Free Christmas at Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop by Jenny Colgan Page B

girl, who was paralyzed with fear. Emily nodded carefully, and Rosie hoisted Kent over her shoulders—­he cried out, then tried to stifle himself, but she could hear him weeping on her back—­and they moved slowly toward the open door. Outside, Mrs. Baptiste had point-­blank refused to leave her post and helped them back toward a makeshift barrier that had been set up.
    When Tina saw them, she simply sank to her knees in the middle of the wet snowy lane. Jake had come hurtling up the road from Isitt’s farm as fast as his legs could carry him and was there now, red-­faced and puffing. He pushed past the barrier and lifted Kent up in his arms as if he weighed nothing, looking into his face with a tenderness that could not have given two figs for whose son this boy was. Emily had run to her mother and buried her face in her shoulder; Tina had taken her in her arms, but her eyes were still wide open, staring straight ahead, as if still fixed on the possible alternative, gazing in horror on another life.
    Finally the fire brigade was here; a man in full breathing apparatus stood in front of Rosie.
    â€œStand aside now please, ma’am. Let us do our job.”
    Rosie stared at him. She knew he was right, that he was the man to go into that awful dark space again, that it was unprofessional and downright dangerous of her to stand in his way. She had had to do the same thing herself, many times: persuade panicking and desperate relatives to leave the professionals alone to get on with their jobs, that that would be the best for everyone, the victims included.
    She couldn’t help it. She turned around and shot back through the hole.
    â€œMoray!” she shouted. Now the fire brigade were setting up big arc lights that could cut through the dust, and it was even harder to see in the gloom. “Where . . . where . . .”
    Her voice choked, her lungs filled with dust. She tried to collect herself for a moment in the swirling dark.
    â€œHere,” came the voice, quick and clipped.
    She could see what had happened right away. The clothes were ripped from Stephen’s back in a line. He had obviously dived right on top of the boy who even now Moray was crouched over, trying to save. She knelt down, but straight away she could tell that, thank God, he was breathing; his back was a mess, but it was not bleeding extensively, it was just going to hurt like absolute buggery when he woke up. But he would—­even as she looked at him, broken and twisted on the ground—­wake up. If they got him out in time. The air was filled with the smell of spilled petrol.
    â€œHere,” she shouted desperately to the rescuers behind them. “Here!” And she grabbed Stephen’s hand tightly.
    Lying there on the ground beside them, Edison was a different matter. Moray had cleared his airways and checked his breathing; he was in the recovery position but completely unconscious. His face was a mess, his little body horribly contorted where it lay. Moray was gently trying to protect his spine. Rosie looked at the GP’s filthy face, but it was absolutely unreadable.
    â€œHe’s a doctor,” she said to the paramedics now fighting their way through.
    â€œWho are you?” one of them barked back at her.
    â€œIt doesn’t matter,” said Rosie, and she knelt down between Stephen and Edison, and refused to move until the stretcher was lifted and she felt Stephen grimace and painfully and briefly come to as he was lifted.
    â€œYou do go,” she managed to say chokily as she felt his eyes rest upon her and saw the relief in them as they did so, “to quite ridiculous lengths to try and get the attention of a nurse.”
    O UTSIDE , TO HER intense relief, the fire brigade was training its foam hoses on the big lorry, which no longer had smoke coming from it. The driver had been brought out, a little concussed, but otherwise perfectly well. He was standing