I crawled forwards, a blind person without a stick, fingers tapping in front of me, trying to find the next flight of stairs. I ought to have been crossing the reading area with the huge brightly coloured rug. I felt the rug under my fingers, the nylon melting and crinkling in the heat, and my fingertips were burning. I was afraid my fingertips would soon be too burnt to feel. I was like the man in Adam’s mythology book, holding onto Ariadne’s thread to find his way out of the labyrinth; only my thread was a melting rug.

I reached the end of the rug and felt the texture change, and then I felt the first step.

I began to climb the stairs up to the second floor, on my hands and knees, keeping my face down to the oxygen.

And all the time I was refusing to believe it could really be happening. This place was soft-cheeked children and fidgeting on the stairs and washing lines strung up across classrooms with flying pennants of children’s drawings. It was reading books and chapter books and beanbags and fruit cut up into slices at break-time.

It was safe.

Another step.

All around me I heard and felt chunks of Jenny and Adam’s childhoods crashing down.

Another step.

I felt dizzy, poisoned by something in the smoke.

Another step.

It was a battle. Me against this living breathing fire that wanted to kill my child.

Another step.

I knew I’d never get to the third floor; that it would kill me before I could reach her.

I felt her at the top of the stairs. She had managed to get down one flight.

She was my little girl and I was here and everything was going to be alright. All alright now.

‘Jenny?’

She didn’t speak or move and the fire’s roar was getting closer and I couldn’t breathe much longer.

I tried to pick her up as if she was still tiny, but she was too heavy.