DEATH BY FIRE

Hannah Jacobs, 62, from London

Picking up my violin in its hard black case, I opened the front door.

‘Mum, I’m going to violin practice,’ I called. ‘OK Hannah, see you later,’ she called back.

I closed the door behind me and set off down the street.

It was 10 May 1971, and I was 13 years old, living with my family in London. We rented a large flat in London’s West End. It was in a tall red-brick mansion block in Moscow Road, Bayswater.

My school friends at Burlington Grammar, near Shepherd’s Bush, lived far away and I was quite lonely. I was a sensitive child anyway, and sometimes had the feeling that