I lit the candle that set the city on fire.

Casualties in the thousands, the news report said later. 342 on the plane. Those on the ground were estimates. It would take days to sort it all out and get the facts straight.

I lit the candle because that’s what I’d been told to do. I live on the flight path, you see. Just at the point where the planes drop low enough to identify, before they disappear over the towers towards the airport. I’d say I chose this flat for that reason, but I didn’t. I chose it because it’s all I can afford. Getting involved in the flight geek forums came after. A way to talk to people after the kids had gone to bed.

I’m not naive. I didn’t expect I was initiating something good, something legal. If they just wanted to set up the perfect photograph, I could have phoned them, or sent a message. I guess it’s harder to link a candle in a window with a distant telescope than a pair of phones or laptops pinging each other through the ether. Though I’m not police, obviously.

When the plane burst into flames and ploughed into the ground, my heart followed it.

They’d contacted me through the forums at first. I’d given away too much about where I lived. It was nice to have somebody who wanted something I could give. Something other than fish finger sandwiches and permission to watch YouTube after 7pm. They asked for coffee one morning, after the school run. I daydreamed it might be a date. They didn’t show. At least, nobody matching their description walked in and sat opposite me. I found a note in my pocket later, asking if I wanted to make some money by doing a small favour. I threw it away.

It should have ended there, but they knew what I looked like now, and apparently, the route I walked to school and back. They were persistent. I was never threatened, but knowing they had access to me – and my family – was enough to chip away at my resolve. When they offered money again a month later, I accepted. It wasn’t a lot, not to most people, but it was enough to pay the deposit on a rental with… not quite a garden, but somewhere I could grow herbs in a proper pot, rather than a wellington boot dangling from my kitchen window.

Nobody spoke to me about it afterwards. No one has ever knocked on my door. My devices have never been seized. I haven’t assisted anyone’s enquiries. The city burned. The people died. The flame went out. And that was that.

I lit the candle that set the city on fire, and my life carried on as normal.

No money ever came. I don’t know how to chase it.

I just keep grilling fish fingers and arguing about screen time.