Huge red and gold flames rose at an angle from its conical roof. There was no smoke; and though they cast a great light, and threw long oblique shadows across the pasture, the flames looked stiff, idealised, as though painted for a Tarot card. For a moment she saw herself on the card too, in the foreground but well to one side so that the focus remained firmly on the burning building (which could now be seen to be isolated in the field, with a suggestion of a hedge, or perhaps some kind of earthwork, at its base): a woman hard to age, wearing a 1930s-looking floral print dress, running with her mouth open and a paradoxical expression, a mask of dissociated consternation, on her face. No shoes. Her hair, flying back in the wind, painted as a single mass. Her lips were moving. ‘Go away. Go away from here!’ The flames roared silently up, amid showers of gold sparks. Anna could feel the heat of them, stretching the skin across her cheekbones. Yet by the time she reached the garden gate everything was dark again; and, despite the heat, nothing had been burned. There wasn’t even a smell of smoke – although through the summerhouse windows she glimpsed what looked like embers, still whirling about inside, just above the floor.