Bobby’s mum was filled with a black worry, ever since she got up, all morning long. More worried than she had ever been in the whole of her life. She knew something was wrong, she just didn’t know what, but she could not settle, not settle at all. And so after lunch, when she still didn’t feel right, just couldn’t shake it off, Cissie put on her coat, her hat and her gloves, and went out into the snow, the thick, heavy snow, and trudged down the backs, round to her friend’s, and she knocked on her door –

I thought it’d be you, said her friend, I just knew. So come on, get yourself in, pet, out of the cold.

Cissie stamped the snow off her boots on the step, went into the warm and said, But how did you know?

I just knew, said her friend. Can you not sense there’s something in the air, something not right?

Aye, you’re right, you’re right, said Cissie, but what is it, what’s wrong, do you know? Can you tell us? Because it’s driving us mad. I just want to know.

Her friend helped Cissie out of her coat, brushed the snow off its collar, then guided Cissie into the back and the kitchen, sat her down in a chair at the table, and said, Well, the one thing I know is that fretting won’t help. But a nice cup of tea, of hot, strong, sweet tea, well, that just might. Then we’ll put our two silly old wooden heads together and see if we can’t think what it is …

*

This is it, thought Bill, his head jammed into his chest, crouched right down in his seat and strapped in so tight he could barely breathe, the snow racing past, the engines surging, but not enough, he knew, not surging enough, one, two, three sickening bumps where there should have been none as Bill closed his eyes and thought again, This is it, thrown up, around and into darkness, darkness –

Get the bloody hell out of there, man …

Bill could hear a voice, someone knocking on the window. He opened his eyes. Albert Scanlon had been in the seat in front of Bill, but Albert was gone, he’d disappeared, the whole of the right side of the aircraft with him, Roger and the lads who’d been sitting with him all gone, disappeared. There was just sky now, only sky. But Bill was untouched, still strapped into his seat –

What the hell are you doing in there?

Bill turned to the window, saw a man with a tiny fire extinguisher in his hand banging on the window, yelling at Bill, Get out, man, get out!

*

Harry thought he was dead. They all must be dead. That this was the end. He’d never see his wife, his daughter, his mother and his father, his brothers and his sister again. That this was death: one second light and noise, the next dark and still. In a country from which he could never return, a language he would never learn. The only sound the sound of hissing, like snakes hissing, hissing in the dark. His mouth full of salt, the taste of salt. He did not dare to raise his hand, to touch the crack across his head. The top of his head taken clean off, like a hard-boiled egg, sheared straight off, and left for dead, without his head. That this was death, his end. But just above him, to the right of him, then he saw the light, a shaft of light, streaming down on him, calling out to him, Harry, Harry, come on, Harry, and he realised he was lying on his side, still buckled in his seat. He reached down, unfastened the belt, and he started to crawl up, up towards the light, the light coming from a hole. He reached the hole, his head out of the hole, he looked down on the ground below and he froze: Bert Whalley, the youth-team coach, was lying in the dirty black slush in his bright blue cardigan, his eyes open, looking up at Harry, staring back up at Harry. There was not a scratch on Bert, but Harry knew he was dead, that Bert was dead. Harry took a step back. He kicked at the hole, made the hole bigger, then he dropped down through the hole, onto the ground. The engine to his left was burning, the rest of the wing gone. Maybe everyone was dead, everyone but him. No, that couldn’t be right. He could hear voices, in the distance, could see five people running away, away through the snow. They were shouting, shouting at him, Run, man, run!

*

Bill didn’t need telling twice, but when he tried to get up to get out, he couldn’t get up to get out. He was trapped in his seat, still wearing his strap. He unbuckled the belt as fast as he could, then clambered out through a serrated hole in the side of the plane, careering past shards of twisted, burning metal, certain the plane was going to blow, its engines explode at any moment, in any second, blown to kingdom come, running as fast as he could through the thick, wet snow, but never touching the snow, his feet never touching the ground, just sprinting as fast as he could, away from the plane, from kingdom come, running for dear life, dear life.

*

Run, you stupid bastard, run! It’s going to explode!

The captain had appeared from around the side of the cockpit. He had a small fire extinguisher in one hand, waving at Harry with the other, yelling at Harry, telling him, ordering him to run, man, run. Then he disappeared again, back around to the front of the cockpit, and Harry would have run, was about to run, but then amid the crackle of the fire, the hissing in the air, the shouting in the distance, Harry heard a cry, a kiddie crying, and Harry shouted at the people running away through the snow, the figures disappearing in the distance, Come back, you bastards, come back! There’s people still alive in here!

But they didn’t come back, they kept going, and in anger and in rage, Harry cursed them. He cursed them as he climbed and he crawled his way back inside the aircraft, scrabbling through the darkness, thinking of his daughter, his own daughter, that someone would do the same for his daughter, go back for his daughter –

He felt a coat, a tiny coat in his hand, in the darkness, afraid of what he would find as he lifted the child’s coat, but there was nothing there, under the coat. He heard another cry, coming from further back. He crawled, he clambered deeper into the wreckage, towards the cries, towards the child, and he found the child, the tiny child, pinned under a pile of debris. He cleared away the debris, he freed the child, lifted up the baby and held it in his arms. Then Harry began to crawl again, back over the debris, through the wreckage and out of the aircraft, with the child in his arms, and when Harry came out of the darkness, back into the light again, the kiddie in his arms, pinned to his chest, he headed in the direction of the people in the distance, tried to catch them up, calling for them to stop, to wait, to take the child from him –

The radio operator stopped running, turned and came back towards him. Harry handed the kiddie to him and said, There’s people still alive in there.

The radio operator nodded, took the child from Harry, then he turned and began to walk away again, the baby in his arms, pressed to his chest.

But Harry didn’t stand and watch him go. Harry went back to the aircraft, back inside again he went, found a woman under another pile of wreckage, in a terrible state, an awful gaping wound to her face, the mother of the child, and Harry had to push her out of the wreckage with his own legs, her legs both twisted and broken, then to drag her clear of what was left of the aircraft –

He still could not understand what had happened to the aircraft, how it could be so utterly destroyed, whole sections disappeared. But back again, inside he went, through the tangled, twisted hell, searching for survivors, calling out to his pals, his best pal –

Blanchy! Blanchy?

Harry came across Ray Wood in his big orange sweater, but Harry couldn’t shift him, couldn’t get him to move an inch. He found Albert Scanlon nearby and he was almost sick was Harry, the injuries Albert had, he struggled not to throw up did Harry as he tried to budge him, but Scanny wouldn’t budge either, and Harry was sure he was dead, both of them dead, Albert and Ray, and Bobby Charlton and Dennis Viollet, too. They were still strapped in their seats, hanging half in, half out of what was left of the plane, not a mark on Bobby and not much wrong with Dennis, but Harry couldn’t rouse them, he was sure they were dead, but he grabbed them by the waistbands of their trousers and dragged them through the slush and the snow, still in their seats, away from the aircraft, away from the flames, and then back again went Harry, back around the aircraft, searching, calling out for Blanchy! Blanchy …?

*

Frank lay trapped in a tangle of metal, watching flakes of ice fall through a gap where only seconds, less than a minute before, had been the tail of the plane. He didn’t know why, but Frank was thinking about the crash at Ringway the year before, in March it was, when a British European Airways flight from Amsterdam had crashed as it came in to land. It was a Viscount aircraft, and about a mile from the runway, it made a sudden right turn, at such a steep downward angle that its right wingtip had touched the ground. The plane broke up, burst into flames and crashed into a house on Shadow Moss Road, killing a...