‘Damn right,’ I whisper, my voice a hoarse rasp. ‘If I get nothing else out of this, I’m going to get my very own architect. Shout again?’
He nods, and we both start yelling once more. We don’t last as long this time, barely making ourselves heard to each other, never mind the world outside.
We fall silent, and listen again, on the verge of defeat. It’s feeling hot now, stifling and stuffy, as though the gentle breeze that’s kept us alive this far is objecting to the sudden bursts of activity.
Both our eyes go wide as we hear the voices again.
‘We need to let them know we’re here, but I don’t know how,’ he says, staring at the top of our cave-jail, his fists clenched and banging against his own thighs in frustration. He adds something that sounds like an unintelligible mishmash of angry vowels.
‘Did you just swear in Swedish?’ I ask.
‘I did,’ he replies. ‘Sorry.’
‘That’s okay. It seems an appropriate time. I’m not sure I have much more shouting left in me. We’ve been talking in whispers, and now it feels like my throat has closed up.’
‘I know. Mine too. And we can’t bang around too much, in case we bring the whole thing down on us … we need to send out some kind ofSOS.’
I stare at him, and at the phone, my eyes bouncing from one to the other. Something about him swearing in Swedish, and the glowing screen, and the need for an SOS has jogged a train of thought in my fatigued mind.
‘The phone!’ I say eventually. ‘The phone has no signal, so we can’t call anyone, but it has a speaker – and music. We can play music!’
He doesn’t reply at first, just fixes his gaze on me and frowns. I’m starting to wonder if I’ve suggested something incredibly stupid, or if he’s doing some complicated mental equation about sound waves and earth displacement. He holds my face in both his hands, and gives me a quick but triumphant kiss on the lips. I barely feel it, they’re so dry.
‘You’re a genius!’ he says. ‘Now tell me how to find it …’
‘Hardly a genius.’ I smile. ‘It’s my phone after all. I just hope it works.’
I tell him how to find my playlists, and his eyes flicker over them. I wonder what music he likes. Down here, in this weird subterranean world of ours, we have been friends. In the real world, maybe he only listens to Rachmaninoff, or death metal, or obscure improvisational jazz. Maybe in the real world, we’ll have nothing in common.
‘Okay,’ he says, sounding amused. ‘It’s between Madonna’sLike a Prayeralbum, Adele, or – for the sake of my national pride –ABBA Gold.’
‘Go forABBA,’ I reply quickly. ‘If there’s a rescue team up there and they hear “Mamma Mia”, they’ll definitely start singing along …’
‘Good point. I think I’ll start it with ‘S.O.S’ though – it seems more relevant.’
As he says it I realise that’s probably what triggered this whole idea. He was talking about needing to send an SOS earlier, and my subconscious picked up on it for me. Good old subconscious. I should have thought of it earlier, but I am not exactly firing on all cylinders.
He puts the song on and turns the speakers as high as they will go. The dramatic piano intro kicks in and then Agnetha – I think it’s Agnetha, definitely the blonde one – starts singing. Even here, like this, it’s infectious, and I’d love to join in.
The chorus gets going and I see he has his eyes closed, his mouth moving as he sings silently along. I settle down onto my back, lowering my damaged arm to the ground, taking hold of his hand with my good one. He twines his fingers into mine in a way that is now so familiar I can’t remember a time when I didn’t hold hands with this man. He leans his head sideways so it’s resting against mine, and I smile.
I can’t sing. I can barely speak. I’m half-crazy with fear and thirst, and the discomfort in my tummy has graduated to full-on pain. Yet somehow,ABBAcan still make me smile.
‘S.O.S’ fades away, but the songs keep coming. All the classics. ‘Super Trouper’, ‘Dancing Queen’, ‘Voulez-Vous’. The greatest disco that never happened.
Both of us are crossing in and out of reality now, the music only adding to the surreal quality of our enclosed world. It’s in the middle of ‘The Winner Takes It All’ that things start to change. At first it’s just a small flurry of loose dirt coming down from the ledge above us.
He leans over me protectively, just in case any more follows. I appreciate the instinct, but know it won’t do any good if the flurry turns into anything more severe. I smooth down his hair and peer over his shoulder.
‘There’s something there,’ I say. ‘Coming through.’
A thin tube has been pushed through the earth above us. It’s narrow and looks like it’s made of some kind of flexible wire that can twist and snake through small spaces. On the end of the cable is a small glass blob, like an eye that’s staring right at us.
We both stare back and he says, ‘It’s a camera!’
Someone is looking at us. Someone knows we are here. Someone is trying to find us!
I wave my arm frantically above my head, grinning, croaking, ‘We’re here! Hello!’
