39
Lottie sits bolt upright in bed. She had been dreaming, lost in a deep, sweaty parallel world where everything felt both familiar and strange at the same time.
The holiday was over, they had returned to work, nursery runs, the old schedule.
Her alarm had been ringing persistently in her ear but she had slept through it. She was going to be late, in trouble.
Leaning over to the side of the bed, she scrabbles for her phone to check the time.
She doesn’t remember falling asleep but they had all been so tired after the party, staying out later than they expected with Josh.
Her neck aches from craning it to watch the fireworks, her head woozy from cider.
She must have dropped off, though a glance at the clock confirms that she has not been asleep for very long.
She sighs. The heat in this bedroom is unbearable at night, her sleep schedule completely messed up.
She stares around the darkened room as the shapes of furniture slowly reveal themselves to her; the wardrobe, a chair covered in clothes, Josh’s travel bed. Lottie listens intently but her son sleeps on. Beside her, Tim begins to stir.
‘What’s up?’ he moans.
‘I thought I heard something. An alarm or a siren. I don’t know, maybe I was dreaming after all.’
Tim raises himself up on his elbows. He sniffs the air which is filtering through the small gap in the bedroom window as though sensing something.
‘Listen,’ she says again. ‘Can’t you hear that?’ He shakes his head, mystified, but throws back the duvet, gets out of bed. ‘Shh,’ she hushes him.
They both pause, straining their hearing until they are rewarded with a cracking sound, like a branch snapping. Underneath it all is something of a low roar like a kettle slowly reaching its boil.
‘Has the wind got up, the weather broken?’ asks Tim as he walks over to the window, which looks out onto the back garden. He opens the wooden blinds a fraction. As he does so, an eerie orange glow casts its light into the dark of the bedroom.
‘I can smell smoke,’ says Lottie, a note of alarm in her voice.
‘Really?’ says Tim. ‘Are you sure it’s not just left over? Y’know from the fireworks and the bonfire?’
‘All that would have blown away hours ago,’ she says. ‘Especially here by the coast. Wouldn’t it?’
Scrambling out of bed, she begins tugging on her jeans under the T-shirt she has slept in. She reaches for Josh, no longer mindful of waking him up.
‘Calm down, I’m sure it’s nothing,’ says Tim. ‘Probably just some idiots messing about. Let me go and have a look around first.’
She hates it when he advises her like this. It is as useless as telling someone not to worry or not to get stressed. As if any of us has any real control over such emotions.
He is starting to pull on his own clothes now, selecting garments from the chair where he flung them last night.
Last night? No, this morning. Today is Sunday, she reminds herself.
But too early for daybreak. This is not a beautiful last sunrise they are witnessing, creeping over the horizon.
Yet surely it is too late for any residual celebrations to be colouring the sky.
‘We should call the fire brigade,’ she says.
‘What? Do you really think so?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Hold on, Lottie. Let me just check it out.’
She watches Tim dress slowly, purposefully taking his time so as not to appear rushed or panicked.
Just as he would if he was at school, asking his pupils to quietly form an orderly queue, to not shout or run.
Fingers on lips. It makes her want to scream sometimes, how calm and practical he can be.
When she knows, deep down, that something is wrong. Very wrong.
At this thought, Lottie holds Josh closer to her, his head nuzzling into her shoulder, his limbs slackening again. She stages a whisper.
‘We’re coming with you.’
‘No,’ says Tim, his voice surprisingly firm and she takes a step back. ‘Stay here with Joshie, until I’ve figured out what’s going on, whether it’s safe.’
‘We need to get out, Tim,’ she hisses. ‘This is serious.’
He looks at her questioningly, a trace of doubt passing his features.
‘What makes you say that?’
There is a hint of accusation in his voice and she lowers her eyes, searching for flip-flops, which she shoves her feet into urgently.
And that’s when they hear it, poised on the threshold of this argument, facing up to each other.
Another siren. The sound is distant, but approaching, if they listen hard enough.
Tim and Lottie lock eyes, searching each other’s faces, reading recognition, comprehension and finally fear.
Wordlessly, they move towards the bedroom door and then out onto the landing and through to the back of the house.
As they cross the lounge, Lottie registers the change in temperature; the air is hotter, thicker, dirtier – as though something silent and insidious is permeating the walls.
‘God, look at the view,’ says Tim, his voice filled with awe and dread as he casts a glance at the wide panoramic window.
Normally it boasts the most perfect vista; boats rocking gently in the water, a sailor-blue sky or a clear twinkly night.
But right now the bay is illuminated in an unnatural light that renders it alive in an awful, menacing way.
The water below looks to be aflame, reflecting a fiery glow, and the sky itself is filling with smoke, almost clouding over before their eyes.
Quickly now, they move into the kitchen, struggle with the latches and bolts of the back door.
Just as they are about to open it and step outside, their footsteps are stalled, their bodies frozen to the spot in paralysis.
It is as though they have been struck by lightning, electrocuted.
The whole house shakes, its foundations seem to tremble, the roof quivering.
An unholy sound; the collapsing of metal and wood, slowly and yet all at once.
Lottie can only imagine that this must be what an earthquake might feel like or perhaps an exploding bomb.
Instinctively, they drop to their knees, crouching down, Tim covering Lottie and Josh with his body like a protective carapace. She can feel Josh cling to her, clawing at her T-shirt with grasping hands as he begins to wail.
‘Shh,’ she says, rubbing his back, laying a hand over his head, smothering his ears as though she might insulate him entirely. She hopes to soothe herself at the same time, console them all with her innate maternal hushing, the only way she can control her breathing, slow her heart rate.
‘What the fuck was that?’ says Tim, his voice abnormally high and shaky.
Somewhere in her subconscious, Lottie acknowledges that he must be really frightened. She can feel his body sending small tremors through her skin. Slowly, he stands up but in a cautious way, as one who expects the roof to fall in, the whole world to come crashing down around their ears.
‘We need to get out of here,’ she hears herself say in some small, dislocated voice that doesn’t sound like her own. Her body floods with adrenaline now, the instinct to protect her son, save herself, it courses through her and she stands, wrenches open the door.
‘Lottie, be careful. Wait,’ she hears Tim call out to her.
Her arms feel tired, her legs like jelly, but she pulls Josh into a closer bear hug and runs out into the garden and up the steps.
Her thighs protest, her breath catching on the hot smoke and dust. She shucks off her flip-flops, toes craving purchase on the ground.
The wail of sirens is close and insistent now, coming and going from all directions.
She does not look back, will not think about the house next door, which she knows now is an inferno, precarious.
The fire is an animal that has been let loose and runs amok, out of control.
She doesn’t even look to see if Tim is following them.
Her only priority is her child, her son, his safety.
Later, sometime in the future, this fact will return to her, surprise her even, as the cuts and blisters on her feet continue to heal, her throat still sore and burned.