So, I’m standing outside your house, hidden from view in the bushes. It’s like a jungle, brambles, cobwebs, you name it, but I can see everything you’re doing. At last, the front door’s locked, you all get in the car and drive off. After you’ve gone, I sneak round to the old shed at the back to collect the gear I brought with me. I wait there for a while; I’m not sure why. I could have been losing my nerve, or I just didn’t want to do it. Whatever, I end up carrying my stuff back to the front and I settle down in the bushes again.
There are the same lights on inside the house as there were when you left, nothing’s changed. There’s no one about, just a couple of cars passing on the road now and again, so I can take my time, make sure it’s done right.
I was told not to bother about trying to hide it was arson, I wouldn’t be able to anyway, but that was my instruction. I thought, someone, somewhere wants you to know it was deliberate. What did you do to them?
I start by smashing one of the big arched windows. I brought a proper sledgehammer for that so it’s done in a couple of hits. Next I empty a petrol can through the hole, sloshing it about for good cover. Then I do the same on the other side, smash the window, slosh the petrol, make sure to soak as much as I can.
Everything stays quiet apart from the rustle of whatever is in the undergrowth. I don’t even hear myself pouring petrol through the letter box I’m so quiet. I finish up by tossing the canisters through the broken windows. Then I light a fueled-up rag, post it fast, and back off even faster.
To be honest, at first, I didn’t think it had taken. Nothing seemed to happen, but I wasn’t going to go and check and have the whole thing blow up in my face. I stayed where I was, masked by the bushes, close to the road, watching and waiting. I remember the moon reflecting in the windows I hadn’t smashed and a bird scaring me as it fluttered out of a tree.
Then everything started to take off, flames shooting up like crazy, smoke billowing out through the broken panes. I’d been told oxygen would fuel the fire and it was happening, because suddenly the whole of one side was ablaze. I watched kind of mesmerized, waiting for the heat to reach me. I don’t think it did, I don’t remember it anyway, I just remember someone shouting and running up the drive and someone else coming after them yelling that they were calling 999. I read later it was a couple of gay neighbors walking their dog.
You might think it weird that I didn’t run. I know I do. But it was like I couldn’t make myself move. I watched the whole thing unfold, more people rushing in, someone grabbing a hose, flames lashing out of the windows curling up to the roof . . . In my head now I’ve lost a sense of time, but I remember sirens wailing up the main road and two fire trucks thundering into the drive. I was still there while the firemen got to work and a crowd gathered on the street, their faces brightened and strobed by emergency lights.
Then a car screeched to a stop behind a fire truck and two people jumped out. I saw who it was right away, recognized the car, but I couldn’t understand it. Why had they come back? What was happening? The girl was screaming, “Nana!” and that was when I realized someone—you—were inside.
I swear I thought the place was empty. I’d watched the three of you go out, ffs, but somehow YOU WERE IN THERE.