The Secret Hen House Theatre (9 page)

Chapter Seventeen

Fire

Hannah hurtled down the secret path, dodging the thorns and ducking the branches. She emerged into the meadow.

And gasped.

Behind the tractor shed rose a huge column of black smoke. And as she stood there, gaping, from across the yard came a rapid series of loud cracks, like machine-gun fire.

Hannah tried to scream, but nothing came out. She couldn’t think. She just ran. Ran with all her strength, her legs drumming across the open field, her heartbeat loud and fierce in her ears.

The smell in her nostrils was growing stronger – a bitter, choking, poisonous smell. Dimly aware of the others behind her, Hannah raced through the yard, around the corner and skidded to a halt at the sight of the back barn.

She drew in her breath in a shuddering gulp. The barn was a vast black cavern of smoke. Through the smoke shot gigantic tongues of blue and orange flame, almost licking the roof.

CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

Hannah felt Sam’s hand clutch hers. She saw Martha open her mouth in a scream, but she could hear nothing above the explosions and the roaring.

Lottie’s face drained of colour and her mouth formed the words, “What’s that noise?”

Hannah pointed upwards. The barn’s corrugated roof was exploding in the heat, expanding and popping with violent cracking sounds. As the flames spread, the sides of the barn started to bulge and writhe.

“Get back!” came a shout in her ear. Hannah turned around. It was Lottie’s mum, followed by the rest of her family. “Get back, all of you! That barn could collapse any second!”

They grabbed the children and pulled them away from the barn. Hannah looked behind them, but there was nobody else.

“Where’s Dad?” she cried.

“Has anybody called the fire brigade?” yelled Lottie’s Uncle Andrew. He waved his mobile phone around wildly. “I can’t get reception. Can anybody get a signal?”

Jo’s eyes and mouth widened in horror. She clutched Hannah’s arm. “The calves!” she shouted.

Hannah’s stomach plummeted as if the earth had slid away from under her feet. She looked into the smoke-filled barn again. The calves – the wobbly-legged calves with their big blue eyes – were shut in a pen at the far end of that barn.

And she knew there was only one place her father would be.

“Dad!” she screamed, but no sound came out. She raced towards the barn. But it was as if she were in a nightmare. She was straining every muscle to move forward but something was pulling her back. She flailed her arms and kicked but she was getting nowhere.

“Get back over there!” yelled a voice in her ear. “Don’t be an idiot.”

Lottie’s Uncle Andrew had his arms around her waist, dragging her away from the barn. She lashed out but his grip was too strong and she was pulled away. But she kept her stinging eyes fixed on the smoke-filled cavern, searching, searching.

And then the shape of her father appeared through the darkness and the flames. His face was completely black. Under each arm he carried a writhing, kicking calf.

Uncle Andrew had loosened his grip when Hannah stopped fighting, and now, with one massive thrust, she broke free of his hold and catapulted towards Dad.

At that moment, a fire engine swept around the corner and stopped by the milking parlour. Another one pulled up behind it. Firemen poured out of them. Some started unrolling hoses. Some pulled on breathing apparatus. Others went up to the adults and seemed to be asking them questions.

A fireman ran up to Dad. Coughing and wheezing, Dad thrust one calf at him and the other at Jo. “Get these two down into the bottom yard. Show him the way, Joanne.”

He turned back towards the roaring cavern.

The fireman grabbed his shoulder with the hand that wasn’t holding the calf. “You can’t go back in there. That smoke’s poisonous. And the fire’s spreading.”

Dad took the fireman’s hand away. “Put it out then. Do your job and I’ll do mine.”

“You can’t go in. Nothing in there’s worth risking your life for.”

CRACK! An explosion like a gunshot blew a huge hole in the barn wall. Flames surged out. Dad pulled a rag out of his pocket, dipped it into the water tank, tied it round his nose and mouth and disappeared into the smoke.

“No!” screamed Hannah. She raced in after him, but a fireman lifted her off the ground and carried her, screaming and choking, out of the barn.

“Don’t you dare go in there,” he said.

“But Dad—”

“We’ll deal with him. You stay with your brother and sister.”

