Chapter 27
She’d rolled the pastry, cutting rounds and pressing them into a cupcake tray, spooned some of her mincemeat into each one – which although a little lumpier than the shop-bought jars she usually favoured, wasn’t at all bad for a first try – and assembled the mince pies as best she could.
Now, she was watching them brown in the window of the oven, trying not to think about the fact that Steven wasn’t calling her back, and trying to avoid the urge to ring him herself and look paranoid and desperate.
When she first heard the shouting outside, she didn’t think anything of it.
There was often the odd shout from a worker, or a neighbour calling to a passing dog walker.
But then there was more. And a rumble of wheels.
When she heard a siren, she sprang to her feet and rushed to the window, her mouth dropping open when she saw what was happening next door.
The air was filled with smoke; even from this distance it misted the air. Monsieur Rémi’s chimney was alive with flames and thicker, blacker smoke. A pompier was unreeling a hose, while others rushed to pull it forward to get water where it was needed as soon as possible.
‘Oh my God,’ she said to herself. It was hard to pick out individuals in the ten or so people who’d gathered by the fire engine; several in navy-blue uniform, others just in civilian clothes. Had Monsieur Rémi been among them? Or was he still inside the house?
She pulled on her wellies, then rushed back to the oven, removed the half-cooked pies and switched the oven off.
The last thing anyone needed was another fire.
Then, not bothering with a coat, she rushed out of the front door, almost tripping on the steps, and made her way as quickly as she could along her snow-covered drive, and around to the gate to Monsieur Rémi’s garden.
As she drew closer, she could hear the rumble of urgent conversation.
But one cry seemed to rise above the rest. Monsieur Rémi, his voice thick with tears and anger, crying out ‘Mon coeur!’ again and again.
A firefighter stood at each side of him, each holding an arm, and to her surprise she realised that he was trying to rush forward, back into the house.
‘Monsieur Rémi!’ she called out as she approached. But when he looked at her, it was if his eyes were somewhere else. He wasn’t really seeing her in his panic, but looking straight through her. ‘Mon coeur,’ he said. ‘My wife! She’s inside.’
She hadn’t spent a great deal of time with the elderly man, but he’d seemed completely lucid when they’d last spoken. Was he confused? In shock? She touched his arm and finally his eyes seemed to alight on her. ‘It’s Nicola,’ she said. ‘From next door.’
His eyes searched her face, realisation dawning. ‘Nicola,’ he said, reaching for her with one of his hands, but unable to lift his arm sufficiently due to the pompier’s tight grip.
‘What happened?’
‘Chimney fire,’ another pompier told her. ‘It can happen when chimneys are not well swept, and when the fire is not managed properly.’
‘Oh no! How bad is it?’
‘We are not sure. Hopefully it will be contained. There are pompiers inside tackling it; and those you can see outside with the hose,’ she said.
‘And my beautiful wife is inside,’ Monsieur Rémi said, his voice filled with despair.
‘I think he’s confused; she’s apparently been de… Well, she passed many years ago,’ she told the pompier in a low voice. She didn’t usually like to euphemise words for death. But in front of Monsieur Rémi in his current state, it would be cruel to labour the point.
‘Oui, we know Monsieur Rémi,’ the pompier told her. ‘We are all local. Volunteers.’
‘Nicola!’ a voice said behind her. She turned to see Lucien dressed in blue firefighting attire, his face slightly marked with grey from the billowing smoke.
‘I thought you were… Never mind.’ He hadn’t mentioned volunteering for the fire service, but she knew that the force was largely volunteer-based. And now didn’t seem the right time to chat about his choices.
‘My darling!’ came Monsieur Rémi’s mournful cry. He managed to tug on her sleeve. ‘Someone has to rescue her!’ he said.
‘Monsieur Rémi,’ she told him carefully. ‘Your wife isn’t in there. You know that, really. I think you might be in shock.’
He shook his head. ‘Nobody is listening to me. Because I’m an old man. Because I’m upset. But I am telling you that my wife is inside. Her picture. It is the only one I have of her from that period. Please, you have to rescue it. It cannot burn.’ His face crumpled.
‘A picture?’ one of the pompiers said.
‘Oh, I know it! It’s in a frame in his hallway!’ Nicola said suddenly. ‘I’ve seen it.’ She was flooded with relief. Monsieur Rémi wasn’t experiencing memory loss; he knew exactly what he wanted.
‘Do you think someone can fetch it?’ she said to Lucien, who was looking at the house, talking with a colleague. ‘It’s really very close to the door.’
‘No.’ One of the firefighters holding Monsieur Rémi’s arm shook his head. ‘The fire might spread; it is too dangerous for a photo.’
Monsieur Rémi’s face crumpled. ‘But it is all I have,’ he said weakly. ‘Please, let me go in. I’m an old man, I don’t have many years left. And I can take the risk. I want to take the risk.’
‘Non,’ the pompière said firmly.
Close to the house there was shouting. The flames in the chimney had stopped reaching through and had been replaced with thick black smoke.
