Strangers. Rosie Thomas

a scream that went on and on, up and then down again as the sufferer gasped for breath. When it stopped she wondered if the screams could have been her own.

      Where was she? What had happened?

      Oh God, please help me.

      The screams had been hers. She could feel another one, the voice of pure terror, rising inside her. She clenched her teeth, and felt the grit crunch between them. She tried to swallow it, to clear her mouth, focusing on the smallest thing to keep the fear at bay. She could feel it all around her, like a living thing.

      Think. Try to work out what had happened.

      Slowly this time, she tried to move. Her right side, arm and shoulder right across to her breastbone, and her hip and thigh, wouldn’t do anything. She was pinned down by something smooth, sloping upwards at an angle. She discovered it by feeling cautiously upwards with her left hand. On her left side, higher up, there was something jagged that felt both hard and crumbling at the same time. She gave up her useless search and let her arm drop to her side again. Legs. Where were her legs? She could feel nothing at all in the lower part of them. It was as if her body was clay that had been crumpled up and crudely remodelled, stopping short at the knees.

      And her head, the pain in her head. She rolled it, just a little, to one side and then the other. There was perhaps an inch or two of play before the pain gripped her. Suddenly Annie realized that her hair was caught underneath something. She had taken her knitted hat off – how long ago? – inside the doors of the shop. Now something very heavy was resting on her spread-out hair, and the pain she felt was the roots of it tearing her scalp. So even if there had been nothing else touching her she would still be trapped here by her hair, forced to lie staring upwards, into – into what?

      There was only the pitch dark, not a sound except the threatening patter of falling fragments when she moved her arm. The fingers of her left hand fluttered, feeling the rough brick, splintered wood.

      She was shuddering now, fully conscious, cold to her bones.

      What would happen to her?

      Annie screamed again as the fear lurched close and threatened to smother her. When the sound of it died away a voice said, very close to her, ‘Stop. Stop screaming.’

      It wasn’t her own voice, she knew that. It was a man’s. A stranger’s.

      At the sound of it, she remembered. Before the noise came, before even the silent wind and the shock that had spun her round into a rain of splintering glass balls, there had been a man. That was it. When she had still been Annie, walking calmly to the exit with a carrier bag of Christmas tree decorations, a man had come up behind her and pushed open the door. Out of the corner of her eye, in that last instant, she had seen his hand and arm.

      Fear moved right inside her now. Where was the man, how close to her? Annie struggled to make her thoughts fit together.

      He must have done this, whatever it was. And if he could do something so cataclysmic what else would there be, when he reached her? To stop the shuddering Annie bit her lips, and tasted salt blood again. She must keep still, or he would hear her. She lay with her head turned as far as it would go towards where the voice had come from, staring wildly into the impenetrable dark.

      ‘Where are you?’ he asked. ‘I don’t think I can reach you, but …’

      ‘If you come near me …’ Annie had wanted to scream at him, but her words were a gasp. ‘If you come near me, I’ll kill you.’

      There was a long moment’s quiet.

      Then the man said softly, ‘It’s all right. Listen, can you hear the sirens? They’ll reach us. They’ll get us out.’

      A solitary policewoman had been standing on the opposite pavement, checking the number plate of a grey van parked on the double yellow lines. The side of it had sheltered her from the blast, and she crouched in the gutter for an instant with her cheek against the cold metal. She heard screaming, and the traffic skidding wildly in the roadway, and the crash of breaking glass. Slowly, sliding her hand up the van’s side, she stood up. Under a cloud of black smoke she saw the front of the store. The roof had been blown open to the sky and she could see the inside where the floors hung, pathetically exposed, tipping downwards. Chunks of brick were still falling. In the roadway people were running, some of them away from the falling bricks, others towards them. There were other people lying on the pavement.

      The policewoman left the shelter of the grey van and made herself walk across the road. The broken glass crunched under her polished black shoes. She held up one black-gloved hand to stop the traffic, as she had been trained to do. Her other hand reached inside her coat for the pocket transmitter, to call for help.

      The first squad car came, weaving up the street between the slewed cars and buses, its lights blazing. The policewoman was kneeling beside a man whose blood seeped through the clenched fist pressed to his cheek. There was suddenly an eerie quiet, and she thought how loud the siren sounded.

      Two policemen leapt out of the car as it skidded to the kerbside. One of them carried a loudhailer, and he lifted it to his mouth.

      ‘Get back. Get back and stay back.’

      One by one the people who had been milling on the pavement began to move slowly backwards, a step at a time. They were looking up at the ruined façade of the store where the smoke still drifted in black coils.

      ‘There may be a further explosion. Please leave the area at once.’

      They moved a little further, leaving the injured and those who were helping them, bewildered groups on the littered pavement.

      Down in the darkness the man’s voice repeated, insistent, ‘Can’t you hear them?’

      At last, Annie said, ‘Yes.’

      ‘I can’t hear you properly,’ the man said louder. ‘Say it louder.’

      She repeated, ‘Yes,’ and then, suddenly, ‘What have you done?’

      There was quiet again after that, and she heard something moving, close to her. Her skin crept in a cold wave.

      ‘I didn’t do it.’ The voice sounded even closer now. ‘It must have been a bomb, I think. Perhaps a gas explosion.’

      A bomb.

      In her mind’s eye, imprinted on the terrifying darkness, the word conjured up flickering images. There were the television news pictures of violent death amongst the rubble, a half-forgotten impression of the reddened dome of St Paul’s still standing amongst the devastation of the Blitz, and then the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima.

      A bomb.

      The images faded and left her in the dark again. Her eyes stung with the effort of staring into it. She understood that a bomb had gone off, and buried her along with the broken Christmas tree balls, the gaudy strands of tinsel and the heavy door she had been going to push open. It was the same door lying on top of her now, crushing her.

      Annie was shivering violently.

      ‘I’m afraid,’ she said.

      She sounded very shocked, the man thought. But she was conscious, and she had stopped screaming. He wondered if there was a chance of manoeuvring himself close enough to help. He eased himself sideways a little, reaching out with his right hand.

      ‘What are you doing?’ Her voice was sharp with the onset of panic.

      ‘Trying to reach you. Listen to me, carefully. Where are you hurt?’

      He could almost hear her thinking, painfully exploring the inner contours of her body, just as he had done himself.

      At last she said, ‘I can’t feel my legs. My side hurts. There’s something heavy on top of me. I think it’s a door.’

      ‘That’s good. It’s probably like a shield for you.’

      ‘And my hair’s caught. I can’t move my head.’

      She