The flames flare white and engulf him, the gun clattering to the floor as his hands desperately fly to his face.
I do not stop to think. I advance on him even though I see his pain, his newfound terror. I see his open-mouthed screams but I can barely hear them over the throb of blood in my own ears, the pounding of my heart, because I know I cannot stop until this is over. He will not stop until this is over.
I empty more and more of the fuel cannister onto him as he lunges and swings madly towards me. The pain must become too much because suddenly he throws himself down to the rug to tamp out his flames. But he does not think it through; the gasoline-soaked rug beneath him leaps to life, flashing even brighter as fresh flames engulf him and creep out towards the rest of the room.
I look to Robert’s prone form. We don’t have much time before this fire is completely out of control. Robert and I need to leave.
I know what I need to do. I circle around Edward and pick up the discarded shotgun, its handle hot from the flame-engulfed floor, and raise it towards Edward’s shuddering figure.
I get him in my sights, flames from the rug now lapping at my own bare legs, sending white hot pain through me as I try to steady the weapon. I exhale calmly and pull the trigger. There is a rip of sound and Edward stops moving before the flames swallow him whole.
I drop the weapon and run to Robert’s side, tearing an antique wall hanging from the wall above him to muffle out the flames approaching him. I thrash them out and pull him, coughing, up to sitting.
‘We need to get out,’ I tell him. ‘Keep pressure on the leg wound.’ He nods, and with my help stumbles up to his feet.
‘The other children? Eleanor?’ he croaks.
‘They’re safe,’ I tell him. It’s a half-truth. Eleanor is safe. Matilda is safe. Stuart I’m not so sure about, though Oliver and Fiona are dead.
We stumble from the sitting room into the hall where I steer Robert clear of the sight of Oliver’s body and out of the open front door.
We burst out into the snow and take in lungfuls of clean winter air. Robert is safe, but Stuart is still inside the building, and I am not like Edward. I cannot be responsible for any more death.
‘Can you make it out to the woods?’ I ask Robert, as we stumble clear of the house. ‘Eleanor and Matilda are in the hide at the edge of the forest.’
‘Yes,’ he tells me, then grasps my wrist protectively. ‘Wait. Where are you going?’
‘Stuart is still inside.’
Robert shakes his head, grasping my wrist harder. ‘No. Don’t go back in, Harriet. Think about your child.’
I remember the life inside me, half Edward, half me, and I hesitate. Then I carefully remove his grip from my arm. ‘I am thinking of her,’ I say delicately. ‘She needs me to be a person who goes back in. I need me to be a person who goes back in.’
* * *
The heat is hard to bear when I re-enter the building and the snow-drenched strip of fabric I thought might protect my lungs does not stop the hot burn in my throat. I dash back through the heat of the flaming hallway, my eyes stinging.
When I reach the new wing, Stuart is no longer behind the glass. He must have made it out another way.
I turn to leave again, but with a sudden jolt remember Sylvia and Anya propped up beside each other in their break room. I turn and sprint towards the staff quarters, through smoke-clogged corridors that lead back to the gas-filled kitchen.
I know nothing I can do will change the past; nothing can change what I did, or who I am as a consequence. But the past can stop here. I can change. I can be better. A fresh start, a new me – a more honest me.
After all, isn’t that what I want for my child? For my daughter?