A fireman grabbed her. “You can’t,” he yelled over the noise. “She’s in good hands . . .”

“Where are they taking her?” Claudia shouted back, so traumatized she hardly knew what she was asking.

“Swansea. It’s . . .”

“Why Swansea?” she almost screamed.

The fireman moved off; someone had called from inside the house, and she was suddenly being wrapped in blankets and led away from the heart of the melee. Pulling Jasmine close, she clung to her in stunned despair. “We have to do something,” she muttered, but seemed unable to make her brain or her body work beyond holding that truth.

Suddenly, in the near distance, an air ambulance rose into the night, monstrous and flashing and swooping away from them.

“I have to go with her,” Claudia sobbed wretchedly. “She can’t go on her own.”

“I’ll drive,” Jasmine croaked. Her throat was parched by floating ash.

Aware of hands grasping her shoulders, Claudia spun around. Andee and Graeme were there, their faces ghostly and strobed by the emergency lights turning night into horrific day.

A fireman approached, ungainly in his protective gear, face smudged, helmet open, and introduced himself as Rajid Khatri, crew manager. He asked Claudia if she was the owner of the property.

Claudia looked at her beloved home and seeing its ruined facade cruelly exposed in the overbright lights, she let out a cry of grief. Charred embers and smoke continued to pour from the smashed windows and clung to the scorched exterior. The roof was still smoldering, the front door was no more, and yet bizarrely, almost defiantly, the tower remained standing proud. She couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing. It was a nightmare. It had to be. Her beautiful home, her friend, her haven, couldn’t have been subjected to something as terrible as this.

Beside her someone was retching. She turned to see Jasmine being held by Andee as she choked and coughed the bile from her throat.

“We have to get to Nana,” Claudia told her. As she said the words it felt as though she was floating, disappearing into another dimension, and for an awful moment she thought she was going to pass out.

“We got here as soon as we could,” Leanne cried, running up to them with Tom. “How’s Marcy? Do you have any news yet?”

“The air ambulance has just left,” Andee told her. “They’ve taken her to Swansea . . .”

“Why Swansea?” Claudia cried again. It was so far. How were she and Jasmine going to get there?

“It’s the main burns center for the South West,” Andee explained. “They’ll be taking her straight there so she doesn’t have to be moved again in case it turns out to be . . . necessary.”