The yelps, barks and howls from the dog compound increase, almost as though the dogs know I have arrived. I throw my bike to the ground and run towards the car parked outside reception. It isn’t until I’m thirty feet away that I realise it hasn’t been abandoned. Someone is sitting in the passenger seat, their head pressed against the window as though they fell asleep during the journey and the driver left them to slumber. I don’t want to risk waking them, so I run round the car and push at the doors to reception. They’re locked. Whoever started the fire must have found an alternative way in. I reach into my pocket for my keys and then pause. Something prickles at my spine – uncertainty, confusion, recognition – and I duck down and peer through the driver-side window at the person slumped against it. It’s a woman. A heavily set woman with strong arms, a generous gut and a double chin cushioning her jaw against the glass. Her hair is longer than the last time I saw her, swept across her forehead rather than spiked up to the sky, and she’s got a new tattoo on her right forearm.

“Al!” I yank open the passenger door and try to catch her, but she’s too heavy. She slips from her seat and through my fingers, landing on the gravel with a thump, her trainered feet still in the seat well, half in the car, half out.

“Al!” I push the hair from her face and tap her lightly on her cheek. She’s breathing and there are no marks on her body, no evidence she’s been hurt. She doesn’t smell of alcohol, either.

“Al?” I slap her harder. “Al, wake up! What happened? Where’s Daisy?” I glance towards the sanctuary as the sound of Freddy squawking and Bill and Ben squealing is carried on a gust of black smoke so thick and acrid I start to cough. “Al?”

Her eyes stay closed but the quietest of groans escapes from her parted lips.

“What was that?” I lower my head so my ear is near her mouth. “Al, say that again.”

I feel her breath in my ear and then, so quiet I can barely hear it. “Leanne.”

“Leanne? What about Leanne?”

Her lips move silently and then her head lolls to one side.

“Al? Al?” I grab her shoulders and shake her, but she’s fallen back to sleep. “Al!”

I cradle her in my arms, rocking her back and forth as the fire rages beyond the fence, a continuous, roaring bass note playing below the higher pitched barks, squawks and squeals that tear at my heart. I can’t leave Al alone, but I can’t let the animals die. I can’t. I can’t let them die.