Amber stifled a yawn and took a sideways peek at Grandma’s enormous bag, propped between them on the pavement. She wondered what the odds were that Grandma had another packet of chocolate biscuits. Quite good, she reckoned; Grandma’s bag was bottomless and guaranteed to prepare you for any imaginable emergency. The last biscuit, munched with a flask of hot coffee just as the sun was coming up over the Thames, felt like a long while ago. She calculated that this was the earliest she had ever got up, apart from the school trip to Margate in Year Four. She and Grandma had crept out of the house before even the Tube was running and had to wait in the morning cold for an all-night bus service, full of early workers. Not as many as usual, Grandma had explained, owing to this being a special bank holiday in honour of the wedding. But the early start had been worth it, to have got such a good spot for their two little camp chairs.
Grandma was an old hand at this, in more ways than one. She was proud to have seen every royal wedding since the Queen had married the Duke of Edinburgh, though if pressed on that one she would admit she had actually been too young to remember much about it. The coronation was a different matter, and she still had a jigsaw of the golden state coach; it lived in a battered old red white and blue box in the sideboard cupboard and it had a piece of sky missing at the top near Admiralty Arch. On wet days Amber was allowed to do the puzzle.
Grandma had slumped sideways in her camp chair and her eyes were shut; no chance of a biscuit yet then, not until she had finished ‘resting her eyes’. Amber studied the other people waiting alongside them. Some had brought blankets and sleeping bags and she wondered what it would be like to have a mass sleepover, all night long on the cold hard pavement. Just then there was a commotion behind as some new people turned up and started trying to barge to the front. They had loud voices and used naughty words. The people who were already there did not sound very pleased and used even more rude words. There was a lot of shoving and Amber sprung to her feet, and then found herself carried sideways, away from the camp chairs, and squashed against the red and white stripy plastic of the safety barrier at the edge of the road. It dug into the side of her head so she was glad Grandma had made her put her pink woolly hat on early that morning. She expected to hear Grandma’s voice calling her name, but there was too much shouting and shoving going on. When the pushing stopped, she wriggled enough to see between a lady’s blue jeans and a man in grey to try and work out how to get back to Grandma. But all she could see were the bottomless bag tipped over in the road, the thermos flask and Wet Wipes rolling in the gutter, and Grandma’s brown laced shoes sticking out, her legs not moving. Then she couldn’t see anything any more, just hot wet blurriness. She knew that even when Grandma was fully alert and not flopped at an angle she always took a few seconds to get her knees working well enough to get up from the settee. She must have been too slow off the mark to get up from her chair and those nasty people pushing had knocked her over.
The lady in the blue jeans looked down at the pink hat shaking by her waist and realised what had happened. At the same time another lady gathered up the contents of the bag, whilst two tall black men wearing Arsenal shirts were bending over Grandma. The man in grey began to talk on his mobile. By the time the people had helped Amber back to the chairs, Grandma was sitting, blinking and pale faced, with a red lump swelling visibly on her forehead. She was so relieved to see that Amber was safe. They gave each other the biggest-ever hug and then a nice fat lady gave Amber a yellow fruit gum.
Suddenly two men in dark uniforms appeared from along the road. Amber wondered why they were allowed behind the red and white barriers, but it was clear when they got closer that they must not be ordinary people. Clearly they were saints, as it said in white writing on their uniform that they were both St John. Amber thought it was odd that they both had the same name, but it was not that unusual; there were three Bens and four Mohammeds in her class. It also said Ambulance, but they must have left that behind, on account of the traffic restrictions. Instead they had a big black bag, even bigger than the bottomless bag, and they straightaway took out first aid gear and set about checking the lump on Grandma’s head.
They had hardly finished fixing the dressing when there was a roar of motorbikes as police outriders went past, signalling that the procession was soon arriving. The crowd rustled with expectation and cheers could be heard from further up the road. Amber forgot everything that had happened as soon as she saw the first of the horses. This was a day she would remember all her life and, when she was as old as Grandma, she would tell it to her own grandchildren.
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