A bus was lumbering its way up Piccadilly from Green Park. Ruby squinted. Number nine. Perfect timing for once. It was on the far side of the road, and the stop was a hundred yards further down. If she hurried, she’d make it.
Something was wrong, though. People were standing on the pavement in groups, looking at the sky, pointing down the road towards Piccadilly Circus. Pointing east, the way her bus was heading. The way home.
The door opened behind her and he stepped out. He was distracted at first, looking up into the sky. But then he looked down and saw her. He started towards her with purpose. She had to get away.
The bus was pulling up at the stop, still fifty yards away and on the far side of the road. From experience, Ruby knew it wouldn’t linger. If she could thread her way through the traffic she’d make it. She hurried into the road, anticipatingthe forward movement of the car in front of her, but the car slammed its brakes on and she smacked her hip against the boot. The driver’s door opened and Ruby turned, ready to argue, to defend herself, stupid motorists thought they owned the road, but the driver wasn’t looking at her. He was looking past her, into the sky.
Ruby skirted around the stopped car and ran into the road, but turned back when she heard a cry next to her. An old lady with her heel caught in a drain. Some people shouldn’t be allowed out on their own, Ruby thought, as she bent to pull the woman’s heel clear of the grate. The ironwork scraped off a long peel of paint, leaving the elegant heel disfigured.
‘Are you all right?’ Ruby asked. The woman looked at her with such undisguised distaste, Ruby took a step back.
‘Take your hands off me this instant,’ the woman said, clutching her purse to her chest.
Ruby smiled, a fixed grin. Don’t let them see they’ve got to you. She glanced up. He was gaining on her. Her Good Samaritan act was going to get her into trouble.
The air-raid siren wailed again. Different this time – instead of the rising and falling tone it was a repeating note meaning danger was imminent. The woman heard it, fear flashed across her face.
Ruby felt a rumble that went right through her. A bomber. Not a speck in the sky, but a very real plane, above the rooftops, much lower than it should be. It was turning, almost on its side, like it was doing acrobatics at an air show. Smaller planes were on its tail. She heard a distant rattle, like a sewing machine. Fighters, trying to bring it down.
The woman with the scraped heel was the only person on the street not watching the sky. She bustled her way acrossthe road, oblivious to the traffic, a black cab making a point of passing by with only inches to spare.
Ruby looked for her pursuer. He, too, was watching the dogfight in the sky. Her chance to evade him. She doubled back. Instead of crossing the road, she ran for the entrance to the bookshop, took shelter inside the recessed doorway.
She’d have to steer clear of the Empire for a few weeks. Try her luck elsewhere. She’d heard the Savoy was worth trying.
The bus collected its passengers, ready to move off. A young woman in a Lyons uniform ran to catch it, jumping onto the platform at the back as the bus pulled out into traffic, gathering speed. Ruby recognised her, and raised her hand to wave.
‘Irene!’ she shouted, before she remembered she was meant to be lying low, but it came out muted against the roar from the planes.
The woman she’d shouted to turned, hanging on to the pole at the back of the bus. ItwasIrene, the only one at the Green Park Lyons who’d been remotely nice to Ruby. Not exactly a friend, but an ally. The bus was already moving off into the traffic, heading past Simpsons, about to be swallowed up by the swirl of cars and buses threading their way through Piccadilly Circus.
Ruby watched as Irene disappeared from view. She imagined her pushing her way into the crowded bus, perhaps finding somewhere to sit, a gallant soldier standing up to make room for the pretty young waitress who’d need to get off her feet after a day serving tea.
What Ruby remembered most, when she thought about it later, was the swish. Like someone had drawn a pair of curtains. There’d been a flash, like lightning; a feeling of being pushed, like a giant hand had reached down andswatted her off the pavement, against the front door of the bookshop.
There never was a bang, like when a bomb went off in the flicks. There must have been, of course, but she never heard it. Just the swish, then the feeling, then staggering along the road, down towards Pall Mall, holding her hand to the back of her head, sticky and warm, not wanting to look.
The bus had caught it. Irene’s bus. A bus that was suddenly not a bus at all, but a cage of twisted metal. A raging inferno.
3
Ruby staggered away from the main road. She couldn’t quite remember why, but it felt important. She’d been about to cross, to catch a bus, but she’d changed her mind.
It would take another ten minutes for another number nine. There weren’t enough of them on the route at the best of times, everyone said so, now they’d be down one. Would they bring in a replacement? They could take one from a lighter-used route? She should write in, suggest the idea.
She fumbled in her bag for a notepad. Suddenly it seemed very important to write. They’d thank her for it.
‘Ruby?’
She looked up. A face in the crowd.
‘My God, you’ve been hurt.’
He pulled a hankie from his pocket as he moved towards her. She stepped back, confused. It didn’t fit, seeing him here, with the screaming behind her from Piccadilly, and the ringing of the bell from the fire engine, already making its way to the scene, and above all of it the siren – redundant surely now the attack had arrived.
‘Let’s get you home,’ he said, taking her arm, a firm grip. Ruby recoiled but the grip didn’t yield.
The car door closed with a clunk. A heavy car. Expensive. The inside smelt of leather and petrol and something else, talcum powder perhaps. Ruby felt for the door handleas he bustled round to the driver’s door, but it didn’t work, just pulled towards her without any click.
