‘Come on!’ I shouted, pulling him as he stumbled along by my side. ‘We have to get higher up!’

Halfway up the hill, well away from the smoke and flames, we stopped to catch our breath.

‘Where’s your sister?’ I said, puffing hard. My throat was raw. ‘Where’s Lucy?’

‘I don’t know, didn’t see her.’

‘Are you hurt?’ I knelt down next to him, checking him over, brushing his hair back off his forehead and checking his head and arms for any obvious injury. ‘Does anywhere hurt?’

‘My throat’s a bit sore.’

‘Anything else?’

‘No.’ He looked at the ground. ‘We – we left Odette in the fallen tree trunk.’

‘What?’

‘We were playing sardines but Jake said we should do a trick on her, make her hide and then not bother coming to get her.’ His words were tumbling out, falling over each other. ‘We knew where she was but pretended we didn’t and she was in a tree trunk near the gorge. Is she all right? I haven’t—’

Sean burst out of the smoke, bare-chested, his T-shirt tied over his mouth and nose.

He was carrying Lucy in his arms, her head resting against his shoulder.

‘Sean!’ I shouted. ‘Over here!’

He ran up the hill to us, laying our daughter gently on the ground. One of her sandals had come off and there was a line of cuts on her arm. She was conscious, but her mouth was tightly closed against the pain.

‘Lucy,’ I said. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Twisted my ankle.’

Sean pulled the T-shirt down off his mouth.

‘Did someone call the fire brigade?’

‘Alistair.’

‘How many are still down there?’

‘I don’t know. But Daniel said Odette’s hiding in a fallen tree trunk – have you seen her?’

As if in answer, a woman’s voice reached us from within the smoke.

‘Odette!’ Rowan’s scream was raw and desperate in full-fledged panic. ‘Odette! Where are you?’

Sean stood up.

‘I’m going back,’ he said to me. ‘Look after our babies.’

He pulled the T-shirt back over his nose and plunged downhill into the smoke.

Chapter 68

68

I watched my husband disappear into the rolling grey cloud of smoke that enveloped the bottom of the estate. The smoke was getting thicker as the fire spread, long flames licking quickly from branch to branch, fanned by a warm wind coming out of the south.

Be careful, I should have shouted as he ran back into danger, as he put his own safety at risk to search for someone else’s child. But I didn’t shout that. I don’t know why. I didn’t shout anything. I just sat and watched him go, fearless, heedless of the consequences, back into the woods where everything was hidden from sight.

I wondered if it would be the last time I saw him.