My house burnt down and I still don't know how I got out alive

There's always one question that pops up in personality quizzes: 'What would you save if your house was on fire?'

I've thought about it in the past: perhaps mementoes from the - children's lives . . . photographs . . . my engagement ring.

But as of Saturday night, I know the real answer. Nothing whatsoever. When smoke is billowing through the house and you're aware that these could be your last moments on earth, the only thing worth saving is your own life.

Flic Everett

Lucky to be alive: Flic Everett stands in her fire damaged kitchen

The fire started as a result of several thoughtless moments. Most things that kill people probably do.

The previous night, I'd been woken at 3am by the insistent beeping of the smoke alarm battery. It was running out and the only way to stop the noise was to remove it.

'I'll buy another one tomorrow,' I thought, half-asleep. By the morning, I'd forgotten all about it. On Saturday night, we had friends coming for dinner and were running late.

I was struggling with the starter and, at 7.45pm, the table wasn't laid. 'We haven't even got any candles or flowers to make it look nice,' I said to my husband, Simon, 43.

He offered to nip to Sainsbury's to buy candles. 'No don't, there's not time,' I said. Then I changed my mind.

The tumble dryer, the laptop on top of it and the clothes were blazing. He ran into the back room, shouting: 'The house is on fire!'


He came back with a pack of tapered candles and put three in the decorative metal holder that's fixed to the wall in the kitchen where we have our dining table.

Our friends, a couple we've known for years, arrived ten minutes later. Later on, after dinner, we went into the newly decorated back room to finish the wine and listen to music.

When our friends left at 1am, we were tired and ready for bed - we'd completed the redecorating only that afternoon.

Unusually for me, I fell asleep on the sofa and Simon decided to leave me there and go to bed. He went to lock the cats into the kitchen as usual and checked that the candles had been blown out.

However, he didn't see that one had almost burnt down and then tipped forward, landing in a pile of clothes we'd shoved next to the tumble dryer to hide them out of sight when our guest arrived.

Flic Everett

Devastated: Flic and husband Simon

At 2.30am, he was only half asleep, and so gradually became aware that he could hear our four cats scratching and miaowing frantically at the kitchen door.

Normally, they settle down and sleep through the night, so he was worried enough to get up. Stumbling downstairs, he opened the wooden kitchen door - and black, choking smoke rushed out.

Through the fog, he could see a glowing furnace. The tumble dryer, the laptop on top of it and the clothes were blazing. He ran into the back room, shouting: 'The house is on fire!'

I woke, disoriented, not understanding. I barely remembered falling asleep, but had taken out my contact lenses and could hardly see.

The next thoughtless moment was the one that nearly killed us. Every night, we leave the keys in or near the front door, after locking up. That night, Simon had slipped them in his jeans pocket as he went upstairs.

He shouted to me that the keys and his mobile were upstairs. There was no point trying to force our way out of the front door - it has mortise security locks.

We had no phone downstairs to phone for help, and no way out. The downstairs windows open at the top, but the gaps are too small to climb through, and the fire had already cut off the back door.

'Call the fire brigade,' I shouted, and Simon ran upstairs to get the phone, perhaps still hoping he could grab the keys and open the front door.

But within seconds, the thickness of the smoke on the stairs had doubled, and the lights had fused.

The smoke was as choking as water, and pitch black


I groped through the smoke, suddenly aware that this was potentially fatal. I've often wondered how it would feel to be in danger of dying. When it happened, there was no time to consider any epic final thoughts; just a vague sense of disbelief, a feeling of: 'This can't be the way I'm going to die.'

Downstairs was so full of smoke that I realised my only chance was to join Simon in the bedroom, where we could climb out of the large window. But by then, none of the house seemed to be in the right place - the once familiar geography of home felt like a twisted fairground fun house.

I couldn't tell if I was going up the stairs or coming down them. The smoke was so thick that it was increasingly difficult to breathe.

It's a typical Victorian terrace, with the kitchen at the back, a narrow hall and, at the top of the stairs, a landing that leads one way to the back bedroom and bathroom, and the other way to two further bedrooms and the attic stairs.

Our bedroom is at the front, but I couldn't work out if I was there or mistakenly trying to get into the back bedroom, which has a window with a vertical drop to a stone patio.

Through rising terror, I heard Simon speaking to the fire brigade. I eventually located our bedroom and ran to the window, which opens widely onto a sloped roof above the front room. 

Jumping down was impossible because the basement steps are directly below - a drop of about 20ft - so I climbed onto the steep bay window roof. I realised I was wearing just knickers and a black satin top - having taken off the dress I'd been wearing to be more comfortable sleeping - and I was clinging to a frost-covered roof in the small hours of a frozen November night.

I thought Simon was behind me, but within a couple of seconds I realised he had tried to get to the attic, where his clothes are, to put his trousers on before the fire brigade arrived.

Confused, he hadn't realised the speed and density of the smoke - that small moment of British embarrassment could have cost him his life.

I screamed back through the bedroom window. I don't remember what I said, but I know I used the words: 'You'll die.' 

Desperate measures: Flic and Simon clung to the small ledge under their bedroom window until the fire brigade arrived


He heard the phrase and came to his senses - but, nearing the top of the attic stairs of our tall house, he turned and realised the way back was obscured by poisonous black smoke.

It isn't like smoke in the movies, where the hero and heroine clamp a rag over their mouths and can easily be seen, battling through a few grey wisps. This smoke was as choking as water, and pitch black.

That was the moment Simon can't stop replaying in his mind. It was the few seconds when he genuinely believed he was going to die. I remember that he reappeared at the bedroom window, having pushed through the smoke and inhaled plenty.

