Doris Lessing

To the ambulance man who bent over Roberta, Alice said, "She's not hurt, I don't think. But she" - tor some reason Alice could not bring herself to use Faye's name of this mess of blood and flesh - "she was right in the way of the explosion."

"And where were you?" asked the ambulance man, gently assisting poor Roberta to her feet.

"I was over there, on that pavement," said Alice truthfully. "No, I'm not hurt."

By now two of them were crouching beside Faye, and Roberta and Alice stood upright, Alice holding Roberta.

"She's dead," Alice said reasonably to Roberta.

"Yes, I know," said Roberta in a normal voice.

At this point a policeman charged up and ordered, "What are you doing here, are you hurt? Then move along."

Alice put her arm round Roberta and walked her away. She did not want the policeman to come to his senses and start questioning Roberta, who, on casual inspection, did not look abnormal, though she was soaked with blood from the waist down.

She had not thought what she would do with Roberta, blood-soaked and in a state, away from the crowds and the police; but they were stopped by another policeman, this time in control of himself, who said that Roberta looked as if she needed attention.

"She's in shock," said Alice.

"Then get her into the ambulance," said the policeman, turning away to join with others in pushing away onlookers.

There was nothing for it. Alice went with Roberta in the ambulance, together with ten others, all of them shocked or slightly hurt. The badly wounded were being loaded into other ambulances.

Theirs was one of the first away. Alice and Roberta were silent, listening to people who wept, who complained, or who excitedly told their stories; how they were peacefully going along the street, or in or out of the hotel, and then...

Cut faces and arms, possible fractures, bruises. One woman had had her clothes torn off her by the blast and was wrapped in a blanket. Another had been flung right through the window that at that moment had been in the process of shattering. She was covered with small deep cuts and seemed the worst off.

They were in the hospital in a few minutes.

Roberta was examined and pronounced unharmed.

Alice explained to a sympathetic policeman that Roberta and she had been going into the hotel when it happened. They got into a taxi and were driven home. The taxi man said it was a shocking thing; probably those Arabs again; they had no sense of the sacred-ness of life, not like the Westerners; if he had his way he would stop the Arabs from coming here.

Roberta and Alice said nothing.

It was seven when they reached home. In the kitchen was Bert, attending to Jasper, who had a great many cuts on his face and his head, but was otherwise all right. Bert said he should get the cuts stitched up; some of them were deep. Jasper said no. And Jasper was right. He should have stayed, instead of ru

"I don't think it would be all right," said Jasper. "The fewer people involved, the better."

Alice thought this was sensible, and tried to examine the cuts. He shook her off. They didn't seem too bad to her; perhaps they wouldn't leave scars. Well, there was always plastic surgery.

The five of them finally sat round the table.

Jasper told them, in a businesslike, formal way, how, as he had turned the car out of the street where it had been left, he had misjudged a distance and scraped the front mudguard of a parked car. He would have driven off, but now there was a car immediately blocking his way, and a man who had seen the incident from a first-floor window came ru

When they at last got into the stream of traffic again, they were so late they thought of calling the whole thing off. Faye could easily disco

When Faye had turned, the second time, not immediately up past the hotel but on the next turning, it was because they had not seen any parking places, had decided to stop the car anywhere they could find a place so that, regardless of who was watching, Faye could wrench the co

"No," Faye had said gallantly, "there's nothing for it," and had tried to drive faster, but was hemmed in by traffic.

And when Jasper had got out but Faye had not, was it that Faye's door had jammed? Had he been going to help her with the door?

This was Roberta, and she sounded accusing.

Jasper hesitated. Alice knew it was because he was trying to think how not to say something. When he looked like this, very pale but luminous, with a candid, suffering, helpless look, it meant he was going to lie. Or wanted to. He began to stutter, checked himself, and said simply, "When Faye drove into the empty space, she went too fast up onto the pavement, and then braked. She did not have on her seat belt. We did not have our seat belts on, you see."

"Of course not," said Roberta, severely.

"But she was jerked forward, and the driving wheel got the pit of her stomach. She didn't have any breath, you see?" he said gently to Roberta. Alice was thinking, There, he's kind, Jasper's kind, he didn't want to tell Roberta any of this....

Roberta was staring at Jasper, her mouth was open, and she was breathing badly. She was thinking, they all knew, that her Faye had been killed because of some silly little thing, something ridiculous; for the rest of her life Roberta would be thinking, incredulous, that Faye died because she drove too fast and too hard up onto a pavement.

"I could see she couldn't move," said Jasper. "I got the car into reverse - I stretched my feet over, and did it. Then I said she must get out quickly. But she did not move. I think she was too sick to move. I got out to drag her out of the car from the driving side. And then the bomb went off."

"Five minutes too early," said Roberta, this time accusing Jocelin. Who, like Jasper, had sat quiet, hesitating. There was something she did not want to say.

Roberta asked quickly, "Who set the timing? Faye?"

"Yes."

Roberta shook her head, as if saying No, no, no - to all of it - but then sat heavily silent, saying yes to tea, yes to sugar in it, yes to a biscuit. But she did not eat, or drink.

Roberta, they all knew, would at some point come out of this passive state.

Jasper was begi

They listened to the news.