We watched from the road as his men sprayed more water over the ruin. The stonework of the exterior walls had survived pretty well, but it was no longer whitewashed as it had been yesterday. Great black scars extended upwards above every windowless void, and the remainder was browned by the intense heat and the smoke.
“Can you tell what caused it?” I asked him.
“Not yet,” he said. “Still far too hot to get in there. But electrical, I expect. Most fires are electrical, or else due to cigarettes not being properly put out. Do you smoke?”
“No,” I said.
“Did you leave anything switched on?” he asked.
“Not that I can think of,” I said. “I suppose the TV would have been on standby.”
“Could be that,” he said. “Could be anything. Have to get the investigation team to have a look later. Thankfully, no one was hurt. That’s what really matters.”
“I’ve lost everything,” I said, looking at the black and steaming mess.
“You haven’t lost your life,” he said.
But it had been close.
AT EIGHT O’CLOCK, I used my neighbor’s phone to call Carl.
“It has not been your week,” he said after I told him.
“I wouldn’t say that,” I said. In the past seven days, I had been informed of an intended prosecution, written off my car in a collision with a bus, spent a night in the hospital with a concussion, lost my house and all my personal possessions in a fire and now stood wearing nothing but my neighbor’s ex-husband’s coat and slippers. But look on the bright side, I thought. It was only seven days since I had taken Caroline out to dinner at the Restaurant Gordon Ramsay. I may have lost plenty, but I had gained more.
“Can you come and collect me?” I asked him.
“Where do you want to go?” he said.
“Do you have a shower I could use?” I said. “I smell like a garden bonfire.”
“I’ll be there in five minutes,” he said.
“Oh, Carl,” I said. “Can you bring some clothes?”
“What for?” he asked.
“I escaped with my life,” I said. “But with absolutely nothing else.”
He laughed. “I’ll see what I can find.”
I STOOD for a good ten minutes in Carl’s shower and let the stream of hot water wash the smoke from my hair and the tiredness from my eyes.
The fire brigade had arrived on the scene at three thirty-two a.m. I knew that because the chief had asked me, as the property owner, to sign an agreement that the fire service investigation team had my permission to access the property later that day, when the building had cooled.
“What would you have done if I’d died in the fire?” I’d asked him.
“We wouldn’t need your permission, then,” he’d said. “We have automatic right of entry if there has been serious injury or a death.”
Convenient, I had thought.
“And we can always get a warrant to enter if you won’t sign and we believe that arson is involved.”
“Do you believe it was arson?” I’d asked him, somewhat alarmed.
“That’s for the investigation team to find out,” he’d said. “Looks just like a normal domestic to me, but then they all do.”
I had signed his paper.
After my shower, and dressed in Carl’s tracksuit, I sat at his kitchen table and took stock. I did, in fact, have some personal possessions left to my name, since my overnight bag had been sitting safely all night under my desk at the Hay Net. Carl had fetched it while I showered, and I was able to shave and brush my teeth with my own tools.
Carl lived in a modern, three-bedroom semidetached house in a development in Kentford, just down the road from where my mangled wreck of a car still waited for the insurance assessor to inspect it.
Carl and I had worked side by side in the same kitchen for five years, and, I realized with surprise, this was the first time I had ever been in his house. We were not actually friends, and while we might share a beer together often at the Hay Net bar, we had never socialized together elsewhere. I had felt uneasy about calling to ask for his help, but who else could I ask? My mother would have been useless and would have left me with the lady in the pink slippers for most of the day as she went through her normal morning rituals of bathing at leisure, applying her copious makeup and then dressing, a task that in itself could take a couple of hours as she continuously changed her mind over what went with what. Carl had been my only realistic choice. But I hadn’t really liked it.
“So what are you going to do now?” he asked.
“First, I need to hire a car,” I said. “Then I’m going to book myself into a hotel.”
“You can stay here, if you like,” he said. “I’ve plenty of room.”
“What about Jenny and the kids?” I said, noticing for the first time how quiet it was.
“Jenny went back to her mother nearly a year ago now,” he said. “Took the girls with her.”
“Carl,” I said, “I’m so sorry. Why didn’t you say something to me?”
“Didn’t seem to matter,” he said. “To tell the truth, I was relieved when she went. I couldn’t stand the rows. I’m much happier on my own. We’re not divorced or anything, and she and the girls come over for the weekends and it’s sometimes pretty good.”
What could I say? Restaurant work, with its odd hours, never was highly recommended for happy marriages.
“Could I stay for a couple of nights, then?” I asked. “I will be gone by the weekend.”
“Stay as long as you like,” he said. “I’ll tell Jenny that she and the girls can’t stay over this weekend.”
“No,” I said quickly. “Don’t do that. I’ll find myself a more permanent place by then. Much better all around.”
“You might be right,” he said. “Are you coming in to work today?”
“Oh yes,” I said. “I think so. But maybe not until later. I want to hire the car first.”
Carl dropped me at the car-rental offices on his way into work.
“Certainly, sir,” they said. “What sort of car would you like?”
“What have you got?” I asked.
I decided on a Ford Mondeo. I wanted a fairly nondescript vehicle that wouldn’t attract attention if, for example, I went again to the members’ parking lot at Smith’s Lawn and the Guards Polo Club.
One of the car-rental company staff insisted on coming with me to my bank to make the payment arrangements before he would give me the keys of the Mondeo. It often seemed to me that the restaurant business was one of the few that allowed its customers to consume the goods before asking for any payment, or even a guarantee of payment. The old joke about washing dishes had worn a bit thin over the years, and I had never known anyone who actually did it, although I had come across many a customer who didn’t have the wherewithal to pay for his dinner after he had eaten it. What could I do? Reach down his throat and pull it out again? In truth, there wasn’t anything one could do except send him on his way, accepting his promise to return with the money in the morning. In most cases, a check quickly appeared, with profuse apologies. Only twice in the six years that I had been open had I simply not heard anything afterwards, and one of those times was because the person in question had died the day after, but, thankfully, not from eating my food. On the other occasion, two couples that I didn’t know, and who had enjoyed the full dining experience we offered, including three courses with coffee and two bottles of my best wine, had both then claimed that they thought the other couple was paying. They had given me just their assurances and their addresses, both of which turned out to be false, and I had carelessly failed to record the license plate number of their car. I bet they had thought it was funny. I hadn’t. I would recognize any one of them instantly, if they ever tried it again.
While I was at the bank, I drew out a large wad of cash and also arranged for a replacement credit card to be sent to me at the Hay Net at the earliest opportunity. Tomorrow, they said. How about this afternoon? I asked. We would try, they said, but I would have to pay for the messenger. Fine, I said, get on with it. Without my credit card, I felt as naked as I had been in the road last night.