No Accident at Abergwyn : A gay cosy mystery (Tudor and Stewart Abergwyn Mysteries Book 1) by Ripley Hayes

Author:Ripley Hayes [Hayes, Ripley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-12-18T22:00:00+00:00

In the event, first thing in the morning came a lot earlier than I had expected. I woke to the sound of the world ending, and the smell of petrol. Then the fire alarm went off.

9

Hold that Thought

I was out of bed so fast that I left most of my brain behind. There was a fire burning in the hall by the front door, sending up clouds of noxious smoke. My bedroom door was on one side of the fire, Mum’s on the other. There was a fire blanket and an extinguisher in the kitchen. I remembered enough to know not to throw water on a petrol fire, but not enough to know whether the fire extinguisher we had would work.

I yelled at Mum to stay where she was and call for help, and then I ran to the kitchen. The fire blanket was next to the door, and I grabbed it, pulling wildly at the fastening. Come on, come on, open you bloody thing, I sobbed, and then, blessedly, it did.

Back into the hall, where the fire was melting our flooring, and beginning to get unpleasantly familiar with the wallpaper. The coats on the hooks by the door were a mass of flame.

The blanket wasn’t nearly big enough. It would have smothered a chip pan, but not this. I did my best, stopping the fire from moving any further towards the back of the house, at least for a moment. Then I dashed back to the kitchen for the extinguisher. That’s when sanity arrived in the form of Dave next door.

He just grabbed my arm and pulled. He may have called me an idiot.

We ran round to the front of the house, where Mum was sitting by her open bedroom window, waiting for us to come and get her. I climbed in and lifted her out to Dave. I could hear the fire on the other side of the door, and the smoke was starting to creep into the room.

“Wheelchair,” shouted Dave over the noise of the alarm, “quick!”

I got the chair, managed to fold it despite my panic, and we eased it through the window — it wasn’t as flexible as Mum — and then I grabbed a blanket off the bed and shoved that through as well. As I followed, the sirens and blue lights came barrelling towards us. Once they arrived, they had the fire out in minutes. Their extinguishers were the same as the one we had in the kitchen, I noticed, just ten times the size, and they had more than one.

The aftermath was horrible. An indescribable, greasy, chemical smell hung over the house. The front door was blackened, the lovely stained-glass panel smashed. Through the door I could see smoke-stained walls, above the remains of the floor, burnt down to the joists. All dripping with foam.

The good news was that the back of the house was undamaged. Smoke had got into the bedrooms, but the doors had held. Our things might stink, but we still had them.

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