Read Online Crooked Vows by John Watt - Free Book Online Page A

inhuman soundless shriek, silenced by the roar of the burning wreck. Then she disappears within the inferno. This is hell, he thinks, and she is trapped without any possible way out. His sense of helplessness becomes unbearable as does his certainty that he has to run for his life before he, too, is overwhelmed by the conflagration.
    He reaches safety fifty or sixty metres from the disaster. With heaving chest and thumping heart, he drops to the ground behind a huge tree trunk, crouching, eyes tightly closed, hands over his ears, trying to shut out the dreadful reality. But there is no way of escaping the hideous mixture of smells from burning fuel, plane parts and human flesh. A long time later, he has no idea how long, he becomes aware that the noise has abated and the flames have subsided into a smoking tangle of wreckage.
    Macpherson sits back in his chair, his eyes fixed on a point on the wall somewhere above Thomas’s head.
    â€˜And the young woman. Where is she, and what is she doing?’
    Thomas remembers finally opening his eyes, looking around and seeing her sitting on a log a few yards away. He can picture her quite distinctly, this first moment of focusing on her. She might be much the same age as himself. She is wearing a short-sleeved shirt, showing rather slight shoulders and arms. His attention is drawn to her legs. Weeping silently, she has pulled up her blue and white skirt a little way to rub her left leg, and winces as she rubs it.
    An impulse comes over him to walk to her, to speak to her, to try to do something to console her. But what would be the right thing to do? Should he sit down close beside her? He should say something—but what? Should he put his hand on her hand, or on her shoulder, or an arm around both shoulders? He notices her hair—fair, and quite short. Should he touch her head? The situation is so far outside his experience. He can’t make the first tentative move towards doing any of these things. He can’t even imagine himself doing any of them. Someone else, yes, he can visualise that. But himself—he feels a paralysis of indecision.
    Macpherson prompts. ‘Please tell me about what happened next. Or what happens now: that is the way to think about it.’
    Thomas sits back in his chair, closes his eyes, and takes himself back to the remembered scene. He is standing, feeling a tremor in his legs, taking shaky steps towards the rear section of the plane. There are two people—two bodies—among the twisted and torn debris on the ground between the sections of the fuselage. Are they complete bodies? He tries to turn away from them as he passes, but can’t control the impulse to look. Confronting him are torn faces, heads caved in, half a leg, an arm missing, scorched, blackened. Blood. The horror is like nothing he has felt before. There is a churning nauseous feeling in his stomach. He looks away, trying to see no more, trying to control what he is feeling.
    He clambers through the jagged opening into the tail section of the plane, looking for something. What is he looking for?
    The rear seats, one on each side of the narrow aisle, are more or less intact. Behind the seats is a bulkhead with a narrow access door which has sprung open from the impact; and behind the bulkhead is the baggage compartment. Cases, boxes and bags of various shapes and sizes, some intact, some split apart, spilling a jumble of clothing, shoes, belongings of all sorts, across the small space.
    His own rigid black case has sprung open, disgorging grey and white striped pyjamas, spare collars, black socks, black trousers, white shirts, a black cardigan in case of cool south-coast weather, white underwear. They stand out against the jumble of brighter colours spilling out of other passengers’ baggage: holiday clothes, mostly. He stuffs his own belongings back into the case and closes it, and continues rummaging through the confusion.
    At the back of the