With a CRASH - too loud! - I landed on the inside of the wall. Wet grass, clay mud underfoot, slightly too slippery, too clinging - I'd need to clean or bin the shoes after. Cast around for the bag, brief moment of panic when all I could find was dewy plants and spiderwebs, then my fingers found canvas. All present and correct. I stood, listened. No footsteps, no lights, alarms, shouting. Only the rustle of night traffic and the sound of my own uneven breathing.
I set off across the garden, keeping to the edge of the lawn. No sense picking through the bushes and getting tangled in the privet but even in the dim light I couldn't bear to stride across the lawn, moon-silvered and glistening, it made me too exposed. If someone looked out of the window I'd be done for. If someone looked out the window even now I'd probably be done for. The thought made me hasten my pace.
I came to the edge of the driveway and swore. Gravel. Might as well yell at the top of my lungs, I'm here, come and get me. Might as well start singing La Marseillaise. I skirted the edge looking for an alternative. The house was very quiet; the siling sleep of a daydreaming grandparent, oblivious. I circled. Long dark aspen shadows on the lawn. Eventually the driveway came to an end: two very flashy cars like hibernating beetles and then steps up to a patio. Do beetles hibernate? Maybe they just die in winter and then the eggs hatch in spring. That made me think of the seeds that some trees sow, whose parents die in fire that they might ilve, rooted in ashes, fed by char. That was after all the whole object of the exercise.
At last I found what the photos had promised: a ladder of wisteria all the way up to the second floor, flimsy wooden frame, the flowers rotted. I slung the bag down. I could see into a kitchen or conservatory or something, wicker armchairs and flower-print cushions. Kid's toys, strewn across the floor - hoops and balls and a water pistol.
No distractions. Time running low.
I unzipped the bag and drew out one of the cannisters, pulled the lid, inhaled the vibrant reek of petrol. Can you get high on petrol? I expect if you could they'd be queuing up at the Esso, the shamble-footed pay-in-pennies addicts. Or maybe you can and nobody discovered it yet. I was already on a high. I held a cannister of liquid napalm, Greek fire, like in the stories. Pure power. Heavy, sloshed a bit, I started to dowse the wooden frame, the dead wisteria. It was glistening with dew but it hadn't rained in weeks, the moisture was surface only, the wood would go up like candyfloss when I struck the match.
One down, one to go. Next cannister I led around the bay window, a stream of magic potion, better than ejaculating. I had to shake to get all the drops to come out - waste not, want not. The next window was a living room, it had those awful twee curtains with fruit and birds and things. I was doing the world a favour to destroy it, really. And big looming armchairs, and a TV. I thought rich people didn't have TVs, they just read books, or used a home cinema system in the basement the size of a council flat. But no, just an ordinary little flatscreen, smaller than Nan's.
The cannister finished. I shouldered the bag and fumbled for a match. Ready to run. I didn't know how long it would take - thirty seconds? Five? Two? Why didn't I bring a lighter? First match snapped, dropped it. Held the second.
Something caught my eye, inside.
Not movement! Christ, I'm not that thick. No, more like pattern recognition, or deja vu. On the coffee table, a cardboard box and some fragments, scattered. It was a jigsaw puzzle, half finished. They'd done all around the edge and a big chunk in the middle, some patches here or there. In the shadows I couldn't even see what it was of. Just the geometry, the vague shape of it.
It hit me with steamroller force that this puzzle would never be finished if I lit this match. It would roast in pieces, each piece smoking and turning to ash alone, as the ugly curtains set alight and the far armchairs blazed and fire ate and ate up the staircase and into the bedrooms, and the children's bedrooms, and gnawed yellow through bedframe and mattress and pillow and flesh and bone and turned the very toothbrushes to ash that the unbearable bit was the jigsaw would never be finished and could never be finished again.
I dropped the match. It hit the patio with the smallest sound, unlit. I clutched the bag with white knuckles. Then I turned and ran.