that’s what people said. That they were sorry.’
This is it, then. I am not holding him, he is not comforting me, and if Mrs H doesn’t shut up blathering on about making up the four-poster bed in the tower and who would have thought it, then I will slap her.
There is no need. They are all silenced soon enough. It comes again. This time they recognise it knocking at the door. At first it is almost imperceptible, the slightest vibration everywhere and nowhere, changing everything and nothing. Hypersensitive, their brains process the immediate, recently gained experience to confirm that the tremor is beyond their control, that they just have to hold their breath as it clatters the cutlery in the kitchen and jiggles the cabinet where the glasses are kept in strict, glittering lines. The tremor is neither strong nor long, barely a few seconds, probably the sort of thing that happens unnoticed several times a year, but that’s irrelevant; all that counts is the deep-seated realisation that now, because the ground can move, nothing can ever be relied upon again. Each of them gasps, but the boy screams, he screams the inaudible scream of the iconic picture hanging on walls with a dreadful casualness, in flats and bedsits the world over.
Irrationally, the aftershock even undermines their faith in the coach house and they need to get out. Out is bland daylight, any magic of the dawn gone, just the dripping of the gutters and the dustbins ready for collection and everything as normal, except for the severed limb hanging limp and brutalised on the side of the house and John and Edmund shouting Valerie’s name across the picture-perfect gardens and the scream of sirens growing closer on the main road.
For Diana, no one illustrated it like this before, but somewhere inside herself she recognises that this is hell and hell is where she belongs.
Chapter Fourteen
There are old photograph albums in his study that have sepia pictures like this: three in a line at Wynhope, the lord of the manor, his wife, the heir to the estate and the family dog, with the staff standing loyally to one side. A fire engine, an ambulance and what looks like two army vehicles with winching gear drive straight through the portrait that Edmund is remembering and skid to a halt in front of them. Monty leaps to meet them, wagging his tail. Reverting to his army training, John steps forwards and briefs the officers, Diana hangs back, Edmund hovers somewhere in between them.
‘Please God they’ve come in time,’ he says.
‘I don’t think it’s possible,’ Diana whispers. ‘Not the way it came down.’
‘Poor you’ – Edmund pulls her close – ‘I can’t imagine how awful it must have been.’
‘It was horrible, Ed, horrible. We’d gone to bed, I don’t know, Valerie didn’t even want to sleep in the tower, I had to practically drag her there and now look what’s happened.’
‘It’s not your fault, Di. If anyone’s to blame it’s me, I should have had a better survey for the pool, shouldn’t have cut corners. I should have come to the funeral, then I would have been here.’
‘Might be better if the lad went inside if it’s safe to do that,’ suggests the man who introduces himself as the lead officer, while his crew and three soldiers are slamming doors and shouting to each other.
The fireman’s radio crackles; he confirms their location. Everyone is expecting her to do something with the boy, why her, why should she be any better at this than Edmund?
‘Come along, Michael.’ Diana relents under the pressure and holds out both hands. ‘We don’t say no to a soldier, do we? One, two. One, two.’
His weight is that of an inanimate object which has no momentum. Diana pulls more forcefully, catches hold of the sleeve of his borrowed coat, feels the strength of her grasp, tensing the muscles up her arm, even into her jawline and her neck, but he wriggles out of the over-large anorak so she falls with a fistful of air and he stays standing.
‘Let me help you, Michael,’ she pleads as she struggles to her feet.
‘No.’ Mikey starts to run to his uncle. ‘No.’
‘Leave him be,’ cries Grace.
But Diana catches up with the child and grabs him again by the arm. His head turns sideways, his mouth is open, and his teeth fasten on her flesh.
‘Call your dog off, sir!’ shouts one of the soldiers. ‘We’re going to use our search and rescue dog.’
‘Get away from me. I hate you, I hate you.’
‘Edmund, please . . . he bit me.’
The world is a cacophony of sounds, the words and requests hit Edmund like stones on the back of his head; he does not know which way to turn.
‘I’m sure he didn’t mean to hurt you, Di,’ he calls. ‘Mikey, stand by me here. Monty, come.’ He gathers in the child and the dog, keeps them close; they are both quivering. Monty listens to him, head up and eager for the fetch command as if they are at a shoot, waiting for the carcasses to fall from the sky. Over at the ruin, a Germen Shepherd noses between the masonry. It is a long, slow process, unreal to all of them except the emergency crews. This is their third call-out, the ambulance driver explains; one to a chimney crashed into a sitting room where an old lady slept on the sofa to be close to the fire for warmth, another to an explosion where a gas pipe had ruptured.
‘And were they all right?’ Edmund hardly dares to ask.
The man nods. ‘We haven’t seen anything quite like this,’ he says.
Which is probably why someone is filming it, thinks Edmund. He doesn’t ask who they are; nowadays you sort of accept that a filming is part of the happening, and, anyway, John seems to be sorting them out.
Finally, a subtle difference in the body language of the dog and the fire-fighters.
‘We’ve got something,’ confirms the handler. ‘Positive!’
‘Have they found Mummy?’
‘Bless him,’ says Grace, to no one in particular. Diana is all on her own and the housekeeper takes a step in that direction to comfort her – Valerie is her sister after all, half-sister – but she stops. It isn’t as if her offer of support would be welcome even if she made it. Instead, Grace is overwhelmed by the sight of the back of the little boy’s head and the tall, tense man beside him, and how dreadful this is for Edmund too, given everything that’s already happened here, and she offers up a little prayer. It’s not something she usually does, but what else can you do at a time like this, apart from hope that there’s someone or something out there who can put things right?
Edmund is a man accustomed to prayer, but ironically he finds himself without handholds, wrestling with the binary future which lies ahead of the boy, just as it did for him, once. With your mother or without. Mikey has stepped just a little away from him and he lets him go. It is a truth that this will happen to the boy on his own. There is no other way.
Chill creeps over her skin with insect feet. Diana puts her head between her knees. I will look up and they will be carrying her out saying, she’s alive, it’s a miracle, and the nine o’clock news will confirm it’s a miracle like the pope does with the confirmation of saints and the healing of sinners, except she can see Valerie as she was when she was small, running in from the garden when her dad gets in from work, face red, bleeding knees
