I was planning to visit him tomorrow, on our day off.
I don’t suppose I’ll be doing that now though.
Gingerly, I raise my hand to my head, and think it might be bleeding.
It is bleeding.
‘She needs to go to hospital,’ says Nick.
‘Do we call an ambulance?’ says Emma. ‘I don’t think you’re meant to move someone who’s hit their head.’
‘Isn’t that more to do with the spine?’ says Felix.
‘I’m googling it,’ says Naomi.
‘I’ve got it,’ says Ana, tapping. ‘She fell more than a metre, right?’
‘She fell about three,’ says Nick.
‘Then she needs an ambulance.’
‘Are you sure?’ says Blake, who appears to have joined us. ‘That’s going to get a lot of attention.’
‘Fuck off, Blake,’ says Nick. ‘I’m calling one.’
‘This is stupid,’ I say. ‘I’ll be fine … ’
‘Ambulance please,’ says Nick into his phone.
I feel like such an idiot, being the source of all this fuss.
It’s not like Emma and I weren’t warned about the stairs.
Iris came out on to the control tower stairs to watch the squadron depart for Essen, leaving Clare to manage take-off with Sergeant Browning. Folding her arms, she looked towards the laden planes, stationary and silent at their dispersal points, waiting for them to begin taxiing towards the runway. She shivered with apprehension, and the cold. The fog had entirely lifted now, exposing a starlit sky, and beneath it an April frost had set in, shimmering on the tarmac and the stairs. Piper was at the foot of them, getting tied up by the parachute rigger, Lydia, to stop her running after the planes. Browning would fetch her into the tower once they’d left, but not before. She liked to see them off too, and howled if anyone tried to prevent her.
And now here was Prim, coming up the stairs towards Iris, her blonde hair pinned beneath her cap, her legs clad in pristine nylons. She held on to the banister as she walked, stopping herself from slipping.
She didn’t need to be down at the base yet. As an intelligence officer, her duties wouldn’t start until interrogation, so she could remain in bed until dawn. But she always spent ops nights in the control tower breakroom, waiting for everyone to return. Annoying as she was, there was no disputing she cared.
‘Shouldn’t you be inside?’ she demanded of Iris, joining her on the landing.
‘I want to see Robbie off.’
‘Well, I’m going in,’ said Prim, pushing past her. ‘It’s freezing.’
Iris stepped aside, giving her room to pass.
And, in the same moment, as Piper let go a bark, the planes began to fire up their engines, their collective roar filling the night.
It was the noise of the planes that did it.
And the blaze of the flare path.
It hadn’t yet been lit when Emma and I began climbing the stairs, passing Rusty, leashed at the bottom. The planes hadn’t started up. We went slowly, our leather brogues as good as skates on the frosted wood. The temperature hasn’t risen above zero for days now, and although the stairs had been gritted, they were still icy.
‘Watch yourselves, please,’ Jeff called after us. ‘I don’t want either of you breaking your necks.’
The shot we were about to film was the last one we had on for tonight. We’ve been working since sundown, getting everything for this sequence in the can: first, the squadron spilling out of their flight briefing; then, everyone in the parachute queues; then, the ground crew loading the incendiaries; then, Emma and I watching the boys head to their dispersal points. This final piece was meant to be of us on the stairs, and the planes taxiing to the runway. It’s an effect-heavy shot, costly and labour-intensive, and the aim was to do it in one take.
