Two days after Big left for Napa, the sky fell down.

I'm a heavy sleeper. You have to be, in Manhattan. All times of the day and night there are taxis driving up and down your street, people spilling out of them and shouting or singing. This is the city that never sleeps. But we have to.

So what woke me that morning was the phone ringing next to my bed. I checked the clock. 9:24. Which, for a freelance journalist with no office to go to, is inconveniently early. All my friends know that. I rolled over sleepily and picked up the phone. 'Unghghhh.'

'Carrie? Is that you? Are you ok?' Charlotte. More divorce trauma, no doubt. But she sounded more wound-up than she had for weeks.

'I would be better if you hadn't just woken me up.'

'You haven't heard? Carrie, put it on CNN.'

'I don't have cable. I decided it wasn't worth it, remember?'

'Just turn on the radio or something. Now. A plane crashed into the World Trade Centre. The TV says we're under attack.'

'What?' I had woken up into a nightmare.

'Please move to the lounge' ordered a nurse as Miranda shuffled out of the bathroom in her robe. 'We're preparing for mass casualties. We may need your bed.'

'Hey, what about my baby?' Miranda called after her, but she'd already hurried on.

Miranda returned to her bedside and gently picked Brady up from the hospital cot. He stirred slightly, in his sleep. She'd never been so scared in her life, never felt this raw. Here was this tiny human being, totally dependent on her to keep him warm, fed, loved and safe. But New York was under attack. Washington was under attack. People huddled round the screen in the lounge to watch the unthinkable happening, over and over again. It was surreal. And she didn't know whether it was in her power to keep him safe anymore. Still adjusting to the awesome weight of this responsibility, all of a sudden she was helpless. What kind of world had she brought her baby into?

'Lady, we have to evacuate this building. Now.' The security guard tapped his foot on the floor.

'One phone call?' Samantha flashed her most winning smile. 'Two seconds.'

'Now.'

'I need to check in with someone, goddamnit, and you know perfectly well I won't be able to raise a signal on my cell...'

'One phone call. Then I want you out.'

'Fine.' Richard's office was on speed-dial anyway. And his secretary knew better than to let him know she'd been asking after him. It wasn't that she still had feelings for the bastard. God no. But that didn't mean she wanted him dead.

One of the girls in her office had a brother in there. She was very calm about it, certain he'd be OK. The alternative was unimaginable. Nobody wanted to disillusion her.

The news was saying 10 000, 20 000. As she picked up her coat Samantha caught a glimpse of the towers smoking in the distance, the thick black smoke of a thousand deaths, and shuddered. 10 000. 20 000. She was bound to have fucked at least one of them.

I threw a pair of sandals on, and then I realised I might have to run. If there was another plane. If there was some kind of bomb on the ground. Anything seemed suddenly, sickeningly possible. Everything in my closet was frivolous. No sneakers. I didn't have emergency supplies like cans or a few gallons of bottled water. I was not equipped for this.

I couldn't get my head around it. The horror of it. That you sit down at your desk one Tuesday morning, one beautiful fall Tuesday morning with the leaves beginning to turn, and out of the clear blue sky a jumbo jet smashes through the walls of your office, and you'll never see another fall. How do you get your head around that?

And the people on the planes. Oh God, the people on the planes. Los Angeles. San Francisco. Was it really only two days ago, that California had been only a plane ride away? Was it only a few hours ago that a plane ride had been a matter of routine? And what if he'd flown two days later... but he hadn't, thank God, he hadn't. Though those other people had.

And there, on my floor, among the useless, frivolous shoes, I hugged my knees and cried -- for them, for the people in their offices, for all those ordinary people, for the brother of the girl in Samantha's office, for Charlotte's onetime sorority sister, for Miranda's former colleague, for Miranda cradling her baby's head and staring bleary-eyed at the unbelievable screen, for Charlotte holed up in the empty apartment where I was rushing to meet her because neither one of us could bear to be alone. For New York, my city with the heart ripped out of it.

Nobody wanted to be alone that day. There was more loss and loneliness than anyone could bear by themselves. Samantha had 'terror sex' with the security guard in the basement of her office building. He really wasn't her type -- a little flabby around the waistline -- but he put his arms around her when he saw her eyes filling up with tears, and it went from there. In the middle of so much death, you want to remind yourself that you're alive. You want to forget what's going on around you and snatch at what happiness you can, because who knows how long it's going to last. Every orgasm in New York that night was a slap in the face to the fundamentalists. Every scream of joy was an attempt to cancel out those screams of terror. It wasn't much, but it was something. As Samantha said, if you want a good time in paradise you don't want to be with fifty virgins.

'Are you OK, kid?' he said on the phone. A continent away.

'I'm fine' I told him, and I meant it. Compared to the people filling Times Squares with photos and flowers, poems and candles, mourning the friends and lovers who were suddenly dust and ashes, mingling with the air we breathed all over Manhattan -- compared with them, compared with the dead, I was totally fine. 'Looks like you chose the right time to bail out.' Rather than two days later I thought, but didn't say.

'All I can say is they picked on the wrong city. I know New York. It'll survive the apocalypse.'

'Yes,' I said. 'Yes, I think it will.'