38

I don’t know how long I was in that darkness. It felt like seconds, weeks, years. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter at all.

And then, after a while, something changed. The world began to shiver. The colour shifted. In the black there were points of light like distant stars, growing larger, and I could feel myself somehow being drawn towards them. They grew until I could see into them, and I was dragged faster and faster. In my veins, the blood was moving. My muscles were shaking. My arms were rushing through a river.

I burst up out of the water, spraying droplets and gasping for breath, ready to retch. My lungs were on fire as I sucked in all the air that I could. All I knew then was air – I had no idea of my own life until the memories flooded back with the freezing wet that was pouring down me. I twisted around and saw Charles looking towards the stairs. In a second I understood what had distracted him.

Below us, the front door slammed closed. ‘Jane!’ someone called. ‘What’s going on?’ It was Nick. Charles’s head fell as if he were in pain. ‘Jane, are you there?’

I wanted to twist the knife, to tell Charles that Lorelei had despised him, that she laughed at him behind his back, but I couldn’t form any words – they had been drenched out of me.

‘Jane!’ Nick’s voice was in the hall now. Then there were footsteps coming up the stairs.

‘I’m here!’ I cried.

At my shout, Charles seemed to regain his strength and made for the door. Barely able to stand, I stumbled after, grabbing at him as he reached the landing. Nick, part-way up the stairs, looked stupefied at the sight of us. In the darkness of the hall he was holding the lighted oil lamp that he used to see through the smog, and, from the way I was grasping at Charles and the state of my torn and soaking clothes, he must have gained some idea of what had happened. Charles stopped when he saw Nick, and they both stared, until Nick began to move again, rushing towards us. Charles, seeing no other way out, leaped down the stairs, barging with his shoulder and hardly touching the steps. Nick was stronger and fitter, but Charles had the momentum. As he moved through the air, I yelled Nick’s name, as if I could somehow protect him.

They met with a shout that rang in my ears long after they had crashed together and broken apart again. But it was mixed with something else: the bone sound of breaking wood. As I watched, a web of cracks spread through the bannister and a metre-long section exploded away, tumbling in shards and blades to the floor. Charles and Nick fell through it together, spinning through the air, lighted by a flickering flame from the lamp as it too dropped to the ground, splitting on the floorboards to spread paraffin on to the heavy hall rug. The lamp, the shattered wood and their bodies all lay, unmoving, on the floor. Wreckage again.

‘Nick,’ I gasped, as I ran down.

Time and sound seemed to have stopped as I looked from one to the other, both perfectly still and without signs of life. Nothing to say there was blood or warmth in them. I could hear the silence, long and bleak.

And then, with a groan, slowly and painfully, Nick stirred. My heart floated at the sight of his head lifting from the floor. With an effort, he got to his knees, a severe bruise welling on his cheek, and I made to throw my arms around him, but at that moment a flame leaped up from a pool of the lamp’s oil at my feet, making me grab at the bannister for balance. The flare reflected on Nick’s skin as he stood.

He looked deep into me and spoke in a low, severe voice. ‘Go. The police.’ He glanced at Charles, who appeared to be unconscious or worse. In a moment I felt just as I had done when he found me surrounded by police after Lorelei’s death: gratitude entwined with guilt. Unable to say anything, I nodded and ran outside, stumbling over the bottles of paraffin for our heaters. The door closed behind me and the lock clicked into place.

That sound worried me – I couldn’t say why, but here and now it seemed to be cutting me off from Nick for a second time and there was something threatening in that. I turned and shoved at the door. I hadn’t thought to take my key and it was locked firm, but through the leaded side window I could see a bright glow that illuminated Nick’s figure, bending down to pull the remains of the lamp’s oil holder away from the fire – and, behind his back, Charles beginning to lift himself up from the floor.

I smacked my hand on the glass. ‘Nick!’ I screamed, desperate to warn him. His face turned to me; and then it burst away as Charles threw himself on Nick from behind, the two of them tumbling out of sight, slamming against the bottom of the door. ‘Nick!’ I cried out again.

I reeled wildly around, looking for anyone who could help. But the smog was so thick I couldn’t see more than a few metres. I ran towards the end of the street, feeling for anyone there. ‘Please help!’ I yelled, tripping into the gutter and banging into low walls and cars.

A radio somewhere was broadcasting Blunt’s Liberation Day speech once again. ‘… where the people who create the wealth have equal shares in that wealth, instead of being forced …’ The crowd were cheering under his words. I ran blind, flailing about in the thick mist, hardly knowing in which direction I was moving. I blundered into the road, narrowly avoiding being hit by a car that was creeping through the blanket of smoke mixed with wet fog, and cried out for anyone to help. Anyone.

Then, from ahead of me, a shout answered mine.

‘Jane? Are you there?’ I recognized the voice, hardened by years of rough, cheap spirits. I couldn’t see him but Tibbot was there somewhere. I ran towards the sound, hoping to touch him, winding my arms through the dirty air. His face came out of the mist, a severe look on his face. ‘What’s wrong?’ he demanded, grabbing me by the shoulders.

‘God, come quick!’ I cried, latching on to his coat.