Hannah turned round. Martha and Sam were standing behind her, their faces huge-eyed and rigid with terror. She held out her arms. Martha shrank away. Sam flung his arms around her waist and burst into sobs.

“Dad, Dad!” screamed Martha.

Hannah whipped her head around. The back half of the barn was engulfed in flames. And, seemingly through the flames themselves, his back bent and his head down, stumbled Dad. Next to him came a
fireman, wearing breathing apparatus. Each of them carried two terrified calves under their arms.

And then everything went into slow motion. A vast concrete beam crashed down from the roof directly above her father. Hannah watched in paralysed horror as it smashed on to the ground.

Her stomach tightened in pain and she doubled over. She felt Lottie’s arm round her shoulder. “It’s OK, Hannah. Look, he’s OK.”

Hannah looked up. By some miracle Dad and the fireman had emerged into the open air. Dad was wheezing and coughing. Two firemen rushed forward and took the calves from him. Two others led him away from the burning barn.

The children ran over to their father. He was bent double and his chest heaved as he gulped in air.

“Stand back,” said a fireman, shooing them away. “We need to check him over.”

Jo came racing up the yard. “What’s happened? Is Dad OK?”

A fireman raised his head. “Stand back, kids. Give him some air.”

They moved back half a step. Hannah watched in terror as firemen rushed around with oxygen masks and breathing apparatus, giving instructions to each other in words she didn’t understand.

Finally Hannah said in a tight little voice that didn’t sound like her own, “Will he be all right?”

“We’re doing all we can,” said a fireman. “The ambulance is on its way.”

Hannah’s throat closed up and only Lottie’s arm
round her shoulder kept her upright. “Ambulance? What do you mean?”

But her voice came out as a tiny croak. The fire crackled and roared as it devoured the barn, and nobody heard her.

Chapter Eighteen

A Discovery

“Yuck!” Sam spat a mouthful of porridge back into his bowl. “That’s disgusting.”

“It’s burned,” said Jo, pushing her bowl away and pulling towards her a yellow exercise book. On the cover she had written in large multicoloured capitals, “BEAN STEW”. This was the magazine of the Great and Mighty Society of Bean. “And lumpy.”

Hannah had hoped they wouldn’t notice. She sighed. “Do you want toast instead?”

“Is Daddy going to be put in jail?” asked Sam.

Hannah’s stomach churned. “No, of course not.”

“You’ve given me milk and Sam water,” said Jo, swapping the cups around.

“Why are the police here then?” asked Sam.

“They’re just trying to find out how the fire started, that’s all.”

Yesterday afternoon, standing in terror outside the burning barn as her father disappeared into the flames, Hannah had been certain that if he came out of that barn alive, she would never worry about anything else ever again.

And he had come out alive. He hadn’t even gone
to hospital. When the ambulance came, he had refused to get into it. “I’ve got a farm to look after,” he said, and even when every other adult offered to look after the farm and the children, he wouldn’t budge. So the ambulance crew had stayed until they were satisfied he was going to be OK, and then they left. He must have a fantastic pair of lungs on him, they said.

So she ought to be completely happy, shouldn’t she?

“Jo, get your drawing stuff out of the way.” Hannah pushed two plates of toast across the table.

“Hey, Broad Bean, look at this,” said Jo, moving the open book towards her brother.

“Cool,” said Sam. “Where’s the butter?”

“In the fridge,” said Hannah.

Sam slid off his stool as Dad’s raised voice came from the dining room.

“You think I’d torch my own barn? With my livestock in it?”

“Is there any jam?” asked Jo.

“Sshh,” said Hannah. But she couldn’t make out any words in the policewoman’s reply.

What did that mean? Did the police suspect Dad of causing the fire himself? But why on earth would anyone do that?

“Hannah, is there any jam?”

“For goodness’ sake, Jo, get it yourself!”

The hall door banged open and Martha crashed into the kitchen, Princess Esmeralda’s eyeliner smudged over her cheeks.

“Ugh, it stinks in here.”

“Hannah burned the porridge,” said Jo. “You look like a badger with that make-up all round your eyes.”

“Shut up, you little weirdo. I’ve got beautiful eyes. Yours look like the bottom of a murky pond.”

