CHAPTER 97
I had slippers on, so I ran across the broken glass just as the petrol tank went up, almost drowning the thunder of Kirsty hurtling down the stairs. I turned straight at her, pushing her back inside.

“Call it in, for fuck’s sake!”

The smell…it was petrol and rubber, as the car burnt, but not meat, and I tried to get closer to see how badly he was hurt. The flames were roaring out of where the filler cap had been, and I could see...

Coconuts. Burning coconuts, that’s what dead men look like as they burn in cars, dead children too, their hair alight….

Fuck it, Annie, get your work head on. I couldn’t get nearer with the heat tearing at my skin, though I could feel my hair starting to crisp up. Kirsty came out dragging a hose and screaming for me to tell her where he was.

“Turn it on me, Kirst, soak me!”

I pushed closer as the water played over me, steaming off my nighty, and I could still see nobody, no body, and I had to stumble backwards, coughing and groaning with the pain as Kirsty kept soaking me.

“He’s not there, Kirst, not there!”

“WHERE IS HE? WHAT HAVE THOSE BASTARDS DONE TO MY DEN?”

I could feel my skin slowly cooling as she kept the hose going. Sirens were already wailing in the distance, and as I moved further away from the blazing Ford I tripped over something on the drive. It was a mirror on a stick. I realised what had happened immediately.

“He was outside the car, Kirst! He’s somewhere in the garden!”

In my panic I had focussed entirely on the burning vehicle, rushing out to try and save our Den, and I had looked to neither side. I span round on the drive and there he was motionless and bloody behind a hydrangea bush. I screamed, and Kirsty threw down the hose as she dashed to him, and she was incoherent in her turn as she managed to pull back some of her own professionalism and start checking his vital signs. In the end she was sobbing.

“Don’t be dead, don’t be dead, you’ve got to be a dad, you can’t fucking die, you just can’t, stay here Den, stay here, I need you, we need you, I’ll fucking kill them, oh fuck, oh fuck, there’s a pulse Annie, he’s still fucking here, Oh dear god just this once be on our side”

The fire brigade arrived as the area car tore in, Nev Chamberlain at the wheel. An ambulance was there thirty seconds after that, and as the Brigade put out the inferno that should have claimed Dennis their Incident Control Unit was working with Nev to contain as much as they could. Jim was the next arrival, and as we stood back for the paramedics to do their job, he put an arm round each of us as we finally gave in and howled and wept our grief. Dennis hadn’t made a sound of any kind.

I disengaged, and went to find Kirsty something to put over her excuse for night clothes, and to fill a bag with a change of stuff for her, and I handed it over, and that is all I remember till waking up in Crawley hospital.

I knew it was a hospital, there was that smell to it, and the fact that I had bandages on my arms and a nurse bent over me made it even more obvious. She smiled down at me as she made a quick note on some chart or other. Then she was off, and a doctor was there with her five minutes later.

“Welcome back, Annie”

“How long…?”

“How long were you away? About twenty six hours. We were a bit worried, but there are no nasties on the monitor”

The nurse smiled again. “ I’ll give Eric a shout, he’s getting a cuppa. Been here all the time, poor lamb”

And they were gone. My man was by my bedside in less than three minutes, and I teased him.

“Could have, should have been quicker, love”

“Waited to get you a cuppa, my love.”

The humour hid the strain, and I realised he had probably slept little if at all over the past night and day. He started the traditional process of answering the questions I had before I could ask them, and as he did I realised how deeply I loved him, and how he must love me. The thought of him, in that car, as Den should have been.

“He’s alive, love, just barely, but he’s cut about a bit, and they’ve had him in surgery a couple of times, plus some minor stuff to remove foreign objects from his back and legs. It looks like he was turned away when it went off, the damage to his face was all from being flung through a bush”

“How’s Kirsty? And what happened to me?”

“Oh, shit, love, you went into serious shock, you were catatonic, Jim found you curled up in a ball in the kitchen”

He was crying, the tears flowing with no drama at all as he told me he loved me.

“I thought I’d lost you, gone for good, yeah? You were just–gone away, out of it, and I thought, that’s it, she’s finally had one too many…”

I pulled him to me, as best as my dressings could allow, and kissed him hard. My face felt tight, and I realised I had at least some burns there. I wiped Eric’s tears away with the bandage on my left hand.

“Kirsty, love? How is she?”

“That is so you, Annie. Your first thoughts, always somebody else, yeah?”

“I don’t hurt that much, and my man isn’t in intensive care, so I have room on my schedule, aye?”

“Aye, love. She’s next to Den, of course. Sally’s there, and Ginny is working a tag team with Kate and Steph. She’s…she’s numb, I suppose, doesn’t say much, just waits”

“Come on, I need to get out of here”

“Sod that, you are on bed rest. You’ve got burns to your arms and face, and didn’t you notice when you walked across all that glass?”

“I had slippers on…”

“Not after you started running, there are bloody prints all over their path. Good job I’m not a foot fetishist!”

“Point taken, I wondered why they itched. Eric, I know they won’t be saying anything, but, for fuck’s sake, why? Is it that crap from Newcastle he ran away down here from? Forget I said that, aye, he never ran, he stood up to the shits.”

Eric looked out of the window, silent for a minute. “I wondered about that, but I also had a thought of my own, that bitch and her friends you locked up. Chantelle’s grandmother, yeah?”

“Why Den, though? He wasn’t really involved”

“I don’t know, my love, I really don’t. Now, drink that tea, I’m going to see if I can scrounge a cripple mover and take you round there. People are worried, love”

I had lost count of how many times he had said that word, and the creeping doubts that had always lurked in my mind, those doubts that went back each time to how hard he had found it to accept me without preparation, packaging, they vanished like soap bubbles in the wind. Eric was as good as his other word, though, and the soft fool actually tried to pick me up and lift me into the wheelchair. I stood, and that is when I felt the damage done to my feet, and a stream of bad words came out. I slumped quickly onto my wheels, and Eric disconnected the various wires and oddities after a hurried word with the desk.

We were some distance away from the Intensive Care ward, and as I was pushed along by my fiancé I had time to muse on how far I had come in such a short time. I mean, as I came out I realised I had actually been placed in a side room on a female ward. Eric stopped eventually at a desk outside closed doors bearing a number of signs that seemed to add up to “Don’t even THINK about wandering in here!”

We got the nod, and the first person I saw as we entered was my mad friend, and she simply burst into tears as she saw me, then shook Kirsty’s shoulder, and that smile---oh god, she lit up, even with the red and black of her eyes, and stood and hugged me tight enough to leave me breathless. As soon as I could, I asked the obvious question.

“Annie, he’s fighting, yeah, and it looks like he was moving away when it went off. Yes, a fucking bomb under the car. That’s the stick and mirror thing, yeah? I thought he was paranoid, me, and then...shit, Annie, are you OK?”

“Better than I deserve, running to a burning car like that, aye? So they didn’t have it wired to the car, then? What do you think, a spotter?”

“Yeah, sees Den, makes sure he gets in, then Den spots it, tries to get away as far and as fast, yeah, and they decide they’ll do it anyway. Cunts. Annie, I want every last one of them dead.”

“Not going to happen, Ruthy, so let’s just take what we can, aye? Den alive and well first.”

She looked down at the still figure in the bed, as the respirator wheezed and various electronic machines did their own background noises.

“He’s mine now, Annie. Mine. We have a date in a year’s time and he is going to be there. Right, love?”

The look on her face said all I needed to know. I wasn’t the only one finding depths where I needed them.