Read Online Flowers for the Dead by Barbara Copperthwaite - Free Book Online

family herself? Was there time for the emergency services to arrive before the car burst into a fireball like she had seen so often in films? But she knew she should not move people in accidents, in case of broken necks. But if she didn’t they might die in the fire.
    She should…she should…she made a split second decision.
    Laura dialled 999, put the phone on speaker, dropped it on the floor and dived forward. Reached for the handle of the front passenger side door to help her mum. Tugged at it, but it wouldn’t budge, why would it not budge? Because the car’s impact had embedded it into the iron hard, frozen ground, which had caved in the roof and bent every panel out of shape.
    “Hello, emergency service operator, which service do you require? Fire, police, or ambulance?” came a voice over the speakerphone.
    “Fire engines! And ambulance!” Laura shouted. She pulled and pulled and pulled at the door, but it wouldn’t give, not so much as a millimetre.
    “What is the nature of your emergency?”
    She ran round to the other side of the car, yelling: “There’s been a car crash!”
    Pulling at the driver’s door, she looked down into her dad’s open eyes. The whites stared out from the red mask of blood, unseeing.
    “Where are you? Do you know your location?” said the calm voice of the operator.
    Laura yelled the location and that her three family members were seriously hurt, but knew it was down to her to act. The flames were getting bigger and stronger, and the heat was starting to beat her back, like a furnace. It was hurting her face to get close.
    “Stay where you are, someone is on their way,” said the operator. “Stay on the line with me.”
    Screw that.
    Laura got on her belly and wriggled back inside through the window she had escaped through. Marcus’s head was a bloody mess but she had to do something to help him. She tugged at her little brother’s seatbelt. Yanked at it while shouting at the top of her voice to the emergency operator.
    “There’s a fire! There’s a fire! I’ve got to get them out! And the petrol tank has ruptured, it’s leaking. Yes!”
    She yelled that last because the seatbelt had finally undone. Marcus collapsed, and though Laura tried to catch him, he fell into a heap, his elbow and knee smacking into her face, making stars dance in front of her eyes. She grabbed him anyway and started pulling.
    His hair is a mess. He’s taken so long over his hair. He wanted it to be perfect, didn’t even want to wear a hat, and now it’s a bloody, matted mess, and…there are big clots underneath it. It’s brain, it’s brains.
    With an effort, she shoved the thoughts away. Put her hands under her brother’s armpits and heaved with all her might, veins standing out with the effort. He moved. Not by much, but he definitely moved.
    She could not use her strength properly in her current position. She pulled again. He was almost at the window. Right, if she wriggled out, she should be able to brace her feet against the wreckage and pull him through the window.
    She scrambled out, turned around just as there was a loud crackling noise. The whole front of the car was ablaze now, the heat searing. Her parents, she had to get them out too!
    Laura was screaming. Screaming at the operator who was telling her to be calm.
    “How can I be bloody calm? They’re going to die!” she shrieked.
    In her panic she stumbled backwards. There was a deafening noise. And once again she was flying, flying, flying…
     
    ***
     
    Laura wakes with a jolt. It is no surprise, she has had this nightmare, woken at that precise point too many times. For a second though, her sleep-addled brain cannot work out where she is; her bedroom looks different. Two seconds tick by before she works out it is only because she is on the floor still. With a grunt, she shifts, forcing herself to sit upright. She raises a hand to rub at her stiff neck and discovers a photograph sticking to it, which she peels off her