Lena was lying flat on her stomach and couldn’t remember how she had got there. Her cheek was pressed against a carpet of grit and it took long seconds for her to realise she was in the theatre. Rising unsteadily to her feet, she was surprised to find she was unhurt except for the painful throb in her knees, which had taken the brunt of her fall. The air was thick with dust that tasted strongly of smoke and she knew she had to get out, but couldn’t work out which way was which. Her eyes stung, making her limited vision blurry, but she was aware of a glow the colour of amber that grew in intensity as she lifted her gaze.
Horror struck her as she realised the fire was above her head and she cried out. ‘Peter! Where are you?’
Using the position of seats that hadn’t been ripped from their fixings, she found her bearings. The main exit was somewhere behind her. That was where the screams were coming from.
Angela had been closer to the middle of the auditorium when the collapse happened, and had landed against the back of a seat with enough force to wind her. The air was polluted with dust that irritated her airways and what little she could suck into her lungs was difficult to expel. Normally when her asthma was bad, she would tell herself to stay calm, but these were exceptional circumstances. From the screams and calls for help, everyone was panicking. She gripped the back of the seat and worked through a plan of action before daring to waste precious oxygen attempting to move. Her inhaler was in her handbag. She needed to find it.
‘You’ll be OK,’ she said between wheezes as she explored the ground with her foot.
When she connected with something solid, she crouched down only to discover it was a crumbling piece of plaster. She stayed on the floor, unsure if she had the strength to stand up again, and felt around some more. She couldn’t find her bag. Her hands moved faster, more desperately. It wasn’t there.
She forced her thoughts to slow. If she couldn’t find her inhaler, she could and she would reach crisp, clean air. As she imagined the coolness of the night filling her lungs, she reached the aisle and that was when she remembered Amelia. She wanted to cry.
Lena rubbed her eyes. She was beginning to make out shapes in the gloom. The dust was settling and she found an illuminated sign pointing to a fire exit, the one she had been heading towards, but the doors themselves had vanished behind an avalanche of burning timber and masonry. She would have to return to the back of the stalls. It was getting quieter back there so it must be clearing. Peter had made the right choice. She should have stayed with him. They shouldn’t have argued. She should have said she loved him. A tear slipped down her cheek.
Ignoring the fire raging in the eaves, Lena climbed over the chunks of plaster and skirted around the small fires that were struggling to catch alight. She would feel less scared once she reached the others. There was safety in numbers, and she felt calmer as she approached the point where the circle overhung the stalls.
On the far side of the theatre, away from the collapse, Carole Brody had stopped crying long enough for her vision to clear. She was hurrying towards the undamaged side exit, but she couldn’t stop herself from looking at the destruction all around her. She could see where the ceiling had been devoured by an inferno and where the upper tier had been damaged. That was when she noticed a lone figure in the circle, and she almost tripped over.
Holding onto Beth McCulloch’s sleeve, Carole had to look again. Her eyes hadn’t deceived her. There was a man shouting for someone called Karin. He turned away and, a moment later, a large piece of masonry crashed onto the balcony close to where he had just been standing.
The near miss was a reminder of how exposed she was and Carole snapped her head to the front again, searching out her escape route. She didn’t see the falling missile continue on its trajectory, or witness it take another victim of the Empress fire; a young woman who would never get to kiss and make up with her boyfriend. Carole kept moving, and made it through the side exit and into a corridor. As she drew nearer to the fire doors, she passed someone moving in the opposite direction, but the idea that anyone would want to go inside was so alien to her that her brain cancelled out all memory of Claudia Rothwell.
Angela, meanwhile, wanted to curl into a ball, but she knew she shouldn’t give up. Her legs trembled as she stood up and surveyed the emerging scene. She found the spot where she had last seen Amelia and gagged on the air she squeezed from her lungs with a tight wheeze. The poor child. Where once there had been red velvet seats, there were smouldering fires amongst the rubble. Angela felt an ache in her heart for Mrs Parker and the pain that lay ahead for her. Angela had lost one of her babies before he could take his first breath. That had been over twenty years ago, and it still it hurt. Before grief could overtake her, she heard a child’s cry.
‘Please! Help me! Please! I want my mummy!’