Single Dads Collection. Lynne Marshall

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      God, he hurt.

      Everywhere.

      There was something pressing on his back and shoulders so he could scarcely breathe, and just beyond him he could hear Ismael’s wife weeping. Ismael was silent, and he hadn’t heard the baby cry at all.

      He could hear rescue workers, though, the shouted instructions, the sound of machinery. And then they called for silence, and he tried to yell, but his breathing was so restricted he couldn’t do more than whisper.

      He could knock, though. He managed to make his hand into a fist around a rock, and he smacked it as hard as he could against the slab above him.

      ‘I can hear something,’ someone shouted, and he recognised the voice of Tim Daly, the cameraman.

      He banged again, and again, and then he heard the scrape of a shovel and the urgent voices.

      Thank God. He closed his eyes and assessed the situation.

      He was lying on his front, his head turned to one side and his left arm twisted up behind his head. He must have lifted it up to protect his head and neck, but it was stuck now, and he didn’t want to think about the pain. But he couldn’t move at all. He could feel everything—only too well—but apart from his right arm and a very small amount of movement in his left leg, he was trapped. And if they managed to free him, he might end up with crush syndrome, from all the muscle proteins pouring into his bloodstream when the circulation was restored. And then he’d go into multiple organ failure and die.

      He felt panic begin to rise, and squeezed his eyes shut, concentrating on slowing his breathing and not wasting energy. He wasn’t getting enough oxygen into his body to waste it on futile panic.

      So he thought about Em, and the baby, and how he would have felt if it had been them in here and he’d been in Ismael’s place.

      What was it Dan had said about being between a rock and a hard place? He nearly laughed, but the laugh turned to a sob, and he forced himself to be calm. He focussed on Emily’s face, the tender smile as she reached up and touched his mouth when he’d made love to her, her fingers exploring him.

      He should have stayed there with her. He should have told his boss to go to hell, and stayed there with her, with the woman he loved, and with the family that had become his own.

      But then he wouldn’t have been there to help Ismael.

      And Ismael might have been outside still when the aftershock had hit, instead of inside, lying still and silent while his wife wept at his side.

      Just like Carmen, dead and cold in the hospital chapel while her tiny motherless daughter had struggled for life in the special care baby unit. All because he’d interfered.

      He felt bile in his throat, but he could hardly swallow, and it seared his parched throat. He ignored it. Precious little else he could do, and all he could think about was Kizzy and what would become of her if he died.

      If only Emily wasn’t so set on not having her. They’d make such a wonderful family, but she’d made it quite clear that she didn’t want any more to do with her than was absolutely essential. Take the breast pump, for example. He’d thought it was crazy right from the start, taking the milk out of Emily into the pump and then a bottle to give to her, when the sensible, best and most convenient thing would have been to feed her directly.

      But she’d been adamant, and who was he to argue? Just a relic from her past come back to complicate her carefully ordered existence.

      It hadn’t done a lot for his, either. Well, a lot for his existence, but damn all for the careful order. Or was it careless disorder he meant? Being able to walk out of the door at a moment’s notice with nothing more than a phone, his wallet and his keys. A far cry from leaving the house with a baby. You had to be seriously orderly to achieve that. It was like a military operation.

      He thought of his flat in London. He’d given Dan the keys the day before he’d left, so he could go and stay there. Was he still there? He hoped not, because when—if—he got out of this mess, he’d have to move back there.

      Back there, alone, without Kizzy, without Em, without Beth and Freddie, without Nick and Georgie and their children. He wondered if they’d had the baby yet. Maybe not. It wasn’t quite due, he didn’t think, but he couldn’t remember.

      It seemed suddenly very important that he did, but he was losing focus. His right leg had gone to sleep, and his left arm was beginning to break through the mental block he’d put on it and give him hell. If only he could breathe…