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Then he heard a boy’s voice, groaning.
Frank looked towards the direction of the voice, then looked at the woman. She looked like she’d be able to sort herself out, but he’d come back after finding the boy.
He ran towards the boy’s groaning until he found him. He was with another boy. Both of them looked around 12. They were on the ground at opposite ends from each other, like when two boys of that age share a bed but don’t want to be face to face.
One was sitting up, and the other was leaning on an elbow, as both of them pushed away the broken wood that had landed on their legs.
Frank could see that they were both able to move their legs and feet. One was smiling. The other was in pain, but judging by his face, it looked like the pain was nothing much, on a par with grazing a knee or banging a shin.
He was about to head back to the woman when he heard panting.
It was the sound of a man in a lot of pain, breathing through his teeth, quickly. Then it stopped, then started again.
It came from the right, towards the factory. Looking in that direction, Frank could see a flashing yellow light, which he thought was the light from a fire engine or some other emergency service. But then he saw that the yellow light was coming from flames. Through the dust, he could see that the factory was on fire.
Frank walked in that direction slowly. There was more rubble. It became higher, and the dust cloud was thicker.
‘Hello?’ shouted Frank. But the man didn’t shout back, he only panted and coughed.
Frank walked towards the sound, until he saw a hand sticking out from the rubble. Then he saw the guy’s legs. They were trapped, but in a far worse way than the boys. The legs were underneath a short but heavy-looking beam of wood, and they looked broken. One of the legs was bent in the wrong direction at the knee.
He followed the legs with his eyes to try and find the guy’s face. He heard the panting again. They were short breaths. The breaths of a man trapped under the weight of the rubble, making every breath an effort.
He leaned over and began to lift one of the rocks away from the rubble, but then stopped when he saw that the guy was one of those guys with the funny moustaches. The type of moustache that curled up at the side like Poirot or an old-fashioned boxer.
Frank liked people like that, usually, these cartoony types with their funny moustaches or big beards or bow ties, the ones that treated life like it was one big fancy-dress party.
But now wasn’t the time. There had been an explosion, and people needed help.
He put the rock back down and ran back to the woman from before, to make sure she had got out from beneath the corrugated iron.
He found her as she was getting to her feet with the help of another man who was taking her arm. Frank took her other arm.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘My God, what happened? What was it?’
‘It was that factory,’ said Frank, pointing towards the flames. ‘There was a factory there.’
The other guy spoke to Frank. ‘Is there anybody else?’ he asked. ‘Back there?’
‘Aye,’ said Frank. ‘There were a couple of boys over this way.’
Frank and the other guy guided the woman to the pavement at the other side of the road, then they rushed back onto the road to help the boys.
One of the boys was already on his feet. His denims were ripped and Frank could see a graze on the legs through the hole, but he looked like he got away with it. He was very lucky, relatively speaking. The other boy looked like he was in more pain, holding his hip.
‘How’s your leg, son?’ asked Frank. ‘Is it your hip? Do you think you could get up?’
The boy got up quickly after Frank spoke to him, like he wasn’t really in that much pain and all it took was a grown man to snap him out of his childishness.
The boy’s pal helped him up, and Frank and the other guy stood by, ready to help if need be. But the boys were fine, and off they went, with the luckier one of the two helping the other one limp away.
The man asked Frank ‘Anybody else?’ as he looked around. ‘Who else?’
Frank looked towards where the boys had headed.
‘Boys!’ shouted Frank, into the cloud of dust.
‘What?’ shouted one of them.
‘Did you see anybody else?’ asked Frank. ‘Any of your wee pals missing?’
‘No,’ came the voice.
‘All right,’ shouted Frank.
The other man looked around, standing on the spot, swivelling to the left and right, to see or hear anything.
They heard a conversation from somewhere in the cloud of dust.
A lassie said, ‘What are you looking for?’
A woman said, ‘My phone.’
