All Sorts of Possible Read Free Page B

water.
    And then it went dark.
    He crawled painfully through the pitch-black, from stone to stone, until he bumped against the rock wall of the chamber and began to follow its slow curve round. The dark tried to spin him
about, but he kept going, the noise of the waterfall a pivot around which to crawl.
    A couple of times he thought he had found the tunnel and then had to backtrack when he discovered a dead end. But, eventually, he found a wider opening and he kept crawling forward, battling up
the gradual slope, the waterfall becoming quieter and quieter, his breathing louder. He collapsed on his front from time to time, crying out as he hit the rocks, so cold it felt like bone on
bone.
    He stopped, frightened, when he heard a different sound above him until he realized what it was: the hiss of leaves in a breeze.
    When his hands touched a fringe of silky grass, he gasped and lay on the ground at the mouth of the hole to try and gather more strength.
    There were woods to his right.
    In front of him was a large meadow, like a sheet of black ice without the moon to light it.
    The night was dark. But it was a dark he knew by smell and sound. It was a dark that warmed him.

10
    Gradually, it began to grow lighter, the world turning blue in the dawn.
    Daniel found the farm after crawling across the meadow and on through a field of wheat that led to an adjoining lane, picking a path through the prickly hedge because he was too weak to climb
the gate. But he found enough strength to totter down the asphalt towards the farmhouse when he saw it, mud cracking and falling from his bare knees.
    The light from the kitchen window drew him like a moth into the yard.
    When the door opened, he smelt coffee. Toast. Bacon frying in a pan. And it was too much to bear.
    As the farmer’s wife knelt down beside him in her dressing gown, he told her in between his sobbing that he was sorry for dirtying the floor, but the words came out slurred because he was
so cold. She stared at this poor wretched thing and silently prayed
thank you
for his return before shouting at her husband to phone for help.

11
    The paramedics handled him very gently as if wary of breaking or tearing his skin. They listened to his heart and wrapped him in silver heat blankets and warming pads. When
Daniel tried pleading with them to sit in the front of the ambulance, they didn’t seem to hear him. He thought it was because his speech was so slurred he could not make himself properly
understood.
    When the vehicle started moving, he cried out as he lay strapped to the stretcher, imagining the road was going to catch him out again if he wasn’t watching it. Gradually, his sore red
hands relaxed as the tarmac held and the tyres kept rolling, but all the time he was lying there, staring at the ceiling, he kept wondering about what was beneath them, his heart jumping every time
the vehicle braked. Sometimes his brain felt so cold he forgot where he was until another bump of the tyres jerked his thinking back and he recalled what was happening.
    Daniel tried to ask questions whenever he remembered.
    ‘
Where’s my dad?
’
    ‘
He got out, right?
’
    ‘
He’s OK?
’
    But the words came out of him quiet and muddled and meaningless, and he gave up trying to ask anything else when a paramedic placed a mask over his mouth to give him warmed oxygen to breathe. As
Daniel lay there, trying to think clearly through the cold, an IV was pricked into a vein in his arm and warm, soothing fluids crept into his body.
    The paramedic stayed focused on warming Daniel, checking his vital signs, telling him he was going to be all right because he was a strong, healthy boy.
    ‘We’re taking you to Addenbrooke’s Hospital,’ she said. ‘It’s in Cambridge. It’s not far.’
    When they pulled into the bay at the hospital and the driver cut the engine, the paramedic leant in closer. Daniel squirmed, trying to grab her hand, because he wanted to ask
again what had happened to