at last she saw Bliss. He ran towards her from the stone archway that led through to the back of the house. His face was the colour of ice.
Julia stumbled towards him. ‘The fire brigade,’ she shouted helplessly.
‘They’re coming.’
Alexander was methodically throwing open every door to check that the room beyond was empty. He slammed the doors shut again and the roar of the fire devoured the sound. Another obliterating blanket of smoke rolled around them and he caught at her arm.
‘Is everyone out of there?’
She nodded, and at once he was pulling her over the stone flags to the big door. She tripped in her tight dress and the thin fabric ripped, freeing her to run. The arched portico framed the night beyond, then it was overhead, and then with Alexander’s arm supporting her they escaped into the darkness. The cold hit them and Julia saw ahead of her the dark, glossy’ ovals of the clipped yews reflecting an ugly red glow. The crowd of people milled at the foot of the shallow flight of steps, their faces turned upwards to the house. Julia and Alexander looked the same way, and understood how quickly and how terribly the fire had taken hold.
The windows of what had been the drawing room, where only a few minutes ago they had been dancing in the flow of candlelight, were now blind eyes from which the smoke coiled in the thick ropes. The flames had reached the first floor, and came darting lasciviously from the windows. The crash of breaking glass and falling timber was just audible through the voice of the fire itself.
‘Is everyone out?’ Bliss shouted hoarsely. ‘Is anyone missing?’
The panic had subsided. The guests were numb with shock, and silent in awe of the fire’s horrible vitality. They muttered to one another, and shook their heads. It seemed that everyone was accounted for.
Julia stood motionless, watching. Bliss’s fingers were like iron hooks digging into the flesh of her arm. Looking upwards at the windows in the gable end of the near wing, she thought of the magnificent beams that supported the roof of the Long Gallery, and the floor of broad oak boards that separated the gallery from the burning bedrooms beneath.
She shivered violently in the city air. And then she remembered.
The words stuck in her throat at first. Bliss looked at her, then gripped her other arm and pulled her closer.
‘What is it?’
‘Flowers. Flowers was upstairs, with a girl.’
They whirled apart and went blundering through the silent huddles of people. ‘Has anyone seen Flowers?’
No one had seen him. There were only white, shocked faces, and none of them was Johnny Flowers.
Julia remembered, with a beat of horror, what he had said in the shadows at the top of the stairs. The party to end all parties. She dared not look up at the lurid windows.
Fear crystallised into certainty within her. She finished her desperate circuit and collided with Bliss again.
‘Not here.’
Alexander turned his face to the house. Julia saw the reflected light of the fire in his eyes.
‘They must still be inside.’
He was already running towards the steps. Two or three other men left the shelter of the crowd and ran with him.
‘No.’ Her scream tore Julia’s throat.
‘No. Don’t go back in there.’
Without stopping to think she began to run too, gathering up the ruined tail of her dress. She had only gone half a dozen steps when more people caught up with her and pulled at her arms, dragging her backwards. She struggled to break free, swearing blindly at them. They held her too tightly, and she was reduced to impotent kicking and writhing.
Her last glimpse of Bliss was as he ran back under the portico, one arm held crooked against his face in a vain attempt to shield it from the fire’s fierce heat.
‘Stop him,’ she whispered to the people holding her. ‘Don’t let him go in there.’
But he had already gone.
The men who had dashed forward with Bliss seemed to be driven back by the smoke, but Alexander was engulfed by it.
Nobody moved or spoke. The fire possessed the whole house now and the malevolent smoke hung over it, obliterating the starry winter sky.
Julia stepped away from the restraining hands and then stood motionless. No one could do anything. Impotent anger swept over her.
‘Where is the fire brigade? Why don’t they come? He’s going to die in there.’ She screamed again at the smoky mouth of the door, ‘Bliss!’
An arm came round her, and she saw that it was Mattie beside her. He friend’s eyes reflected the demonic red glow, as Bliss’s had done. Looking wildly around, Julia saw that all their faces were lit by it. The black shadows thrown by the firelight in the hollows of their cheeks and eyesockets made all of them look like skulls. She felt an instant of wild, almost exultant terror.
The fire would come for all of them. Bliss was already gone, and it was Mattie and Julia standing to face it together, as they had always done.
A bubble of hysterical laughter broke out of Julia’s mouth.
Mattie held her harder, shaking her, hurting her shoulders. ‘Hold on. They’re coming now. You’ve got to hold on.’
Julia heard it then. Only just audible through the roar of the flames were the bells of the fire engines as they raced towards Ladyhill.
The mad laughter died in her throat and Julia gave a long shuddering sigh.
She stood waiting, one hand holding on to Mattie. The fingers of her other hand just rested on the concave space between her hip-bones.
Julia Bliss was twelve weeks’ pregnant. For some reason that she didn’t even understand herself, she hadn’t told her husband about the baby yet.
Summer, 1955
‘It’s cold,’ Julia said.
She looked at the scuffed suitcase at her feet, but it hardly seemed worth opening it and rummaging amongst the grubby contents for warmer clothes. She shivered, and hunched her shoulders.
Mattie didn’t even answer.
They sat side by side on the bench, silently, and the pigeons that had gathered in the hope of sandwich crumbs waddled away again. Over the stone balustrade in front of them the girls could just see the flat, murky river. A barge nosed slowly upstream and they watched it slide past them. A sluggish wash fanned out in its wake.
‘We could go home,’ Julia whispered.
Even to suggest it punctured her pride, but she wanted
