‘I know but there will have to be an investigation, for insurance purposes. And the police say they’d like to speak to us.’
‘What?’
She spins around to look him directly in the eyes.
‘Again, just protocol. See if we noticed anything suspicious, heard anything.’
‘Right,’ she says, her voice distant, her head nodding.
‘They said they would help us find a room in a local hotel or another Airbnb for a few days while we get sorted.’
Lottie gives a low moan.
‘I just want to go home, Tim. To get away from it all. I can’t stand it anymore.’
‘I know, I know,’ he says moving to put his arm around her. She can still feel the odd tremor in his body, the residue of fear or adrenaline still moving around his limbs. He isn’t as cool, calm and collected as he would appear and it is a relief somehow. To know this quiet oak of a man can be felled, though he remains strong and faithful for now. ‘But it’s just for a couple of days while they interview any key witnesses, take statements and collate evidence I guess. The local press is even here.’ He takes an inward breath at this and lets it out slowly.
‘Okay,’ she says despondently.
‘It sounds like they might suspect arson,’ he adds, turning to look into her face, eyes searching hers with that sad, pleading look she has seen before.
‘Really? Surely not. It must be an accident. I told you that site wasn’t safe,’ she says. But then she remembers the twoambulances that have already left. Who was in them? What on earth were they doing at the building site next door?
‘God, do you think it was any of the Woolfs?’ she says, turning her face into Tim’s neck as the tears finally come. It is a delayed reaction, but she is glad of it now; the wetness sluicing out her gritty eyes, washing her dusty cheeks.
Tim shrugs. ‘I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Could have been anyone really.’
She nods again, the tears silently tracking down her face until she covers them with her hands, as though she can barely look this reality in the eye.
‘Come on,’ he says. ‘This is why we need to get seen to. You’ve suffered a shock. We all have.’ He leans and runs a hand over her and Josh’s hair. And then he leads them towards the ambulance where a woman in a dark green uniform is talking into a radio. Next to her are a couple of police officers, their high-vis jackets startling against their dark uniforms. Dawn finally breaks and the cold light of day creeps over them all.
42
Tobias breathes heavily into his phone, trying to stay connected to the emergency services operative on the line while hobbling across the stony beach towards the small party. He can see his daughter kneeling down, swaying beside the long, gangly figure of his son stretched out on the ground, where he must have been dragged from the sea.
She is cradling Drew’s head in her lap. There are a few people with her, soaking wet, a couple of lads and another girl, but they all peel away into the shadows and make their escape when they see him coming towards them on the shingle.
The calm, almost monotone voice in his ear, is reminding him of what he should do; check the airway is clear, tilt the head back, pinch the nostrils closed and blow into the mouth, watch for the chest to rise. Find the right spot, careful of the ribs, hands laced together, one on top of the other, thirty compressions and then two rescue breaths.
He drops to his knees, elbowing Bella out of the way. Putting the phone on hands-free speaker, he throws it to the floor beside his son. He will not think of him as a body, a corpse. Not yet. There is still a chance. Didn’t he watch a programme about cold water victims, how the lower temperature helps to keep the brain alive longer, the body chilled? God, he can’t believe he is even contemplating such things and a small part of him wants to give up already, to keen along with his daughter, to allow his son to lie in peace.
But then Tobias gets to work, in the same way he has tackled everything else, all his life: as if it is a challenge he must rise to, a competition he cannot lose. Death will not get the better of him. They are a family of winners, not losers, and he will not, cannot, countenance defeat.
43
Lottie clambers into the back of the ambulance and abstractly marvels at how they manage to fit so much equipment inside such a small vehicle; it is like a mini hospital on wheels. Perhaps, just maybe, that means they have been able to help the two victims of the fire, have been able to save their lives. Give them a chance anyway. She swallows at the thought, bile rising in her throat.
She sits down dutifully, as instructed, while Tim takes hold of Josh. The paramedics have already checked him over and he is fine, just a little cold and in need of sustenance and rest, like them all.
‘Those feet look nasty,’ says the grey-haired man, whose name is apparently Jim. He has kindly eyes, which are creased around the edges. His tan only seems to reach to the areas exposed around the short sleeves of his regulation green shirt. The V shape at his neck is a dark brown, with white whiskery hairs peeping out where the last button is done up. She reflects on all these things, what they might mean. Does this guy work a lot of shifts? Perhaps he doesn’t get to enjoy the beach, the water, all the joys of the coastline in summer like others. ‘Let’s have a look at them,’ he adds gently.
He opens a packet of sterile wipes and begins to clean her feet, swabbing them carefully. Lottie is aware of the sting and bite of antiseptic. She hadn’t noticed that she had stood on a piece of burning debris, traversed scorched earth. Had literally walked over hot coals to save her son. But it is all coming back toher now. It is the first time she has ever been in such close proximity to something like this. No one understands the capacity of it until they witness it with their own eyes. She still can’t believe how fast the fire must have spread, how it ate through the renovation like a ravenous beast, even an empty shell of a place like a building site, without any soft furnishings or belongings. How is that possible? She shakes her head in horror.
But it is true what they say, she admits; fire is a good servant but a very bad master.
A pair of clean, warm, fluffy socks has been produced for Lottie from somewhere. She eases them over her freshly bandaged feet and draws the foil blanket around her shoulders like some strange silvery cape. The last time she had used one of these was a lifetime ago, in her early twenties. She had just finished running the London Marathon. Her feet were in tatters then as well, as she had staggered over the finish line and promptly burst into inexplicable tears. She had been running to raise money for charity, of course. But she can’t remember which one now. She has done so many sponsored walks, climbs, runs, challenges. She has adopted so many causes, taken on so many of other people’s issues for so long now, she is unsure what it is she does and doesn’t stand for anymore. The rights and the wrongs of everything have become blurred, indistinct, muddied into a grey area in her mind.
On the one hand, there is a part of her – the secret, sadistic side she’s not proud of – that feels a sense of elation that the renovation has been thwarted. That this might send a message to locals and visitors, the wider population, that people are not happy with the status quo and something has to change. That change will only come about through disruption, which often takes many forms; vandalism, destruction, whether accidental or on purpose. You only have to look at the suffragette movement or the Just Stop Oil campaigners. They are not so verydifferent in some ways; vilified in their own time but will future generations thank them? Are some things just too important not to fight for?
