Lucy tried not to be scared and she tried not to get in anyone’s way. The guests were all running around, and it was all a bit confusing. She lost sight of her parents, but she saw Edmund go back up the stairs towards the attics. It was not a raging inferno up there, and everyone was saying the fire was not likely to spread much in the next few minutes, but it was still very brave of him.
Lucy tried to concentrate on how brave Edmund was being, and she tried not to think how she was the one who had caused the fire by lighting the oil lamp. Would Edmund tell people about that? But the lamp had been perfectly safe until he had turned it out – Lucy was sure it had been perfectly safe. Or had it? whispered a horrid little voice inside her head. Mightn’t you have fixed the funnel a bit crookedly? Or put the lamp on a bumpy bit of floor so that it overturned? Did I? But even if I did, it’ll be all right. They’ll put the fire out and there won’t really be any harm done. Make it be all right, she said in her head. Please make it be all right.
It seemed that the fire was getting a bit more of a hold – all those old, dry roof joists, and all that stored-away junk in the attics! – but the fire brigade would soon be here and they would douse the flames.
There was a kind of soft explosion from the attics, and Edmund cried out and came tumbling down the narrow stairs, half running, half falling, his hands blistered, his face and hair black with smoke.
‘Get out!’ he shouted. ‘The whole top floor’s alight! For God’s sake, everybody get out of the house now!’
Somebody grabbed Lucy and half carried her outside to the big lawn at the back of the house. It was cold and the rain was still coming down, but flames and smoke were shooting up into the night sky, tinting it crimson. Lucy stared at it in new horror, because it was exactly as if the house was bleeding into the darkness. She began to shiver, but she still tried not to cry and be a nuisance.
People were saying this was all absolutely dreadful, but the fire brigade was on its way and the fire would soon be under control, and Bruce and Mariana would probably be able to have the place reroofed on the insurance. In fact where were Bruce and Mariana? Had anyone seen them?
Between one breathspace and the next, a situation that had been quite serious, but in control, spiralled shockingly out of control. A man who had found the garden hose and had been connecting it to the water tap at the side of the house suddenly looked up and pointed at the tiny skylight window at the very top of the house. One of the women screamed and then clapped a hand over her mouth.
‘What is it? What’s happening?’
‘There’s somebody still inside the house!’
‘Where? Oh God, where?’
‘Up there. The attic window.’
And then Lucy saw the flash of colour at the skylight window in the attics. Bright jade green. The distinctive outfit her mother had worn for the party. Green silk and the jade earrings she often wore in the evenings, because she loved vivid colours. She saw that her father was there as well, standing next to her mother, and quite suddenly she could feel her father’s arms around her, and she could smell the nice scents of him – soap and clean cotton shirts, and the disreputable old jacket he wore for gardening – and she wanted him to be down here on the wet grass with her more than she had ever wanted anything in her entire life.
‘Shout to them to make a dash for it!’ cried one of the men. ‘They might just do it – if they run straight through the flames.’
‘Handkerchiefs over their mouths so they don’t breathe in the smoke,’ said a woman. ‘That’s what you do. Or sleeves – anything. Shout to them to do that!’
‘They’ll never make it!’ said Edmund. ‘Both stairways are in flames.’ He was staring up at the attic window, his face sheet-white, oblivious of his own burned hands. Lucy looked at Edmund’s burned hands. My fault. I lit the oil lamp and it overturned…My fault that my parents are trapped up there…
‘If they smash the window—’ said the man who had thought they could make a dash for it. ‘Yes, listen, if they smash the window, they could just about squeeze through – they could jump down—’