They had been aware of the scent of wood smoke as they strolled home from midnight Mass, gloved hand in gloved hand. Rosemary was sticking out her tongue to catch the falling snowflakes, while Ronnie, full of mulled wine and Christmas cheer, sang an inappropriate version of ‘While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks’.
The explosion made them jump.
Rosemary reacted first, jogging round the corner into Marchmont Terrace to see the flames. She ran up the neatly slabbed path to the blistering front door of the burning house as Ronnie went in search of a phone.
She was only halfway along the path when the heat hit her, like the power of a blast from an open oven door. She paused to pull her scarf up round her mouth to protect her from the choking air; jerking her hood closer to her head and ramming her hands deep into her gloves. She stretched through the searing heat in front of her, painfully aware of the biting chill of the night air behind her. Her hand approached the blackening glass panel of the front door, its handle tantalizingly close.
She reached out.
Beyond the glass she recognized the flash of a limb, a dark face through the shadows and patterns of swirling grey clouds. An open mouth, shockingly pink amongst the smoke, appeared then vanished, leaving a bloodied smear of skin on the blackening pane. But Rosemary had seen the torture in the face, the desperation for breath, for life. She turned her own face away from the heat, and stretched out her hand to reach the handle. She tried, standing tense while the heat bit at her ankles, melting her shoes onto her toes. She felt her lips burn and eyebrows singe.
They were two people separated by a few feet, one in the snow, one in the flames. Their eyes met. As Rosemary braved another step forward, she saw the figure crumple into the flames. Above the cracking and crashing from the belly of the inferno, she heard a cry.
Then she was knocked sideways, pushed onto the front lawn and its carpet of melting snow. A yellow firefighter’s glove reached past her to the door handle. She watched, willing them to reach. They did. She willed the handle to turn. It did not.
Rosemary was pulled back down the path. She heard the axe smash the glass and the answering roar of the flames, as if the inferno itself had been wounded. The rush of heat punched Rosemary forward. The flames, thriving on their gift of fresh oxygen, flew skywards, hissing and spitting, now at war with the water jet from the hose.
Rosemary turned and looked. The body had surrendered to the flames, merely a small black shadow behind the glass. She heard the hiss and click of the breathing apparatus as two firefighters walked slowly into the inferno, bulky automatons that then returned, half-carrying, half-dragging their prize past her to their colleagues, the oxygen, the stretcher, ice-cold sanctuary. And life.
Rosemary jumped as an oxygen mask covered her face. She had been unaware of how laboured her breathing had become, how blackened her face was, how burned her clothes were. Her husband slipped a blanket round her shoulder, his hand caressed her back.
She looked up to see the woman dancing on the first-floor windowsill, still wearing the black dress that she had probably bought for her Christmas Eve dinner party; the beautiful, expensive dress now being ripped apart by the frantic hands of the screaming woman as fabric melted onto her skin. The torn ends floated out in the wind, black flags in the orange flames against the glittering silent night. Her face was ugly; features twisted with fear, lipstick smeared, pale skin blackened by smoke. One tenacious hand held on to the sandstone bricks, steadying herself against the force of the flames that streamed out the window behind her and curled round her legs.
Rosemary watched in macabre fascination as the woman composed herself, then relaxed. For an instant she was beautiful, her dark hair caught the snow and she smiled. Then slowly, imperceptibly, she took a step forward. She hung for a moment in the night sky, a dark angel in the circling smoke, and then she joined the snowflakes falling through the air.
Falling.
Falling.