The Three by Sarah Lotz Page A

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    How I managed to pay for my parking and make it back to Hoxton without sliding under a lorry on the M23 is a mystery. Another complete blank. Later, I saw that I’d parked Stephen’s Audi with its front wheels on the kerb as if it was a discarded joyride vehicle.
    I only came to when I stumbled into the hallway, sending the table we use for post flying. One of the Polish students who lived in the ground floor flat popped his head around his door and asked me if I was okay. He must’ve seen that I wasn’t because when I asked him if he had any alcohol, he disappeared for a few seconds, then wordlessly handed me a bottle of cheap vodka.
    I ran into my flat, knowing full well that I was about to fall off the wagon. And I didn’t care.
    I didn’t bother with a glass, I drank the vodka straight out of the bottle. I couldn’t taste it. I was shaking, twitching, my hands were tingling. I dug out my BlackBerry, scrolled through my contacts, but I didn’t know who to call.
    Because the first person I always called when I was in trouble was Stephen.
    I paced.
    Downed more alcohol.
    Gagged.
    Then I sat on the sofa and switched on the flat screen.
    Normal programming had been suspended in favour of on going reports on the crashes. I was numb–and by that stage, well past half-cut–but I gathered that air traffic had been grounded, and more pundits than you could shake a stick at were being ferried into the Sky studio to be interviewed by a grim-faced Kenneth Porter. I can’t even hear Kenneth Porter’s voice these days without feeling physically sick.
    Sky concentrated on the Go!Go! crash, it being the one that was closest to home. A couple on a cruise liner had caught shaky footage of the plane flying dangerously low above the ocean, and Sky repeated it endlessly. The moment of impact was off camera, thank God, but in the background you could hear a woman’s voice shrieking, ‘Oh my gawd, Larry! Larry! Look at this!’
    There was a number people could call if they were concerned their relatives might have been on the flight, and I vaguely thought about dialling it, before thinking, what’s the point? When Kenneth Porter wasn’t quizzing air safety officials or grimly introducing another repeat of the cruise ship couple’s coup, Sky turned its attention to the other crashes. When I heard about Bobby, the boy who’d been found in the Florida Everglades, and the three survivors of the Japanese disaster, I remember thinking, it
could
happen. It could. They could be alive.
    I drained the rest of the bottle in one gulp.
    I watched a clip of a naked Japanese boy being lifted into a helicopter; footage of a traumatised African man screaming about his family, while behind him toxic black smoke roiled. I watched that crash investigator–the one who looks a little bit like Captain America–urging people not to panic. I watched a clearly shaken airline exec report that flights had been cancelled until further notice.
    I must have passed out. When I came round, Kenneth Porter had been replaced by a slick brunette anchor wearing a ghastly yellow blouse (I’ll never forget that blouse). My head was throbbing and nausea was threatening to overwhelm me, so when she said that reports were coming in about a Go!Go! passenger being found alive, at first I thought my mind was playing tricks on me.
    Then it hit me. A child. They’d found a child clinging to a piece of wreckage a couple of miles from where they thought Stephen’s plane had gone down. You couldn’t see much from the helicopter footage at first–a group of guys on a fishing boat waving their arms; a small figure in a bright yellow life jacket.
    I tried not to get my hopes up, but there was a close-up as she was lifted into a helicopter and I knew in my gut that it was one of the twins. You know your own.
    I called Mel first. Didn’t think twice. ‘Leave it to me, love,’ she said. I didn’t stop to think how she must be feeling.
    It felt like the family