Free Dying in the Dark by Sally Spencer

he’d ever be able to get down again. He stuck his head through the front doorway, sucked in a gulp of the largely unpolluted air outside, then ran up the stairs two at a time.
    The master bedroom was empty. So was the spare room. The baby’s cot stood in the centre of the nursery, but there was no sign of the baby herself. When he found nothing in the bathroom either, he understood that the whole dangerous exercise had been a complete waste of time.
    He heard the sound of a fire engine siren wailing in the distance, and thought, ‘God, they’ve been quick!’
    But not quick enough. Nowhere near quick enough!
    Moments before the air upstairs had seemed perfectly fresh, but now he was finding it difficult to breathe again.
    â€˜Must be a reason for that,’ he thought hazily. ‘Has to be a reason … a very good reason.’
    He staggered – why was he staggering, he wondered? – out on to the landing again, to discover that the fire had pursued him, and now the whole of the staircase was ablaze.
    Shouldn’t have spread so fast, he thought for the fifth or sixth time. No reason why it should have spread so fast.
    He returned to the master bedroom, and opened the window. Above his head the light fizzled, and then the room was plunged into darkness.
    A crowd had gathered outside.
    Bloody nosy parkers! he thought. What’s the matter with you? Nothin’ good on the telly at this time of night?
    The fire engine was just pulling on to the street, its lights flashing, its siren still howling. Woodend wondered idly how long it would take the firemen to get the ladder up to him. If they were as good as they claimed to be, it shouldn’t take much time at all. On the other hand, if they
weren’t
that good he wouldn’t be around to take the piss out of them for it, because he’d be bloody well dead!
    He hoisted himself up on to the window ledge.
    â€˜Somebody’s up there!’ a woman’s voice screamed below. ‘He’s going to jump!’
    Well, of course I’m goin’ to bloody jump! Woodend thought. What else do you expect me to do? Stay here and roast?
    Rutter’s prize flower patch was just below him, he noticed. Bob always said that even if Maria couldn’t actually see the flowers, at least she could bloody well smell them.
    â€˜Jump!’ several voices urged from below.
    Bugger you, I’ll jump in my own time, Woodend thought.
    â€˜Jump!’ the voices screamed again.
    In fact, if it means destroying Bob’s prize flower bed, I might not jump at all, Woodend thought. It’s only a few weeks to Christmas. I might just stay here until Santa Claus comes to call, then I can leave on his sled.
    You’ve gone loopy, Charlie Woodend, he told himself. You
have
to bloody jump.
    In the event, it was more of a half-jump and a half-collapse-forward. Several people on the ground screamed as he fell, but by that point he had very little interest in anything save for the swirling images inside his head.
    He was lying on his back, staring up at rows of white tiles.
    White tiles?
    Staring
up
at them?
    How
could he be staring up at them. Did that mean that he was hanging from the bloody ceiling?
    He closed his eyes again, and when he opened them once more, it all started to make more sense. The tiles were
on
the ceiling, he was on a bed. Put the two together, and he was almost certain that meant he was in a hospital.
    But why? Had all that greasy food, washed down with pints of best bitter and rounded off with a cigarette, finally brought on the heart attack that Joan had been warning him of for so long?
    No, Joan was the one who’d had the heart attack – while they’d been on holiday in Spain.
    So just what
was
going on?
    He turned his head to one side, and saw the man in blue uniform who was sitting next to his bed.
    â€˜So what’s it all about, Constable?’ he asked.
    And then he remembered. The sudden