“And I had the medallions of pork,” said Alistair. “They were wonderful.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I am so glad you enjoyed it.”

We chatted for a while longer, and then they departed, promising to be back again, and next time at their expense. And they hadn’t mentioned anything about the intended prosecution. Perhaps things were indeed getting back to normal.

My cell phone rang in my pocket.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello, my darling,” said Caroline excitedly. “I’ve arrived, and it’s beautiful. I have a lovely room overlooking the river. I wish you were here.”

I wished it too. “Did you have a good flight?” I asked.

“Lovely,” she said. “I slept for about three hours, so I’m doing pretty well.”

“Well done,” I said. “It’s eleven-thirty here, and I’m going home to bed.”

“Where are you?” she asked.

“At the restaurant,” I said. “I’ve been helping with the dinner service.”

“You’re a naughty boy,” she said. “You should be resting.”

“What, like yesterday?” I said, laughing.

“I’ve got to go,” she said. “I’m meeting everyone else downstairs in five minutes. We’re going out on a boat. I’m going to be exhausted.” She sounded excited.

“Have a great time,” I said. We hung up, and I positively ached to be there with her.

I yawned. I was exhausted too, both emotionally and physically.

I changed, and then Carl gave me a lift home, and it was not until after he had driven away that I realized that I had left my overnight bag in the office at the restaurant.

“Oh well,” I said to myself, “I’ll have to go to bed without brushing my teeth.”

And I did.

I DREAMED that I could smell toast. But someone had left it in my broken toaster for too long and it was beginning to burn. Burned toast. My father had always rather liked his toast burned black. He had joked that it wasn’t burned, it was just well-done.

I was awake and I could still smell the burned toast.

I got up and opened my bedroom door.

My cottage was on fire, with giant flames roaring up the stairway and great billowing black smoke filling the air.

14

O h shit! I thought. How am I going to get out of this? I closed my bedroom door. Perhaps it was all a dream. But I knew it wasn’t. I could smell the smoke coming through the cracks around the door, and I could feel the heat, even on the other side of the wood. It wouldn’t be long before the fire had eaten its way through.

I went to the window.

My cottage had been built more than two hundred years before, and the windows were the original leaded lights, small panes of glass held in place by a lattice of lead strips. The windows were themselves small, with only a tiny hinged opening for ventilation that definitely wasn’t large enough for me to get through.

I opened the ventilator and shouted at the top of my voice.

“Fire! Fire! Help! Help! Somebody help me!”

I couldn’t hear if there was a response. The noise of the fire below my feet was becoming louder with every second.

I shouted again: “Fire! Fire! Help! Help!”

There were no sirens, no hoses, no yellow-helmeted men on ladders.

The air in my bedroom was getting thicker with smoke and it made me cough. I stood up near the ventilator to get some fresh air from outside but, even here, smoke billowed up from the window below. And it was getting very hot.

I knew that people who died in fires usually did so from smoke inhalation rather than from the flames themselves. I wasn’t sure whether this was comforting or not. I didn’t want to die, and I especially didn’t want to die like this, trapped in my burning house. Instead, I got angry-bloody mad, in fact-and my anger gave me strength.

The air in the room had almost completely filled with smoke. I dropped to my knees and found that it was quite clear near the floor. But I could feel the heat from below, and I noticed that my carpet was beginning to smolder close to the wall near the door. If I was to get out of this alive, it had to be soon.

I took a deep breath of the clear air, stood up, picked up my bedside table and ran with it towards where I knew the window to be. I couldn’t see anything, as the smoke stung my eyes. At the last second, I caught a glimpse through the glass of the light from the fire beneath and made a slight adjustment to my path.

I crashed the bedside table into the window. The window bent and buckled but didn’t move. I repeated the process and the window bent more, and some of the small panes dropped out, but still the damn lead framework held.

I again dropped to my knees for a breath. The space beneath the smoke had diminished to just a few inches, and I knew this was it. Either I broke out now or I would die.

This time, the table went right through the window and fell out of sight into the smoke and flames below, taking the remains of the window with it. There was no time to think or worry about what I was jumping into. I clambered through the opening and leaped, trying to jump away from the building, away from the fire.

One of the advantages of having such an old property is that the ceilings were very low, and, consequently, the fall from my bedroom window to the lawn below was only about ten feet. Quite far enough, I thought. I landed with my feet together and my body moving forward, so I kept on rolling like a parachutist over the grass and into the road beyond. I got to my feet and moved to the far side of the road and looked back.

Flames were clearly visible through what was left of my bedroom window. I had literally jumped in the nick of time.

I gasped fresh air into my lungs, coughing wildly. I was cold. I stood shivering on the grass verge, and only then did I realize that I was completely naked.

My neighbor, roused perhaps by my shouts, was outside watching and now walked towards me. She was a small, elderly lady, and I could see by the light of the flames that she was wearing a fluffy pink dressing gown with matching pink slippers, and her white hair was held neatly in place with a hairnet.

I looked for something to cover my embarrassment and ended up just using my hands.

“That’s all right, dear,” she said. “I’ve seen it all before. Three husbands, and a nurse for forty years.” She smiled. “I’m glad you got out all right. I’ll fetch you a coat.” She turned to go. “I’ve called the fire brigade,” she said over her shoulder. She seemed totally unperturbed at finding a naked man on the side of the road in the middle of the night next to a raging inferno no more than fifteen feet from her own bedroom window.

The fire brigade arrived with flashing lights and sirens, but there was little they could do. My cottage was totally engulfed in flames, and the firemen spent most of their time and energy hosing down my neighbor’s house to ensure the searing heat didn’t set that alight as well.

I sat out the rest of the night at my neighbor’s kitchen table wearing one of her ex-husband’s coats and a pair of his slippers. I didn’t ask her if he was ex-by death or ex-by divorce. It didn’t matter. I was grateful anyhow, and also for the cups of tea that she produced for me and the fire brigade at regular intervals until dawn.

“Just like the Blitz,” she said with a broad smile. “I used to help my mother provide refreshments for the police and firemen. You know, WRVS.”

I nodded. I did know. Women’s Royal Volunteer Service.

THE MORNING brought an end to the flames but little other comfort. My home was a shell, with no floors, no windows, no doors and nothing left within, save for ash and the smoldering remains of my life.

“You were lucky to get out alive,” said the chief fireman. I knew. “These old buildings can be death traps. Timber stairs and thin wooden doors and floors. Even the interior walls are flammable, plaster over wooden slats. Death traps,” he repeated while shaking his head.