‘Tell her not to worry. In fact, I’ll call her later.’

  A nurse came in to check my scar and to check my vitals, Claudia off to the hotel, but she would return later.

  That evening I called Jenny after my father had charged my phone with the help of a nurse. It was 11pm here, so it would be after filming in New York.

  ‘Hello?’ she answered.

  ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Christ, you scared the crap out of me, had to cut short filming, but they said you were alive and OK.’

  ‘American news showed the story?’

  ‘All ten hours of coverage, coast to coast, as well as the baby. I’ve had a dozen requests for interviews but I’ve ignored them all.’

  ‘Do one, make some money,’ I suggested.

  ‘They never offer us much, they think they’re doing us a favour and furthering our careers.’

  ‘Well after this call you can mention that you’re in touch with me.’

  ‘So what happened exactly?’ she asked.

  I gave her the short version over twenty minutes.

  ‘My god, they’ll make a movie about that for sure.’

  ‘I won’t be in it, I could never act that part, it … would freak me out a bit, the loss of all the Swedish passengers.’

  ‘Rolf will recover?’

  ‘Yes, but it could take months. I can move my legs and feet without pain, so there’s no real nerve damage, my spine must be OK. Anyway, you stop fretting and focus on acting.’

  ‘You won’t come on set now…’ she realised.

  ‘I will, just delayed a bit. I can appear in a wheelchair maybe.’

  Call ended, phone on silent – I eased on my side, no visitors with me now. After gasping in pain, and waiting for the pain to ease, I brought my knee up and I pushed my leg back down several times, and the more I did it the better it felt.

  Switching legs, I slid my knee up and my leg back down a few times. Finally back on my front, I lifted my lower legs as best I could, hopeful now that I would walk again soon.

  No good deed goes uncriticised

  After a restless night - the shooting pains keeping me awake, my parents returned with the reporter, plus the twins.

  The mood was off, and I had to wonder why. ‘Something wrong?

  The reporter began, ‘The Telegraph newspaper has criticised you for getting your friends off the plane first.’

  ‘I … got Rolf off, then six passengers, finally Carter, so … their story is bollocks.’

  ‘We’re going to run a counter-story.’

  ‘Talk to the air crash guy that was here, have him make a statement about the seating positions.’

  ‘BBC news has already criticised the paper, with an expert witness, since there are no laws or rules that say who you should get off first or last. If I was in a crash, I’d get my wife and kids off and to hell with the passengers.’

  ‘So would most people,’ I agreed.

  ‘The news already mentioned that, family first, but you never took off any family, and Carter was last.’

  ‘Go find that air crash guy for me, he could make an official statement.’

  The reporter rushed off.

  ‘Bloody cheek,’ my father noted, Rita wanting to hit someone and cursing the newspaper. She would make a statement to the Swedish media outside, but would also find the air crash team – seen at the same hotel.

  She told me, ‘The Swedish girl is OK, not hurt, and she has made a statement to Swedish police investigators – that you carried her off then her mother, and that father was helping them.’

  ‘I wonder if the Telegraph has a few old friends of Roger Pearson working there,’ I told them. ‘Worth investigating, and I will. How’s Rolf?’

  ‘He is awake but slow,’ Rita told me. ‘Mother sits with him.’

  ‘Did you get his text message?’

  ‘Yes, and mother went nuts,’ Rita confirmed, choking up. ‘We think he is dead for twenty minutes, we call the airport and the police, then we call his phone ten times and finally you answer.’

  ‘Relax, he’ll recover,’ I told her. ‘A few weeks from now we’ll have a holiday to Corsica, we’ll sit and take it easy.’

  Jacqueline Dupont walked in, a nice smile for me. ‘I knew you’d be OK,’ she said hugging the twins first, my parents standing to greet her. She finally knelt close and held my hand. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Operation on my hips was fine, and a few days from now I’ll try walking. I have youth on my side.’

  ‘I knew an old lady that broke her hip, took ages, but you’re young enough to recover quickly.’ They fetched her a seat. ‘Manic outside, but they recognised me and let me through, has to be five thousand people out there.’

