On his journey back to Larkscroft, Robbie watched as the promise of the moon glowed on the horizon. He turned on the radio and sang along, drumming the beat on the steering wheel until the song ended and he flicked between stations to find something else. As the road dipped and he passed Montgomery’s dairy farm, he realised that it was not the moon colouring the sky but the flames of a fire that wavered in a haze of black smoke. Robbie pressed his foot on the accelerator and his entire body lurched forward as he rounded the last corner and saw the roof of the farmhouse burning like tinder in a bonfire. After abandoning his car at the roadside, he ran past the neighbours who had gathered outside the gate. One of them called out that they had phoned the fire brigade but before Robbie knew what he was doing, he had burst through the shed doors into the farmyard to see if the hall window was unlatched.
It took him several minutes to work out that the fire was upstairs and entire sections of the roof had collapsed. It hissed and crackled above him, sending parts of the walls crashing onto the tarmac and causing a heat so fierce to accost him that he had to physically push against it. He used the handle of the outside broom to break the window and the glass shattered in symphony with the panes above him blowing out from the force of the fire. The smoke in the ground floor caused him to cough and he screamed for his father through the sleeve of his jacket. It was impossible to hear anything above the racket of the fire as the house creaked and fell apart. Robbie knelt on the carpet and crawled towards his father’s room, calling his name as he went. The door was open but when he reached the bed he found it empty and started to panic.
‘Dad,’ he shouted. ‘Where are you?’
He imagined that his father had fallen asleep in the living room in front of the television, or that he had tripped on the stairs where the fire was making a quick descent. Robbie struggled to think clearly enough to plan his next move. Where was Wendy? The moment he had the thought, he remembered the parent-teacher evening she had to go to and his promise that he would be back in time; he pictured the text message he had sent before going into Joan’s: On my way, you head on. As he patted the floor around him in search of the bed, his hand struck a limb and he discovered his father collapsed on the ground in the corner.
‘Dad, are you all right?’
There was no response and Robbie quickly removed his jacket and placed it over his father’s face. Standing in the smoke was so difficult that Robbie’s eyes started to water and he lost his bearings entirely. Light from the flames, which by now had travelled through the hallway to devour the doors of the living room, was illuminating the window that Robbie hoped to carry his father through but the heat held him back and he cried out in frustration.
With his father in his arms, he took a moment to assess any other possible exits but ended up facing the hallway and the open window again. John’s body was limp and no heavier than his thin, young bride had been when he had carried her over the threshold of their home. Robbie turned his back to the flames and moved as quickly as he could into the hallway. The heat felt like day-old sunburn.
Every breath he took was laced with smoke and he worried that he might collapse before getting his father to safety. The air coming from the open window allowed him a moment’s reprieve as he turned to lower his father through the broken glass on to the picnic table. A crash sounded behind him as the bookcase fell within inches of his leg and the flames spread out across the floor. Scrambling through the window was dream-like; his legs would not co-operate and his clothes got caught on jagged pieces of glass. He cried out as pain shot through his foot and he used all his strength to give the final push that landed him in the yard. After lifting his father from the table, he managed to carry him only several steps before he was forced to lower him to the ground. In the background he could hear people shouting and what sounded like someone attempting to break the padlock on the yard gate.
In a fit of coughing that made his lungs ache, he collapsed beside his father and pressed his neck to find a pulse. His hands were shaking too violently to determine if anything was beating beneath his fingertips and the best he could do was gather his father into his lap and rock him. The house blazed in front of them, far enough away not to hurt them but close enough that they could feel its heat. A siren sounded in the distance and a sudden calm came over Robbie as he wiped the soot from his father’s face and watched as the farmhouse groaned before giving in to the flames and collapsing. Sparks rose against the night sky as bits and pieces of the house fell like meteorites onto the tarmac.
‘Son?’
Robbie looked down as his father wheezed beneath him.
‘Dad,’ he said, unbuttoning the top buttons of his pyjama top, ‘just relax, an ambulance will be here soon.’
John turned in the direction of the house and closed his eyes tightly.
‘It’s ok, it’s going to be ok,’ Robbie said, stroking his hair.
He tried to speak but his voice was hoarse. Robbie could hear someone struggling with the bolt on the cattle gate.
‘They’ll be here soon.’
A male voice swore as he wrestled with the hawthorn tree and started to pull the gate open. His yellow Wellington boot kicked through the branches and he called for help.
‘Where …?’ Robbie heard his father whisper.
‘Try not to speak, Dad.’
John started to wriggle and cough.
‘Easy, easy,’ Robbie said. He could tell that his father was intent on telling him something and he tried to support his back so that he was in a sitting position.
‘Where … were … you?’
The firemen were through and as some of them pulled a length of hosepipe down the yard towards the house, two made their way towards Robbie and his father.
‘I rescued you,’ Robbie said, craning his neck to see his father better. As his forehead creased with confusion, he felt a sharp pain above his eye and realised that he must be injured.
