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THE DEAD ROOM
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icola
stabbed a finger on her phone, the impact hard enough to split a nail.
“Work, for Christ’s sake. Work.”
For the third time, Scott’s voicemail
answered her.
On the TV, the shot changed from Mishal
Husain in the BBC studio to the scenes in Manchester, then to the shaky images
from someone’s phone as they panned across the rubble and the wafting threads
of smoke. Offscreen, shouts broke out, the words meaningless. Away to the side,
a couple held each other, both weeping as blood streamed from jagged cuts on
their faces. A non-stop howl of sirens whooped through the smoke, the sound
like a terrified child’s screams in Nicola’s head. She pressed on Scott’s name
again. The line refused to connect, let alone go to her husband’s voicemail.
On the TV screen: BREAKING NEWS: EXPLOSION IN MANCHESTER CITY CENTRE. HUNDREDS INJURED
AND MISSING. EVACUATION UNDERWAY.
“Julia,” Nicola whispered. Her stomach
clenched and her saliva became a thick, electric flood. Gagging, she ran to the
kitchen and vomited into the sink. Spitting and attempting to breathe normally
through the foul taste in her nose and mouth did no good.
“Julia,” she croaked and spat again.
Words from the TV flowed from the living
room. She caught one.
Bomb.
Nicola dashed back to the TV, socks
skidding over the flooring. On the screen, Mishal checked her papers before
gazing at the camera. Her words made no sense. They were simply a noise put
over the images of the sobbing people stumbling across rubble, of the overturned
cars, of the blown-out windows in shop fronts, of the blood stains on the
ground and the smoke staining everything an ugly black.
The paperwork Nicola had been going
through until a few minutes before fell beside her discarded laptop as she
collapsed to the sofa. Phone gripped tightly between both hands, she struggled
to think through the panic and fear.
Her mobile rang.
Scott.
Through Nicola’s terror, something hard
and implacable in her head took over. Mouth bone dry, she answered the phone.
“Scott? Can you hear me? Are you there?”
“Nicola?”
The line cut out for a moment, then
cleared and he was there in her ear, in her mouth, in the fearful burning deep
in her chest.
“Nicola? I’m here. We’re here. Jesus
Christ.”
“Oh, my God, Scott. Julia? Is she—”
“She’s fine. She’s fine.”
Tears exploded. Nicola bent double. She
pressed the phone against her ear and had to fight for each boiling breath.
Pain all over, pain in her head from the phone pressing into her ear, pain in
her other hand as she dug her nails into her palm.
“Nicola? Are you there?”
The rock in Nicola’s head grew, blocking
the sting burning in her chest. “I’m here. I’m here. Are you okay? Please tell
me you’re okay.”
“We’re fine. We’re all right. Calm down,
okay? We’re all fine. We’re still with Nigel and Cate. We were going to drive
into Manchester earlier but there was something wrong with the car. It wouldn’t
start.” He broke off. The blustery breath of his sigh ran down the line.
“Jesus, Nicola. This is unbelievable. They’re saying more than five hundred dead.
They’re saying—”
The signal dropped again and Scott’s voice
fell in and out.
“. . .Nicola?”
“Scott? Can you hear me?”
The line went dead.
“Shit.” Nicola smacked
the phone against her thigh and saw the images on the TV.
York. The city centre.
“Jesus Christ.”
The historic city had become a bombed-out
wreck. The camera, again amateur mobile phone footage, tracked over buildings
and shops with missing windows and roofs, over blasted out chunks of brickwork,
over the car wedged into the side of an overturned bus and the massive pieces
of broken glass surrounding both vehicles.
Mishal spoke again, telling the viewers
the facts were thin on the ground, that reports suggested the explosion was
down to a bomb detonating a few minutes before which put it twenty minutes
after the one in Manchester.
Gripping her phone with all of her
strength, Nicola tried to speak, tried to find any words she could give
herself.
Mishal went on. She told Nicola there
could be hundreds of deaths in York and Manchester with countless injured. She
told Nicola the authorities were evacuating the centre of the city and the
surrounding areas. She told Nicola other cities across the country were on high
alert.
Nicola managed a weak moan as the insanity
of the scenes hit her. She could have been watching a report on Syria, not York
on a Saturday afternoon. This wasn’t York: the old buildings with jagged mounds
of exposed metal and masonry poking upwards or pavements buried under tons of
brick or wickedly sharp daggers of window glass scattered across the roads.
York was people and cars and jobs and old streets and history. Christmas
shoppers drenched in blood or staggering out of buildings and crying at each
other belonged in images of foreign countries, not in the middle of York, for
God’s sake.
Julia.
The whisper rose from a deep place far
below. It contained one basic command: to ensure her daughter was safe.
Nicola tried Scott’s number again. No
connection. Breathing fast, she stood and paced around the living room. On the
TV, Mishal went through what little facts she had: massive explosions in
Manchester and York about twenty minutes apart had killed an unknown number of
people out for their Christmas shopping; hundreds of injured filled local
hospitals while the police and the authorities were working to rescue those
trapped under rubble, and the PM had boarded a plane back from Switzerland and—
The line connected. It rang once and Scott
was right beside her.
“Nicola?”
“Jesus, the line went and I couldn’t get
through again.”
“I know. All of our phones have got the
same problem. Everyone’s calling everyone else. The landline does nothing. Are
you all right?”
“I’m fine. Are you all together?”
“Yeah. Keep thinking I should put the
kettle on. Make us all a nice cup of tea. We’re English and that’s what we do,
isn’t it?” He laughed much too loudly.
Nicola did the same and her gusting laugh
made her shake. She sat. Now that she had him back again, the rock inside
sealing away panic seemed to be shrinking. Nicola focused on her breathing for
few seconds.
“It’s York, as well,” Scott said. “Just
seen it. Unbelievable.”
“Me, too. It’s bombs, isn’t it?
Terrorists?”
“I think so. I—” He broke off. “Someone
wants to say hello, Nicola. Hold on. Jules is coming.”
Nicola smiled and wiped at her tears, barely
aware she’d been crying. On the TV, a burst of rumbling noise blew out of the
speakers. There was a second, no longer, of Mishal turning to her side, of what
could have been shock on her face.
Then static filled the screen.
Then the line died in Nicola’s ear.
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