  ‘What!’ I puzzled. ‘What the fuck for?’

  ‘The baby.’

  ‘Ah, so not for me. Well I’m … disappointed in that.’

  She laughed. ‘The Italians are going crazy over the story. Your plane crashed ten yards from where the baby was, so … what were the chances? And you got her away ten seconds before the forest caught fire.’

  ‘Just chance, and many people die needlessly each day, and alone,’ I told her. ‘And if God crashed the plane to save her … I’d have some sharp words with God.’

  ‘It’s a nice story, coming after the tragedy of the passengers killed, and people latch onto nice stories – it helps them,’ she explained.

  ‘I suppose, yeah,’ I agreed. ‘But I won’t be labelling this a miracle. It was a fuck-up by Boeing and a fuck-up by the technicians in Stockholm, and a fucking disaster – not a miracle.’

  ‘Perhaps you should just say nothing to the thousands outside, they have their faith and they cling to hope.’ She waited.

  I sighed out, a glance at my parents. ‘I’ll not burst their bubble, too much,’ I offered.

  Rita put in, ‘The baby only stops crying for you, so maybe a miracle in a way.’

  ‘Another strange fact,’ Jaqueline noted. ‘And it’s doing the rounds in the Italian media.’

  ‘Have they identified the baby’s parents?’ I asked.

  ‘Not yet,’ Jacqueline replied. ‘And when they do they’ll lynch the pair; baby had been tortured, cigarettes put out on her.’

  ‘Oh my god,’ my mother let out.

  ‘Baby doesn’t look Italian,’ I noted.

  ‘No,’ Rita agreed. ‘They say she is north European.’

  ‘So … why abandon a baby on a hillside?’ I posed.

  ‘To get rid of it,’ Jacqueline suggested. ‘But it was not a new-born, it was six months old, so they raised the baby and then couldn’t cope and they abandoned it.’

  ‘People abandon babies on church steps, not in the fucking woods!’ I insisted. ‘It was meant to die there!’

  ‘Yes, and it had been there all night they think, no one seen dumping the baby in the morning. They could have left it near a police station - it would have been taken into care, so … they didn’t want it in care for some reason.’

  ‘They’ll face attempted murder charges,’ my father noted.

  Jacqueline nodded at him. ‘And more, the media want blood, and the Italians want a public lynching of the parents. But the parents could be teenagers who were afraid.’

  ‘Even teenagers would abandon the damn baby at a church,’ I insisted. ‘They meant to journey up that road, up a damn hillside a few miles.’

  ‘Maybe they lived nearby,’ Rita suggested.

  ‘I saw no houses or villages for a few miles, I had a good view,’ I told them.

  Rita suggested, ‘Maybe the teenagers were camped out near the woods, afraid to go home with the baby. Italians don’t like teenage pregnancies.’

  My father cut in, ‘The baby was tortured, so they were not just innocent teenagers, more like drug addicts.’

  ‘The mother left a note,’ I remembered. ‘Said she was sorry, and to please take care of the baby, so … maybe the father was the issue, abusing the baby. The mother was probably beaten as well.’

  ‘If that’s the case,’ Jacqueline began, ‘then they won’t come forwards, and with the news stories now they’ll be on the run and hiding in fear. They could be out the country already.’

  ‘You been to the film hotel?’ I asked her.

  ‘Once a month at least, it’s close, and they’re busy now, more film fans visiting, but it has a quality reputation, and people like to attend the wine tasting events there.’

  ‘Got your money from the movie?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, and way more than I expected. And my villa in Corsica makes me good money; I could do with three villas there.’

  ‘There’s space, so build another one, yes, and the new apartments next door will be cheap to buy, good rental income eight months a year.’

  ‘The income from my villa will pay for the construction inside a year,’ she enthused. ‘And the hotel got some good reviews in the media in France and Europe. Wherever I go I promote the hotel, and people tell me they try to book it.’