The door to the dining room opened and Dad and the policewoman walked out. Neither of them looked at the children. Dad’s face was grim as he showed the policewoman to the scullery door.

“Well, thank you very much for your time,” she said as he pulled the door open. “We’ll be in touch. And if you find anything or hear anything that might help us discover the cause of the fire, let me know straightaway. Anything at all. If this was arson, we need to find out who was responsible.”

Arson!

Did the police think someone had burned Dad’s barn down on purpose?

But who on earth would do that?

Dad walked back into the kitchen. The children avoided his gaze. Since the fire, his mood was worse than ever.

He stopped and stood by the table.

“Were any of you playing around with matches in that barn?”

Now they all looked at him. “No.”

“Are you sure? What were you all up to yesterday afternoon?”

The Beans looked at Hannah. “We were nowhere near the barn,” she said. “And we wouldn’t do
anything like that. You know we wouldn’t.”

He grunted. “Hmm.”

“Why are you asking?” said Hannah. “The police don’t think we did it, do they?”

Dad frowned. “They think it must be arson. There’s no other explanation for a livestock barn going up in flames like that. They even started asking me questions, for goodness’ sake.”

“You!” said Jo. “Why would you burn your own barn down?”

“Oh, don’t worry, I soon put them right on that score. Not much point burning down your own barn if you’re not insured. Well, must get on,” he said, heading out round the back where he kept his boots and coats. “But if you lot see or hear anything, you let me know.”

For the first time ever, Hannah wished it wasn’t the holidays. All the noise and bustle of school might have crowded out the image that kept flashing back into her head.

Dad, groping his way out of the burning barn, And a concrete beam, falling, falling, falling…

As soon as she had cleaned up the breakfast stuff, she found herself heading back to the barn.

The foul stench of chemical smoke hung in the air all over the farm. But the sun was shining and sparrows chattered in the hedgerows. It felt wrong, like laughter at a funeral.

All that was left of the barn’s structure were the steel uprights. The sun poured down on to the scorched ground, illuminating millions of ash flecks
hanging in the air. Every little breeze blew up clouds of ash and soot, which got into Hannah’s nostrils and made her cough.

She walked through what had been the barn and out the other side. The yard out there was black too. She walked on, down the back track that cut through the fields leading to the other side of the village.

There was a matchbox lying on the track. Hannah hated litter. She bent down and picked it up. She would put it in the bin when she got back.

She transferred it to her other hand to put in her coat pocket.

As she did so, something caught her eye.

There was writing on the back.

Hannah’s stomach scrunched itself into a tiny ball.

Miranda
, said the writing, in blue biro. And, below the name, a mobile phone number.

Hannah dropped the matchbox as if it was burning her fingers. Her heart thumping against her chest, she stared at it lying in the dust.

When she’d last seen that matchbox, in the bus shelter, it was full.

Now it was empty.

And the barn had burned down.

She heard Dad’s words again. “Were any of you playing around with matches in that barn?”

And she heard Jack’s voice outside the theatre. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

She looked back at the huge burned-out skeleton of the barn.

No.

No. Don’t be crazy. They couldn’t have done that. They
wouldn’t
have done that.

They wouldn’t have gone into the barn. The packet was here, on the track. They were probably just walking along the footpath. Nowhere near the barn.

Something else must have caused the fire. It couldn’t have been them, could it?

Because if it was … then she was responsible. Because it was her fault that they were on the farm.

No. It couldn’t have been them.

She looked at the matchbox on the ground.

It wasn’t evidence, was it? She couldn’t report that to the police. Just a stupid matchbox?

Was it a crime? Withholding evidence?

But she couldn’t tell the police. She couldn’t tell anyone. Because then they would know. They would know that she had invited Jack to the farm. And they would know that the whole fire was her fault.

Hannah looked at the matchbox again. She stretched her fingers out. Withdrew them. Stretched them out again.

Slowly she bent down, picked up the box with the tips of her fingers, put it in her coat pocket and trudged back towards the house.

A big black BMW was parked in the farmyard. That looked familiar too, but Hannah couldn’t quite pinpoint why.