Chapter 11: Torchlight

For one second nobody screamed.

Then everybody did.

A buggy wheel squealed. Somebody's dog went mad. Glass crunched under a hundred feet at once.

"Is anyone hurt?" I was shouting before I knew I'd opened my mouth. "Is anyone hurt?"

"Here! Over here!"

It was a girl of about ten, standing on the edge of the broken glass with her mum, holding up her arm.

A thin scratch. One bead of blood.

Mum was already there with the first-aid box from under the counter.

"Just a nick, darling," she said. "You were very brave. Have a bun."

Someone laughed shakily.

That was the sound that turned it.

I climbed onto the bread crate by our door, where everyone could see me against the hole where our window had been.

It was almost pitch dark. The streetlights on the parade were dead too.

"Phones!" I shouted. "Everybody! Torches on!"

Nothing happened.

Then one light came on, by the key-cutter's.

Then five. Then fifty.

Within moments, Ropery Parade was full of little white stars, held up in the air.

"Nobody walk near the glass," I said. "Mind the kids. And don't go home. We're not done."

"The power's gone, Hol!" somebody shouted.

"The ovens are gas," I shouted back. "My dad lit them with a match for thirty years."

People cheered.

I jumped down and ran into the kitchen.

It was black. I found the long matches on the shelf by feel.

The deck ovens lit with a soft blue whump, the way they had every morning of my life.

I put the last trays of buns in.

When I came back out, the chip shop owner was frying by torchlight on his old gas range, swearing happily.

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