'I have to go there,' she said.

'Kay, don't,' said Hughes. 'I came because I didn't want you to hear from someone else. But there's nothing you can do there. It's 58's area. Leave it to them.'

'They'll funk it,' said Kay.

'They'll fuck it up! I have to get there.'

'It's too far! There's nothing you'll be able to do.'

'Helen's there! Don't you understand?'

'Of course I understand. That's why I came. But-'

'Kay,' said Mickey, grabbing at her arm again. 'Hughes is right. It's too far.'

'I don't care,' said Kay, almost wildly. 'I'll run. I'll-' Then she saw the ambulance. She said, more steadily, 'I'm taking the van.'

'Kay, no!'

'Kay-'

'Hey,' said the warden, who'd been looking on all this time. 'What about these bodies?'

'To hell with them,' said Kay.

She'd begun to run. Mickey and Hughes came close behind her, trying to stop her.

'Langrish,' said Hughes, growing angry. 'Don't be idiotic.'

'Get out of my way,' said Kay.

She'd gone to the back of the ambulance first, to fasten its doors. Now she went to the cabin and climbed inside. Hughes stood in the doorway, pleading with her. 'Langrish,' he said. 'For God's sake, think what you're doing!'

She felt for the key; then caught Mickey's eye, over Hughes's shoulder.

'Mickey,' she said quietly. 'Give me the key.'

Hughes turned. 'Carmichael, don't.'

'Give me the key, Mickey.'

'Carmichael-'

Mickey hesitated, looking from Kay to Hughes and back again. She took out the key, hesitated again; and then threw it. Her aim was true as a boy's. Hughes made a grab at it, but it was Kay who caught it. She fitted it into its socket and started the engine.

'Damn you!' said Hughes, striking the metal frame of the door. 'Damn you both! You'll be thrown out of the service for this! You'll be-'

Kay punched him. She punched him blindly, and caught his cheek and the edge of his glasses; and as soon as he'd fallen back she let down the handbrake and moved off. The door swung to, and she grabbed for its handle and drew it closed. Her tin hat had fallen low on her brow; she tugged at its strap and pulled it from her head, and at once felt better. She glanced in the mirror-saw Hughes sitting in the road with his hands at his face, and Mickey standing slackly, doing nothing, looking after her as she pulled away… She made herself drive with maddening care across the soil- and glass-strewn street; and then, when the road was smoother, she speeded up.

As she drove, she pictured Helen; she pictured her as she had last seen her, hours before: unmarked, unharmed. She saw her so clearly, she knew that she couldn't be dead or even hurt. She thought, It can't be Rathbone Place, it must be some other street. It can't be! Or, if it is, then Helen will have heard the Warning and gone to the shelter. She'll have gone to the shelter, for my sake, just this once…

She had got on to Buckingham Palace Road, and now sped on past Victoria Station. She turned into the park-hardly slowing, so that the tyres squealed on the surface of the road and something was tilted out of its place in the back of the van, and tumbled and smashed. But ahead was that glow, irregularly pulsing, like a faltering life-dreadful, dreadful. She changed up the gears and went faster. The raid was still on, and the Mall, of course, was empty; only at Charing Cross did she meet activity: a warden and policemen attending to another incident, they heard her coming and waved her on, thinking she'd been sent to them from her station. 'Just along that way,' they called, pointing east, along the Strand. She nodded; but she didn't think, even for a moment, of stopping, of giving help… When, a little later, another man, seeing the ambulance crest on the front of her van, came lurching off the pavement, his hands at his head, his face dark with blood, she swerved around him and drove on.

Charing Cross Road was up, because a water main had been struck there three days before. She went west, to the Haymarket; drove up to Shaftesbury Avenue, and got on to Wardour Street, meaning to get to Rathbone Place like that. She found the entrance to Oxford Street blocked by trestles and ropes, and manned by policemen. She braked madly, and began to turn. A policeman came running over to her window as she was doing it.

'Where are you trying for?' he asked. She named her mews. He said at once, 'I thought your lot were there already. You can't get through this way.'

She said, 'Is it bad?'

He blinked, catching something in her voice. 'Two warehouses gone, so far as I know. Didn't you get the details from Control?'

'The furniture warehouse?' she said, ignoring his question. 'Palmer's?'

'I don't know.'

'Christ, it must be! Oh, Christ!'

She had wound the window down to talk to him; and could suddenly smell the burning. She put the van into gear, and the policeman leapt back. The engine shuddered as she reversed. She changed gear again-double-declutching as usual, but timing it badly and crashing the cogs: swearing, enraged by the clumsiness of the mechanism; almost weeping. Don't cry, you fool! she said to herself. She struck at her thigh, savagely, with the ball of her fist. The van swayed about. Don't cry, don't cry…

She was heading south now, but saw an unblocked road to the left, and turned sharply into it. A little way along it she was able to turn left again, into Dean Street. Here, for the first time, she saw the tips of the flames of the fire, leaping into the sky. There began to come smuts-dark, fragile webs of drifting ash-against the windscreen of the van. She pressed hard on the accelerator pedal, and sped forwards; she got only a hundred yards, however, before the road was blocked again. She stuck out her head. 'Let me through!' she called to the policemen here. They made gestures with their hands: 'No chance. Go back.' She turned and, in desperation, went west again, to Soho Square. Another road-block; but a less well-manned one. She stopped the van and put on the hand-brake; then got out, ran, and simply vaulted over the trestles.

'Hey!' someone called behind her. 'You, without a hat! Are you crazy?'

She thumped the flashes on her shoulder. 'Ambulance!' she shouted, panting. 'Ambulance!'

'Hey! Come back!'

But after a second, the voices faded. The wind had turned, and she found herself, suddenly, smothered in smoke. She got out her handkerchief and pressed it to her nose and mouth, but kept on running; the smoke came on in gusts, so that she passed, for a hundred feet or more, through alternate states of blindness and stinging light. Once she was caught in a shower of sparks, that singed her hair and burnt her face. A moment later she fell, and in getting to her feet lost her sense of direction: she ran forward a couple of steps, and met a wall; turned, went on, and seemed almost at once to meet another… Finally, something came hurtling towards her head-a piece of burning paper, she thought it was, as she dodged away. Then she saw that it was a pigeon, with blazing wings. She put out her hands and ran from it, stumbling in horror, dropping her handkerchief, drawing breath as a new wave of smoke came against her face, and starting to choke. She staggered forwards-and suddenly found herself in space and heat and chaos. She put her hands on her thighs, and coughed, and spat. Then she looked up.

She had come very close to the heart of the fire; but recognised nothing. The buildings about her, that she ought to know; the running firemen; the pools of water on the ground; the snaking hoses-everything was lit with a garish, unnatural intensity, or hidden by leaping black shadows. She tried calling to a man, but he couldn't hear her over the roaring of the fire, the throbbing of the pumps. She went to somebody else-taking him by the shoulders, bellowing into his face: 'Where am I? Where the hell am I? Where's Pym's Yard?'