A COMBINATION OF HEAT, smoke and noise woke Melissa Stone and she sat up abruptly, coughing and choking as the smoke that filled the room also filled her nose and mouth, flavouring every breath she tried to take.
Panic swept through her, making her heart race, as she realised the house was on fire. It magnified when she realised the smoke alarm she could hear was the one in her daughter’s bedroom. Throwing back the covers she hurried to the door, where she barely noticed the heat as she grabbed the handle and yanked the door open.
A cloud of smoke, thicker and darker than that which had already filled the room, rushed in to engulf her. She resisted the urge to fall to her knees and cough her lungs up, instead she groped her way through the doorway and out into the passage, where an orang
