DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN
David could smell smoke. He sat bolt upright in bed, stirred with a start from a deep, booze-assisted slumber. The lighting in his bedroom was all wrong, flickering orange, not blue-black. He got up too fast, tripping over the piles of clothes and other things he’d not yet unpacked, pulling on his trousers and shirt as he stumbled across the cluttered room. He felt nauseous. The house was still unfamiliar, and his head was spinning. He crashed downstairs, pulled on his boots and grabbed his jacket, then burst out into the cold of early Boxing Day morning.
One of the cottages at the far end of the road was on fire.
A crowd of people had already gathered outside the house. Marcus’s place, he thought, and he could see him in the doorway, frantically passing his