  ‘Right now I’d rather be there than here, trust me,’ I told her. ‘If I can get there by train and boat I might do some recovering there.’

  ‘Train to Marseille, ferry across,’ she told me. ‘Not a long journey and very picturesque.’

  ‘Have you seen Rolf?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Do so, you were his heartthrob when he was younger, so go massage his arse as therapy – it’ll take his mind off things.’

  The nurse appeared later with the requested vibrating hand-device, and she showed Rita how to use it. Cream applied, and I got my insides shaken around, the hip scars and lower back. It hurt, but it would do me some good.

  That evening, after lights out, I again moved onto my side and moved my legs, and feeling well enough I suppressed the pain and sat upright amidst the rubber supports, letting my legs down.

  I hadn’t seen the nurse walking past, and she rushed in, shocked. And soon scolding me.

  ‘I need the toilet,’ I lied. But I did feel like I wanted to go.

  ‘Then you call me, you have buzzer!’

  ‘Relax, and be a good nurse and help me stand.’

  A glance at the corridor, and she took a risk by assisting me up. On my feet, the floor cold, I held her shoulders as she held me, and I walked around in a circle.

  ‘It feels OK, no permanent damage, my legs work fine.’

  Fetching the cardboard pee tube, she helped me pass some urine, still a little painful, and after I promised her large sums of money and a special Roskov massage she walked me around the bed and back.

  Back in bed, I thanked my nurse for taking the risk and asked that we dance together again the next night. Laughing, she tucked me into the rubber supports and left me to dream about dancing nurses, and Claudia’s cleavage.

  She had only been gone an hour when she returned, and I was awake anyhow, so I could hear the crying baby. Light turned on, and she placed down the baby as I eased up a little and onto one side, accepting the baby – who stared into my eyes again.

  ‘Hey, Chubby Lump, calm down, I’m here.’

  ‘What is … Chubby Lump?’ the nurse enquired as the baby stopped crying.

  ‘Fat legs. And no girl wants fat legs.’

  ‘All babies have fat legs,’ she quietly insisted, and she sat. ‘I have no luck with this baby, and I am good with babies.’

  ‘You have good boobs, so she should quieten down. If you showed me those boobs I would quieten down.’

  ‘Shhhh. Don’t say that,’ she hissed as she checked the door, trying to hide her grin.

  ‘Are you married?’ I asked.

  ‘I was, now separated; he was a cock, too much drink.’

  ‘No kids?’

  ‘No. But I work in children’s ward before, many years.’

  I cradled the baby and stroked her head. With the nurse lifting the bed twenty degrees, pillows adjusted, I turned onto my back with a shock of pain, but I was getting used to suppressing it. Baby on my bare chest, and she went off to sleep straight away.

  ‘She knows you,’ the nurses suggested with a beaming smile. ‘From a past life perhaps.’

  ‘Not from this life,’ I quietly noted. ‘Maybe she just prefers men.’

  ‘They say her real father burnt her with cigarettes, she has the marks, so I don’t think she liked him.’

  ‘Maybe someone - who looked like me - did look after her. People say I look Italian.’

  ‘Yes, you look like a local man. But I hope you don’t behave like them.’

  ‘Trust me, I let the women in my life tell me what to do. But they don’t see me every day, so maybe that keeps them keen to see me.’

  ‘That and a good massage,’ she suggested.

  ‘Yes, I always satisfy my girl first.’

  ‘I never get this,’ she complained.

  A doctor walked past, then backed-up and came in.

  I got in first, before he complained, ‘I couldn’t sleep, and I asked for the baby.’

  ‘And the pain?’ he asked.

  ‘Not so much, and my legs work well.’

  He nodded. ‘You are young and fit, this helps. Strange how the baby knows you.’

  ‘I’m not religious, but I have no explanation for it.’

  He put his hands in his white lab-coat pockets. ‘The plane crashed and stopped a few metres from the baby, a miracle in itself, and that you found her – or she would have died.

  ‘The nuns outside say that God gave you the strength to get the passengers off and to find the baby, and I won’t argue with them since I have never seen anyone with broken hips walk, or carry two people at one time.’