Frank ran off in that direction, to help this woman find her phone. She’d need it to let her family know she was all right. But he’d have to be fast. It wouldn’t be long until the police came and cleared everybody away and taped the area off, and if she didn’t find the phone before that happened, it would probably be lost for good. He’d help her find that and anything else that was missing, he’d see if anybody else was missing anything, then he’d come back to check on the guy with the funny moustache, if there was time.
Porridge
Jason sat at the kitchen table, eating his breakfast. It was the same breakfast he’d had every day for the past three months. It was a bowl of porridge, made by his wife Mary.
He didn’t like it.
His favourite cereal was Frosties, but he wasn’t allowed to have that anymore. He’d been stuffing his face too much recently, not just with Frosties but with everything, and Mary blamed it on what he was having for breakfast.
She told him that what was happening was that he was starting the day with a sugar rush. He was starting the day on a bad foot. Then he’d come crashing down an hour later, and crave more sugar. She said that was why he was snacking throughout the day, eating chocolate and crisps and whatever else he bought at the shops on his way to work. It was why he was fat and always tired.
So it would be porridge now. And he wasn’t even allowed salt in it either, because salt was bad for you. It would be porridge oats and hot water, with a splash of milk on top, if he wanted.
Soy milk.
That was how he started every day. Every single day. He’d go to bed, knowing that the next day would start that way. And in the morning, he could barely bring himself to climb out of bed.
He couldn’t take it.
He asked her if he could maybe have Frosties as a weekend breakfast treat, as a wee reward for managing to stay off it during the week.
But she said no and told him to stick with it, he’d thank her in the end.
He told her he understood that she was trying to do a good thing, but he asked her to consider if it was any kind of life to deprive yourself of the things you like, just for the sake of being a few pounds lighter or having a bit of extra get up and go.
But she told him he was fat and tired, how was that any kind of life?
He said all right, all right, he’d do it, and he asked her how long it would last. A couple of weeks? A month? Or was it when he got down to a certain weight? He could do it as long as he knew that there was light at the end of the tunnel.
She said that there was no reason for it to end. ‘You’ll get used to it,’ she said. But he never did. And it was driving him out of his mind.
But then, one morning, something happened.
‘Look at this,’ he said, holding up a spoonful of porridge that he’d just lifted out from his bowl.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘Come around here and look.’
‘What is it?’ she asked again. ‘It isnae a fly or something is it? If it is, I don’t want to see it.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Just come here and look. It’s funny.’
‘Funny?’ she asked.
She wondered what could possibly be funny about porridge, so she stood up and walked around to his side of the table. She looked into the bowl of porridge, and then at the spoon. There was nothing funny there.
She asked: ‘So what is it?’
Jason raised the spoon and turned it slightly. ‘D’you not think that looks a bit like Charlie?’
She began walking away, without looking at the spoon. She couldn’t be bothered with this.
‘Look!’ said Jason, smiling.
She stopped and turned. Curiosity got the better of her. She walked back to Jason’s side, knowing that it was a waste of time. But she was curious.
She looked at the spoon, ready to say ‘No’ and walk away. But you know what?
‘It does!’ she said.
She leaned closer to it, and tilted her head from side to side to view it from different angles. She laughed. ‘It actually does!’
She looked for her phone to take a picture, she was going to send it to Charlie’s wife Deborah. But she couldn’t find it.
Jason smiled at the porridge on the spoon, then pointed at one bit with his pinky. ‘Do you see that bit there? That’s his hair. Do you see it? How much does that look like Charlie’s hair?’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s the spitting image.’
And it was. It was the double. Charlie had thick, wiry fair hair that looked all wavy and bumpy like a cloud. Or like a lump of porridge.
Mary looked at it for a while longer, then she lost interest.
She walked back around to her side of the table and sat down. And it was back to business as usual, as quickly as that. George went back to eating his porridge. They finished their breakfast, left the house, got into their separate cars and went away to work.
A few days later, something else happened.
Mary read about it when she and Jason were having breakfast. Deborah had posted an update on Facebook.
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