What it was like losing everything when my home went up in flames

When I was four, my mum and my sister and I lived in a big old house up on an isolated hill. The closest town was a mile or so away in the valley at the bottom of the hill. The house had a lot of land and was surrounded by large farms. On several occasions, criminals had used the land to burn out stolen vehicles – once my mum even opened the door one morning to a policeman informing her of a dead man found on the edge of the land.

I was terrified of the house because it was so big and would often have to run from my room to the bathroom at night, for fear of monsters eating me. I would trail around after my mum so I wouldn’t be alone.

It was little surprise that the night of the fire I was too scared to sleep and was in bed reading my children’s book. After a while I noticed a strange mist coming under my door and billowing up into a menacing silhouette. Of course it was smoke from the fire but, being only four, I assumed it was a ghost coming to steal my soul and promptly hid under the duvet.

My mum was already in bed so the fire – left momentarily unnoticed – had spread across the room consuming furniture as it went. My room was right above. I peeked out from under my duvet to see a strange wriggling under the edges of my carpet, it looked like the carpet was moving.

Suddenly massive spiders were boiling out from underneath the carpet and scuttling across the room. Presumably they were trying to escape but it just terrified me back into hiding. I tried to open my book under the covers and calm myself but as I opened the book a spider jumped onto the pages and I slammed it shut in terror. I curled up into a ball and just hugged my pillow for comfort. To this day I don’t think I have ever seen larger spiders; there were daddy long legs bigger then I could have believed possible, as well as the loathsome black house spiders with their horrible jerky gait. I have hated spiders with a murderous passion my whole life – I’m sure this spider apocalypse is the reason why.

A minute later my mum burst into the room and took me under one arm and all I could see was smoke. Luckily for me she wasn’t asleep.

As we passed the dining room I could hear a roaring but before I had to time to ask we were outside. My sister was already standing there wrapped in a blanket, half asleep. I could hear sirens now and ran to the edge of the terrace to look down into the valley and the flashing lights making their way up the hill. It finally dawned on me then what was going on. I actually felt relieved because it wasn’t ghosts after all, and I started asking to see the fire, but my mum wasn’t having any of it. In fact she wouldn’t let go of me until the fire brigade arrived.

We were taken by ambulance to the nearest hospital. For me the adventure continued as I was fascinated by all the hospital machines that were testing me for smoke levels and wearing an oxygen mask seemed like a great time. My sister fell asleep but my mum on the other hand was clearly distressed.

It turned out the fire had started when a bird had fallen or flown down the dining room chimney and pulled an old faulty wire out of alignment. The resulting spark killed the bird and set fire to the carpet.

We had no home to live in and a lot of family possessions had been destroyed in the flames. We ended up living with friends for several weeks before moving into a smaller but far less terrifying house, on a quiet road near the middle of town. After all the house had thrown at us there was no way we could go back.