and squeeze it through the window to give them something to jump onto, but she was in pain and it was too heavy for them. He had tried to get her to the window, where she could breathe more easily, but she couldn’t move and he couldn’t lift her.
Conor coughed. It hurt, and it felt like he was choking and unable to breathe as his throat and mouth filled with warm phlegm. But he struggled into the centre of the room, where the smoke was thickest. Because the laptop was there, and the black book he had seen the man use. They were important. His dad would need them.
After everything that had happened, he wanted his dad to be pleased with him.
Carrying the two items, he clambered over the bed towards the window. He was still coughing and retching, but he could hardly hear the sound he was making because the fire in the rest of the house was so fierce.
Conor could hear his dad shouting. There was no way he could shout back – his throat and eyes were too full of smoke – so he didn’t even try. He just balanced the contents of his arms on the window ledge, then pushed them over, as if he was posting a letter.
Conor knew his dad would catch him if he did. But he didn’t want to leave the nice lady here. He didn’t know who she was, but she had come back to help him and he wanted to help her too. That was what his mum would have expected, and his dad. He retreated back into the room, feeling his way to the end of the bed and down onto the floor where she had collapsed and was now choking. He pulled at her arm and tried to say, ‘Come on,’ but he just started coughing even more. Maybe if he pulled his T-shirt over his nose, he thought, that would help. As he did so, he gulped down a mouthful of air that was slightly less thick with smoke. The coughing eased for a moment.
‘Dad’s here!’ His mouth formed the words, but no sound came from his dry throat. ‘He says we should jump!’
The lady didn’t move. Not at first. But Conor continued to tug her arm, and after ten seconds she rose from her crouching position. She turned, and peered through the smoke at him. Her face was black, with wet streaks around her eyes, beneath her nose and around her mouth.
‘Dad’s here!’ He tried to say it again. He was kneeling now. The lady’s eyes lingered on his lips and he thought that perhaps what he’d said had made her feel a bit better.
That look didn’t last long.
The sudden creaking sound was louder even than the roar of the flames. Conor had seen a programme on TV once all about earthquakes and how they could make whole houses move and tumble into rubble. It was like that now. The floor suddenly seemed to slant. At the far side of the room a gap appeared between the wall and the floor. Beyond it he could see flames.
The lady grabbed hold of him. Together they tried to push themselves to their feet. But there was another great creaking, cracking sound as the floor gave way. The two of them collapsed with it, holding each other tight as they fell into a cloud of smoke, dust and flames.
Joe’s throat was raw from shouting. He had heard the noise, and now he saw an ominous crack along the exterior wall, at the height of the first floor and extending along its entire width. It could only have been caused by a collapse of the ceiling joists.
The laptop was on the ground in front of him, broken and smashed. Next to it, a leather-bound book, face down and open, its pages crumpled. Joe grabbed them and ran round to the front of the house, where he dropped them again. He could hear the scream of fire engines not far off, but he knew he couldn’t wait for them, and he ignored the shouts from the ARU.
He was five metres from the main door and the heat was almost unbearable. But he didn’t stop. With his head bowed and his right forearm covering his eyes, he strode forward, vaguely aware that someone had tried to pull him back – he’d shrugged them off without even looking back.
Joe burst through the burning doorframe and into the oven of a house.
He crouched low, almost crawling, because he knew that the floor of a burning building could be at least 100 degrees less hot than the ceiling, and the toxic CO2 levels much lower. The closer he kept to the floor, the longer he had. Even so, the heat was overpowering. It hurt just to breathe – like pumping fire into his nostrils – and it was all he could do to keep his eyes open. The staircase had completely collapsed and there was a great hole in the ceiling that seemed to be dripping flames. The wall two metres to his left was a crumbled mound of smouldering rubble; he could see through it to what remained of the bedroom on the first floor – the burning wardrobe, boxes ablaze. But a section of the floor had collapsed into the room below, and it was here that he saw the sight that ripped his heart out.
He could see a mattress, seven metres away to his left, upended against the exterior wall and burning; smouldering cardboard boxes that had also fallen through the floor were bursting into flame. And he could see, through the poisonous smoke, a small boy lying on the ground. To Conor’s right, through a screen of flames, a second figure was pushing itself up to its knees.
Joe didn’t have time to think, only to force himself further into the oven, through the smoke towards his son. He wanted to crawl more quickly, but the hot air pushed him back. His clothes, his hair, everything scalded, as though he too would ignite any moment. He shouted his boy’s name, but the shout was only in his head because his lips were clamped shut.
It took ten seconds to reach him; ten seconds that felt like an hour. Conor’s eyes were open and he was coughing. He was alive, so Joe turned to Eva.
They had not fallen in the same place. She was five metres away, but it might as well have been five miles. Two burning rafters had fallen in front of her and the wall of flame that burst from them had closed her into a corner. She was kneeling, and Joe could see her face through the flames and the heat haze. Half her hair had already been singed away, revealing her scalp; what remained had curled with the heat. The skin on her face and neck was blistering. She clearly wanted to break through the flames, but the heat was holding her back.
Half of Joe wanted to run – not for himself, but to get Conor out of there. The other half told him he couldn’t. Eva needed him. If he could just break through that barrier of flame, grab her and pull her back. He had to try – she would die if he didn’t.
Joe was steeling himself to burst through the wall of flame when he saw her lips move. No sound came from them, and he wouldn’t have heard anything over the roar of the blaze even if it had. But he could understand the exaggerated form of her mouth, carefully shaping two single words, her lips continuing to blister gruesomely even as she did so.
‘
A great groan from the old house told him another section of ceiling was falling. Burning timber thundered down on Eva. Joe roared her name, but even as he did so he had to fall back to protect himself and Conor from the collapsing building. He caught a glimpse of a solid wooden joist cracking against Eva’s head and her body bursting into flames as she dropped. He shouted again, and tried to step forward, but it was useless. He knew he couldn’t save her. He could only save his son.
Joe was still shouting as he ran from the inferno – ten metres, fifteen metres – before falling to the ground, exhausted, with Conor. He was aware of fire engines and neon; of men barking instructions and a bustle of activity; of Conor, groaning weakly on the ground next to him.
Ricky. Caitlin. And now Eva.
Joe barely realized he was curled on the ground. He didn’t notice four members of the ARU, their expressions full of shock at the insane howling of this grizzled, battered figure. They approached him with care, preparing to secure him if necessary. He did not notice how Conor, alive against the odds, pushed himself feebly to his feet and, unnoticed by the men going about their emergency work, staggered to where a damaged laptop and a leather-bound book were lying on the grass. He did not notice how the roof of the house suddenly caved in, thrusting smoke and rubble ten metres up into the air and all around.
The only fire he was aware of now was the fire in his soul. A furnace of hatred, fuelled by images of the dead, and by two words.
‘
