Paul arrives, smacking at the flames with what’s left of his T-shirt. He smothers the remains of the blaze in the doorway. “Go!” he shouts.

Oscar takes the lead, Tyler following closely behind with Paul Enfield bringing up the rear. Part of the ceiling collapses and the corridor bursts into a ball of fire.

“This way.” Oscar takes them to the other end of the corridor, where another set of stairs leads them down, and Tyler remembers coming this way on that first day that now seems like a lifetime ago. It was less than a week.

The fire is waiting for them at the bottom, the kitchen already an inferno; there’s no way to reach the back door. He can see Doggett peering in through the glass from outside, gesturing for them to go back. But there is no back. Oscar leads them through the dining room and back into the living room, but the patio doors are locked. It’s Paul Enfield who puts his naked bulky shoulder to the glass-paneled frame.

At the far end of the room the flames are jumping from one item of furniture to the next, dancing inexorably closer. Tyler hears the doors crack and give, and then he feels that same change in air pressure, just like at Wentworth’s house. Enfield and Oscar stumble out into the night and the rush of oxygen inward fans the flames higher. The firestorm reaches out to engulf him.

As Tyler throws himself backward through the patio doors, the last thing he sees through the oncoming fire is the picture above the mantelpiece. The gray face of the fire watcher, as it melts and runs.

embers

Lily stands in the garden watching the Old Vicarage burn. A woman touches her arm. The Indian girl. The policewoman. The house is almost gone now. She can still feel the heat of the flames, yet she shivers. The girl puts an arm around her shoulders, but Lily can’t feel the warmth; the chill is deep inside her, running through the marrow of her bones. She turns to the girl. Something familiar about her. An Indian woman with a pretty face and a button nose . . . that wrinkles when he screws it up and bawls. Lily asks if she can hold him, just once. The midwife looks round. They’re not really supposed to. Lily begs and the woman relents. He’s a mottled dark-red color, a perfect little ball of anger. She can feel his strength already. She’s not sorry to be giving him up. She wants to put all this behind her and go back to the theater. But that won’t happen now. It’ll be back to Sheffield and she’ll never see any of them again, the girls from the theater or the office. And not Edna. She regrets that most of all. They’ll never let her go back . . . to the cottage where Edna is waiting for her.