‘If you can hear me, I’m in a house,’ I say. ‘A house somewhere within fifteen minutes of Olinda. I think we were driving south of there.’ It’s hopeless. ‘We took the road south, then turned left …’ What road was it? Think, Margot? He’d turned hard, pushing me back into the seat. ‘We took two lefts from the last house.’ But they don’t know where the last house was. Unless they found my car? More screaming on the phone. The flames are at the door now, entering the room. The silent march of fire. He’d circled me in such a way that at first the fire stays at bay, a perfect ring. The floor will likely drop through before I’m burnt alive.

I start screaming, but it’s hopeless. No one can save me now. The flames climb the walls. The sound of burning grows. And I can feel the sweat all over my body.

My only hope is someone in the rural quiet hearing the fire or my screaming. I shriek. My throat aches. The fire is crackling fiercely now. I try to tear my hands free but the tape is too tight. It won’t give.

I stand steady. He wants me to jump. He sought the symmetry between Peter’s destruction and my own, but I won’t go out like him. My last defiant act is to stand steady and take what’s coming. The flames are encroaching on the circle, licking out towards the stacks of paper beneath the chair. The smoke is burrowing into the fibres of my lungs. I can’t stop coughing. The room is so hot now, I feel the sweat in my hair, my lower back, my calves. The flames are hissing, screaming. No, I think. That’s not the sound of fire. Turning back to the window, through the smoke, I see something. Lights.

My heart catches and I could cry. Over the crackle I hear sirens.

‘Help!’ I scream. ‘Up here.’

I hear something, banging downstairs, then the flames start … withering. White foam. A man. Cormac must be back, this must be some sick game he is playing, but … it’s not Cormac. He is dressed head to toe in yellow.

‘Help!’ I say. ‘I’m over here. His hands find me, hold me for a moment. Then he reaches up and at once the rope loosens about my neck.

‘Stay still,’ he yells. ‘I’ve got you.’

I fall forward, folded over his shoulder and we’re moving. The stairs crack and his foot falls through but he clutches the rail and continues on. More sirens sound now, swarming around us. I cough and blink through the sting of the smoke. The hoses start blasting the room. I can hear them spraying the flames. We burst through the back door, shepherded by two others.