Hari heard voices above her. She tried to open her eyes but they were gritty with dust. She felt an arm hanging lifeless over her face and her memory came flooding back.
‘Kate!’ Her voice was a whisper although she felt as if she’d shouted out the name of her friend.
They were all dead, the children, the two men, Hilda—and Kate? ‘Kate?’ Dust filled her mouth and Hari gagged on it.
Someone tapped on the masonry above her and Hari tried to lift her head. She felt Kate’s body shift and tip sideways. ‘Oh Kate!’ Hari tried to move her arms but they were pinned by jagged pieces of bricks and mortar.
‘Help us.’ Her voice was faint but the tapping stopped. ‘Help us,’ she called again.
‘It’s all right, cariad, we’re coming for you.’ A face appeared in a gap above her grimed with sweat and dust. ‘Be still, we’re going to move the debris carefully, love, so not to hurt you.’
The work was painfully slow but the light above her became steadily brighter, the weight gradually lifting away so that she could breathe more easily. Hari tried to lift her head again but her neck was wracked with pain and with a sob she fell back against the bricks again. All she’d seen for her effort was a glimpse of Kate’s hand with the wedding band shining golden in the light.
A lifeless, waxy hand smeared with blood. Her friend was dead, they were all dead. Hari couldn’t stop the gasps of grief and pain escaping from between her swollen lips. Tears scaled her grazed cheeks as she let herself slip away into a fog of darkness.
A week later Hari was discharged from hospital with little more than cuts and bruises. The nurse led her to the entrance. ‘You’ll have two black eyes for a while but you got off lightly, my girl.’
Hari shook her head. ‘Except that I lost people I love.’ Her tone was disconsolate. The nurse touched her shoulder sympathetically.
‘I see that here every day,’ she said gently, ‘we’ve got to keep telling ourselves we’ll win this damn war, somehow.’
Hari stood on the pavement. She felt cast adrift on a blank sea; she had no sister, no Michael and now, no Kate.
‘But you have father and Jessie and even poor old Georgie Porgie when he’s home from the front so stop feeling sorry for yourself.’ Her voice rasped as she scolded herself.
When she got home they all fussed around her. Jessie made her endless cups of tea, giving her a few precious aspirin and talking softly to her of the war being over one day. In the end, Hari went to bed worn out with tears, her head pounding, her eyes so swollen they were half closed.
She lay on her narrow bed and thought of the past, of before the war when she was free, of when she briefly had Michael in her arms.
Hari remembered when the air raids began, how Meryl had hidden under the table, peering out at them like a little animal from a lair and she began to cry again, the salt tears hurting her bruised eyes. But at last, too weary to stay awake, she slept and dreamed of peace.