Decider - By Dick Francis Page 0,33

her, and she’d say that I was too big and that one day I would collapse her lungs and break her ribs and suffocate her from love.

Collapse her lungs, snap her ribs, suffocate… dear God.

With a good deal of effort I levered my elbows up into the familiar supporting position and spoke to Amanda’s twelve-year-old son.

‘Wriggle out,’ I said, coughing. ‘Wriggle up this way, head first.’

‘Dad… you’re too heavy.’

‘Come on,’ I said, ‘you can’t lie there all day.’ I meant, I didn’t know for how long I could lift myself off him, so as not to kill him.

I felt like Atlas, only the world lay not on my shoulders, but beneath them.

Incongruously, sunlight fell all around us. Blue sky above, glimpsed through the hole in the roof. The black smoke funnelled up through there, slowly dispersing.

Toby made convulsive little heaves until his face came up level with mine. His brown eyes looked terrified and, uncharacteristically, he was crying.

I kissed his cheek, which normally he didn’t like. This time he seemed not to notice and didn’t wipe it away.

‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘It’s over. We’re both all right. All we have to do is get out. Keep on wriggling. You’re doing fine.’

He inched out with difficulty, pushing bits of masonry out of his way. There were some sobs but no complaints. He made it onto his knees by my right shoulder, panting quietly, coughing now and then.

‘Well done,’ I said. I let my chest relax onto the floor. Not an enormous relief, except for my elbows.

‘Dad, you’re bleeding.’

‘Never mind.’

A few more sobs.

‘Don’t cry,’ I said.

‘That man,’ he said, ‘the horse kicked his eyes out.’

I moved my shirt-sleeved right forearm in his direction. ‘Hold my hand,’ I said. His own fingers slid slowly across my palm. ‘Look,’ I said, gripping lightly, ‘dreadful things do happen. There’s never going to be a time in your whole life when you won’t remember that man’s face. But you’ll remember it less and less often, not all the time, like now. And you’ll remember us being here, with all the stands blown inwards. A lot of people’s memories are full of truly awful things. Any time you want to talk about that man, I’ll listen.’

He squeezed my hand fiercely, and let it go.

‘We can’t just sit here for ever,’ he said.

Despite our fairly disadvantaged state, I was smiling.

‘It’s quite likely,’ I remarked, ‘that your brothers and Colonel Gardner will have noticed the stands have been rearranged. People will come.’

‘I could go and wave out of those broken windows, to tell them where we are –’

‘Stay right here,’ I said sharply. ‘Any floor might collapse.’

‘Not this one, Dad.’ He looked around wildly. ‘Not this one, that we’re on, will it, Dad?’

‘It’ll be all right,’ I said, hoping I spoke the truth. The whole landing, however, now sloped towards where the stairs had been, and I wouldn’t have cared to jump up and down on it with abandon.

The pressures of the chunks of ceiling, roof and Press tower were unremitting across my back and legs, pinning me comprehensively. I could, though, move my toes inside my shoes, and I could certainly feel. Unless the building subsided more from accumulated internal stress, it looked possible I might escape with a clear head, an intact spinal cord, both hands and feet and an undamaged son. Not bad, considering. I hoped, all the same, that rescuers would hurry.

‘Dad?’

‘Mm?’

‘Don’t shut your eyes.’

I opened them, and kept them open.

‘When will people come?’ he asked.

‘Soon.’

‘It wasn’t my fault the stands exploded.’

‘Of course not.’

After a pause, he said, ‘I thought you were kidding.’

‘Yep.’

‘It’s not my fault you’re hurt, is it?’

‘No.’ He wasn’t, I saw, reassured. I said, ‘If you hadn’t been hiding right up here I could have been lower down the stairs when the explosion happened, and would now very likely be dead.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’

It seemed very quiet. Almost as if nothing had happened. If I tried to move, different story…

‘How did you know the stands would explode?’ Toby said.

I told him about Neil seeing the det cord. ‘It’s thanks to him,’ I said, ‘that all five of you weren’t killed.’

‘I didn’t notice any cord.’

‘No, but you know what Neil’s like.’

‘He sees things.’

‘Yes.’

In the distance, at what seemed long last, we could hear sirens. One, at first, then several, then a whole wailing orchestra.

Toby wanted to move but again I told him to stay still, and before very long there were voices on the racecourse side, outside and below, calling my name.

‘Tell them