The fire was well under way, past the point of reversal or rescue. Five of the lower lodges had been brought to the ground and the flames were licking their way up the valley, deep into the bowels of the dwellings on the terraces above. The pure rage of it reminded him of the river when it was at its most unstoppable. It was not something that could be reasoned with. But standing on the balcony he did not worry for a second about it reaching him, or even about the smoke troubling his lungs. The river was at a brimming, tumultuous height – a height that defied the logic of the last few days’ rain – and provided a protective barrier, a barrier even more inarguable than the conflagration. It splashed up high and wild against the walls of the house, splashed against him too. He realised, belatedly, that he was naked, but he was not afraid. He decided he could happily, very happily, let it take him: the river, the trees beyond, the valley, the moor, everything. He would be more than OK with that. He realised he was singing but he had no idea what the song was, only that he knew it. He grabbed his whiskey bottle from the kitchen sink and drank from it. The air smelled good and rich, like something being turned over and exposed, and he thought for a moment he could hear a siren in the distance, but then thought maybe he had imagined it, and he wasn’t able to tell because his singing was so loud, and the river was loud too, and he had no wish for either to stop. On the right-hand side of the valley, where one of the higher A-frames – one of the taller, more high-specification lodges, which was to be rented at a greater price to the ones nearer the river – had fallen, the fire had also opened up a gap in the trees, but had not reached beyond that to the bigger trees where the valley began to get mossier, which would reject the advances of the fire with their immense moisture. The gap and all the light from the moon and the fire allowed him to see one particularly memorable, wide-armed oak and he thought about the time he had walked past it with Sally, which had been the same afternoon they’d walked past the abandoned house and she’d talked about people destroying the pianos in the fifties and sixties: thousands of them, kicked and smashed to fuck or set alight. It had actually been on this same walk that she’d told him about Martina Whittaker – yes, he had her surname now, and would not let it slip away – and her grandfather, who had punched the bull in the face when it charged him. There had been an old faded ‘BULL IN FIELD’ sign still up there at that point, which must have triggered the story. He recalled now also that he’d somehow got the details twisted: it was Martina’s great-grandfather who had punched the bull in the face, not her grandfather. Standing there naked, illuminated by the flames, staring at the tree, he remembered everything Sally had told him; he did not forget a thing.