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  By ten o’clock her back was aching, her eyes were smarting, her nose was blocked, and smells of burning exhaust from the road outside seemed to have invaded every inch of her office. Blinking, she pulled a handkerchief out of her bag and blew her nose vigorously. It helped a bit, but there seemed still to be something wrong. After a second she decided that the burning smell was worse than just exhaust fumes and got up to investigate.

  Opening her door, she saw to her horror that the whole of the wall at the far end of the long general office was on fire. Flames were licking around the doorjambs of Kate’s office and Len Scoffer’s, crawling up the wall and eating away at the ceiling. The grubby greenish carpet of the main office was smouldering in long patches that seemed to stretch out towards Willow like the fingers of some malevolent creature.

  Transfixed in shock, for a moment she simply stared, choking in the acrid smoke with its foul smells of burning varnish, rubber, dirt, wood and plastic. Then she looked the other way towards the stairs and cried out.

  Already her exit was blocked by a thick barrier of blackish grey smoke through which bright orange flames were shooting. She was caught between two advancing fires. Her eyes were streaming and the choking in her throat was threatening to make her sick as well. Desperately looking round the big room, trying to think what to do first, she noticed that the heavily sprung fire doors were hooked open in the passage between her and the stairs fire. Seizing her jacket from the back of her chair, she held it around her nose and mouth and tan forwards to unhook the doors. The brass was already hot and she swore, pulling back from it.

  Taking the jacket from her face, and trying not to breathe in, she wrapped it round her hand. Choking in the smoke, despite holding her breath, and flinching from the heat that seemed strong enough to peel the skin from her face, she managed to force one stiff hook out of its brass eye. The door swung heavily towards her, almost knocking her off balance. She struggled across the wide corridor to the other door and repeated the operation. Just as the door was released from its anchorage, a rolling wave of fire uncurled itself along the ceiling towards her. Intense heat pushed her behind the swinging door and frightened her back into her wits.

  She ran for the nearest telephone and punched in 999, knowing that she should have done that first. As she pressed the buttons, she saw that something had happened to the skin on the fingers of her right hand. It looked like crumpled cloth that had been pushed up in ugly wrinkles and somehow glued into place.

  ‘Emergency. Which service are you calling?’ said an efficient male voice, forcing her attention away from the horrible sight of her own hand.

  ‘Fire,’ gasped Willow.

  ‘What’s your telephone number?’ asked the voice coolly.

  Willow looked down at the telephone only to see that the card with the number was so old and scuffed that she could not read the figures. She craned towards the next telephone but could not see it.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she sobbed. ‘Hold on. I’ll find out.’

  ‘Too late,’ said the voice irritably. ‘You’re through.’

  ‘Fire brigade,’ said an even more efficient voice.

  ‘Thank God!’ said Willow, wasting crucial time. She gave the address of the building, explained what had happened and what she had done so far. Her voice was almost calm for most of the time but every so often it wobbled or was overtaken by a cough.

  ‘We’re on our way,’ said the fire brigade officer and gave her instructions to get to the fire escape without waiting to collect any belongings.

  Willow replaced the receiver and prepared to run, realising with a sickening lurch of fear that she did not know where the fire escape might be. There seemed to be no signs on the walls of the office that were not already on fire. The choking, vile-smelling smoke was getting worse. The sullenly smouldering carpet was alight, and the flames had reached more than half the way to her office. She could not see the wall that divided the inspectors’rooms from their staff. The noise was appalling and to her horror she saw that chunks of the ceiling were sagging down through the rolling, threatening flames.

  Sobbing, Willow turned into her own small office and banged the door shut as though its varnished, veneered chipboard could keep out flames. Aware that she was disobeying the Fire Brigade’s instructions, she seized her suede shoulderbag, stuffing into it the black notebook in which she had been writing, hung the bag crosswise over her back, and leaned out through the open window. The air smelled fantastically sweet, as though the dust and fumes pumped out by the incessant traffic had been miraculously cleaned. A streetlamp cast a wonderfully serene, unflickering light over the whole scene.

