When my friend Jonathan heard the crash of breaking glass that night in 2008, he thought it was drunks flinging bottles on Leith Walk in Edinburgh. They did that a lot, although they must have been rowdier than usual, as it was loud. It took him a few minutes to understand what was actually happening – and in that time the stairwell to his fifth-floor flat became entirely impassable. That crash was the sound of the downstairs windows exploding – glass shattering under the obscene heat of the burning apartment below us.
As for me, I was sitting with Jonathan’s wife, Ericka, in the other room, distracted by wine and chatting nonsense. The first I knew anything was wrong was when Jonathan appeared in the doorway. “I don’t mean to worry you,” he said. “But we need to go.” I flapped around, trying to locate my shoes. “No,” he clarified. “We need to go now.”
