Martin stumbled forward with his hands outstretched.
Annie was under there. He would launch himself at it and dig until he reached her. There were uniforms all around him, police in helmets, and firemen with their brave silver buttons. He went forward with the surge of them, through the gaping hole where the busy doors had stood, and into the thick dust and the blizzard of fragments that the wind blew off the broken walls.
They were already working at the wreckage, with shovels and picks and their bare hands, to clear a space. He pushed further forward, and the broad blue back in front of him turned and heaved a chunk of stone into his hands. Martin never felt the weight. He swung round and passed it on to the next link in the chain and then reached out for the next. His lips drew back from his teeth in concentrated effort and he felt the tension of the day’s idleness evaporating.
He was helping her now, working with his strength to reach her.
Hold out, brace for the weight, swing with it, let go and reach again.
I won’t let her go. I won’t let it take her. The words beat in his head, synchronizing into a desperate chorus with every heave and stretch of his body. Instead of the rubble at his feet and the legs of the men struggling in front of him, he saw Annie.
He saw her at home, waiting for him to come in at the end of the day, and the way that her face softened with pleasure at the sight of him. He saw her frowning, with her head tilted a little to one side as she sat reading with Thomas, and then laughing, with Benjy as a fat, tow-headed baby slung on one hip.
He thought of the warmth of her beside him in their bed, the softness and familiarity of her curled against him. The warmth seemed to spread around him, insulating him for an instant from the desperate rescuers.
He could feel Annie’s generosity and strength, and the reality of her love for the three of them, like a living thing fighting beside him. If she was dead, and all her warmth and life had bled away, how could he bear it? And if she wasn’t dead, but buried, injured, what must she be suffering? Her pain stabbed into him, becoming his own, and he doubled over it. Like an automaton he took the next chunk of masonry that was thrust backwards at him.
If it could be me down there, instead of you, Annie. I love you. Did you know that? I wish I’d told you. I wish I’d let you know how much.
He knew that he could have worked for ever and he found himself trembling with impatience, sweat glueing his hair to his face as he waited for the next load. But there were more uniforms pushing past him now. He dimly heard the blare of sirens. Martin let his arms drop to his sides and he ducked sideways, into a corner of shadow. The lights carved out a pallid room inside the skeleton store and the rescuers milled within the room. Martin tried to slip out beyond the walls of it. He went down on his hands and knees and tried to pull at a piece of plank that stuck up at an angle. The illusion of superhuman strength had deserted him and he wrestled feebly with his piece of wood. The sweat dried icily on his face.
Then he felt a hand on his shoulder.
‘Who are you?’
It was a policeman, of course, in a greatcoat and peaked cap.
‘My wife is under there,’ Martin said. He looked at the policeman and saw the official expression fading for a moment, and sympathy peering out at him. He was very young, Martin thought irrelevantly, the old cliché. Not more than twenty, surely? A year or so older than Annie and he had been, back at the very beginning.
‘Will you come this way, sir?’
Martin nodded, helpless now, although his torn hands still twitched involuntarily, reaching out for more stones. He followed the policeman to the steps of the parked trailer. Inside it he saw telephones on a bench, a little group of men waiting. It was very warm and stuffy after the cold outside.
‘My wife,’ he explained to them. ‘I want to help to get her out.’
‘Do you know for sure that she is down there?’
Martin shook her head, but then he babbled, ‘Yes. Yes, I’m sure she is. There’s nowhere else she could be, not after all this time …’ The words petered out as they looked at him.
‘The façade is unsafe still,’ the senior man said gently. ‘I can’t allow anyone except rescue personnel anywhere near it. The most helpful thing you can do for your wife is to leave her recovery to those trained for the job. If she’s there, of course.’
‘I want to help,’ Martin repeated.
‘I know. But what will happen if I let you go in there and a chunk of rubble falls on you?’
The policeman pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. Martin could see that they wanted to be considerate, but they were also irritated by his persistence.
‘If you would like to go down the road to the local station,’ the other one suggested, ‘you can have a cup of tea in the warm. I’ll send a WPC to keep you company, and we can contact you as soon as we know anything at all.’ He tapped one of the telephones with his fingertip.
‘I’d rather be here, as close as possible,’ Martin insisted.
‘I’m afraid, then, it will be a case of asking you to wait at the cordon. The inner one, at the point closest to here.’ The commander gestured backwards over his shoulder. ‘Would you like a constable to come with you?’
Martin thought of the young faces he had seen today, blotched with cold under their helmets.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Thank you. I’ll be all right on my own.’
They nodded, waiting for him to go and leave them to their work.
‘It said … it said on the radio that there are still three people in there. Is that true?’
The officer hesitated for a moment and then he said, ‘Yes. Before the collapse at least one of them was alive. We heard a shout. There’s still hope, of a sort.’
Martin stood up, painfully, like an old man.
Annie, was it you, screaming down there?
They escorted him back to the cordon. Martin walked to the place closest to the control trailer and stood once more to watch as he had watched since midday.
There was a disturbance behind him but he didn’t hear it. It took a tap on his shoulder to make him half turn his head, never taking his eyes off the store.
‘Hello. Mike Bartholomew from the BBC.’ It was a man with a microphone, a camera crew trailing behind him. ‘I saw you come out of the control trailer back there. Is there anything you can tell us?’
Martin whirled round and struck out, almost knocking the mike out of the man’s hand.
Annie, was it you, screaming down there?
‘No,’ he shouted. ‘I can’t bloody tell you anything.’
And he turned his back on them, staring helplessly at the circle of lights around the store front, tears blurring his eyes.
Steve lifted his shoulders, gathering what was left of his strength, and then dragged himself another inch to the right. He had to rest afterwards, lying with his lip still drawn between his teeth until the claw of pain released a little. Then he tensed his muscles again for another effort.
If he could get close enough to her, he thought, he might be able to do something to help her. Annie lay very still and silent, and the beat of her pulse seemed frighteningly weak.
To move across the last few inches separating them took everything Steve had. His head flopped down and his ears filled with the sound of his own gasps for breath.
At last he had done it. He was still holding on to her hand, and he clung to it while he fixed all his will on the next breath, and then the next. He had kept the worst fear at bay while he struggled to reach her – the fear that the airflow, wherever