  Suddenly hopeful, Willow got one knee on the sharp metal edge of the casement window and looked down to try to work out how she could climb to safety. The forty-foot drop seemed so much less frightening than the fire that she hauled herself up so that she was balanced on the narrow metal frame. She hardly noticed that it bit into her knees. ‘Fires go up,’ she said grimly. ‘I’ll have to get down.’

  Hanging on to the sides of the window frame, she put one leg out over the sill and realised at once that she would have to go down the other way. Turning awkwardly half in and half out of the window, she saw that flames were already licking around the edges of the door, and the sight forced her to move.

  With her back to the street, she re-clamped her hands on to the narrow metal window frame and gingerly launched herself down the wall. It was clear that her shoes were going to be a dreadful encumbrance and so she kicked them off. It seemed a long time before she heard them hit the pavement.

  Keeping her mind deadened to the length of the drop, she felt around with her Lycra-covered feet for some kind of toe-hold. There seemed to be nothing. Her tights ripped against the brickwork and the skin of her big toes was scraped raw. Her hand, already painful from the burns on the palms and fingers, began to hurt seriously, and she knew that she would not be able to hold on for much longer.

  Risking another look downwards in search of where to go next, she thought she saw the shadow of a gap in the brick-work about nine inches below her right foot, but she also saw the street and several upturned faces. Dizziness flooded her mind and she pushed her face into the brickwork in an effort to keep the sick faintness at bay. The roughness of the bricks rasping the singed skin of her face helped to control the vertigo and she arched and stretched her right foot until it found the crack in the bricks.

  Carefully testing her weight, she took one hand off the window frame and instantly gripped the edge of the wider concrete sill. She breathed deeply and forced herself to move the other hand. The toehold was not deep enough to take her whole weight and she knew that she must move on quickly.

  Her muscles began to quiver and she could not force herself to move either hands or feet. Terrified that she would fall, she hung spreadeagled against the wall, feeling the skin on her burned hands break agonisingly.

  ‘Hang on, love,’ said a voice from below her. ‘You’re doing okay. We’ve called the Fire Brigade. They won’t be long. Hang on. The fire’s above you. It can’t come down and get you. If you fall we’ll catch you. It’s not far.’

  Another male voice, more authoritative, said: ‘You’re not going to fall. Move your left hand down, about four inches. There’s a gap in the mortar that’ll be a great handhold. You’re fine. The shaking will stop as soon as you move. Take your left hand off. Come on. You can do it.’

  Feeling as though she were pulling against some tremendous suction, Willow did as she was told, scrabbling clumsily for the promised handhold.

  ‘Aah!’

  ‘That’s right. Turn your fingers so that they fill the whole gap. Good. Now move your right foot. Just about eighteen inches below the level of your foothold is the top of another window. It’s narrow, but it’ll serve you so long as you don’t let go of your handhold. Come on. You can do it. It’s much safer than staying where you are. Come on.’

  In the distance Willow could hear the consol
ing, exciting, threatening sound of sirens. There were several, not quite synchronised with each other.

  I’m going to make it after all, she thought, relaxing just enough to move her right foot as she had been instructed. I’m not going to die.

  It was not until a tough-feeling young fireman in a scratchy blue uniform pulled her into the safety of the cradle at the top of a crane that she remembered wanting to be dead. He put his arm around her shoulders, chuntering to her as his mates wound them down to the ground.

  ‘You’ll be fine, love. You did great. Don’t worry now. We’ve called an ambulance. You’ll be fine. All’s well. See? They’ve got the pumps going.’

  There was a slight bump and he guided her out on to the pavement. There was the sound of clapping and a hoarse cheer. Willow turned, every muscle in her body shaking even more than when she was pinned in terror against the excoriating brick wall. Her head felt as though it were floating a few inches above her neck and her throat was sore. She could hardly see.