From the other side of the road I heard more footsteps running. A man sprinted past, followed a moment later by three Teddy Boys, whooping and shouting. One got a hand to the man’s jacket and brought him down. ‘Informant cunt,’ one of the boys shouted, while the others kicked him. He struggled up, tore clear of them and began to run again. ‘Off to the Secs?’ they screamed at his back.

Tibbot and I turned and dashed back to the house, stumbling and catching each other. ‘What is it?’ Tibbot asked urgently.

‘It’s Charles. And Nick,’ I said.

I went to the side window but all I could see were flames, divided into six by the lead-framed panes of glass, surging along the hallway. The pile of newspapers that we had to send each month to be destroyed in the National Records Office, the stack of our collective madness of accusations and denunciations and fury, was alight. The bottles of paraffin had exploded in the heat, fuelling the fire.

Something unseen was smacking against the wood from the other side – feet or fists. Tibbot put his shoulder to the door and I pushed against it too, but, whether it was the strength of the lock or the weight of the bodies on the other side, it wouldn’t give. We heard someone cry in pain from the other side of the wood.

‘The back door?’ Tibbot shouted to me.

‘It’s bolted.’

‘I’ll call the station.’

‘There’s no time!’ The heat was coming through the wood.

Tibbot scanned the ground and picked up a large stone from the garden. He pulled it back behind his shoulder and pitched it at the side window. But the leaded frame was sturdy, and, although the glass fractured, the window didn’t give. He took the stone and used it to smash again and again at the frame, knocking it out of the wood to fall on the floor of the hall. A blast of hot air and smoke rushed out, stinging my skin and making me stagger back. Tibbot jerked his head away, doubling up to cough out harsh smoke.

Holding my sleeve over my mouth and nose to block out the smoke, I reached inside, turning the lock. Tibbot shoved the door then and it gave way easily – whatever had been up against it was gone, but as it swung back there was another rush of scalding air. The bottles of paraffin had showered the room with droplets of oil that flared here and there; the fire was licking high on the coat stand, and black smoke from the charring fabric billowed through the hall, making it hard to see. Nick lay on the floor and above him stood Charles, his hand and temple both bloody. He shook as his eyes met mine. I had no thoughts then but hatred of him. A second later Tibbot pushed me aside and rushed in; but the surge of air from the open doorway made the flames on the rug billow up, and they forced him back, coughing again. We both turned away from the stinging heat, and, when we looked back, Charles was running out through the rear of the house. The flames blew up again as he burst out the back door.

I took my handkerchief from my sleeve, held it over my face so I could breathe in shallow, panting breaths and flew to Nick, winding past the flames on the rug. He was lying on his side, turned away from me. I dropped to my knees and froze at the sight of his blackened face as Tibbot rolled him on to his back and put his head to Nick’s chest. ‘He’s not breathing,’ he said. There were broken pieces of bannister around us, smeared with blood where Charles’s hand had touched it.

‘Nick,’ I rasped, my voice barely loud enough to be heard. On the rug, needles of glass from the broken paraffin bottles glistened in the firelight. ‘Nick, can you hear me?’ I bent to listen for any sound. There was nothing. I felt like I was holding his hand while he stood on a precipice.

‘Look at me!’ Tibbot ordered him, smacking Nick’s cheek lightly. There was no response. ‘Look at me.’ He slapped again, more forcefully this time. I watched for any sign of life. The colour was gone from his skin. Tibbot felt Nick’s wrist for a pulse, searching for it, seemingly unable to find anything.

‘Is he alive?’ I whispered, my heart thudding against my chest so hard that I thought I would break apart. ‘Tell me.’ A spray of oil flared by my hand, burning it. Tibbot glanced at me, a grim look on his face, as he moved rapidly to Nick’s neck to feel for a pulse. Then he started pumping his hands up and down on Nick’s chest, alternated with blowing into his mouth. I sat and watched, wondering if it would ever end. After a while, Tibbot checked Nick’s wrist for a heartbeat, and then his neck again. He went through the cycle of actions again and again, each time feeling for a pulse.

And at the end, for ten, twenty, I don’t know how many seconds, he knelt with his fingers pressed to Nick’s neck, all the while looking at me. And then he slowly sat back and lifted his hand away. ‘No!’ I shouted. My hands searched desperately over Nick’s chest, trying to find the heartbeat that would save us both.

‘I’m sorry,’ Tibbot said quietly.

‘No!’

‘He’s gone.’

‘I won’t … no!’

Without warning, Tibbot grabbed me and dragged me aside, falling against the broken bannister. I looked back to see a bundle of flames and burning fabric tumble to the floor where I had been kneeling, the fire flooding out from it as it hit the boards. The coat rack was now a mass of light and more fell, separating us from Nick. The smoke was getting thicker.

‘We have to get out,’ Tibbot coughed, his chest hacking.

‘He’s –’

‘He’s gone. We have to get out!’

All I could feel was my skin burning. It could have all burned away. And, as I looked up, I saw Hazel in the doorway, standing just as she had done when a policewoman brought her to our house after her mother’s death.

I ran to her, my arms outstretched, turning her so that she couldn’t see the broken form on the floor. She put her arms around me and I felt her tremble with tears that began to wet my own cheeks.

All I could do was stroke her hair and pull her tighter. ‘It’s going to be all right,’ I said. ‘I’ll look after you. I’m here. I’ll look after you.’