It was some small consolation that the victim of the pylon would very likely feel nothing. The shock would be massive and the nerve endings destroyed. He’d probably die in the hospital from secondary infection or organ failure. Weight will be much reduced due to fluid loss caused by the burns. A few have survived such a shock but they have always been disabled for life.

Daniel didn’t survive. I thought he might be already dead when I held on to him by the belt of his jeans on the pylon. He felt heavy and inert. I could feel the warmth of his body through my knuckles. If he was dead, would he still feel warm? How did I know? I knew nothing. Then I heard him give a harsh whimpering groan. That sound I was to hear for years to come, I still hear it in my quiet moments, in my dreams. My husband has held me in the night when I’ve cried and shivered. I make the noise Daniel made, keening softly for a moment until a bubbling in his throat silenced him. I think it was the life going out of him.

It was very nearly dark. Lights were on in houses on the hillsides around. I imagined the people in those houses who knew nothing of us, of what had happened, of how we hung there, people who were having an ordinary evening of food, television, talk. Mum and Dad were at home in the nearest house, unknowing, but not long to be in ignorance. The cars, ambulance, police cars, Super Grid cars, would all have their headlights on and they’d see them come up the road from the village.

Time passed—how much time? I don’t know, I’ve never asked and no one told me. It may have been only minutes, perhaps half an hour. My hold on Daniel was growing weaker, he was sliding ever so gradually over the angle, his body collapsing, all its strength lost. He dragged me with him, pulling me down. Being tormented on the rack must feel the way I felt then, when the torturer screws more tightly. My arms were stretched to the uttermost, straining till they felt tugged from their sockets. His leg slid off the steel bar, and I could do nothing to stop it. He hung then like a sack, like a carcass on a hook. But my hands were the hook and I could stand no more. The pain of it was huge, shooting from my shoulders down my back in great shuddering thrusts and burning in my brain. My own body was bent half over, my head pressing against his back, and he was slipping. I knew I’d have to let go. Balanced with a bar supporting each underarm lest I fall myself, I opened my hands. I had to, I couldn’t hold on any longer.