Chapter Thirty

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With trembling fingers, Tara unlocked the front door. She was late home, and dreaded what her father was going to say – the only consolation she could think of was that she was too old to be spanked. She hadn't meant to be late, if it hadn't been for her friend, Lucy, distracting her with some videos on Youtube, right when she was about to leave, she would have been home on time.

All thought of the punishment she was likely to receive, was driven from her mind when she got the door open and was greeted by a cloud of thick black smoke which billowed out to engulf her. She stumbled, choking, away from the door until she found fresh air and could breathe again. It took her a short while to recover enough to wonder what was going on, and once she did, she cautiously approached the front door; the worst of the smoke had cleared, so she could see beyond the front door to the passage, but she still felt her throat close-up a little as she stepped over the threshold and started down the passage.

"Em. Em. Emily!" Tara called out, as she headed along the passage to the kitchen; she wondered where her sister was. She realised before she got to the kitchen that the smoke was coming from the dinner Emily was supposed to have been cooking; how the dinner had come to be burned, she didn't know, but she was certain that it meant Emily was going to be the one in trouble, not her.

There was no response from Emily by the time she got to the kitchen, and no sign of her dad. Tara's instinct was to go looking for them; she resisted that instinct, however, knowing it was more important to deal with the situation in the kitchen. She paused long enough to collect the fire extinguisher from the cupboard under the stairs, where it was kept, and then she entered the kitchen, holding her breath as she did so. The smoke made her eyes blink, but she found her way to the stove without any problems, and once there she put the fire extinguisher down – there were no flames for her to deal with just then.

Since there was no fire for her to extinguish, she focused instead on the smoke. Grabbing the pans off the top of the stove, she carried them to the sink, where she turned on the cold tap to douse the contents – at one time they might have been described as food, but that was no longer the case. That done, she returned to the stove.

She groped through the smoke, while continuing to hold her breath, until she had turned off all the hobs and the oven and found the oven-gloves. As ready as she was going to get, she pulled the oven door open, releasing a fresh cloud of smoke that threatened to choke her, and reached in for the roasting pans. She almost dropped them, but made it to the sink without mishap, and dumped them into the water with the other pans, she then yanked open the back door and made for the fresh air.

Tara remained outside until the last of the smoke had cleared, and then she returned to the kitchen to turn off the water before the sink could overflow and flood the kitchen. The last thing she needed was more mess, even if she wasn't responsible for the state the kitchen was in, and she had no intention of being the one to clean it up. Once the water had stopped, she checked the oven to be sure it was out, and there was no fire to be dealt with – there wasn't, thankfully – and then went in search of her sister.

As she headed nervously up the stairs, afraid of what she was going to find – she knew that something had to have happened for Emily to have let the dinner burn – Tara took out her phone so she could call her dad. It rang several times before switching over to the answerphone; she immediately disconnected the call and dialled again. The second time she reached the answerphone she began speaking, babbling.

"Where are you, daddy?" she wanted to know, almost sobbing into the phone. "Why aren't you answering. I need you. I think something's happened to Emily; the dinner's been burned and – and..." Her voice stumbled when she reached the top of the stairs and she saw the mess that was once the door to her sister's bedroom. "I'm s-scared d-daddy," she stammered as she edged towards her sister's bedroom; she wanted to turn and run down the stairs and out of the house, but she couldn't, she had to know if Emily was there. "Emily's door's broken," she continued down the phone.

She saw the messed-up quilt straight away, but wasn't troubled by that. It wasn't until she reached the end of the bed, and saw that Emily was not in the room, and that there was blood – her brain leapt to an answer for what the red stuff was – on the bedside cabinet that she lost control of herself. With a scream, she fled the room, with such haste that she tripped when halfway down the stairs and fell the rest of the way. Bruised and shaken, but somehow still in possession of her phone, Tara got to her feet so she could run from the house; she had always felt safe and secure at home, but now she felt scared to be there.

She wanted to keep running, across the yard and out the gate and down the road, but she forced herself to stop in the yard so that she could call for help – not from her father, since he was clearly not answering his phone.

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