Somehow, right now, it no longer seemed very funny.

Mrs Wilkes.

Dora paused by the door. Mrs Wilkes was upstairs, asleep. Well, she couldn’t go back out onto that smoke-blackened stairwell. She just couldn’t.

The key was – oh thank Christ! – in the door.

Dora shot the bolts back, coughing and wheezing, and turned the key. She pushed the door open.

Thank God Thank God Thank God . . .

She sprawled outside into cool clean blissful fresh air, hardly noticing that she grazed her knees hard on the old flagstones as she fell forward. She ended up on all fours, gulping in great lungfuls of pure air, then another mighty contraction hit her and she groaned. Oh Christ, of all the times for this to happen. She was going to have the baby. Already, she felt the urge to push.

Her poor dead baby.

Dora staggered onto her feet, clutching her middle over the flapping wetness of her nightdress, shivering with reaction at the sudden cold of the night-time air. She stumbled a few paces down the path, away from the fearful heat of the blaze, and turned and looked back at the pub as it started to fold in on itself, the beams in the bar collapsing.

She looked up. There was her room, full of thick black smoke and she could see flames there too now, starting to leap up. And further along the landing . . .

Oh God.

There was Mrs Wilkes, arms waving at the window of her bedroom. Dora could hear her screaming.

‘Jump!’ she shouted. Better to break some bones than burn.

Mrs Wilkes couldn’t hear. But Dora could hear her. Her screams were frantic, scorching through Dora’s shattered nerve-endings.

‘Jump!’ she yelled again, then had to stop as a coughing-fit racked her.

And then the windows in Mrs Wilkes’ room blew out. Smoke billowed blackly from the frame and Mrs Wilkes wasn’t standing there any more. She’d stopped screaming. She was gone.

Dora put both hands to her mouth in horror.

‘Well, well. If it ain’t Dora O’Brien,’ said a male voice behind her.

60

Dora felt icy fingers of terror dance all the way up her spine. Hands still clutched over her mouth, eyes streaming, her face soot-stained, her skin, her nightdress, everything reeking of smoke, she turned in slow motion – and there was her nightmare. It was Bruno Graves, his gruesome horizontal scar seeming to flicker redly in the light of the growing fire. He was grinning at her.

‘Mr Frank Pargeter says hello,’ said Bruno, and stepped forward.

Another contraction hit her. Dora doubled over, grunting with pain, knowing that this time she was caught.

This time, she couldn’t run. She didn’t have it in her. Three strides and Bruno would be upon her. Dora closed her eyes and just hoped it would be quick. Then another huge contraction hit her and she screamed, agonized. Her and her dead baby would meet up in heaven together, out of this hell hole. It wasn’t so bad maybe.