Suddenly, the room filled with voices and bustling people in black-and-yellow coats and big yellow helmets. The fire brigade had arrived. None too soon, I thought. I started to cry. It was unlike me to cry. My father had been one of the old school who believed that men shouldn’t. “Stop blubbing,” he would say to me when I was about ten. “Grow up, boy. Be a man. Men don’t cry.” And so I had been taught. I hadn’t cried when my father had been killed by the brick truck. I hadn’t even cried at his funeral. I knew that he wouldn’t have wanted me to.

But now the shock, the tiredness, the feeling of inadequacy and the relief that the cavalry had arrived was just too much, and so the tears streamed down my face.

“Come on, sir,” said one of the firemen into my ear as he held my shoulders, “let’s get you out of here. Are you in any pain?”

My tongue felt enormous in my mouth, stifling me. “No,” I croaked. “Well, my knee hurts a bit. But I’m fine…But she…” I pointed at MaryLou, unable to say anything further.

“Don’t worry, sir,” he said to me, “we’ll look after her.”

He helped me to my feet and turned my shoulders away. My gaze remained on where MaryLou’s legs should have been until the fireman turned me so far that my head just had to follow. He held me firmly and pushed me towards the door, where a second fireman put a bright red blanket over my shoulders and led me out. I wondered if they used red blankets so that the blood didn’t show.

The fireman guided me down the corridor towards the stairwell. I looked into the kitchen as we passed by. Carl was leaning over the sink, throwing up. I knew how he felt.

A man in a green jacket with DOCTOR written large across the back pushed past me. “Is he all right?” he asked my escort.

“Seems so,” was the reply.

I wanted to say that no, I wasn’t all right. I wanted to tell him that I had glimpsed an image of hell and that it would surely live with me forever. I wanted to shout out that I was far from all right and that I might never be all right again.

Instead, I allowed myself to be led to the stairwell, where I obeyed instructions to go down. I was assured that others would be waiting at the bottom to help me. But can they erase the memory? Can they give me back my innocence? Can they prevent the nightmares?

HAVING BEEN INSTRUCTED by the fireman, I obediently descended to ground level and, as promised, was met by helping hands and soothing voices. A brief assessment of my physical injuries left me, still wrapped in my red blanket, sitting on a row of white plastic chairs for what seemed like a very, very long time. Several times a young man in a bright green outfit with PARAMEDIC emblazoned in white letters across his shoulders came over to ask if I was OK. He said that they were sorry about the delay, but there were others in greater need. I nodded. I knew. I could still see them in my mind’s eye.

“I’m fine,” I said. But I didn’t really mean it.

Ambulances came and went, their sirens wailing, and a line of black body bags, laid out close to the back of the grandstand, grew longer as the afternoon sunlight slowly faded towards evening.

I was finally taken to the hospital about seven o’clock. After so long sitting in the plastic chair, I was unable to stand properly on my left leg since my knee had swollen up and stiffened badly. My young paramedic friend helped me to an ambulance that then sedately drove off with no siren or flashing lights. It was as if the urgency of the crisis was passed. Those seriously injured and dying had been whisked away at speed. Those already dead were beyond help. We, the almost-walking wounded, could now be cared for with composure and calm.

The ambulance took me all the way to Bedford, as the hospitals more local to Newmarket had been overwhelmed by the seriously injured. At Bedford, an X-ray revealed no fractures in my swollen left knee. A doctor speculated that the collision with the door may have caused a temporary dislocation of my patella-my kneecap-which had resulted in some internal bleeding. A hematoma had formed in the joint, causing both the swelling and the pain. The blood loss that had stained my trousers was found to be due to a tear of the soft tissue of my lower thigh, also probably a consequence of the collision with the door. Although the flow had all but stopped, the doctor insisted on applying some adhesive strips to close the edges of the wound, which he then covered with a large white rectangular bandage. No such care was afforded to my trousers, which were unceremoniously cut off short on the left side. The hospital provided me with a tight blue rubberized sleeve for my knee to both provide support for the joint and to apply pressure to the hematoma to reduce the bruising. They also thoughtfully equipped me with a long white, closely woven cotton sock to wear on my left foot to reduce swelling in the lower leg and a supply of large white painkillers. I would be fine, they said, after a few days’ rest. Fine in body, I thought, although it would take longer to heal the emotional injury.

A taxi was ordered to take me home. So I sat waiting in the hospital reception, somewhat embarrassed at having caused such a fuss and feeling guilty that I had escaped so lightly while others had not. I was utterly drained. I thought about Robert and Louisa, my staff. Had they survived? What should I do to find out? Who should I ask?

“Taxi for Mr. Moreton,” said a voice, bringing me back to the present.

“That’s me,” I replied.

I realized I had no money in my pockets.

“That’s all right, the National Health Service is paying,” said the driver. “But they don’t tip,” he added. He’s going to be unlucky, I thought, if he thinks he’s going to get a tip from me.

He looked me up and down. I must have been quite a sight. I still wore my chef’s tunic, but my black-and-white checked trousers now had one leg long and one short, with a blue knee brace and white stocking below.

“Are you some sort of clown?” asked the driver.

“No,” I said, “I’m a chef.”

He lost interest.

“Where to?” he asked.

“Newmarket.”

THE TAXI ARRIVED at my cottage on the southern edge of Newmarket at about eleven o’clock. I had slept the whole way from Bedford Hospital, and the driver had real difficulty waking me up to get me out of the vehicle. Eventually, I was roused sufficiently for him to help me hop across the small stretch of grass between the road and my front door.

“Will you be OK?” he asked as I put the key in the lock.

“Fine,” I said, and he drove away.

I hopped into the kitchen and took a couple of the painkillers with some water from the sink tap. The stairs were too much, I decided, so I lay down on the sofa in my tiny sitting room and went eagerly back to my slumbers.

I was lying on a hospital gurney that was moving slowly along a gray-colored, windowless corridor. I could see the ceiling lights passing overhead. They were bright rectangular panels set into the gray ceiling. The corridor seemed to go on forever, and the lights were all the same one after the other, one after the other. I looked up and back to see that I was being pushed by a lady in a red chiffon blouse with a mass of curly hair bouncing on her shoulders. It was MaryLou Fordham, and she was smiling at me. I looked down at her lovely legs, but she didn’t have any legs and seemed to be floating across the gray floor. I sat up with a jerk and looked at my own legs. The bedding was flat where my legs should have been, and there was blood, lots of blood, bright red pools of blood. I screamed and rolled off the gurney. I was falling, falling, falling…

I woke up with a start, my heart pounding, my face cold, clammy, sweaty. So vivid had been the dream that I had to feel with my hands to be sure that my legs were actually there. I lay in the dark, breathing hard, while my pulse returned to something near normal.