On fire, and perhaps only seconds away from being beyond hope of control.

I had seen the red cowling of a fire extinguisher in the kitchen. But when I dashed back there, all I found was a fire blanket, fixed to the wall by the stove – good for stifling pan fires, less useful for the kind of conflagration taking hold in the living room. Nevertheless I took hold of the release tags and pulled with such force that the whole affair, plastic cover and all, came off the wall. As I tried to separate blanket and container, I saw the jug of filter water on the side, left there when I gave up making my little cocktail. I grabbed it and ran, as fast as I dared without spilling the water, back into the living room.

It was bad, really bad. Returning to the living room I took a lungful of the smoke, which was thicker and nastier than it had been just seconds earlier, and hung lower in the room. It was as if I had tried to breathe water, polluted water – my lungs revolted, my eyes flooded with stinging tears, and I doubled over, only preserving the water in the jug by a phenomenal act of will.

Pierce appeared unaffected, and continued to watch the fire. Half the map was alight, all of London east of St Paul’s. The fire had caught at the cornice and on spots of the floor. I stamped across the floor, scattering smouldering debris, and aimed high with the water, towards Tottenham, trying to quench the fire at the point that it threatened the ceiling. The jug was exhausted in two large sloshes, the third was a pathetic spray of drops, and while some of the rage was knocked from the fire, it was not exhausted, and its boundaries moved ever outwards.

Increasingly light-headed, I turned to the blanket, first holding it out like a sail to see how wide an area I could smother – not enough. But clutching its upper corners in my fists made me think – it was fireproof, right? I changed my hold, trying to wrap it around my hands as best as I could, and then tried to knock the burning notes from the wall, breaking up the largest patches of the fire and scraping firebreaks, stamping on the flames that fell to the floor. Embers went in my hair and eyes and bit at my cheeks; grey pushed in at the edges of vision. I had to stop, after making what seemed like little difference, to retreat and double over, coughing and retching.

But Pierce had awoken from his trance and had disappeared into the kitchen. He reappeared with a blue plastic mop bucket, much bigger than the jug, even only filled halfway, and directed it at the fiercest points of the fire, across Hackney and Leyton.