Bobby’s mum was filled with a black worry, ever since she got up, all morning long. More worried than she had ever been in the whole of her life. She knew something was wrong, she just didn’t know what, but she could not settle, not settle at all. And so after lunch, when she still didn’t feel right, just couldn’t shake it off, Cissie put on her coat, her hat and her gloves, and went out into the snow, the thick, heavy snow, and trudged down the backs, round to her friend’s, and she knocked on her door –
I thought it’d be you, said her friend, I just knew. So come on, get yourself in, pet, out of the cold.
Cissie stamped the snow off her boots on the step, went into the warm and said, But how did you know?
I just knew, said her friend. Can you not sense there’s something in the air, something not right?
Aye, you’re right, you’re right, said Cissie, but what is it, what’s wrong, do you know? Can you tell us? Because it’s driving us mad. I just want to know.
Her friend helped Cissie out of her coat, brushed the snow off its collar, then guided Cissie into the back and the kitchen, sat her down in a chair at the table, and said, Well, the one thing I know is that fretting won’t help. But a nice cup of tea, of hot, strong, sweet tea, well, that just might. Then we’ll put our two silly old wooden heads together and see if we can’t think what it is …
*
This is it, thought Bill, his head jammed into his chest, crouched right down in his seat and strapped in so tight he could barely breathe, the snow racing past, the engines surging, but not enough, he knew, not surging enough, one, two, three sickening bumps where there should have been none as Bill closed his eyes and thought again, This is it, thrown up, around and into darkness, darkness –
Get the bloody hell out of there, man …
Bill could hear a voice, someone knocking on the window. He opened his eyes. Albert Scanlon had been in the seat in front of Bill, but Albert was gone, he’d disappeared, the whole of the right side of the aircraft with him, Roger and the lads who’d been sitting with him all gone, disappeared. There was just sky now, only sky. But Bill was untouched, still strapped into his seat –
What the hell are you doing in there?
Bill turned to the window, saw a man with a tiny fire extinguisher in his hand banging on the window, yelling at Bill, Get out, man, get out!
*
Harry thought he was dead. They all must be dead. That this was the end. He’d never see his wife, his daughter, his mother and his father, his brothers and his sister again. That this was death: one second light and noise, the next dark and still. In a country from which he could never return, a language he would never learn. The only sound the sound of hissing, like snakes hissing, hissing in the dark. His mouth full of salt, the taste of salt. He did not dare to raise his hand, to touch the c
