The Company of Strangers [antikvár]

Chapter 130th October 1940, London. Night 54 of the Blitz.She was running, running as she had done before in her dreams, except this wasn't a dream, even though with the flares dropping, as slowly as petals, and the yellow light, and the dark streets with the orange glow on the Skyline it could easily be a dream, a horror dream.She flinched at a tremendous explosion in a nearby Street, staggered at the shudder in the ground, nearly ploughed into the paving stones face-first, legs kicking back wildly. She pushed up off a low wall at the front of a house and her feet were slapping against the pavement again. She ran faster as she saw the Auxiliary Fire Service outside the house. New hoses uncoiled from the engines and joined the spaghetti in the black glass Street as they trained more water on the back of the house, which was no longer a house but half a house. The whole of one side blown away and the grand piano with two legs over the startling new precipice, its lid hanging open like a tongue lapping up the fiâmes, which set off a terrible twanging as the fire plucked at the piano strings and snapped them, peeled them back.She stood there with her hands over her ears to the unbearable sound of destruction. Her eyes and mouth were wide open as the back of the house collapsed into the neighbour's garden, leaving the kitchen in full view and oddly intact. A hissing noise of escaping gas from the rup-tured mains suddenly thumped into flame and burst across