When Astrid McKenzie went up in flames at the end of my road I was fast asleep in my bed, dreaming about my mother.

I feel terrible that while Astrid crackled away I was totally oblivious to her suffering.  My mother maintains you always dream in opposites so I suppose it makes sense that in my dream she was running toward me with her arms outstretched, ready to embrace me.   This simply does not happen in real life, which is probably why I was so deeply ensconced in the dream, enjoying something I never normally experienced, that I never heard the crackling of the flames only a little way down the road.

Astrid was a children's television presenter.  I was always mildly intrigued that she was one of my neighbors because she was a mini-celebrity and celebrities are my stock in trade.  I'm a ghostwriter.  I'm the 'as told to' or the 'written with' in small type you see underneath the celebrity's name on the cover of their autobiography.  Every time I hear the name of someone in the news I automatically start asking questions, filing away a mental profile, just in case.  Although Astrid was hardly likely to need a ghostwriter now.

But Astrid, it seemed, was not responsible for the blazing inferno that killed her.  I first learned about the fire when I watched the local news on breakfast TV.   It had started just after midnight.  I must have slept through all the sirens.  Seeing the street where I lived on television was unnerving.  I pulled a pair of jeans on and rushed outside to look at the charred remains of Astrid's little mews house. 

And then it began to hit me.  I had a sudden flash of Astrid waking up to a wall of fire around her bed.  I wondered what went through your mind when faced with something like that?  Did you automatically leap out of bed and try to wade through it?  Would you stop to think about anything at all in the face of such danger?  What would it be like to know that in a few seconds you would be subjected to heat that would cause your flesh to fry, your blood to boil, and your bones to snap, crackle, pop into powder?  These were the kind of thoughts that would now begin to haunt me.  Sometimes I like awake, working myself up into a state of panic imagining the worst kind of violent death I could encounter.  Plane crashes have always been favorites.  Boating accidents and drowning feature high on the list.  It doesn't matter that I made the swim team at school and passed the lifesaving exam.  Somehow I will be caught in the perfect storm with drowning the only option.   Elevator cables snapping, tornadoes hurtling the car I am in through the air, sharks lurking beneath the surface in a bay where they have never been seen before, waiting to bite my leg off.  I've entertained all these eventualities and many more.

And then of course there's murder.  They're all out there waiting for me but murder is the worst.