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understand…
    WPC Murphy kept talking regardless of my objection. “As I was saying Mr. Jones responded to the call alongside three other paramedics. The crew was short-staffed. A fourth paramedic was needed. Your husband had the right training. He volunteered and took the call.”
    “Nooooooooo!” A long, shrill howl of despair filled the room, and it took me a moment to work out that it was mine. My vision blurred and my throat closed up. I struggled to breathe and found myself slumping against the policewoman. Perhaps if I just closed my eyes, this would all go away…
    “Parker, call 999. Tell them we have a highly pregnant lady in distress here, do it, now!” WPC Murphy’s voice lifted me out of the blackness and I wondered idly who they were talking about.
    “Steve,” I mumbled. “I want Steve!”

Chapter Six
    WPC Murphy made as though to put her arm around me but stopped the movement before she made contact. She cleared her throat instead. For a moment, she hesitated but then spoke again.
    “Mrs. Jones, I am really sorry but I think it’s best that I tell you what happened, okay?” Her voice was softer now, and the tremor was more distinct. She’s finding this really difficult, a detached part of my brain observed.
    “Mr. Jones would have arrived at the scene at about twenty minutes past ten. He was assessing a young child with a head wound when another bomb went off…”
    “How do you know all this?” I interrupted. “I mean, if he’s really dead, then how do you know when he got there and what he was doing?”
    WPC Murphy recoiled at my outburst, but only for a split second. “I know this,” she supplied gently, “because one of the other crew members told us.”
    “You mean… you mean Steve died and the others survived?”
    In my great terror, I didn’t even notice, then, that I had uttered those words for the first time. Steve died. I was too focused on the notion that someone else should have been there and survived. Not fair, my brain screamed . Not fair, not fair, not fair!
    “One of the crew members survived. The other three, including your husband, perished alongside another crew. A second bomb went off while they were attending to those injured by the first bomb, and many of the paramedics and victims on scene were killed by falling masonry and debris. We don’t know how many have died, yet, but it’s a terrible, terrible tragedy.”
    A terrible, terrible tragedy. What a terribly inadequate way to sum it up. I lifted my feet onto the sofa and curled up into a small ball. The baby was kicking wildly in my tummy, probably unsettled by the masses of adrenaline sloshing through my body, and bile sat acidly in my throat. The room swam in and out of focus and I only had one thought. If Steve was dead, I wanted to die, too.
    “Mrs. Jones? Are you with us?”
    WPC Parker knelt in front of me, her face at eye level with mine. Without warning, the bile in my throat demanded out and I threw up, explosively, all over the sofa and the carpet. The heaving wouldn’t stop and the baby kept kicking and kicking. I moaned in terror and pain, my face wet from tears that I hadn’t noticed were still falling, and I wanted Steve.
    From a long, long way away I heard the two policewomen talking but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Suddenly more people filled the room, people in familiar green suits, and they were fussing over me, trying to make me better. Surely one of them had to be Steve, if he was on paramedic duty today?
    I scrutinized each face hopefully, calling for my husband, but each face turned out to be unfamiliar once it came into focus, and I was alone, alone.
    Alone, apart from the baby kicking in my tummy, of course. And Josh, who was still asleep upstairs.
    The paramedics fitted me with all sorts of gear, a heart rate monitor for me and one for the baby, an oxygen mask, and they seemed to be getting ready to load me onto a stretcher. Why they wanted to save me if I was just