  ‘Thank you,’ she muttered, frowning at the bunch of spectators, who were being urged away from her and from the building by an older fireman. A row of four gleaming, panting, quivering, scarlet and silver engines was ranged along the pavement and there seemed to be dozens of running, helmeted men, pulling out hoses, fetching ladders. One yelled out: ‘We’ve got a real burner here.’

  Then the water started, hooshing out of the hoses, filling their flatness out into great, fat worms. Willow moved as water drops ricocheted off the building into her hair and she tripped over a loose paving stone.

  The young fireman steadied her and urged her towards the first-aid kit in his particular engine.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ she said, searching the faces of the growing crowd.

  ‘There’s a man there who was talking me down. A climber, I think. I must—’

  ‘Anyone else in the building, love?’ called an urgent voice.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Willow. ‘Not on my floor. But I don’t know about the others.’

  ‘We can’t find any, Matt,’ shouted a voice from inside the building.

  Willow’s officer led her away to put a temporary dressing on her hands. Then the ambulance came. She tried to explain that she had to find the man who had guided her down the building, but the paramedics overrode her protests and whisked her away. With tears of pain and frustration leaking out of her sore eyes, Willow asked the green-overalled woman where she was being taken.

  ‘Dowting’s. Just across the river. You’ll be there in no time and they’ll give you something for the pain. It won’t be long now, love. I promise. Hang on.’

  Willow closed her eyes.

  FIVE HOURS LATER she was lying, washed, bandaged and dressed, in a torn but clean hospital nightgown in a ward full of interested middleaged women. Her burns were not severe, she had been told. She was very lucky. Yellow ointment had been smeared over her hands, and then they had been swathed in light, unconstricting gauze bandages. Her hair had been singed in front, as had her eyebrows, presumably by the burst of flames that had surged towards her as she forced the second door to close. But there was no serious damage. The sensation of peeling and burning on her face had been merely heat. The skin was intact, except for a couple of places where the brickwork had scraped it. The damage was not much worse than a bad day’s sunbathing on the beach would have caused.

  Looking down at her bandaged hands, Willow doubted the doctor’s reassurances. The memory of the stretched and distorted skin on the first three fingers of her right hand was terrifying, worse even than the actual pain, but eventually the pills she had been given began to deaden her feelings.

  The sharp pain in her hands and the rasping ache in her throat, nose and eyes were still there, but they seemed less immediate and her mind was soothed, too. Her thoughts slowed into easy lethargy.

  Someone else was responsible. She could let go for the moment.

  SHE WOKE THE NEXT MORNING, feeling much less easy, choking and coughing, and feeling sick. Trying to find a tissue to spit into before she was properly awake, she banged her hand on the edge of the wheeled table at her side and cried out sharply. Holding the hand against her chest, still choking, she waited for the throbbing pain to stop.

  She could not see properly and her eyes hurt too. Terrified that they might have been permanently damaged by the fire, it took Willow a while to remember that she had not taken out her contact lenses when she reached the hospital. There was nothing on her bedside table to put the lenses in and so she screwed up her eyes to try to ease the burning sensation, and decided to put up with it until she could think of something sensible to do with the lenses.

  ‘Here, love, take this,’ said a small, grey-haired woman at her side, offering her a bundle of paper handkerchieves. Willow nodded and accepted them, spitting gouts of blackened phlegm into them.

  ‘Sorry,’ she muttered when the spasm was over. ‘Disgusting!’

  ‘Don’t you fret. You’ve had a bad time. You really have. You were having a terrible nightmare just now.’

  Willow tried to haul herself up the bed, leaning on her wrists and wincing.

  ‘Hold on,’ said her rescuer. ‘Bet, come over here and help.’

