Steffi
Charlotte’s so tiny she can hardly see over Lauren’s dashboard. The heat in here’s so intense that we roll down the windows, but the burning horizon engulfs the car. The smoke is following us downwind. Woody’s squirming on my lap, and, even though Charlotte can’t be doing more than 40mph, I’m clutching him with every ounce of my being; I’m so scared he’s going to fly out the windscreen. My lungs ache from the smoke. I still can’t understand if this is real or not. I can’t have read an email on the toilet while a house burnt down around me. Lauren is gurgling next to me, her eyes rolling about in her head. The state of her. My best friend – the one who’s always there, always cheerful, always the glue of the group – is now a broken toy. I want to cry but the baby in my arms is already too upset. Thoughts surge through me as the smoky breeze blasts my hair. I could ’ ve died. Any of us could ’ ve died. Woody could ’ ve died. The fire’s still burning, it’s everywhere. Is someone else going to die? I pat Woody’s hair, say shh shh , to both him and Lauren. I try to keep going through each breath.
Nicki’s on the phone to her parents. ‘Mum? Mum. There’s been a fire . . . it’s bad . . . where are you? Stay away . . . fire brigade coming . . . Yes, I’m safe. We’re all safe . . . Where’s dad? Are you sure he’s still that far away? Call him and check . . . Yes . . . I know ... I’ll call again soon.’ She hangs up. ‘What the fuck just happened?’ Nicki twists around, sees the state of Lauren, and faces forward again. ‘What happened?’
‘My baby,’ Lauren just sobs and sobs, folding inward on herself. ‘They’re going to take him. Please, stop them, please.’ Charlotte and I share a desperate look in the rearview mirror.
‘I’m not precisely sure,’ Charlotte says, speeding along, her voice deeper and calmer than I’ve ever heard it. ‘But I think, somehow, Woody went out onto the decking and managed to pull the top off the smoke grenade.’
‘My fault, it’s my fault,’ Lauren says.
‘Shh, honey. He’s OK. Everyone got out OK.’
‘It’s my parents’ house,’ Nicki says, almost dumbly. ‘We need to go back.’
‘Yes, yes, in time,’ Charlotte says. ‘Let’s just get out of the way of the smoke first.’
Her complete air of calm is jarring considering Charlotte generally acts like every second of her life are the final ones of cramming before a major exam. She’s almost zen . I’ve never seen her zen. Not even when she accidentally ate half a pot brownie at a third-year house party, insisted she would die, and made me take her to hospital for ‘monitoring’. She dictated her funeral plans into her phone while eating the entire contents of the Sheffield hospital vending machine.
‘I’m a terrible mother,’ Lauren cries to my side. ‘I’m awful. You all think it.’
‘Shh, honey. It was an accident.’
‘I left him. I left my baby and look what happened. Everything’s on fire. He could’ve died. You’re all going to tell. I’m going to lose him. I can’t lose him.’ She screams and Woody starts screaming too, fighting to go into his mother’s arms, squirming against me as I struggle to hold him.
‘Lauren, careful . . . careful . . . Woody, no, Woody.’
‘I need to get out. I can’t breathe. I need to get out. LET ME OUT.’
She lurches past me and makes a grab for the door handle. Woody attaches himself to her hair and we become enmeshed in a disastrous web of entangled limbs.
‘Please,’ Charlotte calls back. ‘Please stop, Lauren, please.’
‘LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT.’
‘Hang on. I need to find somewhere.’
‘I can’t hold them both,’ I yell. Nicki awkwardly tries to twist and help but she’s blocked by her bulging stomach. The car tilts as we ascend a winding countryside hill and I close my eyes for a second to ground myself in whatever mad hell is occurring around me.
‘LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT.’
‘Lauren, please. I see a viewpoint. Hang on. Hang on.’ Charlotte hard turns right and we’re flung around the car, everyone yelping, until we screech to a halt on a tiny gravel parking bay with a long bench overlooking the view.
‘Give me my son.’
I’m too startled to do anything other than let Woody hurl himself into her arms. Then Lauren’s out of the car with him, running past the bench, into the horizon. She stands and watches the view for a moment before her knees cave in and they both drop to the dusty ground. She hangs her head and sobs into her baby’s hair, while the rest of us stagger out towards her. Above their silhouette, the smoke billows across the vista and dancing patches of orange flicker as they eat their way through the parched field like termites. Below us, we hear the urgent wail of a fire engine.