When my buddy Jonathan heard the crash of breaking glass that evening in 2008, he thought it was drunks flinging bottles on Leith Stroll in Edinburgh. They did that rather a lot, though they should have been rowdier than typical, because it was loud. It took him a couple of minutes to grasp what was truly taking place – and in that point the stairwell to his fifth-floor flat turned fully impassable. That crash was the sound of the downstairs home windows exploding – glass shattering below the obscene warmth of the burning condominium beneath us.
As for me, I used to be sitting with Jonathan’s spouse, Ericka, within the different room, distracted by wine and chatting nonsense. The primary I knew something was unsuitable was when Jonathan appeared within the doorway. “I don’t imply to fret you,” he mentioned. “However we have to go.” I flapped round, making an attempt to find my sneakers. “No,” he clarified. “We have to go now.”
We pulled ourselves collectively, barefoot and giggly, and adopted him. In reality, my first feeling was that of pleasure. I’ve at all times had a mushy spot for a disaster; my favorite tarot card is the Tower – the one which heralds your foundations being swept out from beneath you, falling our bodies and lightning bolts filling the sky.
However the second we opened the entrance door, I realised this was no gleeful journey. Billowing up the stairwell was a wall of thick black smoke and the air was already sizzling. We backed up, slamming the door behind us. It felt as if somebody had made a horrible mistake. These stairs had been the exit – our solely exit. It didn’t make sense that we couldn’t use them.
Nonetheless, I had watched the BBC docudrama 999 as a baby, and thrilled to its re-enactment of dramatic emergency calls. I may hear Michael Buerk’s gravelly directions in my head: “Soak towels within the tub, plug the hole below the door.” We did that and it was like making an attempt to dam a river with twigs. Smoke oozed up all over the place: by way of the floorboards, the skirtings, the partitions.
The strangest factor was the best way the room dimmed to black. Every time I’d imagined a home fireplace, I’d pictured coughing, warmth, the again of my hand testing the heat of every door. However by no means this swaddling darkness.
At this level, we needed to resolve the place to go. Within the kitchen, there was a window that opened broad. However that confronted the again backyard, which was walled off to any fireplace engines, and, with none ladders, an escape route from the top-floor window could be unattainable. In the lounge, for causes recognized solely to Edinburgh landlords, the one openable window was a little bit PVC factor up above head peak. The desk in entrance of the window was a wood board balanced precariously on A-frames. But when we stood on it, we may entice consideration; somebody would know we had been trapped inside. On the road beneath, a crowd had already gathered.
Pressed in opposition to the glass, we took turns to gulp mouthfuls of recent air from the window within the moments when the wind conspired to billow away the flames licking up from downstairs. However then the gust would change and the thick smog outdoors would veer in the direction of us and what poured in was each bit as unbreathable because the air inside.
The state of affairs brought on a form of glitch in my mind. I used to be in my 20s, and had, till this level, believed myself to be immortal. However in that second, I instantly understood that this sack of meat – a physique that incorporates all of the needs and fascinations and nuances that make up a Jane – might be snuffed out of being. And I actually didn’t need that to occur. I’d do something, in actual fact, to stop that from taking place.
I used to be able to contort myself by way of that unattainable window, and leap from the highest flooring –break my legs if I need to – if that meant residing, respiration, persevering with to exist. However in the long run I didn’t should. The fireplace brigade arrived; they introduced their extendable ladder and had us cower inside whereas they smashed the glass. It appeared to take an inordinately very long time, however finally we had been allowed to clamber out into the evening, to the ready ambulances. We had been taken to hospital, the place we had been handled for smoke inhalation, then launched. And we had been primarily nice.
Since that evening, fireplace makes its approach into all of my fiction: buildings tend to catch alight, there are ritualistic bonfires and arson. My debut novel, Freakslaw, centres on fireplace as a power of rebirth and revolution, in addition to a automobile of destruction.
On tenting journeys, I’m the keeper of the flames – stoking them, tending them, as if by doing so I can declare some form of management over an unattainable power. I do know that I can’t, in fact. Hearth is extra highly effective than me, demise is extra highly effective than me, and not less than one in every of them will get me in the long run.
Freakslaw by Jane Flett (Doubleday, £16.99) is out now. To help the Guardian and the Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Supply expenses might apply.
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