  ‘I played football as a boy, for many years, always hurting my legs and hips but ignoring the pain. I got to be good at turning the pain off.’

  He nodded. ‘This may have helped, yes. They have started to remove the bodies at long last, but they are all just ash, melted into the seats and the metal, much of the bodies burnt away, little left.

  ‘Identifying them could take months, but they have the seat positions to help them. I’m afraid that it will be many months before bodies are sent home, so the families here in hotels will … be disappointed and have to come back later.’

  I was staring out the door at the image in my mind of the burnt bodies. ‘A few more minutes and I could have got more of them off.’

  ‘The passengers were unconscious?’ he asked.

  ‘No, many were looking up, some moaning, a few crawling towards the exit seat.’

  ‘They say the bodies of the people at the front and back were badly broken, the bones and the spine. The pilots were broken in half almost, spines detached.’

  ‘Maybe the vibration was more at the front and back, it seemed like it. In the middle it was terrible, but I saw an air hostess at the front being thrown around in her seat, her head smashed against the wall.’

  ‘You are alive, perhaps, because you were sat in the middle. So much for sitting at the back of a plane.’

  With the doctor gone, the nurse sat with a magazine, my mind went back to the crash. The wings were being hit by the trees, so … if a tree hit the left wing the nose would yaw to the left, soon yawing the other way, hence the shaking.

  The trees had been causing the shaking, the impacts, and the impacts were not uniform, the trees not uniform in where they had been planted perhaps. The middle of the plane was turning me more than shaking me, but the pilots were being slammed left and right.

  It made sense, and I would discuss it with the air crash team - if and when I saw them.

  Facing the nurse, the baby asleep yet twitching, I asked, ‘Can you massage my wounds a little?’

  She jumped up. ‘Of course.’

  ‘And don’t forget, you are a professional, no enjoyment in massaging my balls.’

  ‘Were your balls hurt?’ she teased.

  ‘Yes, crushed in the seat a little.’

  ‘Well in that case I can offer a professional hand.’

  The massage of my groin, cock and balls was great, and I knew now what a “massage plus-plus” felt like, I was even tempted to ask for a happy ending for my stiff cock.

  Finished, forty minutes later, she placed the baby in a cot and waited, the baby not waking.

  She faced me, hands on hips. ‘If you can do that for my sister’s kids I pay you well.’

  I smiled widely. ‘I can try, when I get out of here.’ Turning back over, the pain horrendous, I lay down like a good patient and tried to get some sleep as I thought about the busty nurse massaging my groin area.

  Fighting back

  In the morning, and after my big breakfast – I was starved, the gang appeared.

  The Sun Newspaper reporter began, ‘The air crash team released a diagram of where people sat, the ones you rescued, and the sequence in which you took them off the plane.

  ‘They got statements from the mother and daughter, and the German man called Peter, which I think is Peder with a “D”, and they confirmed the sequence, so The Telegraph now looks stupid.

  ‘This morning’s edition, my paper, ridicules them and has the diagram and the sequence. And the forest workers made a statement to the police, about you running into the burning forest to get the baby, so … fuck knows how they can still criticise you.’

  ‘Friends of Roger Pearson perhaps.’

  ‘We could suggest that, yes, just to piss them off.’

  Rita put in, ‘Rolf wants to take legal action.’

  ‘No, I don’t need the added hassle. How’s Carter?’

  ‘We spoke with him yesterday, sat with him for an hour, and he seems OK. He was asking after you, and had you had sex with any nurses yet.’

  The reporter laughed, my parents not impressed.

  ‘No sex, no, but when they massage me I admit to enjoying it. And my legs are OK. Last night I stood up and walked around the room with the help of a nurse, then they brought the baby to me.’

  ‘You walked?’ my father asked.

  ‘Some pain, but I can walk. So if the hospital catches fire I’m OK. Anyway, why don’t you head back, then come back closer to when they release me – which could be two weeks from now. And you can’t sit there moping for two weeks.’