Last to Leave Read Free

rhododendrons. She rounded them to find him seated on an artistically prone Greek pithoi with Claudia’s tartan cloak over his shoulders, his wife standing ramrod straight behind him like some Victorian ghillie posed for a photograph with the local laird.
    For a moment Kate thought Carlton had shaved off the right side of his wild white beard. But it was there all right, flattened to project ridiculously, like an airfield’s windsock, from the farther cheek. It was the way he’d slept on it, adding to the mad Don Quixote appearance of his scarecrow figure.
    Claudia was drably austere in a charcoal velvet housecoat, her iron-grey hair in schoolgirl plaits. She turned stiffly to face the other woman. ‘Ah, Kate, this is a grim business. Most disturbing for everyone.’
    In total control. If she was aware that her home and everything in it was likely lost, she gave no indication. Her voice of doom was the one she normally employed for everyday observations.
    â€˜Just look at that,’ piped her elderly husband, staring upwards into the fiery reflections on the underside of billowing smoke. ‘What incredible colours. You know, my dear, we don’t appreciate the night sky enough. When did we last come out and truly look at the dark?’
    Unsurprisingly she didn’t answer. ‘I’m so very sorry,’ Kate whispered, leaving her to guess whether she referred to the fire or to Carlton’s increasing dottiness.
    Claudia drew an audible, deep breath. ‘It’s fortunate we increased the insurance cover.’
    That was startling. ‘All the same,’ Kate couldn’t help saying, ‘to lose so much that you’ve built up over the years …’
    â€˜Accumulated,’ Claudia corrected her.
    Had she regarded all Carlton’s valuable acquisitions as so much encumbrance then? While it shocked the other woman she stored it for consideration later. ‘I wanted to be sure you were both all right,’ she said. ‘Robert’s rung for a minibus to take us all to the Greythorpe Hotel. Naturally it will catch them on the hop, so some of us may need to share rooms for the present, but at least there will be beds for the rest of the night.’
    She offered her arm and between them the two women raised Carlton to his feet and got him moving in the right direction. As they passed round to the front of the house the full heat struck at them again. Three fire appliances were present and a battery of hoses was being directed on the house, already reduced to a glowing shell. It seemed impossible that such devastation could have happened in so short a while. Piles of smouldering debris lay where thrown from windows in a panicky attempt to save what seemed precious. They had to pick their way through it all to where the family had been herded together, a phalanx of stunned strangers in oddly assembled garb.
    An ambulance was pulling away, circling what had been a reasonably tidy stretch of lawn before so much trampling, and just then the promised minibus, bright yellow, appeared at the far end of the drive.
    They were dragooned into a semblance of order, oldies first, and, busy with getting Carlton’s stiff old legs to cope with the high steps, Kate hadn’t time to look around for the twins, assuming they’d be equally occupied with organizing their elders and board last.
    A trio of firemen clumped across to the bus. One wearing a soot-smeared white helmet put his head through the bus doorway. He had a list on his clipboard. ‘Mrs Kate Dellar?’ he accused her, as though she might have denied it. ‘Could I have a word, please?’ So she climbed down.

    Then, as the others were driven off, he told her: Eddie had been injured. He was on his way to High Wycombe Casualty Unit. And, after a recount of survivors, one was missing: her daughter Jessica.
    Eddie? Jess? Both her children? ‘But they said everyone was safe!’ she shouted at