‘No, thanks,’ Beth said tersely. She wasn’t sharing Karin’s amusement. The woman was in the aisle seat, and they couldn’t move until she cleared a path.

As they waited, Beth put on her hat and coat before lifting her shoulder bag over her head and across her tensed body. Karin shoved her phone inside the bag’s front pocket.

‘We really should get moving,’ Beth tried.

Her new friend waved her hand. ‘We won’t make it to the front of the queue so we might as well take our time. If it was a proper emergency, I think we’d know about it by now.’

As it transpired, Karin and Beth found themselves somewhere close to the middle of the large crowd waiting to get out through the central exit, which was somewhat fortunate because when the lights went out and everyone surged forward, the bodies surrounding them kept them from toppling over.

‘Oh, my God! Please, no! What— What’s happening?’ someone shrieked close to Karin’s ear. It was the lady with purple highlights who had been shadowing Beth.

The screams all around them were unmerciful and Karin wanted to cover her ears, but she couldn’t move her arms. When a gust of warm, acrid air assaulted them, they started choking on the dust.

‘I can’t breathe!’ cried the woman squashed against Beth’s back. ‘I don’t want to die!’

‘Stop pushing!’ yelled Beth.

‘It’s not me!’ she shouted back.

The emergency lighting fought against the dust cloud to create a luminous grey fog, and when Karin looked at Beth, she hardly recognised her. They were covered in a thick layer of plaster and grit. ‘We’ll be OK,’ Karin promised.

Beth nodded. She was trying so hard not to let her fear show, but Karin could see how the skin above her collarbone was sucked in every time she tried to breathe. Karin was struggling for air too. ‘We’re packed in. Too tight.’

‘We need to move across to the side,’ Beth told her. ‘Imagine we’re swimmers. In a riptide. As we’re dragged forward. Get ready to move. Sideways.’

Karin turned her head to glance back across the auditorium. Through the swirls of dust, she spied smouldering timbers rising up where rows of seats had been. The damage appeared to be concentrated on one side of the auditorium.

‘We need to move that way,’ Karin said to Beth, pointing with her eyes to the opposite side.

With the next push, Karin and Beth steered themselves diagonally. Each time they moved, Karin was aware that they were being followed by the sound of sobbing. The old lady clung to Beth like a limpet.

And whilst Beth’s new friend dripped snot and tears onto the back of her jacket, Claudia Rothwell was edging closer to the fire doors at the side of the theatre.