The room was thick with smoke.

Dora hauled herself up, groaning with the pain.

‘Mrs Wilkes . . .’ she said weakly, then coughed again, doubling over with the force of it. She couldn’t breathe.

Dora slipped her feet into her slippers and staggered to the door, her wet nightdress clinging to her legs. She hadn’t wet the bed, she realized it now; her waters had broken. Her poor dead baby was on its way.

She opened the door and the dragon’s-roar of fire and choking black rolling smoke that plumed in on her almost pushed her straight back into the room.

Oh God help me, she thought.

The pub was on fire.

59

Dora staggered out onto the landing, looking left and right. The smoke was worse out here, a thousand times worse. Bent over with pain and with her hand over her mouth and nose, Dora looked down the stairs – her room was closest to them – and could barely see. Her eyes were stinging, streaming. She could just see orange flames down to the left of the flight, where the main body of the bar was. She could feel the fierce heat of the fire as it crackled and burned its way through the ancient timbers of the pub.

Got to get out.

Dora stumbled down three steps, coughing hard as the smoke choked her. Then a fourth. The further down she got, the hotter it became and the more difficult it was to draw breath. She took another step down. Then another. Down below, she heard a series of hard pops as the old leaded windows blew out.

She couldn’t go into the bar. There, the fire was at its worst.

She stumbled down another step, then another, terrified of going further down but knowing that if she didn’t, she’d be finished.

Another step.

She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see. Hard contractions were hitting her stomach and now she just wanted to stop trying. Life was so hard. All she wanted was to crouch down on the stairs and let whatever happened, happen.

She took another step, then another.

Now she was at the foot of the stairs and the full horror of the fire was revealed. The entire bar area was ablaze, fire licking along the ancient beams on the ceiling, the bottles behind the bar exploding, the liquor inside them feeding the flames.

She couldn’t go that way. That way, there was only death.

Dora turned right at the bottom of the stairs, her throat agony as the smoke and heat seared it, her stomach a sea of awful pain, her legs barely carrying her. She opened the door there into the snug and practically fell inside into clean air. Quickly, she closed the door behind her and now the fire’s roar was quieter. The snug was just as it had always been, little banquettes and seats and old polished tables. The fire hadn’t reached in here yet; but it would.

Coughing hard, anguished, agonized, Dora stumbled across to the outside door, fumbled with the bolts. She was terrified they wouldn’t open. That Mrs Wilkes had taken the key out and ‘put it somewhere safe’ as she liked to say, laughing at herself because ‘somewhere safe’ always involved the item in question getting lost. The bar staff had found Mrs Wilkes’ dentures in the pantry, her curlers in the till. Everyone’d had a good laugh about it at the time.