‘Look,’ the pompière said to Monsieur Rémi. ‘The fire’s almost out. Your wife’s picture will be OK.’
Almost immediately there was the sound of shattering glass. One of the windows in the upper floor had cracked under the heat pressure. There was an eerie orange light visible. And she fell silent. Clearly the fire had spread.
‘Let me go!’ Monsieur Rémi cried, wriggling in the grasp of the two strong men who held him. ‘It is my life! And she is my life! Without her I have nothing. No life. You have to let me go in! Please!’
Lucien met Nic’s eyes. She saw something flicker in them for a moment. An understanding perhaps of Monsieur Rémi’s words. A reflection of his own situation.
Before she could stop him, he’d raced towards the house.
‘Lucien!’ one of the pompiers called. ‘No, it is not safe. You are not wearing…’
But it was clear that his words were falling on deaf ears. Lucien took one more look back at them then disappeared through the open front door.
‘Ah, merde!’ Another firefighter darted after him, stopped short of the front door. ‘Lucien!’ he called. ‘Lucien! Come out! There is too much smoke!’
Nicola felt adrenaline flood her body, felt her instincts to help, to protect her friend, kick in. It took every ounce of strength she had not to race towards the door and go pull Lucien out. But she knew, really, that her doing so would only make things worse. How could he be so stupid?
Monsieur Rémi looked pitiful now, slumped against the two men holding him.
‘I think you can let him go,’ Nicola told them.
They glanced at each other, then one tentatively let go of the old man.
He sank to the floor, adrenaline clearly leaving him.
She noticed streaks of moisture on his cheeks, making runnels in the light covering of grey he had developed.
Reaching forward, she held his hand. ‘Lucien will be back soon,’ she said.
‘I promise.’ Although she wasn’t quite sure who she was hoping to convince.
The picture was just inside the hall. He should surely be back by now.
The firefighter standing close to the door called his name again. ‘Lucien, it is not safe!’
Then, as if in response to her words, there was an enormous crack and the sound of something falling. A huge black cloud burst through the front door – a mixture of brick dust and smoke billowing forth. Something inside had fallen.
‘Lucien!’ she called out.
The huge cloud obscured the front of the house, thick and unrelenting. ‘We should move back,’ one of the men said. ‘Come. We are too close.’
But she found she couldn’t. Crouching by Monsieur Rémi on the ground, she looked at the property, only the upper floor visible now behind the cloud which seemed determined not to clear.
The white snow on the ground, the blinking lights from her own property next door, seemed to mock them all.
Twinkling Christmas magic and light juxtaposed with danger and horror, smoke and destruction.
She thought of Annabelle, of Matthieu; what would they do without Lucien? And she stood up, wanting to run, wanting to push the firefighters out of the way and dash through the smoke. To hell with the consequences.
Later, while she recognised how stupid it would have been to put herself in danger like that – realised that all she would have done is make the situation more precarious, put more lives at risk by making herself another potential casualty to be rescued – she was a little bit proud that her instinct when challenged had been to run towards danger rather than away from it.
You never knew how you might behave in situations like this until you experienced them, and she’d always assumed she’d get herself as far away as possible, should she ever be faced with something on this scale.
Yet her friendship with Lucien, her concern for him, had made her want to rush into smoke, into unknown danger to save him.
Luckily, an arm shot out to stop her, fastened itself around her leg. It was Monsieur Rémi. He looked up at her, a strength flashing in his watery eyes. ‘Non,’ he told her simply. ‘Non. It is enough.’
‘But…’
Then, as she looked, her eyes caught something in the haze; the smoke and dust had thinned, spread out, the air tinged with the scent of burning and ash.
Everything looked misty, surreal. But in the centre of the fuggy air she could see movement – a figure.
She stopped, held her breath, even as the pompiers urged them all to move farther back.
As the figure moved closer and the smoke continued to clear, she saw it was Lucien. A few more seconds and she could make out his face, dirty with dust, his hair messy and smoke-clogged. He was holding something in his hands.
Monsieur Rémi’s grip loosened on her ankle and he began to sob.
Others rushed up to Lucien, scolding, giving him oxygen, moving him to fresher air. There was no orange glow from the building any more, just what seemed like endless smoke. A radio crackled – the pompiers inside had conquered the blaze; all was well.
Someone moved towards them, holding out the picture that Lucien had rescued. Wordlessly, Monsieur Rémi grabbed it, held the cracked glass to him. But only half of the picture had survived, the other curled and blackened by heat. He turned away, his shoulders heaving.
Nicola was torn. She wanted to comfort him. But how? And would he even want her to?
‘Is Lucien OK?’ she asked a passing firefighter. He was sitting on the step of the ambulance now, an oxygen mask on his face. Another pompier crouched by his side.
‘I think so; he was very stupid, he will need to come in and be assessed. But I think he is OK.’
‘Thank God.’
She sat with Monsieur Rémi as he clutched the ruined picture to himself, looked at his half-decimated house and wondered what the future might hold.