  ‘Coming, Lil,’ said a taller, plump woman from a bed near the door. She pulled an orange quilted dressing gown over her blue nightdress and hurried over. Her blue eyes were alight with interest and concern. She helped her friend push Willow up against the banked pillows behind her back.

  ‘Aren’t there any nurses?’ she asked painfully, when, panting, they stood back.

  ‘Oh, yes, but they’re doing the changeover at the moment. You know, night staff to day. They have to talk about us, so they don’t have time to do anything for a bit. But they’ll be round soon. They’re good girls, you know,’ said the woman called Bet.

  Willow smiled at them both. ‘What are you in for?’ she asked, but before they could answer she was coughing again.

  Bet bustled off in her quilted dressing gown and fluffy slippers and poured Willow a glass of water, saying, ‘Go on, Lil. Get her some more hankies. Can’t you see she needs them?’

  Willow, astonished by their kindness, coughed and spluttered, drank the water, and began to breathe normally again. Bet assured her that the trolley with early tea would be round soon and asked if she could get anything in the meantime. Willow, tired out by the effort of coughing up the smoke and dust, shook her head.

  ‘D’you know which floor we’re on?’ she asked suddenly. The two women turned, beaming.

  ‘Ninth,’ they said in unison, obviously glad to be able to help.

  Thinking of Tom, lying just one floor above her, made Willow swing her legs out from under the white cellular blanket.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think you ought to get up,’ said Bet, ‘not for a bit. Wait till the nurse’s seen you.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Bet,’ said Lil. ‘She’ll need the toilet AU that coughing! Think what it does to your bladder; and she probably hasn’t been at all since they brought her in.’

  ‘We’d better help her, then. She shouldn’t go on her own. She might pass out’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Willow, smiling at them both and trying not to wince as the scorched skin of her face stretched. ‘It’s my hands and my lungs that are the trouble, not my legs. I’ll be fine.’

  She walked gingerly out of the ward, and knowing that they were watching, held herself as straight as possible in spite of the shakiness of her legs. Having used the lavatory, as they expected, she turned out of the ward through the swing doors and called the lift.

  It was not until she was walking into the Intensive Care Unit that she noticed the cold on her back and realised that the nightgown she had been put into the previous evening was gaping all down the back, secured by only one pair of tapes.

  ‘What are you doing?’ called a nurse, hurrying round the desk half-way down the corridor. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Tom Worth’s wife,’ she said, noticing
how hoarse she sounded. She could not recognise the nurse but thought that was probably because she still could not see clearly. ‘I need to see him.’

  ‘So you are,’ said the nurse, peering at her. ‘I’d not have recognised you like that. But you’re hurt; burned, isn’t it? You shouldn’t be up here. Where’ve you come from? I’ll take you back at once.’

  ‘Floor below. Don’t know the ward. Please let me see him.’

  ‘Come along. I’ll take you back.’

  ‘I must see Tom first’.

  With a small, strong hand under Willow’s right elbow, the nurse led her to Tom’s room and let her stand at the foot of his bed for a moment His face was still the odd pale-beige colour that had worried her so much when she first saw him after the shooting, and he appeared not to have moved at all since then. At that moment Willow could not believe that he would ever look any different.

  ‘There’s been no change,’ said the nurse, stating the obvious, but she added with brisk kindness, ‘That’s not bad news. He’s holding his own. Come along now. We must get you back to bed.’

  Chapter Eight

  The Following Day Willow was told that her bed was needed for an emergency admission and that she would be allowed to leave after lunch. She went bearing a prescription for painkillers and a pink card to remind her of the date of her first outpatient appointment. The nurse who saw her off told her not to touch the dressing on her hands until she came to the hospital’s burns clinic again after the weekend.

  ‘But if you are worried or have any bad pain, let us know at once. All right?’

  ‘All right,’ said Willow, longing to get out of her filthy, stinking clothes and find her old spectacles, which would at least help her to see the world’s sharp edges again. She took a taxi back to the house and let herself in.