your wife was in there, sir?’

      Martin thought, he didn’t know anything. Annie could be anywhere in London. But yet he was sure, with sick, intuitive certainty, that she was here.

      ‘Not for certain. But she could be.’

      The policeman’s brisk manner reasserted itself. There was a procedure to follow. He guided Martin back across the tapes, and they faced each other over them. The officer pointed away down the displaced street.

      ‘If you will go to the local station, sir, down there on the left …’

      He knew where it was. Once, when he and Annie had been out shopping, they had found a gold earring on the pavement. She had insisted on taking it to the police station, and he had waited impatiently beside her while the desk sergeant wrote everything in the lost property file.

      ‘… they will take down your wife’s details. And there is a number you can ring at Scotland Yard. They’ll give you more information there.’

      I want to help her. Over the man’s shoulder Martin looked at the devastation again, and felt his own impotence. His fists clenched involuntarily, aching to reach out and pull at the rubble, to uncover her and set her free.

      He shrugged uncertainly and turned away from the barrier. The watchers stood aside to let him through, and he walked down the road to the police station.

      They showed him to a corridor lined with hard chairs. There was an office at the far end with a frosted glass panel in the closed door. Two or three people were sitting in a row, waiting, not looking at one another, and the stagnant air smelt of their anxiety.

      Martin sat down in the empty chair at the end of the line.

      The minutes ticked by and he thought about Annie and the boys. Whenever the question What would we do, without her? reared up he tried to make himself face it, but there was nothing he could see beyond it. It was impossible to envisage. He couldn’t think beyond the diminished figures of the firemen that he had seen, working away up the road. He thought about them instead, willing them to uncover her, as if the intensity of his longing would spur them on.

      The door at the end of the corridor opened and a woman came out. Someone else from the silent line went in in her place, and the rest of them went on helplessly waiting. A fat woman in a checked overall came past and asked if anyone wanted a cup of tea from the canteen. Martin shook his head numbly.

      At last, after what seemed like hours, it was his turn. The office was cramped, lined with steel filing cabinets. A police sergeant sat behind the desk with a young WPC beside him. They nodded reassuringly at Martin, and the sergeant asked him to sit down.

      As Martin answered their questions, the girl filled in a sheet of paper. He gave Annie’s name and age, her general description. They asked him why he thought she had been in the shop and he answered, unable to convey his fearful conviction, simply that it seemed likely.

      ‘I’ve got a photograph of her here,’ he said.

      Martin took out his wallet. In a pocket at the back there was a snapshot of Annie playing in the garden with the boys. She was laughing, and Benjy was standing between her knees, twisting the hem of her skirt. He pushed the photograph across the desk to the sergeant and then demanded, ‘Do you know anything? Can’t you tell me anything at all?’

      The policewoman turned her pen over and over in her fingers while her colleague spoke.

      ‘As you must know, everything is being done that can be done to explore the shop for possible survivors, and the operation will continue until it is quite certain that no one is left inside. One survivor has been located in the last hour, using thermal imaging equipment, and they should reach him very soon.’

      The wild, hopeful flicker was extinguished almost as soon as it had shone out.

      ‘Him?’

      ‘Yes. It’s a man, apparently not badly hurt.’

      So it was possible, then, for someone to survive under that landslide of rubble. The hope it gave him helped Martin to confront the next question.

      ‘And the two … bodies that have already been recovered?’

      ‘Both have been positively identified. They were store employees.’

      He wanted to put his hands up to cover his face, letting it sag with relief, but he sat still, ashamed to feel so grateful for the news of someone else’s death.

      ‘I would go home, sir, and wait there. We’ll contact you immediately if there is any news of your wife.’

      The interview was over. Martin got up reluctantly and then stood holding on to the chair back.

      ‘Or you could wait here,’ the WPC said. It was the first time she had spoken and she glanced nervously at her companion. He nodded, and looked past Martin at the door.

      ‘Thank you,’ Martin said. He had never intended to go home while Annie might need him here.

      ‘When your wife does come home, sir,’ the sergeant called after him, ‘would you be kind enough to let us know at once?’

      Martin nodded and went out into the stale, chilly air of the corridor again. Instead of sitting down he found his way by the scent of fried food down the stairs to the canteen in the basement. There was a public telephone under a blue plastic hood beside the swing doors. He dialled the familiar number and counted the rings. One … two … Audrey answered before the second one was complete. She sounded breathless, as if she had run to do it.

      ‘It’s Martin. Have you heard from her?’

      In the background he could hear Tom’s voice calling out, ‘Is it Mummy?’ Martin closed his eyes and hunched his shoulders, as if he were waiting for someone to hit him.

      ‘No,’ Audrey said.

      Martin looked at his watch. It was ten to one. Wouldn’t Annie have telephoned, by now, to make sure that everything was all right? He knew there was no particular reason why she should, but the knowledge that she hadn’t reinforced his conviction. She was in the store. Every minute that passed made it more certain.

      ‘I’m at the police station,’ he said. ‘They can’t tell me much. None of the … ones they have found is Annie. They don’t know any more than that. I’m going to stay here and wait.’

      ‘Yes,’ Audrey answered, ‘you’d best stay there. We’ll be all right here …’ The dialling tone cut her short. Martin had already hung up and gone. He ran up the stairs again, and walked out of the police station into the street. In front of the store the yellow latticework of a crane stood idle. He walked towards it, into the wind, shivering. He passed the enclave of television cameras and waiting pressmen and thought, with unreasoning savagery, that they were like vultures hovering before the kill. He walked on around the outer edge of the barriers until he came to the point where the policeman had blocked his way. He looked up, over the heads of the crowd. It seemed impossible that the crumpled front of the store could remain standing. As he watched it seemed to sway, curling inwards with a shower of falling fragments that drew clouds of whitish dust down with them.

      Martin shivered, and he realized that the wind was strengthening. It swept across the street, lifting a torn paper wrapper into the air before pasting it to the wet roadway again. Even above the noise of the wind, Martin thought he could hear the creak of broken girders as the concrete weight shifted and then settled itself for another moment or two, before the next gust came.

      A police van inched along the inside of the cordon. Behind it the police were moving the watchers back, all the way back up the road. More steel barriers were lifted out of the van and pushed into place. Looking backwards, as he was ushered out of range with everyone else, Martin saw a group