Strangers. Rosie Thomas

move any part of you?’ he persisted.

      ‘My arm. My left arm.’

      Gently, he said, ‘Reach out with it, then.’

      He heard a tiny clink, perhaps the buckle of her watch against broken masonry, and the soft scraping of her fingers as they moved towards him. He stretched his own arm, further, until the muscles ached, and the splinters scraped his wrist. And then, miraculously, their fingers touched. Their hands gripped, palm to palm, suddenly strong.

      Annie thought, Thank God. The hand in the dark was so solid, the feel of it gripping hers almost familiar, as if she already knew the shape of it.

      The man heard the sob of relief in her throat. Her hand felt very cold in his.

      ‘What’s your name?’ he asked into the blackness.

      ‘Annie.’

      ‘Annie. I’ve always liked the name Annie. Mine is Steve.’

      ‘Steve.’

      It was a reassurance to repeat the names, an affirmation that they were still there, still themselves after the cataclysm.

      Annie felt his thumb move on the back of her hand, a little stroking movement. The fear began to loosen its grip, and her breath came easier. She turned her head towards him, as far as she could. Her hair pulled at her scalp.

      ‘I thought you did it,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I was afraid of you.’

      ‘I didn’t do it. I was just doing my Christmas shopping, like you.’

      Christmas shopping … the translucent glass balls that had been so expensive, the shiny ribbons and fir branches in the shop windows, the snow falling in the wintry streets. And now? To be buried, in this acrid darkness. How far down? She had the impression that she had fallen down and down, into a great pit. What was balanced above them, how many tons of rubble cutting them off from the sky and air?

      Annie’s hair tore at the roots as she struggled, involuntarily.

      ‘Keep still.’ Steve’s fingers tightened over hers.

      Annie heard the door creak over her face. Yes, she must keep still.

      ‘And you?’ she asked. ‘Are you hurt?’

      ‘I’m cut, here and there. Not badly. My leg’s the worst. I think it’s broken.’

      Now Annie’s fingers moved, trying to lace hers between his.

      ‘Don’t let go,’ Steve said quickly.

      ‘I won’t. I’m trying to think. How can we get out?’ She was collecting herself now, trying hard to keep her voice level.

      ‘I … don’t think we can.’ The sound of the sirens came again, multiplying, but a long way off. ‘They’ll come for us, Annie. It won’t be long, if we can just hold on.’

      Annie thought, They won’t find us. How can they? No one even knows I’m here. I didn’t tell Martin where I was going.

      ‘Who is Martin?’

      It was only with the question that Annie realized she had been thinking aloud. All her senses were dislocated. She was looking, staring so hard that her eyes stung, but she couldn’t see. There were noises all around her now, not just the sirens but other, rumbling sounds, creaking, and the rattle of falling fragments. Yet she couldn’t tell whether they were real, or replaying themselves inside her head, like her own voice. And suddenly she had the feeling that she wasn’t trapped at all, but falling again, spreadeagled in the blackness. Annie clenched her fists and tilted her face upwards, deliberately, ignoring the pain in her head, until her cheek met the solid, cold, weighty smoothness of the door.

      ‘My husband,’ she said, willing the words to come out normally. She wasn’t falling any more. ‘Martin is my husband.’

      ‘Go on,’ Steve said. ‘Talk to me. It doesn’t matter what. Lie still, and just talk.’

      Leaving home this morning. There were the three of them, watching her go, little Benjy in Martin’s arms and Tom swinging around the banister post. Before that, she had run to the top of the stairs, reaching up to brush her cheek against Martin’s. A goodbye like a thousand others, hurried, and she hadn’t even seen her husband’s face. It was so familiar, rubbed smooth in her mind’s eye by the years.

      Suddenly, Annie felt her solitude. She was going to die, here, alone. But the hand holding hers was blessedly warm. Where had Martin gone, then?

      I love you. They repeated the formula often enough, not out of passion but to reassure each other, renewing the pledge. It is true, Annie thought. I do love him.

      Yet now, trying to summon it up in pain and fear, she couldn’t see her husband’s face.

      In its place she saw the garden behind their house, as vividly as if she was standing in the back doorway. Only a week ago. Martin was stooping with his back to her, his head half-turned, reaching for the hammer he had dropped on the crazy-paving path. She saw his hand, the torn cuff of the old jacket he wore for gardening, and heard the music coming from the kitchen radio.

      They were working in the garden together. Martin had at last found time to repair the larchlap fencing that separated them from their neighbour’s voracious Alsatian. The boys had gone to a birthday party and they were alone, a rare two-hour interval of peace.

      Annie was standing at the edge of the flower bed. The dead brown stalks of the summer’s anemones poked up beside her, acid with the smell of tomcats, and the earth itself was black and frost-hard. Her arms ached because she was holding up a bowed length of fencing, waiting for Martin to nail it in place. Neither of them spoke. Annie was cold, and Martin was irritable because he was an awkward handyman and the setbacks in the task had brought him close to losing his temper. He picked up the hammer and jabbed it at the nail, and the nail bent sideways. Martin swore and flung the hammer down again.

      Annie was thinking back to the days when they had first bought the crumbling Victorian house, long before Tom was born. They had worked endless weekends, painting and hammering, because they couldn’t afford to employ builders or decorators. They would quarrel unrestrainedly then, launching themselves into blazing arguments over the coving that had been mitred wrong, the glaringly mistaken shade of paint, the tiled edge that rippled like waves on a lagoon. And then they would stop, and laugh about it, and they would go upstairs and make love in the bedroom where the last occupants’ purple and orange wallpaper hung down in ragged strips over their heads. Nine, ten years ago.

      A similar memory must have touched Martin too. He had kicked the hammer aside and straightened up to look at her.

      Annie saw his face now, every line of it. She could have reached up and touched it in the darkness. He looked almost the same as he had when they first met, except for the deeper creases beside his mouth, and his frown.

      He had put his arms round her, inside her coat, and kissed her.

      ‘Let’s ask Audrey to come in tonight, so that we can go and eat at Costa’s.’

      They always went to Costa’s. Annie couldn’t remember the last time they had been anywhere else. They shared a plate of hummous, and then they had dolmades and a bottle of retsina. The last time, after their work in the garden a week ago, they had come in late and Martin had taken the babysitter home. Annie had gone on up to bed and she had fallen asleep at once, before he lay down beside her. In the morning Benjy had woken at six, and for the sake of another hour’s peace she had carried him in and put him between them. He had smiled in triumph, with his thumb in his mouth.

      Martin had reached out across Benjy to rest his hand regretfully in the hollow of Annie’s waist. They had looked at each other, acknowledging. That was how it was. They were tired, and then there were the children.

      Something touched Annie now, colder than the cold that pierced her bones. She was shivering again.

      ‘We always go to Costa’s,’ she repeated.