The smoke began to flood into the bedroom and out through the window, where I was clutching the sill to stop myself sliding off the roof. By then I was trying desperately to calculate our chances of jumping and surviving.

I figured we had about two or three minutes before we'd pass out from the smoke.

The only thing in my mind, other than our survival, was how my son, Wolfie, 17, and Simon's daughter, Mimi, 20, would feel if we died that night.

Thankfully, both were away - Wolfie was staying at his Gran's and Mimi has her own flat nearby. That was the moment we heard the sirens on the main road.

'Please come,' I kept begging. 'Please come.' All I could think about was the children and that we needed to survive for them - there was no space in my head for anything else other than urgent, practical strategising.

We will never, ever use candles again, and never risk one day or night without a smoke alarm


'If we hold onto the gutter and lower ourselves, it might break, but perhaps we can climb onto the neighbour's porch - it's only four feet away,' I thought frantically.

From Simon's discovery of the fire to the arrival of two fire engines in our small avenue, it must have been less than seven minutes. It felt like hours of grinding terror.

I saw a ladder appear and then a huge fireman gripped me and said: 'You're all right, love. I've got you.'

He carried me down and somebody wrapped me in a huge jacket. I've joked, like most women, about fancying firemen, about 'being rescued', but my God, I could never have imagined the flood of pure gratitude that engulfed me.

I was vaguely aware of Simon being helped down the ladder, and then we were in the fire engine, with oxygen masks over our faces.

It was only when I looked down that I realised we were covered in soot. We looked like Dick Van Dyke and his sweeps in Mary Poppins. We could see a fireman kicking in our front door, the flashing blue lights of an ambulance, a police car - our quiet road had suddenly turned into something from a TV drama.

We were led to the ambulance in our bare feet - another fireman thoughtfully retrieved some oddments of clothes for us. I re-dressed, inappropriately, in the soot-stained glamorous dress and high heels I'd taken off a couple of hours earlier, and borrowed a phone to let my parents know what had happened. 

Flic Everett

Pet rescue: It was thanks to the noise their cats made that Flic and Simon woke up after a candle caused a fire in their home

Later, I heard my message on their answerphone. 'Mum, it's me. I'm really sorry to wake you . . . we're fine, there's been a little fire.' I sounded like a relaxed chat-show host. In retrospect, I can only assume I was in shock.

At our nearest hospital, Wythenshawe, we were treated with the utmost kindness and respect.

They brought us cups of tea, gave us more oxygen and chest X-rays. Standing alone in the blue-lit room, wearing a hospital gown and pressed against a metal plate, it hit me how violently and instantly your circumstances can alter.

Hours before, we'd had a casual Saturday night dinner and a few glasses of wine. Now we were being tested for carbon monoxide inhalation, having blood tests - and we were feeling endlessly, desperately, grateful to be alive.

While we waited for the results in the dimly lit A&E department, on two beds the nurses had sweetly pushed together for us, Simon and I held hands and talked about how it had felt, how we both, separately, thought we were going to die, and how relieved we were that our son, and our best friend and lodger, had been away that night.

We tried not to talk about the cats who had saved our lives - it was too painful and we felt too guilty.

Only people - and pets - are important. Everything else is just so much stuff


We both secretly thought they must have died because the fire had cut off the cat-flap and, until the firemen had kicked in the door, how could they have got out?

Not once did either of us wonder about what else we'd lost in the fire. Nothing mattered, other than the fact we had survived, that later in the morning we'd be able to phone our children and hear their voices, see our parents, speak to our friends.

All that counted was other people. I didn't care about the precious childhood photos in a box upstairs, our huge piles of lovingly collected vinyl records, the favourite ornaments, all the memories, all the things - because, in the final analysis, memories live on in your mind, and belongings are just objects.

Of course, we felt bitterly stupid at our own carelessness, at the danger we'd pointlessly put ourselves in - but it's had one salutary effect: we will never, ever use candles again, and never risk one day or night without a smoke alarm.

We went back the next day, expecting to find our cats' bodies in a charred shell of a house.

All four were sitting outside, licking themselves. Their eyes were baleful yellow orbs in grey balls of soot, but they were alive.

The kitchen, hall and stairs were entirely black and the other rooms lay under a coating of soot like some terrible mockery of snow.

In the kitchen, the tumble dryer, vacuum cleaner and laptop had melted, and the walls and ceiling were jet black.

All my recipe books were charred, the lights had fused and the window had cracked from the heat.

The whole house reeked of toxic smoke and every room was covered in soot - the white tiles of the bathroom looked like an abattoir streaked with black blood.

All my clothes were stiff with soot - my white fake fur coat resembled a badger's pelt.

All the books were covered in a greasy film, and the hall and stairs were as black as an Underground tunnel.

The first time I saw our home after the fire, I burst into tears. Since then, going back to throw things in a skip before the professional housecleaning service arrived, we've tried to break down the tasks into bite-sized chunks and focus on just one thing at a time - otherwise, it's overwhelming.

In about three weeks, we should be able to move back and start repainting. I'm hoping that, by then, it will feel like home again.

We are staying at my parents' house and a friend's flat, living out of boxes of smoke-stained clothes while we start to tackle the mess. Our friends and families have been astounding in their generosity - my best friend has even bought me a new coat, because all mine smell irretrievably of kippers.

But several days later, I still feel the same way. What's lost is only possessions and if, next week, most of mine are filling the skip, I still won't weep over them.

In those desperate moments on the roof, straining to hear the sound of sirens in the distance, I realised the truth. Only people - and pets - are important. Everything else is just so much stuff.


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