I nod. I completely understand. And Samantha – Em – was only a child. She was sixteen years old, and she saw her father killed as he put his own fragile human body between his family and an earthquake. Who wouldn’t want to move on from that?
‘I understand,’ I say, gently. ‘I really do. We had way too much attention as well. I never liked it. So, bearing that in mind, what I don’t understand is why you’re making this film at all?’
I realise as we talk that I am feeling more relaxed by the second. That being in Em’s company is good. That I’m glad I didn’t run away from this. I also can’t wait to tell Harry who she is.
‘Good question,’ she says. ‘No simple answer. I’ll get the basics out of the way first – it’ll be a great programme. As a film-maker, it’s golden. I’ve got photos and video clips that haven’t been used before, and I’m fascinated by the impact that one night, one event, can have on us as people – the way it affects who we are, who we become, how we live our lives.
‘The less simple stuff is to do with me, and my dad, and our own story. Obviously I’m not ashamed of my dad, and I’m not ashamed of Samantha Frazer – I had my reasons for avoiding her, when I was younger and more vulnerable, but now I feel like the time is right for me to tell this story – and let’s face it, this ten-year-anniversary thing means someone is going to. It might as well be me.’
‘But why do you need me or the others? It would be powerful enough if you did it alone.’
She grins. ‘Moody shots of me gazing off into the horizon, photo album pics of Dad, an emotional pilgrimage back to the place where I lost him …’
‘Yes. All of that. Exactly.’
‘It’s not just my story, that’s why. We all shared something that night. We shared something intense, and then we all went our separate ways. It’s like we were thrown together, then torn apart, and left in a world that didn’t really understand.
‘It happened to dozens of us. It happened to Mexicans. It happened to Brits, and Americans, and Australians, and Europeans. It happened to children and grandparents and everything in between. There is so much more to it than me. Earthquakes happen all the time – it’s what happened to us all afterwards that I’m interested in.’
Earthquakes do happen all the time; she’s right. Over a million a year, if you count all sizes. I have a minor-league obsession with it, and check the United States Geological Survey website like normal people check Facebook. I’m less about Twitter, and more about tectonic plates.
Just yesterday there was a 6.4 in Puerto Rico, a 4.2 in Indonesia, a 4.5 in Kansas and a 5.4 in Russia. That’s not even counting the smaller ones that people don’t even pay attention to.
We think of the world as being solid beneath our feet – but it’s not. It’s a giant jigsaw puzzle, and not all of the pieces fit together properly. There are earthquakes rumbling away constantly – moments when the movements in the Earth’s crust cause a build-up of stress and friction; moments when that stress and friction meets a fault line, a place of weakness. Moments when all that energy bursts out, spreads in seismic waves, like ripples on a pond.
The earthquake we suffered through was a 6.1 in magnitude. That isn’t so bad – there are well over a hundred of them most years.
In some places, it might only have caused limited damage – but not there, not that night.
Milder tremors, probably ongoing since before the village existed, had weakened the foundations of the buildings. There was subsidence from very old mining. There were sinkholes that had been developing for years. There were landslides, as the quake happened just after the rainy season.
A perfect storm.
‘I don’t know,’ I say carefully, sipping now-cold coffee. ‘I’m not sure that it won’t just be … picking at a healed scab.’
She stares at me, assessing and thoughtful. ‘I’m not sure it is healed, that scab, are you?’
I pull a face. She may be right, but I still don’t feel at all sure. ‘Why do you need me? You have plenty of others to tell their tales. You can do this without me.’
‘Can I be blunt?’ she asks.
‘I can’t imagine you any other way.’
‘True. Well, Elena, to risk sounding crass – you were the poster girl, weren’t you? You were young and pretty, and you were the one everyone was praying for. When you were missing, and your mum was crying outside your house on the news. When they discovered you were alive under the rubble, you and Alex.
‘It all made you, and later Harry, the public face of what had happened. Those pictures of you that night, sitting on the stretcher, by the ambulance, covered in blood and gazing out at the destruction … they became the pictures that people remembered. The ones that made them think “there but for the grace of God”, you know?’
Sadly, I do know. Those pictures – the ones I didn’t even register being taken, I was so dazed and confused – were syndicated all over the world. The happy ending, wrapped in tinfoil.
‘It’s not just that,’ she continues. ‘It’s what happened afterwards. In those next weeks and months, and all these years since. Do you think your life would have worked out the way it has if you hadn’t been there that night?’
‘My life is fine,’ I say eventually, realising that I sound defensive.
‘I’m not saying it isn’t,’ she responds quickly. ‘I just think it’s different than you’d imagined … I know mine is. And that’s what I’m fascinated by, Elena – the way it changed our fates, destinies, whatever daft name you want to give it. We all started that night feeling normal – feeling like we knew what would happen next.’
‘And none of us did,’ I say. ‘None of us had a clue.’
She shakes her head, and we are both silent. We are both remembering. We are both survivors, and no matter how much we try and forget, it is always there. Just beneath the surface, buried in mental rubble.
