The Family Game by Catherine Steadman (94)

I empty more and more of the fuel canister onto him as he lunges and swings madly toward me. The pain must become too much because suddenly he throws himself down to the rug to tamp out his flames. But he does not think it through; the gasoline-soaked rug beneath him leaps to life, flashing even brighter as fresh flames engulf him and creep out toward the rest of the room.

I look to Robert’s prone form. We don’t have much time before this fire is completely out of control. Robert and I need to leave.

I know what I need to do. I circle around Edward and pick up the discarded shotgun, its handle hot from the flame-engulfed floor, and raise it toward Edward’s shuddering figure.

I get him in my sights, flames from the rug now lapping at my own bare legs, sending white-hot pain through me as I try to steady the weapon. I exhale calmly and pull the trigger. There is a rip of sound and Edward stops moving before the flames swallow him whole.

I drop the weapon and run to Robert’s side, tearing an antique wall hanging from the wall above him to muffle out the flames approaching him. I thrash them out and pull him, coughing, up to sitting.

“We need to get out,” I tell him. “Keep pressure on the leg wound.” He nods, and with my help stumbles up to his feet.

“The other children? Eleanor?” he croaks.

“They’re safe,” I tell him. It’s a half-truth. Eleanor is safe. Matilda is safe. Stuart I’m not so sure about, and Oliver and Fiona are dead.

We stumble from the sitting room into the hall where I steer Robert clear of the sight of Oliver’s body and out the open front door.

We burst out into the snow and take in lungfuls of clean winter air. Robert is safe, but Stuart is still inside the building, and I am not like Edward. I cannot be responsible for any more death.

“Can you make it out to the woods?” I ask Robert as we stumble clear of the house. “Eleanor and Matilda are in the hide at the edge of the forest.”

“Yes,” he tells me, then grasps my wrist protectively. “Wait. Where are you going?”

“Stuart is still inside.”

Robert shakes his head, grasping my wrist harder. “No. Don’t go back in, Harriet. Think about your child.”

I remember the life inside me, half Edward, half me, and I hesitate. Then I carefully remove his grip from my arm. “I am thinking of her,” I say delicately. “She needs me to be a person who goes back in. I need me to be a person who goes back in.”



* * *



—

The heat is hard to bear when I reenter the building, and the snow-drenched strip of fabric I thought might protect my lungs does not stop the hot burn in my throat. I dash back through the heat of the flaming hallway, my eyes stinging.

When I reach the new wing, Stuart is no longer behind the glass. He must have made it out another way.

I turn to leave again, but with a sudden jolt remember Sylvia and Anya propped up beside each other in their break room. I turn and sprint toward the staff quarters, through smoke-clogged corridors that lead back to the gas-filled kitchen.

I know nothing I can do will change the past; nothing can change what I did, or who I am in consequence. But the past can stop here. I can change. I can be better. A fresh start, a new me—a more honest me.

After all, isn’t that what I want for my child? For my daughter?

We all make mistakes and live with them, but we can make a virtue of that fact. We can turn one bad day into a hundred good ones. One bad choice into a lifetime of good choices.

Ahead of me I hear the sound of flames hitting gas and exploding as the force blows the kitchen door clean off its hinges, the backdraft knocking me off my feet. My hands fly to my buzzing ears as I choke on the cloud of smoke.

I stumble up to my feet and dart forward into the kitchen, dodging the flames lapping cabinets and bursting along the fabric of the half-rolled blinds.

I bolt into the white corridor beyond and then I see her. Anya freezes mid-step, the weight of a barely conscious Sylvia leaning against her, her expression terrified as she tries to work out if I am here to help or hurt.

But there is no time to explain. Wordlessly I slip an arm under Sylvia’s other shoulder and take half her weight.

The three of us burst out into the frozen white of the garden and spill onto the snow gasping in clean air.

After a moment, Anya catches her breath and speaks. “The phone lines don’t work. We need to call the fire department, the police. Do you have a phone? We aren’t allowed our own phones in the house.”

Of course they aren’t.

“Matilda has my phone,” I answer honestly.

Anya suddenly seems to remember the rest of the Holbeck family. “Oh God, where are they? I completely—” Her hand flies to her mouth. “Are they okay? I didn’t think— There was only time to save Sylvia,” she gabbles, emotion taking hold of her.

“Everyone else is okay,” I lie. “Everyone is gathered down by the forest, away from the fire. We can walk down to meet them—call for help there.”

Anya looks between me and her barely conscious friend and seems to come to the conclusion that I am, at least, the devil she knows.

“Okay,” she says, “let’s go.”





49


Iris


MONDAY, JULY 10



Iris. Apple of my eye.