‘Everyone thought you’d gone away with your mother,’ she says, but Walter doesn’t hear.
There are shouts from the house, carried across the avenue, and one fireman’s voice lifts above the rest.
There’s someone in there, it says. There’s someone in the house.
They all turn from the fire to look at Walter.
‘Who’s inside?’ It’s the question in everyone’s eyes, but it’s Harold who gives it a voice.
At first, Dorothy doesn’t think Walter has even heard the question. His gaze doesn’t move from the slurry of black smoke, which has begun to pour from the windows of his house. When he finally replies, his voice is so soft, so whispered, they all have to lean forward to listen.
‘Chicken soup,’ he says.
Harold frowns. Dorothy can see all the wrinkles of the future pinch together on his forehead.
‘Chicken soup?’ The wrinkles become even deeper.
‘Oh yes.’ Walter’s eyes don’t move from number eleven. ‘It works wonders for the flu. Terrible thing, isn’t it, the flu?’
They all nod, like ghostly marionettes in the darkness.
‘We’d only just got to the hotel when she took ill. I said to her, Mother, I said, when you’re under the weather, what you need is your own bed. And so we turned around and came home again.’
And all the marionette eyes stare at Walter’s first-floor window.
‘And she’s up there now?’ says Harold, ‘your mother?’
Walter nods. ‘I couldn’t take her back to the nursing home, could I? Not in that state. So I put her to bed and went to ring for the doctor.’ He looks at the tin Dorothy handed back to him. ‘I wanted to explain to him I was giving her the soup, as he advised. They put so many additives in these things now. You can’t be too careful, can you?’
‘No,’ says Dorothy, ‘you can’t be too careful.’
The smoke creeps across the avenue. Dorothy can taste it in her mouth. It blends with the fear and the frost, and she pulls her cardigan a little closer to her chest.
*
Harold walks into the kitchen through the back door. Dorothy knows he has something to tell her, because he never uses the back door unless it’s an emergency or he is wearing his wellington boots.
She looks up from her crossword and waits.
He moves around the work surfaces, lifting things up unnecessarily, opening cupboard doors, looking at the bottom of crockery, until he can’t hold on to the words any longer.
‘It’s awful in there,’ he says, as he replaces a mug on the mug tree. ‘Awful.’
‘You’ve been inside?’ Dorothy puts down her pen. ‘Are you allowed to go inside?’
‘The police and the fire service haven’t been there for days. No one said we couldn’t go inside.’
‘Is it safe?’
‘We didn’t go upstairs.’ He finds a packet of bourbons she had deliberately hidden behind the self-raising flour. ‘Eric didn’t think it was respectful, you know, under the circumstances.’
Dorothy doesn’t think it’s respectful rummaging around in the downstairs either, but it’s easier to say nothing. If you challenge Harold, he spends days justifying himself, like turning on a tap. She had wanted to go in there herself. She even got as far as the back door, but she’d changed her mind. It probably wouldn’t be wise, under the circumstances. Harold, however, had the self-discipline of a small toddler.
‘And the downstairs?’ she says.
‘That’s the strangest thing.’ He takes the top off a bourbon and makes a start on the buttercream. ‘The lounge and the hallway are a mess. Completely gone. But the kitchen is almost untouched. Just a few smoke marks on the walls.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Not a thing,’ he says. ‘Clock ticking away, tea towel folded on the draining board. Ruddy miracle.’
‘Not a miracle for his mother, God rest her soul.’ Dorothy reaches for the tissue in her sleeve, then thinks better of it. ‘Not a miracle they came back early.’
‘No.’ Harold looks at the next biscuit, but puts it back in the packet. ‘Although she wouldn’t have known a thing. The flu had made her delirious, apparently. Couldn’t even get out of bed. That’s why he’d gone to ring for the doctor.’
‘I don’t understand why he didn’t take her back to the nursing home.’
‘What? In the middle of the night?’
‘It might have saved her life.’
Dorothy looks past Harold and the curtains, and out on to the avenue. Since the fire, it had slipped into a quiet, battleship grey. Even leftover Christmas decorations couldn’t lift it. They seemed dishonest, somehow. As though they were trying too hard to jolly everyone along, to pull their eyes from the charred shell of number eleven.
‘Stop over-analysing things. You know too much thinking makes you confused,’ Harold says, watching her. ‘It was a discarded cigarette, or a spark from the fire. That’s what they’ve settled on.’
‘But after what was said? After what we all decided?’
‘A discarded cigarette.’ He took the biscuit and broke it in half. ‘A spark from the fire.’
‘Do you really believe that?’
‘Loose lips sink ships.’
‘For goodness sake, we’re not fighting a war, Harold.’
He turns and looks through the window. ‘Aren’t we?’ he says.
Number Three, Rowan Tree Croft
28 June 1976
‘Do you not think people might be a tad suspicious, two little girls knocking on their door and asking if God is at home?’ Mrs Morton put a bowl of Angel Delight on the table.
‘We’re going undercover.’ I carved my name in it with the edge of a spoon.
‘Are we?’ said Tilly. ‘How exciting.’
‘And how do you propose to do that?’ Mrs Morton leaned over and pushed the bowl a little nearer to Tilly.
‘We’ll be doing our Brownie badges,’ I said.
Tilly looked up and frowned. ‘We’re not in the Brownies, Gracie. You said it wasn’t our cup of tea.’
‘We’re going to be temporary Brownies,’ I said. ‘Ones who are more casual.’
She smiled and wrote ‘Tilly’ in very small letters at the edge of the bowl.
‘I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear any of that.’ Mrs Morton wiped her hands on her apron. ‘And why this sudden fascination with God?’
‘We are all sheep,’ I said. ‘And sheep need a shepherd to keep them safe. The vicar said so.’
‘Did he?’ Mrs Morton folded her arms.
‘So I want to make sure we’ve got one.’
‘I see.’ She leaned back against the draining board. ‘You do know that this is just the vicar’s opinion. Some people are able to manage quite successfully without a