‘You left me alone.’
Robbie recoiled, not even registering the firemen’s presence as they extracted his father from his arms. A fireman with smoke-stained cheeks and a hard hat knelt beside Robbie as his father was taken away.
‘This one’s in shock,’ the fireman said without turning away from Robbie. ‘You’ll be all right, mate. You’re safe now.’
‘Do you ever get the feeling that life is like one of those spinning tops that has been going along just fine and then suddenly it starts to feel a bit wobbly and soon it’s careening out of control?’ Robbie said.
Elizabeth laid her hand on his arm.
‘Come on, let’s have a look at the damage.’
Wendy pulled into the driveway behind them. Robbie watched her closely as she made straight for him and he lowered his head in anticipation of a scolding. When he felt her arms around him and the coldness of her nose on his neck, it took a few seconds for him to reciprocate the embrace. He held her while she soaked the collar of his jacket and squeezed him so tightly that his smoke-induced cough returned and forced them apart.
She stepped back, wiped her face roughly with the sleeve of her coat and turned to take in the sight of the farmhouse. Its charred remains still dripped from the firemen’s soaking and the wind blew the bitter scent of smoke across the driveway. A door slammed shut behind them and, as Wendy walked over to speak to their neighbour, Robbie and Elizabeth picked their way across the front field to the cattle gate.
‘This is where the firemen got through,’ he said.
The gate was still ajar and Elizabeth set her small shoe into the footprint of a fireman’s Wellingtons. A thick grey mist of cloud hung above them and made the scene in the yard more desolate and dreary than it had been the previous night.
‘I broke this window with the broom; it’s lower to the ground than the rest,’ he explained.
His sister nodded and pulled at the remaining shards of glass in the frame.
‘Let’s go in through the kitchen,’ he said.
Built on to the farmhouse by Robbie’s grandfather, the kitchen stuck out from the rest of the house and had suffered no damage from the fire. Inside, it was possible to imagine that nothing was different but as soon as Elizabeth opened the door into the living room, they could see through to the hall where the fire had been snuffed out. Apart from some charring on the doorframes, the living room had suffered only smoke damage. The walls were sooty and the furniture soiled but when Elizabeth ran a wet finger over the table, the wood beneath came up clean. The hallway carpet crunched like snow beneath their feet as Elizabeth and Robbie made their way to the stairs.
‘We’d better not go up there,’ Robbie said, peering up the banister to the entrails of the roof.
Elizabeth ignored him and climbed the stairs, careful with her footing as if the whole thing might collapse beneath her at any moment. Robbie heard Wendy shouting from the yard and looked between Elizabeth’s back and the kitchen.
‘We’re in here,’ he shouted. ‘Lizzie’s going upstairs.’
Wendy appeared beside him and shouted at their younger sister to come down.
‘Relax,’ she shouted back. ‘The floor will hold fine. I just want to have a look. Don’t be such scaredy-cats.’
Robbie and Wendy looked at one another, shrugged and followed their sister. From the top of the stairs they could see that the roof had caved in over their father’s old bedroom. A crow circled above the house and Robbie felt a shiver run the length of his spine. The walls had disintegrated to piles of what looked like charcoal, and the contents of Narnia were reduced to ashes.
‘Look, Robbie,’ Elizabeth said, pointing to the blackened corpse of the rocking horse in the corner. It had been protected by a large brass fireguard that had belonged to a distant relative and was too grand to look comfortable in the living room. Robbie grabbed the horse by its ears and pulled it to safety.
‘That’s about the only thing that’s salvageable,’ Wendy said.
‘All those memories,’ Elizabeth said, shaking her head, ‘gone just like that. Mum’s old wedding dress was in there somewhere and all our old school records and that grandfather clock you wanted to restore.’
‘Oh well,’ Wendy said. The wind from the broken window toyed with her hair. ‘If there hadn’t been so much food for the fire in here, perhaps Dad wouldn’t have fared so well.’
The three were silenced.
‘It’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be,’ Robbie said, stepping onto the landing to check the damage to his old bedroom. ‘I thought the whole place would be razed to the ground.’
‘You made it just in time,’ Wendy said, her tone soft.
The door had been closed to his room and, although it looked as though the fire had travelled beneath the door to the carpet, the worst of the damage had been done by the water sprayed through the broken window.
‘We’d better get going,’ Wendy said, checking her watch. ‘Dad will be wondering where we are.’
Robbie hung back as Elizabeth made her way down the stairs.
‘Hey,’ Wendy said, pointing her finger into his chest. ‘This is not your fault, all right?’
The look in her eyes was fierce.
‘Do you hear me?’ she said.
He nodded but struggled to meet her eye.
‘Do you?’
There was soot smeared across her right cheek that a tear had cut a path though.
‘Yes, Wendy, I hear you.’
She nodded resolutely and repeated that it was time to go, before following Elizabeth downstairs.