Soul Fire

except that we can see the sea from the hospital entrance.
    Plus, there’s still no sign of Lewis, the only one of us with enough Spanish to talk to the doctors. I’ve texted him twice but he hasn’t answered. I try not to think about the
tension between him and Zoe, because that has nothing to do with this. Does it?
    Tim , she said.
    Or was it him ?
    I try to picture the shape her lips made when she tried to speak. But all I can remember is that red slash mark across her face, and the limpness of her body.
    Is the killer with me right now?
    Sahara’s face is colourless, as though she could faint again at any minute. ‘How much longer?’
    There’s no one to ask. The hospital is clean and new and almost empty. No one else seems to have been seriously injured. I guess the locals know how to stay safe.
    I stand up. God knows what the police made of us: me and Ade in our multi-layered Correfoc clothes, Sahara dressed like a bank robber, Cara like a sweaty clubber.
    ‘Was she burned ?’ Cara asks.
    ‘I told you, it was difficult to be sure.’ I close my eyes. ‘But part of her face was red raw. And I could smell burning. I thought it was the fireworks, but perhaps
that’s how skin smells when . . .’ I feel too nauseous to continue.
    ‘But she was so well wrapped up.’ Cara looks down at the bare skin of her own shin: there are a few tiny spots the colour of ripe cherries. She rubs it. ‘Ouch.’
    Sahara leans over. ‘That’s what happens when you play with fire.’
    ‘I’m fine,’ Cara says. ‘And before you have a go at me, look at goody-goody Alice?’ She pulls at my jacket and when I look down at my sleeve, I see there are two,
three . . . no, at least ten little scorches in the fabric.
    I remember the first shower of sparks to hit me. ‘It was an old jacket.’ I could tell her I only went into the fire to protect her, but what’s the use?
    ‘But what about your hair?’
    I bring my hand up to my head. Cara steps forward, and touches my scalp behind my left ear.
    ‘Ow!’
    ‘It’s burned all the way through to the scalp,’ she says.
    I touch the same place and there’s a sore spot the size of a five pence coin. ‘I hadn’t even realised.’
    Cara looks more shocked by that than by anything else that’s happened. She tenderly pulls strands of hair from elsewhere to cover the spot. ‘It won’t show, Alice.’
    ‘Of course, we don’t know if she was trampled as well as burned,’ Sahara says.
    Cara and I gawp at her.
    Even Ade, who hasn’t spoken since we got here, shakes his head. ‘Sahara. The more you speculate, the worse it seems.’
    She stands up. ‘Well, what are we supposed to do while we wait? There’s not even any guarantee they’ll let us—’
    I see him first. ‘Lewis!’
    He’s running through the hospital doors, towards us. He stares at each of us, as though he’s taking a register. ‘Zoe? It’s Zoe, isn’t it?’
    I nod.
    ‘What’s happened to her?’ Lewis demands.
    ‘We don’t know yet,’ Sahara says. ‘You have to try to talk to them. Your Spanish is better than ours.’
    He shakes his head. ‘If I’m the best we’ve got, we really are in trouble, but I’ll try. Where are the doctors?’
    ‘I’ll show you.’ I walk with him towards reception.
    ‘Where’ve you been, Lewis?’ I hiss, once we’re out of earshot of the others.
    ‘Looking for you lot.’
    Couldn’t you see what happened, from up there on the phone box?’
    ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Ali. If I’d seen her burning, I’d have helped, wouldn’t I?’
    ‘Burning?’
    ‘Or whatever has happened to her.’ He turns his back on me and says something to the woman behind the desk, who looks relieved that at last there’s someone who might be talking
sense. I catch the odd familiar word, and realise she probably can speak English after all, but didn’t trust the rest of us.
    But that’s not the thing that’s confusing me right now. Burning . How would he know?
    ‘They’ll send someone out to see us as soon as they can,’ Lewis says.
    I look at the floor, instead of at him. Of course it’s natural to assume that she’s been burned under the circumstances . . . and yet he sounded so certain.
    ‘You just said you’d have helped if you’d seen her burning. Did you get to talk to her somehow? Did she tell you she was burned? Are you sure you didn’t see
something?’
    His eyes narrow. ‘I don’t think this is the time for twenty bloody questions, Alice. I assumed