I tear away from the man holding me by the arm to run back inside to see Giles, wracked with coughs behind a gas mask, uncertain on his feet but upright, supported by one fireman, Selena carried by another. They are led straight past us into the cool, wet night air and down the steps to the medical response truck.
I don’t want to be in the way, but I need to see him, so I lurk at a short distance, just making sure. His ribcage seems too tight, he stretches out one arm while the other rests against the gleaming white metal.
“Anna…” he wheezes. I wasn’t even sure he had seen me, but he wants me to hold his hand. “I lost your keys upstairs.”
“Forget about the keys.” I clasp his hand between mine and press it against my cheek. He reeks of smoke, and his face is an odd shade of flushed pallor. “Are you all right?”
“Think so.” He breathes deeply, and more calmly.
We watch as Selena, sobbing, is laid on a stretcher and pushed up into the back of the truck.
“Sir, you had better put this on.” A young paramedic hands him an oxygen mask and adjusts the valve on the metal container. “Do you want to sit down? Do you feel dizzy, nauseous or confused?”
“I’m all right.”
“Please, sir, do you feel dizzy, nauseous or confused?” the paramedic repeats impatiently.
“No! I don’t need—”
“Giles, please! You’ve played the man enough!”
He groans, coughs, and slips the tube around his head and the openings into his nose.
“How is the girl? She’s pregnant,” he tells the paramedic. “Did she say that she’s pregnant?”
“Yes, sir, and she’s in hysterics. But as far as we could see, she’s not—um—hurt in that way.”
“Not bleeding?” Giles urges him.
“No, sir, she isn’t. Sorry, I must—” He dashes off.
“What’s Nick doing here? Why isn’t he with her?” Breathing heavily, Giles nods at the girl inside the truck.
“Don’t know. Returning to the scene of the crime, maybe. He didn’t know she is pregnant, though. Stupid male chauvinist heroism!”
Giles frowns. “Heroism? Nick?”
“No, you!” I laugh and cry and the same time. “You could have—what if you had—”
“No, no, don’t you see? I helped save his child. I’m free of him now. Of Nick and all that. Now I’m free of it.”
I try to digest this, and I dimly understand what he means, But if I’m honest, I don’t really care. He is safe. That’s all I care about.
“Anna…”
“Breathe, don’t speak!” I clasp his hand again, but he reaches underneath my coat and round my waist.
“Come close!”
I snuggle against him, push the plastic tube out of the way with my nose and gently kiss the soft, stubbly skin under his ear.
“That’s nice. Anna, the fire didn’t come from the dome.”
“Not? But Selena—”
He shakes his head. Breathes. Then speaks.
“Her key was stuck in the bloody…door. It…she couldn’t get out. I had to smash the door in…with the fire extinguisher.” He grins wanly at the irony.
“But then—”
“Corvin…Corvin’s office.”
“Oh, my God! Was he—was he in there?”
“Don’t know. It was all full of smoke. The firemen pulled me away before I could get to him.”
Another groan comes from the crowd, and shards of glass are sprinkling onto the asphalt. We step out from behind the truck and look up; smoke and flames are now pouring out the windows as well as the roof of the dome.
“Stand back!” the megaphone sounds again. “Stand back from the building!”
“What a mess,” I murmur, hiding against Giles’s body. “What a God-awful bloody mess.”
“Some of the mess is that you don’t know what you want.”
When I am angry, I flare up like a firecracker. Giles glimmers like a slow fuse. He doesn’t usually shout back when I shout at him, but when I have cooled down again, he goes on smoldering.
“I’m glad you weren’t burned to a crisp up there. That’s gotta be a good sign, right?” I doubt that flippancy will throw him off the scent, but the last thing I want tonight is to go on arguing with him.
“Mm-hmm.”
“I know that I want to come home with you tonight,” I offer.
At last, a sort of smile. He pulls me closer, and his hand inches lower. “That’s something to live for, isn’t it?”
Now I’m riled, too. “Well, do you know what you want?” Oddly enough, I have the feeling that I have been manipulated into asking him the question he wanted me to ask him.
“How did your interview at Queen Mary go?” he asks, as if he was merely