“Rose…alight…fire.” Lillianna gasped. “Trying…to put…it out.” She took another puff of her inhaler and sat down in the lane. “Can’t remember the last time I used this?” she said once her breathing had calmed. “It’s the cottage.”
She didn’t need to elaborate, the smell of smoke drifted towards them on the night breeze, along with large fluttering bits of ash. Something large was burning.
Ross obviously made the connection at the same time. His arm dropped like a lead weight from around Evie’s shoulders. “Kit’s still in there.” He sprang away and pushed off the top of the car bonnet to get past.
“Hey!” the officer yelled and finally emerged from the car to give chase, breathlessly shouting into his radio as he ran.
Numbed, Evie watched them disappear in the fog bank up ahead. “We went for chips. Kit stayed behind. How? We’ve not been gone that long?” She began walking, circling around the abandoned police car to get into the lane.
“Evie, wait!” Lillianna caught up with her. “We should keep back. It’s not good up there.”
The fog cloud grew denser as they neared the cottage. Ash swirled like confetti in the air and stuck to every surface. The smoke itself had a bitter taste and dried their throats. Regardless, Evie pressed on, her coat held tight across her mouth and nose. She reached the rear of the first fire engine, and almost ran into Ross. He was sandwiched between two burly police officers, resisting their pleas for calm, his curses, regularly punctuated by calls for Kit.
There was no answering cry, only the horrid crackles and fizzing pops of flames burning through dried timbers, and then the roar of water as the fire engine crews directed their hoses. Upstairs, one of the cottage windows blew out and shattered, making both women yelp. They scuttled back towards the hedgerow on the far side of the lane. “What happened, Lilli? Tell me.”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure. Everyone was at the pub celebrating, waiting for you, but then a rumour started circulating that Molly was back and it hadn’t been Sammie after all but some other woman. It all got a bit crazy then, some folks had had a bit too much and they were getting mouthy. I left the pub at that point and went over to Molly’s, but there was no sign of her. Her car isn’t even back. I tried sending her a message, but I’ve not had a reply. And I tried you. Again, no response, so I thought I’d walk back up here and find you. Only I got halfway across the green and someone told me the place was on fire. I tried to ring you again, and I sent a message, but you know what the reception’s like around here.”
True to her words, another few paces into the field and Evie’s mobile phone started chirping with a message alert. She gazed at the text neither seeing nor comprehending it. Instead, tears streamed down her cheeks, forming rivulets in the tight mask of smoke particles that already coated her face. This couldn’t be happening. It wasn’t real. Fate couldn’t tear him away from them like this. They’d only just got comfortable with one another. Ross had even suggested they consider booking a holiday together.
“He’s still in there,” she groaned, sagging to her knees among the damp grass. “He wouldn’t come with us…refused to believe… And Mimmy’s in there with him.” The notion of the kitten being trapped in her basket tore another hole in her already breaking heart. Both her strays. They’d both arrived the same night; now they were going to depart together.
No! She couldn’t let herself think like that. They’d survive, both of them. Somehow, they’d be all right.
“They have to get them out.” She clawed at Lillianna’s skirt, and buried her face in its magenta and black folds, sequins digging into her cheek. “Have to. Have to get them out.”
Chapter Seventeen
After Ross and Evie left, Kit down tooled and watched their car tail lights fade away. Evie had been clucking around him like a mother hen, when all he’d really wanted was a moment alone to collect his thoughts. Sammie found…alive and well. He couldn’t believe it. He didn’t believe it. She’d been missing too long, and the details of her absence were too deeply engraved upon his soul for him to accept anything but absolute proof that anything had changed.
Kit wandered through the empty rooms to his favourite perch on the windowsill of the back bedroom, only to find condensation clouding the small mullioned panes, which had run down and formed a large puddle on the sill. Frustrated, he flung a rag on it, and collapsed onto the bed instead, causing a plume of feathers to puff skywards. Mimmy immediately pounced, disturbed from her favourite hidey-hole beneath the bed by the growl of the springs. Distractedly, he watched the kitten caper, swiping at the speckled feathers with her paws.
