Zoe Holohan

The heat got too much.

I woke up in the bed with my bikini bottoms still on and Brian screaming from downstairs, telling me to get up.

And his voice had such a tone of urgency that obviously I woke up with a shock.

Brian was just standing there, like he was in a trance, and the whole side of the garden, the whole area that we'd just come in from, the pool, was just filled with flames.

The whole back garden and the hills behind, of which we could have a view from the back of the house, were totally on fire.

So we realized now we had minutes if not seconds to get the hell out of there.

I made sure I had the wallets, the passports, our keys, our wedding rings, and that was it.

And I just threw on a dress, this long white dress that I'd chosen specifically for the honeymoon.

And I threw on this pair of webbed wedge sandals, all new, all beautiful.

But I thought the long dress might be a good idea.

I don't know what I was thinking.

I thought the long dress might be a good idea if we encountered fire.

Outside the car,

were like these little whirling tornadoes of burning debris.

We'd actually stepped into hell.

The heat was unbelievable, but we were inside the car.

And, you know, there was this small moment, this split second where I thought, yeah, we're going to get out of here.

We're going to be okay.

We're in the car.

We're going to zoom out of this.