Bride by Accident

She couldn’t ask the kids.

Which left her.

She gulped.

‘Don’t slide,’ she told the bus. Stupidly. Inconsequentially. ‘Don’t you dare slide. I haven’t come all this way to get squashed.’

Squashed wasn’t a good thought and she couldn’t afford to think it. If she hesitated any more she wouldn’t do it. There was no choice.

Two kids.

She reached up, grabbed the top of the window-frame and hauled herself up and inside the bus.

She was met by chaos.

A bus, lying on its side at a thirty or forty degree angle on the side edge of a cliff wasn’t the most organised place to be at the best of times. And this one had been crushed by rolling logs.

There was shattered glass, twisted metal and seats, satchels spilling schoolbooks…

How had so many kids got out of here alive? Emma asked herself as she tried to get her bearings.

The frame was still almost intact. That’d be why. There’d be cuts from the broken glass but not much impact damage.

What else might have caused major trauma?

There were a couple of logs that had smashed right inside.

Maybe they’d missed everyone.

Yeah, right.

But maybe they had. She couldn’t hear anything.

‘Is anyone in here?’ she called, trying not to sound as terrified as she felt.

Nothing.

Maybe Katy had been mistaken. Please.

She bit her lip—then slid her way slowly down, gingerly, horribly conscious of the fact that the bus was precariously balanced thirty feet above the sea. But there was nothing she could do about that little nightmare. She couldn’t think about it.

She did think about it.

No matter. She couldn’t let it matter. She worked slowly down the rows of seats, searching, searching…

Thank God she was wearing sensible clothes. Her oversized jeans and windcheater and her sneakers protected her from the worst of the broken glass. If she’d been in summer dress and sandals she’d be have been cut to ribbons.

Where were they?

Katy had said there were two kids. Katy looked the sort of kid who’d miss nothing.

And as she thought it, she found the first.

She almost missed him. A vast log had smashed through a window, crushing the child against the far bus wall. Crushing him so that she could scarcely see him. The log had rolled back as the bus had settled, but Kyle had been left where he’d been crushed.

No.

He must have died instantly, Emma thought, sickened beyond belief. A little boy, seven or eight…

Bright copper hair.

Dead.

She swallowed and swallowed again. Katy had said his name was Kyle.

Kyle.

She was crying now. Tears were sliding uselessly down her cheeks and she couldn’t stop them. She didn’t try.

‘Kyle.’ She whispered his name, then put her hand across to touch the little boy’s face. His face was almost untouched but the rest of him…No. She checked for a pulse, but it was no use. She was searching for something she knew had irretrievably gone.

Useless.

Her touch turned into a tiny gesture of blessing. It was all she could do for him.

Doctors should grow accustomed to death.

Doctors never did.

Two kids. She had to move on. Katy had said there were two kids. She swiped away the useless tears and went on searching.

Where…? Had someone been thrown out?

Where?

‘Suzy?’ she called.

Nothing.

She was reaching the front of the bus now, the lowest point—checking, checking.

And then she heard…

It was a rasping, choking sound, so slight it had been almost lost in the sounds she herself was making as the broken glass crunched under her.

Where had the sound come from?

Further forward.