Maybe he’d come back as a cat in his next life. It seemed a pretty easy life, and no one made a fuss about you going on the prowl. Not that he currently felt remotely sexual. What he really wanted was someone to hold him tight and not let go regardless of how much he abused them. He needed that sort of absolute faith, that sort of unwavering love to prove that everything was still okay, and that the world wasn’t about to turn topsy-turvy again.
Kit dug in his pocket for his phone. He scrolled through the call list searching for Ross and Evie’s home number. Maybe if they held him, one either side, he’d feel safe. Stuff fish and chips, he wanted them back. His thumb hovered over the dial button. He didn’t want to sound needy.
The sound of shattering glass startled him into a seated position. Kit ran onto the landing just in time to see a second missile sail through the already shattered window that provided illumination on the turn of the stairs. The smell caught in his nostrils just before the new glowing missile shattered on impact. What was that? Petrol? He stopped himself short of the lower landing, his arms braced upon the banisters as the fuel caught and the flames fanned out in a huge arch below him. Kit made a hasty retreat. Already, fiery tendrils were racing across the landing and down the aged wooden stairs.
“Shit!” One of the loose electrical wires sparked. And then the lights went out.
Something had provoked this. What had he done?
The woman hadn’t been Sammie, he concluded. So, they were coming for him with flames and pitchforks. He needed to get out of here and run.
Kit ran back towards the bedroom, improvising an escape route out of the window. If he threw the mattress out first, the landing would at least be soft. Mimmy shot between his feet as he opened the bedroom door. “No!” he called after her. “Stupid cat.”
Kit chased across the landing after her and followed her up the half-rotten stairs to the attic. She carved a long gouge in his hand when he tried to extract her from one of Flora’s old hat boxes. “Ow! Damn, you stupid moggy.” He sucked at the wound, in which blood had begun to pool, then made a second grab for her. This time he hung on, despite her claws. “Hey, it’s okay. We don’t have time for this. We need to get out.” There were no convenient hatches onto the roof. That was damned inconvenient oversight. He’d phone a Velux windows rep tomorrow if he got out of here alive and there was a house left to install them in. Fire brigade, he thought, hurrying downstairs again. No, he needed to get out first.
The few seconds it had taken to grab Mimmy had wrought extensive damage to the landing. What little wallpaper there was now hung in fiery curls. Thickening smoke obscured the route back to the room he’d inhabited. It was the only room with sash windows that still opened; the others had long since succumbed to layers of paint and wood filler. A few of them had been nailed shut from the outside.
Kit inched his way along the passage. Flames seemed to line every groove between the floorboards, rows upon rows of pretty orange petals that he had to dance around. If it had been more than a few feet he didn’t think he’d have made it. He paused halfway, gasping for breath and wondered if he’d have been better staying in the attic and trying to knock a hole in the new roof. Having it fixed had clearly been a terrible mistake.
He laughed, although it came out as a dry cough that morphed into a sob. Mimmy’s wriggling intensified at his distress. “We should have had a puppy,” he told her. “At least dogs are loyal, and they understand the concept of giving comfort not just receiving it. Keep still, will yer.”
A crack sounded above and plaster began raining from the ceiling. Kit darted, avoiding the falling debris, but he skidded, jarring his ankle. Pain fired up his leg, and on instinct he flung Mimmy through the door to the bedroom and reached out for support, only for every nerve ending in his body to join the chorus of agony as a jet of flames scorched his hands. Kit drew breath to scream but no sound came out. The smoke dried his eyes and got into nostrils. He followed Mimmy into the bedroom, and kicked the door closed behind them. There, he collapsed, as the world began to spin.
His hands were blacked and dotted with vibrant speckles of red. Kit bit down and made his muscles propel him forward, even though he could feel the fluid seeping between his fingers. Crying, and choking, he crawled his way to the window. It hurt like hell to manipulate the catch. Kit sacrificed an abandoned mug to the cause, bashing it against the stiff lock until it released.
Air gusted into the room as he raised the sash. There was no time to manipulate the mattress now. And he wasn’t sure he could do it. He pulled the ends of his sleeves down over his hands, leaving just the tips of his fingers sticking out, then the grabbed the yowling kitten again. Ignoring both her squirming and the bite of her claws, he tucked her as best he could inside his jacket and zipped it up. “You’ll thank me later, pussy cat.”
