Dead Man's Footsteps

Abby had been in this lift for nearly nine hours now. Maybe she would be here until Monday, if it didn’t break free and plunge to the ground first.
    Oh, fucking great. How was your weekend? I spent mine in a lift. It was cool. It had a mirror and a panel of buttons and a dirty glass roof with light bulbs and a scratch on the wall that looked like someone had started out carving a swastika but changed their mind – and a printed sign by some dumb fuckwit who couldn’t spell – and clearly couldn’t maintain the fucking thing properly either .
    WHEN BROKE DOWN
    CALL 013 228 7828
    OR DIAL 999
    She was shaking with anger and her throat was parched, raw from shouting, her voice gone almost completely. After a rest she hauled herself to her feet once more. She was beyond caring about shaking the thing and dislodging it – she had to get out, rather than just wait forthe cable to snap or the shackles to shear, or whatever else might cause her to plunge to her death.
    ‘I’m trying, you stupid bastards,’ she croaked, staring at the sign, feeling the walls closing in around her again, another panic attack coming on.
    The lift’s phone was still dead. She held her mobile close to her face, breathing deeply, trying to calm herself down, willing a signal to appear, cursing her service provider, cursing everything. Her scalp was so tight around her skull it was blurring her vision and the damn urge to pee was coming again now. Coming like a train, hurtling through her insides.
    Pressing her knees together, she sucked in air. Her thighs, locked against each other, were quivering. She felt an agonizing pain in her belly, as if a hot knife blade had been pushed deep inside her and was now being twisted. She whimpered, gulping down air, her whole body shaking, doubling up into a foetal ball against the wall. She wasn’t going to be able to hold out much longer, she knew.
    But she persevered, clenching – mind over matter – fighting her own body, determined not to succumb to anything it wanted to do that her brain did not. She thought about her mother, who had been incontinent with multiple sclerosis from her late fifties.
    ‘I am not bloody incontinent. Just get me out of here, get me out of here, get me out of here.’ She hissed it under her breath like a mantra until the urge peaked and then slowly, so damned slowly, began to recede.
    Finally, blissfully, it had passed and she slid back down on to the floor exhausted, wondering how long you could stop yourself from peeing before your bladder ruptured.
    People survived in the desert sometimes by drinking their urine. Maybe she could urinate into one of her boots,she thought wildly. Use it as a container. Emergency drinking supply? How long could you last without water? She seemed to remember having read somewhere that a human could last weeks without food but only a few days without water.
    Steadying herself on the swaying floor, she removed her right boot, then jumped up as high as she could, striking the roof panel with the Cuban heel. But it did no good. The lift just swayed crazily, banging and booming off the shaft again, throwing her sideways. She held her breath. This time – surely this time something was going to break. The last frayed strand of wire that stood between her and oblivion…
    There were moments now when she actually wanted it to break. To drop however many floors were left. It would be a solution to everything. An inelegant one, sure, but a solution all the same. And how ironic would that be?
    As if in answer to her question, the lights went out.

13
11 SEPTEMBER 2001
    A house burned down one night in the street where Ronnie Wilson grew up, in Coldean in Brighton. He remembered the smell, the noise, the pandemonium, the fire engines, standing out in the darkness in his dressing gown and slippers, watching. He remembered being fascinated and afraid at the same time. But most of all he remembered the smell.
    A horrible stench of destruction and despair.
    There was the same smell in the air now. Not the pleasant, sweet aroma of wood smoke, or the snug cindery smell of coal, but a sharp, pungent stench of burning paint, charring paper, singeing rubber and acrid gases from melting vinyl and plastics. A choking reek that stung his eyes, that made him want to cover his nose, back off, get away, retrace his steps to the deli he had just left.
    But instead he stood still.
    Like everyone else.
    A surreal moment of silence in the Manhattan morning, as