Jem did as she asked, hopping Chloe across the floor to the window in time to feel the first rush of cold air on her face. Rosie was waiting on the balcony, while a dishevelled crowd gawped up at her from the pavement. Three of them had brought buckets of water.

“I think it’ll hold us all,” she said, but it wasn’t as if they had another option, so Jem boosted the girls through the empty frame. As Ava dropped clear on the other side, Jem sagged onto her knees, coughing and choking and only vaguely aware of someone shaking her shoulders. Then she was standing, Rosie’s arms around her, the smell of blood and smoke and sweat all over her, and Rosie was pushing her and cajoling her and pleading with her to “fucking move, right fucking now!”

Jem reacted more to the stark panic than the command, landing in a heap on the metal. She could feel Rosie slapping and tearing at her pockets, though she wasn’t sure why. Below them, the road was a sea of blue lights, their intensity dazzling after so long in the dark, and everyone around her seemed to be yelling.

“Here,” Rosie said, not yelling, just insistent. She pressed the inhaler against Jem’s lips, lifted Jem’s hand, and closed her fingers around the plastic. “Come on, Jem. I don’t know what I’m doing with it.”

Jem pushed the spray three, four times, doing her best to synchronise her breathing with it but mostly failing.

“Someone fucking help us!” Rosie screamed over the side of the balcony. Smoke billowed from the ruined window, and something disintegrated with enough force to rattle the foundations. The girls cried out, clinging to the railings and each other. Jem heard the mechanised whir of a ladder platform and a man barking instructions she couldn’t understand.

“Ava, get Chloe up,” Rosie said, and knelt beside Jem. “Can you stand with me?”

Jem nodded but then slumped to the side when she tried to get her legs under her. “Sorry,” she whispered. Nothing was working properly, and her vision was failing too; Rosie’s face kept disappearing at the edges. The balcony rocked again, banging her into its bars as a firefighter hurried over to crouch by them.

“She’s asthmatic,” Rosie said. “I don’t think I can carry her on my own.”

“I’ve got her, love,” the man said, hauling Jem into a sitting position. “You go on ahead. The lift won’t take all of us at once.”

Rosie seemed on the verge of refusing, before her common sense kicked in. She touched Jem’s cheek. “I’ll see you in a minute,” she said, and bolted to the ladder.

An alarm blared as the lift began to descend. Jem listened to its progress, her view blocked by the man in front of her. “Are we…we waiting for…the next ride out?” she asked.