OUTSIDE THEA, FATIMA and Shadow have retreated to the bank, but I don’t follow them across the little bridge, instead I splash into the water, gasping at the coldness, feeling the heat coming from the Mill against my face and the freezing chill of the Reach against my thighs.
‘Luc!’ I scream, wading through the water until I am waist-deep, beneath his window. My clothes drag against the current. ‘Luc, I’m here!’
I see his face, lit by flames behind the glass. He’s struggling with the little window, warped by damp from the recent rain and stuck fast. My heart is in my mouth as he thumps his shoulder against the frame.
‘Break it!’ Kate shouts. She is struggling through the water towards me, but just as she says it, the window flies open with a bang, and Luc disappears back into the smoky darkness of the room.
For a minute I think he’s changed his mind, but then I hear a sobbing, bubbling cry, and I see his silhouette, and he’s holding something, and it’s Freya – Freya screaming and bucking against him, coughing and screaming and choking.
‘Now!’ I’m shouting. ‘Drop her now, Luc, hurry.’ His shoulders barely fit through the narrow frame, but he forces one arm and then his head out, and then somehow squeezes the other arm through the narrow space. And then he is leaning out as far as he can, holding Freya precariously at arm’s length as she flails.
‘Drop her!’ I scream.
And Luc lets go.
In the moment of falling, Freya is completely silent – mute with shock as she feels herself go.
There is the flutter of garments, and a brief flash of a round startled face – and then an almighty splash as she hits my arms and we both fall into the water.
I am scrabbling for her beneath the surface of the Reach, my fingers hooking on her face, her hair, her clutching arms … my feet slipping beneath me as the waters tug.
And then Kate is hauling me upright with Freya in my arms, and we are both choking and spluttering, and Freya’s thin scream of fury pierces the night, a choking shriek of outrage at the cold and the salt water stinging her eyes and her lungs – but her fury and pain is beautiful: she is alive, alive, alive – and that is all that matters.
I stagger to the bank, my feet sinking into the sucking mud, and Fatima snatches Freya from my arms while Thea hauls me up, my clothes dripping water and mud, and I am laughing or sobbing, I am not sure which.
‘Freya,’ I’m saying, ‘is she OK? Fatima, is she OK?’
Fatima is checking her as best she can, between Freya’s steam-engine shrieks.
‘She’s OK,’ I hear. ‘I think she’s OK. Thea, take my phone, call 999, quick.’
She hands me back my near-hysterical baby, and then turns to help Kate up the bank.
But she is not there. She is still standing in the water, beneath Luc’s window, and holding her arms up.
‘Jump!’
Luc looks at her, and at the water. For a minute I think he is about to do it, about to leap. But then he shakes his head, his expression is peaceful, resigned.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘For everything.’
And he takes a step back, a step away from the window, into the smoky depths of the room.
‘Luc!’ Kate bellows. She splashes along the shore, looking from window to window, desperately seeking the shape of Luc’s silhouette against the flames as he runs the gauntlet of the flaming corridor. But there is nothing there. He is not moving.
I picture him – curling on his bed, closing his eyes. Home at last …
‘Luc!’ Kate screams.
And then, before I realise what is happening, before any of us can stop her, she splashes through the water towards the door of the Mill, and hauls herself up.
‘Yes, the old Tide Mill,’ Thea is saying. ‘Please hurry. Fire and ambulance.’
‘Kate?’ Fatima cries. ‘Kate, what are you –’
But Kate has reached the door of the mill. She wraps her wet sleeves around her hands to protect them from the heat of the doorknob, and then she disappears inside, closing the door behind her.
Fatima darts forward, and for a second I think she is going after her. I make a grab at her wrist with my free hand, but she stops at the edge of the jetty, and we stand, all three of us, Shadow whining at Thea’s heels, barely breathing as the smoke from the Mill billows out across the Reach.
I see a shadow flash past one of the tall windows – Kate on the stairs, hunched against the heat – and then nothing – until Thea points up at the window of Luc’s old room.
‘Look!’ she says, her voice strangled with fear, and we see, against a sudden burst of flame, two figures, dark against the red-gold of the inferno.
‘Kate!’ I cry, my voice hoarse with smoke. But I know it’s no use. I know she can’t hear me. ‘Kate, please!’
And then there is a sound like an avalanche – a roaring crash that makes us all cover our ears, and cover our eyes against the blast of sparks, broken glass and burning wood that bursts from every window of the Mill.
Some vital beam in the roof has given way, and the whole thing tumbles in on itself, a bonfire collapsing under its own weight, shards of glass and flaming splinters spattering the shore as we hunch against the explosion. I feel the heat of cinders scalding my back, as I huddle over Freya in an effort to protect her.
When the noise subsides and we stand at last, the Mill is a shell, with burning beams poking like ribs into the sky. There is no roof, no floors, no staircase any more. There are only the tongues of flames, lapping from broken window frames, consuming everything.
The Mill is destroyed, utterly destroyed.
And Kate is gone.