He will always remember the terror. It was the sound of the fire, the smell of it. Orange dancing in the wet night air, sparks flying, water gushing from the hoses in the firemen’s hands.
Dominic lifts his hands to his face and smells them.
‘I had to wash my hands over and over,’ he tells his family. ‘Again and again, until the smell of soap was stronger than the smell of petrol.’
So many things to remember about that night. Heat following him along the passage, fire rushing forward, his sister’s thin cry and dry cough as she inhaled the smoky air. Smashing the window, letting Harry go and praying that the earth outside would be soft enough to break her fall. Scrambling through after her, scraping the backs of his legs on the broken pane.
Maddie leans forward when Dominic gets to this part. ‘Oh, Dad. That must have been terrible.’
‘It was, Mads,’ he says. ‘It really was.’
‘But you got out. And you rescued your sister, too. Everybody must have thought that was brave. Didn’t they say that? That you were really brave?’
Dominic strokes his daughter’s hair, but his eyes are still on Kate. His wife isn’t looking at him, but her face is more open. ‘Not really,’ he says. ‘It was my mum, you see. She was still standing just outside the kitchen door, holding a can of petrol.’
‘And you had to get rid of it?’
‘Exactly. I had to make sure no one knew the fire was her fault. I didn’t think about the smell, not then. All I wanted was to hide that can. Keep her safe.’
‘So, you didn’t even think they would blame you?’
‘Not then,’ Dominic says.
‘But later?’
‘Later?’ Dominic says, and shrugs. ‘Later they blamed me for everything. The fire, the old man. It was all my fault.’
‘But it wasn’t.’ Maddie is close to tears. ‘None of it was.’
‘I began to think it was, though. I told myself I should have done something. If I’d shouted loudly, told them what he was like, how he’d treated Mum … Maybe someone would have listened. Instead, I was labelled: a pyromaniac, the boy who let his grandfather die, the boy whose mother couldn’t help him, the boy whose mother was mad. All I wanted was to leave that boy behind. Leave it all behind. Start anew … And that’s what I did. It was all going so well, or so I stupidly thought. Then, along came Noah and his family tree.’
‘I’m sorry, Dad.’
‘No, Noah. Don’t be. I started allowing myself to wonder, just like you were: Who was Gabriel Felix? What happened to that boy? That led me to other questions. Big ones. What about my sister? What happened to her? And Mum. Was she still alive? Once the thoughts were there, they wouldn’t go away. So, eventually, I hired a pi – Sebastian Crown. He’s the one who found Mum. That’s when I started my Sunday-afternoon runs.’
‘And that’s why you didn’t want to come to see me at Greenhills,’ says Noah.
‘I couldn’t. Mum … Well, she expects me here now. Every Sunday afternoon. If I’m not here, she gets upset.’