Nineteen
I’M so thirsty.
This was Emmy’s first thought when the darkness lifted.
She heard a woman singing softly, a lullaby. Emmy was not alone.
A trio of booms echoed from somewhere far above her. She smelled ash and dirt and sulfur.
Something cool and wet touched her forehead and she opened her eyes.
“There, now,” a woman said as she held the compress to Emmy’s head. “You’re all right. You’re safe.”
Emmy looked about her and saw nothing but shadows and the dim outlines of men and women crouched like stowaways in the hold of a ship. She was lying on a cot. Her head pounded and her ankle throbbed.
A whistling sound, faint but recognizable from the last moment she remembered, split the quiet, and Emmy half rose with a start before the woman gently pressed her back down on the cot. “Not to worry. You’re safe here.”
“Where am I?” Emmy croaked. “What happened?”
“You’re in a shelter, love. You’re safe. You were knocked out cold but a fireman brought you here. You’re safe now.”
For several seconds Emmy could not make sense of this information. All she could remember was that she had been on the street. And then there were sirens. And the angry flutes.
“What—what day is it?”
“It’s still Saturday, love. What’s your name?”
“Emmeline. Where am I?”
“You’re in the basement at Saint Paul’s. What’s your last name, Emmeline?”
Emmy ignored her question. She had to think for a moment. She had been on her way home. Home. She was walking home. She had the satchel in her hand. She was walking home. Home.
Julia. And Mum.
Emmy bolted upright and her head spun.
“Hold on there, Emmeline. You’ve a nasty bump on your head. Let’s take it easy, now.”
“I have to go.” A wave of dizziness swept over Emmy and her upper body fell against the woman. She lowered Emmy back down.
“You can’t go back out, Emmeline. It’s dangerous. There are bombs falling everywhere.”
As if to prove her point, several booms pounded outside and the room shook.
“They’re going to kill us all!” a man shouted.
“Hush, now!” the woman yelled back to him.
“But my mother and sister—,” Emmy pleaded.
The woman’s eyes narrowed in concern. “Were they on the street with you?”
“No. They’re at home. I was on my way to them.”
She patted my arm. “They are surely in a shelter, too, Emmeline. Just like you. They’d want you to stay safe. You can’t go out there now.”
“It’s bloody Armageddon,” another man said, sounding terrified.
The woman who was singing softly nearby stopped for a second and told the man to shut up. A child whimpered and she started singing again.
The satchel.
Julia’s book.
“Where is it? Where’s my bag?”
The woman held up the satchel. “Right here. It’s right here. See? You’ve nothing to worry about. You’re safe here.”
“Nobody’s safe,” a voice grunted.
The angry flutes whistled outside, followed by a thunderous roar, and again the room shook.
From somewhere behind Emmy an old man began to recite the twenty-third psalm. The woman who held the compress to her head joined him. A few others did, too.
“I’m thirsty,” Emmy whispered.
The woman reached behind her for a glass jar and poured water into a tin cup, which she held to Emmy’s lips. The water tasted like metal. Emmy lay back down.
The woman unwound the shawl she had over her shoulders and folded it into a tight rectangle. Then she placed it under Emmy’s head.
“Rest now,” she said.
Emmy slept.
When she awoke, the room was in semidarkness and cloaked in an odd silence after so much noise hours before. People were walking about slowly, gingerly. Those who hadn’t had a cot on which to sleep moved stiffly after having spent the night on the hard floor.
Emmy rose to a sitting position, her head protesting. She reached up to touch her forehead and felt a band of gauze, sticky with dried blood. The woman who had ministered to her the night before was asleep on the floor.
“Is it over?” someone asked.
“Who knows?” someone answered. “Who knows anything?”
Emmy reached for her satchel at the woman’s feet and got up carefully, holding her head as she stood. A wave of dizziness nearly sent her toppling back to the cot. A man walking past steadied her and Emmy whispered her gratitude.
She wanted to thank the woman who had cared for her, but she had to get home to Mum and Julia. Perhaps she would see the woman again someday.
Perhaps.
Emmy slid the strap of the satchel over her shoulder and tested her footing. Her left ankle ached ferociously. She tried out a few small steps as she followed those also wanting to exit the shelter. They went down a hallway, through a set of double doors, and to a stairway that led upward. Emmy took the steps one at a time with a hand firmly on the rail. With each step, the smell of ash and fire and dust became more pervasive. The light at the top of the stairs was a sickly yellow, not from the morning sun but from a thousand fires still burning.
Saint Paul’s appeared undamaged, but as Emmy gingerly made her way east toward home, the destruction from the day before began to reveal itself: crushed buildings, broken windows, blackened brick, roofs missing or caved in. Fire and rescue crews were rushing about with a hundred tasks to attend to; they had no time to bother with a fifteen-year-old girl who hobbled resolutely down debris-choked streets. The closer Emmy got to the flat, the more her heart began to pound. She passed the intersection that would take her to Primrose. She didn’t know whether Mrs. Crofton’s shop still stood but she could not take the time now to see. Her only aim was to make sure Julia and Mum were all right.
Emmy passed a rescue crew digging in wreckage. A dead man lay at their feet, his eyes open and vacant, his nose and mouth covered with dried blood. Another man was being tended to. His shoes had been blown off and his shattered legs hung from his pant legs like laundry on the line. “Where’s my Lucy?” he was saying.
Two more rescue workers were pushing away rubble to get to an outstretched hand. “Hold on. We’re coming for you,” one of the workers said. He reached for the hand to assure the trapped person that help was on the way. The hand and half of its severed arm tumbled toward him at his touch.
Emmy turned away to vomit into the gutter. The paltry contents of her stomach landed on a baby’s crib toy.
She wheeled away from the scene, holding a hand over her mouth and willing herself to look at nothing but her feet. Finally, she turned down her street. The first few buildings were fine. But then she could see that the row of flats across the street from where she lived had been flattened, squashed as if they’d been made of cardboard. With relief she saw that the flats on her side of the street still stood. But the explosions from across the street had taken out every front window. Whole sections of roof were missing and Thea’s front door hung by one hinge.
Emmy hobbled up to her front door and felt for the key under the mat. She wrenched open the door, calling Mum and Julia’s names.