After the Fire Read Free Page B

spreading to fill every space it found. And the heat of the fire travelled too, building in intensity until everything it touched burst into flames, and soon the small fire wasn’t small any more and the smoke was streaming out of windows, under doors, filling the stairwells and flats, until it had taken control of Murchison House.
     
    Carl Bellew didn’t hear anything or smell anything or see anything suspicious. He was asleep in his chair. His mother, Nina, was in her bedroom down the hall from the living room, and she didn’t notice anything either. It was seven-year-old Becky who heard the sound of something falling – a muffled sound. A mysterious sound. Becky was sitting in an armchair, her feet hanging down over the side, watching television. The unexpected noise got her attention. She swung her legs down to the floor and stood up, walking past her brother and her sleeping father. She didn’t say anything to either of them about the sound she had heard. She didn’t say where she was going, or why. The kitchen door was closed and she thought nothing of it. The door to the bedroom she shared with her brother was closed and that wasn’t unusual either. But when she touched it, the door was warm. Warm as blood. Becky reached her hand out to the door handle, which was metal. It was hot enough to sear her palm and she cried out in pain. The scream was loud enough to disturb her father.
    ‘What’s going on?’ he called. He was still half-asleep and grouchy as a hibernating bear. It wasn’t a good idea to wake him up at the best of times.
    ‘I’m all right,’ Becky shouted back, pulling her sleeve down over her hand to protect it. She put her covered hand on the door handle and turned it, then pushed the door open.
    And the fire came to meet her.
     
    Debbie Bellew was crossing the car park, carrying a plastic shopping bag, when she heard a shout. Shouts were normal on the Maudling Estate but it was always wise to check it was nothing to do with you. Debbie glanced behind her and saw a man shading his eyes, pointing up at the tower block opposite him. Murchison House. Debbie turned to see what he was looking at. It took her a second to make sense of the fact that the top of the tower had changed shape, widened, swelled. Against the darkening sky, black smoke made parts of the building disappear. It was flowing out of windows on the west side of the tower, and with every second that passed the smoke seemed to move faster, finding new places to escape.
    The handles of the plastic bag slipped through her fingers and fell on the tarmac. By the time the sponge cake slid onto the ground, Debbie was already gone, sprinting towards the base of Murchison House, knowing that she was too late. Nothing on earth could have stopped her.
     
    Melissa Pell heard a smoke alarm going off – not in her flat, somewhere else – and one part of her brain considered it, then dismissed it. It was teatime. People were cooking. People burned food. She’d done it herself, many a time.
    She sniffed. She could smell something in the air, something acrid. Smoke. Actual smoke. That was dinner in the bin, she thought. No salvaging it.
    ‘Shit!’ She jumped up off the sofa, tipping her son off her lap onto the floor.
    ‘Mummy,’ Thomas protested as she rushed to the kitchen. She could see it in her mind’s eye: the gas flame flickering, the cloth she’d tossed to one side carelessly. Charring and then burning, the flames rising higher and higher.
    But the kitchen was fine. The gas was off. The cloth was nowhere near the cooker. Everything was just the same as normal. Melissa stood for a second, letting her heart rate drop. Everything was all right. There was no reason to panic. Panic was a habit. She needed to let it go. She needed to allow herself to believe that she and Thomas were safe at last.
    Melissa turned to go back to her son. She’d moved two steps towards him when her smoke alarm began to chirp.
     
    Mary Hearn put the radio