Chapter Two
She patted down her skirt as she started to smell smoke. It was slight at first, but became thick quick and fast. With a shuddering blink, she turned towards the door and noted the smoke now billowing into the bathroom from underneath it, through the keyhole, even through the cracks in the side near the hinges.
Her heart tripled its pace and she coughed into her hand. She jerked back from the door, staring at it in disbelief.
That would be when the wood started to sizzle and crackle. A second later, it burst into flame.
She stumbled backwards until her legs jammed up against the ceramic toilet, and she screamed. By god did she scream.
Above the crackle and roar of the fire, she heard people shout from outside and soon the piercing wail of a firetruck.
Considering Sizzle Cafe was squeezed between the police station and the fire station, help wasn’t far away. In fact, the back wall of the toilet was shared with the fire station itself.
Notwithstanding how close help was, she still had a flaming door in front of her. She grabbed a hand towel near the basin, covered it in water, and crammed it over her mouth.
By now the whole door was covered in bubbling, undulating flame.
... Yet it wasn’t hot.
She should have been boiling; she wasn’t.
Fires don’t burn cold.
Something wasn’t right.
She didn't have long to entertain that alarming thought; the thick smoke was still making her choke, and she struggled for every breath.
She huddled against the cistern, crumpling her face towards the wall.
Her elbow jostled into something and a small package fell out from under the u-bend.
Even in the chaos and the smoke she noted it; it caught her eye. It had Henrietta written across the top in a scrawl. As she reached out a shaking hand to pick up the packet, she heard the firemen kick into gear on the other side of the door. There was a fantastic splashing and sizzling sound as the water started to chase back the flames, and the wood shuddered under the impact.
For a moment she paid no attention to it. For a moment she forgot she was stuck in the bathroom behind a flaming door.
All her attention focused on the package.
She was attracted to it. The attraction was electric, magnetic, impossible to ignore. As she stared at it, smoke filling the room and billowing around her, sensations rushed through her body. Cold snaps, tight shivers, exciting tingles.
Her distraction didn’t last. With an adrenaline-fueled snap, she remembered where she was.
She crumpled her shoulders, digging her feet into the ground as she pushed herself as close to the toilet as she could.
Her hand clutched the packet, her knuckles pale white with tension.
With a resounding shout from outside, the door buckled, and the flames started to die.
Jimmy Field rushed in. Being the large capable fireman he was, he found her huddling in the corner, lifted her up, and carried her out of the room.
That was how Henrietta Gosling spent her lunchtime. She spent the afternoon in emergency being treated for smoke inhalation.
She spent a good chunk of the evening trying to explain to her sister how it wasn't that embarrassing to be caught in a flaming bathroom.
It wasn't until Henrietta got home to her small sweet house that she realized the packet was still in her hand. Somehow she’d held onto it all day long. From the hospital, to Marcia’s, she hadn’t dropped it.
With an audible swallow and a shaking whine, she realized how horrifying that was.
The worst was yet to come.